Happy Birthday tomorrow, America!

Just a reminder that here in the Land of the Free™©® you can be straight-up executed by the government for holding a mobile phone and trying to assist your fellow Americans when they require aid from being shoved to the ground by those who are supposed to be protecting us. Then the president will accuse you of being a domestic terrorist because you had a firearm on your person that you were legally allowed to carry (as guaranteed by the Second Amendment), even though it remained holstered. Then the government will tell lies about you having drawn your weapon and announce that you deserved to die even though video footage exists, and the only thing you were holding was your phone. Then the government agents responsible for murdering you in broad daylight will get put on "administrative leave." But, woo-hoo, fireworks or what the fuck ever.

Instead of attending some tacky, unattended, bloated, partisan, for-profit event that's a drain on American taxpayers for America's 250th, I'll be celebrating American heroes who embody the best ideals of what our country could be. Like a 37-year-old intensive care nurse working to help our veterans who put himself between a woman who had been attacked... and the federal agents who shoved her to the ground. At which time he was pepper-sprayed then executed by the government as he tried to help her. Then he was vilified and branded a terrorist by the head of the government, despite the fact that he had done nothing illegal or wrong.

He was just an American trying to enjoy the freedoms which were at the heart of the entire reason this country was built in the first place. And he was a helper...

This country was better with you in it, Alex Pretti.

   
• Greed Hike! After record-breaking financial quarters worth billions upon billions of dollars in profit, Tim Cook announced that price hikes for Apple devices are "unavoidable," and they arrived this week. It's been noted that last year alone Apple raked in $112 billion and spent $310 billion on stock buybacks. Which is to say that Tim Cook is full of shit. His company has more money than some countries, and the idea that they can't absorb the RAM price increases THAT APPLE FUCKING CONTRIBUTED TO WITH THEIR AI BULLSHIT, well... forgive me for laughing. And for hanging on to my existing Apple products for a good, long, while.

   
• Don't Get Grifted! The insanity just keeps piling up...

People are entirely too easy to manipulate when it comes to their health. And I have no idea how we got here.

   
• Feral Hogs! This may seem funny... but my friend Doug and I were chased by feral hogs in Kauai, and it was terrifying. They are horrific. Which, if you've seen the movie Hannibal, you already know...

You would not want to meet a feral hog in a dark alley. Or anywhere else, I'm guessing.

   
• She's Super! The hate being lobbed at Milly Alcock because she dared to accept an acting job as Supergirl in a movie is repugnant. Snyder fan-bros aren't just content to say "I am not going to watch the movie because I don't like the direction of the James Gunn universe"... oh no. They have to attack Milly's looks and anything else they can think of to make it personal, despite the fact that she's getting rave reviews by people who don't care for the movie that much...

On every post where Supergirl is even mentioned, Snyder-bros are unloading with hate and adding things like "FLOP!" and "Sasha Calle is the ONLY Supergirl!" and whatever. And here's the thing. These same people didn't even turn out for Saha Calle's only appearance as Supergirl in The Flash, which is widely regarded as one of the biggest box office flops of all time. The projection here is insane.

   
• Cut-Proof? It's genuinely jaw dropping how the fact that an abundance of evidence exists to disprove the non-stop lies, but people are still choosing to believe them all...

Counting to 45,000 isn't difficult at all when you don't fucking count in the first place.

   
• Receipts! Megyn Kelly unleashed a disgusting viral video against Haitians who arrived here with a temporary protection status. It was horrific enough that people are coming forward with viral comments of their own to hit back. And, if they are even half-true, they're damning enough that they should ruin her. But we all know how that works. People like this get a pass for some reason. I can't fathom how Amy Coney Barrett will explain voting to strip TPS protections from endangered Haitians when two of her adopted children are from Haiti and this will likely result in some... or many... of them losing their life.

