Day three of watergeddon is at hand.

I'm back down to no water at all, which means another day of feeling grimy. AND ANOTHER DAY OF NOT BEING ABLE TO COOK MY BELOVED BUTTERNUT SQUASH IN BROWN BUTTER WITH CRISPY-FRIED SAGE! The next time I get even a trickle of water, I'm filling up every container in the house.

Which is what I should have been doing all along.

The good news is that I finally got to see the Spider-Noir series on Amazon Prime. I knew I'd love it because I'm such a huge Nicholas Cage fan, but it's so much more than him... it's a really good story that looks amazing (especially in Black & White, which is how I decided to watch it)...

Finally... finally... Sony used their Spidey franchise license responsibly again. Which leads me to wonder if they'll get all stupid again and give us another Morbius or Madame Web or Kraven. Lord I hope not. Better they just sell the film rights back to Marvel than create another horrible mess out of things.

Here I am, back from vacation and ready to start dropping bullets I've been collecting over the past week... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts...now...

   
• Trash Panda Review! Let's start out our Sunday by looking at something uplifting, shall we?

I love raccoons. YouTube knows I love raccoons. So you can bet at some point while I'm scrolling through YouTube that there will be raccoons on my page. Interesting to note that raccoons may be the next animal to be domesticated for wide-scale adoption as pets...

Not sure how my cats would react to having a raccoon in the house though.

   
• GAAAAAAH! If only I could afford to purchase something like this for my home...

Nicholas Hernandez Art is an Instagram account I was following seconds after I saw the finished product. Gorgeous. Friction' gorgeous. And oh-so-expensive... but worth the price.

   
• King of the Road! Good God. When people think that they can regulate who gets to park on a public street... and get the police to help them enforce it... then society is fucking fucked...

Nothing surprises me any more. Nothing.

   
• Learn from Example! Totally valid...

I learned everything not to do in life from watching television.

   
• Olympic! If you want to step away from the horrors of the world, this guy is visiting one of my favorite hotels on earth... not so far from me in Seattle!

I really need to pay a visit again one of these days. I can't really afford to spend the night... but the bar and restaurant are worth the money to visit.

   
• Bad Omens! I have few regrets in life. Watching the finale of Good Omens is one of them. What a complete betrayal of all that came before. I cannot fucking fathom what would make the writers come up with something so devoid of joy for two characters that people adore. Let alone what would make Prime Video greenlight it.

Terry Pratchett would not... COULD NOT... approve. It doesn’t even make sense. I would have much rather lived with a cliffhanger forever than to have suffered through this abomination. Everybody deserves a do-over.

   
• Enjoy Our Hellscape! I tried my best to avoid the news while I was gone. And catching up this week has been the nightmare you'd think it would be.

• Soon after massive honeybee deaths, Trump moves to close the nation’s premier bee lab. I know he likely doesn't understand how totally screwed we are if the bee population collapses, but isn't there anybody in his entire administration who has a clue and can speak out?
• Former ‘pray the gay away’ Orlando ministry leader arrested for soliciting a teen boy. Why don't we just save the time? Any time somebody speaks out against the gays, the drag queens, the trans community... any of it... just go and arrest them. Because they are obviously trying to point attention away from whatever messed up stuff they're into. Like preying on a 14 year-old boy. It's always the same with these people. Every accusation is an admission. And every time I see somebody attempting to drum up hate against a marginalized community, I'm just going to assume they're a pedo asshole.
• Conservative Group Sues ‘Find A Black Doctor’ Directory Over Discrimination. Jesus. It takes minutes to Google the absolutely abhorrent discrimination and lack of care provided to Persons of Color. Even the most fundamental basics... like pain management... is another world when you’re Black. It isn’t racist to want a doctor who will care for you from a perspective you share. Not even a little bit. This kind of thing blows my mind. Just fuck ALL the way off with your ignorance. The fact that this lawsuit is even a thing IS VIVIDLY DEMONSTRATING PROBLEM!
• FDA staff blindsided by move allowing more e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches onto US market. So first RJ Reynolds donates $5 million to Trump. Then Trump invites their executives to Mar-a-Lago where they ask him to loosen regulations on flavored vapes. Then Trump calls RFK Jr. and tells him to change government policy. I guess now we wait for strychnine to be allowed in breakfast cereals because General Mills and Kellogg's sends their executives to Mar-A-Lago to explain that testing for poisons costs them too much money. All they have to do is throw a little cash his way, and it's done! He doesn't care about anything but money, so what does the health of American citizens matter? Spoiler Alert: We don't matter.
• Republicans call off vote on Iran war resolution that was on the verge of passing. So there it is. There's no representation in government any more. The minute our representatives work to initiate change, the President's goon squad simply prevents them from being able to act. Isn't democracy great?
• Trump accused of downplaying the 13 military lives lost in Iran war: 'In other wars you lost hundreds of thousands'. "I get a kick when I look at somebody on television saying, 'he's lost 13 people'" — As Commander in Chief, he is directly responsible for 13 soldiers under his command losing their lives. All to distract from him being in the Epstein Files over 38,000 times. And this is what he has to say about them? Our soldiers laying their lives on the line deserve better than this kind of flippant bullshit.
• Trump Endangers Wild Animals by Authorising Lethal Cyanide Bombs Across Millions of Acres of Public Land. Not just animals... people. People are probably going to die. This is sadistic, horrific shit that everybody agrees needed to go away. But when you're going to sell public lands off to enrich your corrupt family, you can't have coyotes running around, can you? They really mess up being able to build an AI data center.