   
• Watson is on the Case! There's a practice at Apple whereas some company comes out with a very good app for their various devices which has killer features... at which point Apple will put those same features into their own apps or operating systems, essentially destroying the app which had the idea first. Way back in 2001 an app named Watson was released by a small developer which added a lot of useful tools to Apple's Sherlock search utility. Soon after, Apple released an updated Sherlock which could do all the things Watson could do... and it was game over. After this kept happening, the term "Sherlocking" was popularized to describe the process. Fast forward to now and Apple's new Siri-enabled Calendar app allows you to add appointments and such just by talking or typing to it with natural language commands. This was the hallmark feature of a competing calendar app called Fantastical, which I purchased back in the day. And I still use it, even though the developer switched to the dreaded "subscription model" which I do not pay for because my old license allows the basic functions to still be used. So now the question becomes... will I ditch Fantastical in favor of Calendar? And the answer is yes, probably. I'd rather not have additional apps installed to worry about, and odds are Apple's built-in app will work fine for me. Not that Fantastical's developer will care, because they're not getting any money off of me anyway. On one hand I'm sad that another developer has been Sherlocked. It's bad for the platform. But, on the other hand, I hate subscription models so much that I won't be losing any sleep over it either.

   
And now back to my recovery.

I honestly wasn't going to write more than two posts about Pride Month. It was going to be one post at the beginning, wishing all my friends in the LGBTQ+ community a Happy Pride... then another at the end, summarizing the genre movies I watched for the month. That's it.

But holy crap are people up their asses this year.

So much faux persecution, hate, and bullshit.

And though this excellent piece by Dan McClellan is about baseball, you can apply it to many, many, other scenarios...

And then there's this nonsense...

Serious question... do these assholes even READ the Bible?

Because the meaning of the rainbow for Christians is right there in the Book of Genesis: "I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant..." — Genesis 9:13-15

Rainbows are widely interpreted to be a sign from God that his judgement over the earth has passed and he won't destroy the world with a flood again. Kinda the opposite of a "weapon."

And, oh yeah... THE PRIDE FLAG IS NOT A LITERAL FUCKING RAINBOW!!!

It was intentionally made as its own symbol, with each color representing LGBTQ+ values. Six colors instead of seven. And originally it had 9 or something. The LGBTQ+ community is not "stealing God's rainbow" which is categorically absurd. When Hawaii put a rainbow on their license plates, did they steal it from God? Give me a fucking break.

I swear these assholes spend more time thinking about gay stuff than any gay person I know.

Which is not surprising given the rate that most of them turn out to be closeted homosexuals, and this is just an attempt to divert attention away from them.

Misdirection always works!

Until it doesn't.

   
• News of the Week! I did not see this coming!

I'm not going pretend that the original Romy & Michele's High School Reunion was genius fare... but it was entertaining and did have many quotable moments that have infiltrated meme culture. With this being my favorite...

I have said that line in many an inappropriate situation, and, to people who recognize it, that's solid gold, baby!

   
• Reading is Fundamental! Gawd DAMN that read is cold...

But she deserves it, because that's an incredibly shitty take to have. What a piece of shit... wanting people to be bullied.

   
• Taste the Rainbow! I stopped by the local bagel shop that I never knew existed until until yesterday. I asked for a toasted plain bagel with cream cheese. The young woman behind the counter said "Our plain bagels are rainbow this month, is that okay?" — What I wanted to say: "OKAY?? WHY, M'LADY, I AM THRILLED TO FIND A BUSINESS HERE IN REDNECKISTAN BEING INCLUSIVE BY CELEBRATING OUR FELLOW HUMANS IN THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY FOR PRIDE MONTH! BRAVO TO YOU! GIVE ME ONE HUNDRED OF YOUR FINEST RAINBOW BAGELS SO I MIGHT DISTRIBUTE THEM ACROSS THE LAND OF OUR FAIR CITY! THIS IS MORE THAN MERELY 'OKAY'... THIS IS PHENOMENAL! GOOD ON YOU!" — What I actually said: "That would be perfect, thanks."

Icing on the cake? This is a darn good bagel... especially for here, which is nowhere near New York City.

   
• Vegas, Baby! Yeah. No. I'm done with Vegas. Especially since I don't have work there anymore. Couldn't care less if I ever go back because of bullshit that's detailed here...

"Resort fees" were the beginning of the end for me. Deceptive practices with no purpose except to deceive. Everything else is just garbage on top of garbage.

   
• 1%! Dang. We really fucked up, didn't we? As a society, I mean...

But now we've got trillionaires and shit.

   
• Woke Sky? Is there anything more cringe than somebody attempting to unleash a beat-down, but fumbles it so badly that they only end up beating themselves?

It's so painfully obvious that he really, really thought he was doing something with that tweet. It's word salad that incorporates buzzwords he knows his base hates... regardless of whether it makes a lick of sense. WOKE! NON-BINARY! Ha ha! GOTHCA! Jesus. How fucking embarrassing.

   
• I Lie Because I Don't Care! Fuck this asshole. I understand that when you have nothing to support your bigotry, your lies are all you got, but forgive me if I don't give a crap. Your bullshit fantasies endangers people. It whips up hate against people who have done NOTHING to you. Not that you care. You don't care who your lies hurt... as long as it's people you don't like...

It would be different if her audience would take two seconds to verify that what she's saying is true... but we all know they won't. She feeds the narrative they want to believe, and it doesn't matter if it's true or not.

   
And that's a wrap on bullets. Until next week, then!

Don't think that life without water pressure will hold me back... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts...now...

   
• Take a Look, It's In a Book! When it comes to video games, I'm a creature of habit. I mostly play Minecraft Dungeons, which is such a relaxing way to wind down when I've had a particularly challenging day. I don't generally look for other games to play, but sometimes they find me. The latest of which I can't even play because it's not available for iPad or Mac! It's a weird concept to be sure. A fairy has ripped 3,072 books off the shelves of a magical library. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to put every last one of them back on the shelves where they belong...

The reviews are pretty stellar. People love it so much that even when they earn magical abilities to allow them to complete the game faster, they don't. Instead they put each book back manually. Because it's relaxing. I can't imagine a bigger endorsement than that. I really, really hope it comes to a platform I have available one day soon!

   
• Priorities! Take a look at this nonsense that greets you when you login to Facebook...

Facebook now prioritizes their shitty AI slop bullshit over your friends. Which speaks volumes. The reason they want you to use their product is not to communicate with those who mean something to you... it's to generate stupid AI crap. And I honestly don't get it. What do they gain by de-prioritizing your friends? Running AI nonsense is expensive. Having you engage with your friends is relatively cheap. Which is why it seems insane that you have to skip past TWO AI products before even getting to your friends. I don't fucking understand any of this. Probably too old.

   
• I'm on a Float! This past week I happened upon a discussion about how "stupid" water beds were, yet they were everywhere anyway. They didn't offer much support for sleep, they were impossible to move, they could have serious problems when it came to the water getting slimy, and they required a heating pad under or else the water would be freezing to sleep on. It was totally a messy idea that made no sense. And yet... I liked my water bed! It was comfortable enough (when warm) that I was able to fall asleep easily. Not sure it did much for sleep after I nodded off, but for the five years it was functional, I enjoyed sleeping on it. But then the heater had to be replaced for the second time, which requires you to completely drain the bladder, at which point my parents told me it was time to be rid of it. I kept the bed frame though, because it had a padded edge I liked, and just threw a regular mattress inside. So... stupid? Yes. Very. But not insanely so. Sometimes I miss flopping down on a squishy, sloshy bed at night.

   
• Full Disclosure! I haven't thoroughly enjoyed a Steven Spielberg movie since Minority Report in 2002. Before that there were quite a few. Despite it all, I never stop rooting for him out of pure nostalgia. His latest, Disclosure Day looks like he may break his 24-year dry spell for me...

At least I sure hope so.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Pardoned Jan. 6 rioter to plead guilty in child sexual abuse case, adding to pattern. "Once is an anomaly, twice is a trend." This is the sixth... SIXTH!... January 6th insurrectionist arrested for being a child predator? And that doesn't even touch the number of sex crimes and other criminal acts from the January 6 mob. All pardoned by the president. The so-called "law and order president." What a fucking joke.

   
• Inhumane! Years ago, a woman tossed a cat looking for affection into a trash bin. The cat was rescued, but the woman was caught on video and (rightfully) became a total pariah of society. People (rightfully) loathed her. She (rightfully) became one of the most infamous people in Britain. Her response made things even worse. If you hadn't heard about the story, here you go...

This morning a news story hit my feed with the headline 'Cat Bin Lady' Mary Bale still lives in Midlands - and doesn't feel forgiven. And I was like. Good. Fuck that piece of shit. This is all I could possibly want for her. Anybody who would cause suffering to an animal which did nothing but show them affection deserves to be an unforgiven outcast. People like this have no place in society.

   
• Talk About Performative! Good Lord am I exhausted over this stupid shit. It burns. IT BURNS!

When you are invited somewhere which has different traditions than you hold, it's merely being polite to be respectful to these traditions. People like this need to get out of the house and fucking travel more. I've been to countless places where I was respectful to my host by doing something I wouldn't usually do. What always, always, gets me is how these same people will totally lose their shit if somebody were to disrespect their traditions. Get a fucking life, asshole.

   
And now back to my regularly-scheduled water outage.

Had water... then didn't have water... then had water, but low pressure. Which meant I could take a shower, but not a very good one.

Then the water was gone again when I got home, which means no butternut squash pasta in brown butter with crispy-fried sage. Again.

In other news, how cool is this...

Probably won't offset the utterly insane decision to shut down federal bee labs, but even a little progress in the face of absolute disaster is better than nothing.

Surely there has to be somebody in the administration who understands what an absolute fucking disaster it would be for life on earth if the bee population collapses?

   
• Quokka Edition! In today's episode of Adorable Animals Eating stuff...

If I hadn't seen a quokka in real life, I would have sworn they were AI or something.

   
• Flour or Corn? I have been watching tortilla challenge videos, and now I’m dead, y’all...

A challenge I would most certainly lose.

   
• NEWSFLASH: F.D.A. Blocked Publication of Research Finding Covid and Shingles Vaccines Were Safe. Suppressing scientific findings because they disagree with your idiotic bullshit... whodathunkit? OH... EVERYBODY WHO'S FUCKING SANE!!! Lying to keep people from being safe and healthy is exactly what you want from those in charge of keeping you safe and healthy. But that's RFK Jr. and the Trump Administration in a nutshell.

   
• Second Verse, Same as the First! Why? Why is he not telling the whole story? Because he's a fucking dumbass piece of fucking shit that's going to get babies killed...

Go fuck yourself you unbelievable fucking asshole. Jesus CHRIST why aren't these fuckers held responsible for their misinformation? All it takes is one person who listens to him and loses their kid before it's murder.

   
• Half Off Energy! Are we great yet?

Oh... wait a sec... we still have one month left before gas prices are cut by 50%. Which means it will be going from the $3.12 a gallon at the time Trump took office (national average) to $1.56 a gallon (national average) any day now! That will be a refreshing change from the $4.46 (national average) we're paying now! — Just remember... during the campaign Trump pledged to "rapidly drive prices down" and reduce energy/electricity costs by half within 12–18 months. We're almost there, so hang on, everybody! Just so long as the person in charge isn't falling asleep at the wheel, everything will be fine!

   
• The Real World! Yes. You have that exactly right. Instead of serving the American people as his job requires, this piece of shit went on a fucking seven month vacation on the taxpayer’s dime...

When are people going to wake up and realize that this administration is a fucking sham? They do nothing but make life easier for wealthy people. That’s it. War profiteering, grifts, lies, and crimes. That is the entirety of what they do.

   
• Worship Him! Posted without comment...

Except to say that this is as accurate a critique as it could possibly get.

   
And... good night.

Jalopnik: With 12,000 Flights Canceled In May Already, We've Got Bad News About Your Summer Vacation.

"The U.S. is now two months deep into an unprovoked war with Iran and the results have not been kind to anyone. In the states inflation tripled with surging gas prices, which quickly reached an average of over $4.00/gallon nationally. And in a world completely dependent on fuel, any shortage in the supply system hurts everyone, especially concerning air travel. It's bad enough that Matt Smith, Kpler director of commodity research warned on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that the 12,000 flights have been cancelled in May — of which we're only five days in — was only the beginning. Expect jet fuel prices to affect your summer travel, or even cancel it."

This is what incompetence in government looks like. They're so desperate to distract from the Epstein Files that we're now in a war that's fucked the entire country... and, indeed, the world.

I'm so sick of this non-stop parade of horrors I could vomit.

NEWSFLASH: RFK Jr. plans to curb antidepressants, which he falsely compares to heroin.

I've had crippling anxiety since I was 17. I know the age because I can remember the first anxiety-fueled attack I had with crystal clarity. Couldn't breathe. Felt like I was dying. Didn't know what was happening. Couldn't put a coherent thought together. At the time I thought I was having a heart attack. Everything was dialed to 11 and I was in quite a lot of pain.

Not knowing what was happening, mom took me to the doctor. We were told that it was a "panic attack" and I would be fine once I calmed down. Which I did. But I was still so rattled the next day that I still didn't feel like myself. The best word I can think of to describe my condition is... scrambled.

I have no idea what triggered the attack. Whatever it was probably disappeared as I was trying to deal with it all.

A couple times a year I'd get hit again, but it was never as intense as the first time. Probably because I understood what was happening to me. Though it could still get pretty bad. It's called crippling anxiety for a reason. It incapacitates you and you literally can't function.

Eventually I visited Thailand and looked to make some changes in my life. I started meditating, and that allowed me to manage my anxiety fairly well. I did have to run to initial care a couple times over the years for help, but I was never put on any medication.

Until I was.

Caring for a parent with dementia drove up my anxiety levels every single day, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. Far worse than it ever had been. No amount of meditation would touch it. And the fact that I was being incapacitated meant I couldn't care for my mom... let alone myself. Which probably made things even worse.

And so... my doctor ran me through the SSRI gauntlet, where you keep trying different options until something works. Or at least makes life with anxiety manageable. And we hit it on the third try.

I stayed on the pills until three or four months after my mom passed, when I slowly started to get my life back together and go back to meditating to control my stress and anxiety. It wasn't a cold-turkey halting of the drugs. It was a medically-controlled tapering off so that the side-effects don't get too awful. And, despite the FUCKING BULLSHIT NONSENSE BEING VOMITED OUT OF RFK JR.'S STUPID, IGNORANT, ANTI-SCIENCE, PIECE OF SHIT FUCKING ASSHOLE... it wasn't harder than "quitting heroin." Or, if it was, quitting heroin must be a fucking cake-walk, because it was no problem at all. My doctor gave me a schedule and advised me how to do it safely and, after a while, I was done. Back to practicing my meditation.

And then, seven years later, I was at work trying to deal with too much and there it was... an anxiety attack so bad that I was in my car thinking I was dying. All my muscles were so tight that I thought I was going to pass out from the pain. I was jumping out of my skin. My hands and feet were frozen and my fingers were bent back, leaving me clawing at my chest. I would have started screaming, but I couldn't breathe. I don't think that I passed out, but maybe I did. I honestly don't remember.

I didn't mess around. The minute I was able to pick up my phone and dial, I was calling for an emergency appointment with my doctor. YOU KNOW, THE ONLY PERSON QUALIFIED TO GIVE ME FUCKING MEDICAL ADVICE.

Given the severity of the attack, it was decided I would try some milder doses of SSRIs to see if that would allow me to get back to being able to function again.

It did not.

I was spiraling so often so quickly that I went right back to the drug which worked the best for me the first time. From there I worked myself from one pill to three per night. But slowly. Because the side-effects are horrible. Mostly revolving around explosive diarrhea from morning to night... and sometimes in the middle of the night.

Eventually things evened out. And my life started to feel like my own again. Which is to say that my life started to feel like most everybody else's does. Which is to say that any anxiety I'm experiencing is manageable. I don't get so overwhelmed that I can no longer function and am trying to scream while struggling to breathe.

After five or so months when things started to normalize for me, I worked my way down from three pills to two. Two pills to one. And then I was going to go back to zero when I decided that I just didn't fucking want to. I'm old enough now that I simply do not want to spend any more of what little time I have left struggling with my anxiety. I'm done with it. So I met with my doctor and explained where my head was at. He was happy that I had taken the initiative to reduce from three pills to one pill safely (I'd been through it before), and agreed with my reasoning. His training led him to believe I was better off where I was at, so he supported my decision. Medically.

And so...

Every night I take a small yellowish-peachy pill called Paxil.

Then I thank God that Paxil exists and my doctor exists so I can have a normal life that's not being ruled by something I can't control. With that pill I can manage. I can cope. I can be me. And I don't have to live in terror of an anxiety attack appearing out of nowhere and sending my life spiraling...

So fuck RFK Jr. and his stupid ignorant shit. Fuck him sideways.

I have no doubt that there are doctors who over-prescribe. I have no doubt that there are people who are abusing SSRIs. And, yeah, addressing that is probably a good idea. But for RFK Jr. to feel that he gets to overrule my doctor and unilaterally purge/reduce SSRIs for whatever stupid-ass reason (RFK Jr. being somebody who, I'll remind you, has no fucking training for this shit)... well, he can go fuck himself.

I am not going back to where I was when there's a perfectly suitable, perfectly safe, medically-sound, scientifically-studied solution available to me.

And some fascist junkie asshole with no medical training and not a lick of sense in his fucking brain-worm-riddled head has any fucking business telling me otherwise.

I'm about as exhausted as I can get after a week of trying to juggle all the balls I have in the air, but I'm not passing on the bullets... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts...now...

   
• My Room! Olivia Rodrigo was the host of Saturday Night Live last night, and had this hilariously awesome sketch...

As if that weren't enough, the track is a banger!

   
• Spider-Noir! It's not just because I'm a huge Nicholas Cage fan and he's perfect for the role... it's because this actually looks like it's going to make use of his talents in all the right ways...

I'll be watching it first in black &' white, then probably again in color if it's awesome. Which I'm expecting it will be.

   
• Best Friends! Somebody commented that this video is the opposite of toxic masculinity, and that seems apt...

There's an entire Instagram channel devoted to this, if you need a mood boost.

   
• Grapes! No, I'm not finished with watching animals eating stuff videos...

And can you really blame me?

   
• Yuii Chan Draws! This is remarkable...

It's like she has the entire thing in her head and is just tracing out what's already there. That's talent.

   
• Deadly Crystals! This is utterly fascinating. And a little scary. There's science happening, but they take great care to explain it in a way most people can understand...

Polymorphs be terrifying, yo.

   
• We're Out Of The Salmon! Tell me you've never worked in a restaurant without telling me you've never worked in a restaurant...

Amazing how Biden was the target of a gajillion 86-46 memes, where it apparently wasn't some kind of "mob term." And a simple Google search shows that the president himself re-posted far worse. And then there's this...

Funny that. Or fucking disgusting. You be the judge.

   
And now? Back to being exhausted. In more ways that one.