The mess we're in is crazy-easy to understand when you consider how things work now...

Confirmation bias. It's a hell of a drug.

   
And now... back to work. Because yesterday I fell asleep before I could finish. Tomorrow is a holiday for me. Here's hoping that I can take at least one day off.

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.

And I need you to watch it.

It's that important, and here it is...

Okay, that was a ruse. Here's the real deal...

I implore you to watch this. If you have kids then I implore you to watch this then talk with them about AI chatbots. I implore you to share this with people you know... especially if they have kids or are vulnerable in some way.

You could be saving a life...

This is fucking repugnant.

AI is stealing our precious resources like fresh water and electricity.

And now they're coming for the people. Exactly as we knew it would. Because there's money to be made.

   
• Amaze! Cubed! If you haven't seen Project Hail Mary you should most definitely do that. And once you have, you should watch this interview with the book's author...

Now that's science fiction!

   
• Four Decades Meatless! April 22nd was Earth Day! Or, for me, Vegetarian Day! I became a vegetarian on Earth Day 1986... 40 years ago. My girlfriend at the time said when she kissed me that she could "smell meat," which was apparently a bad thing because she was a vegan. And so... I went to Burger King, ordered six regular burgers, ate them all, then never ate meat again.

Sure we broke up a couple months later and I could have gone back to eating meat, but I realized that the numerous allergy problems I dealt with since I was very young were... diminishing? So I decided to stick with it. And, sure enough, my allergies slowly faded away. No idea if it was the meat... or steroids or antibiotics in the meat... but my quality of life improved dramatically. It was not easy being a vegetarian back then because food options weren't as prevalent as they are now (especially at restaurants), but I stuck with it and never turned back.

   
• Series Two! One of the biggest surprises of 2024 was the BritBox series Ludwig. It's a murder mystery show staring David Mitchell in the role he was born to play...

The second season will debut this year. But when this year hasn't been disclosed.

   
• Peace! And so... disabled veterans peacefully protesting the Iran War is against the law now...

Fucking disgraceful. There is no bottom with this fucking administration.

   
• All for the B! I've been a fan of Cardi B for a while... then I became a super-fan when I found out she's a serious history nerd (and her appearance on Hot Ones sealed the deal). But the thing I love most about her (and her team) is that she loves her fans. So many stories of her being truly grateful to the people who recognize her amazing talent and got her to where she is. The latest from a fan who got seriously shit on at a show was fully redeemed when Cardi's team reached out to make it right...

I love how the comments in the original video had people saying "Yeah, Cardi is going to be pissed!" because everybody knows she cares about her fans.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Tim Cook stepping down this year, John Ternus confirmed as next Apple CEO. I hope that John Ternus has even a fraction of the gravitas and drive that Steve Jobs brought to Apple. Tim Cook always seemed like a capable CEO (he took the company to a three trillion dollar valuation, after all), but ultimately he didn't seem like he wanted to push Apple towards greatness. He seemed more like a "don't rock the boat and keep the money flowing to our shareholder" kind of CEO. Which is a serious problem for a tech company like Apple. I look at the products which debuted under his tenure... Apple Silicon, AirPods, AppleTV, ApplePay, Apple Music, Apple Watch, AppleVision Pro, to name a few... and I can't help but wonder if he was the one pushing these projects forward. Maybe. But I doubt it. And if he was, then he didn't do much to show it. With Steve Jobs, you knew he was driving the boat, and that's what Apple needs moving forward. It's okay to not want to overshadow your team, but you have to at least project that the team is under your management.

   
• Idiot! I swear, these dumbfucks are so low IQ that I finally understand why that's the insult they lob at other people. It's the "I know I am but what are you?" vibe...

So... I guess this whole insistence of America having a ready military force is all bullshit then, isn't it? Now you can have a bunch of soldiers coming down with the flu, mutating it, and spreading it to each other so they're having to call out sick from battle? God.

   
Now you can go back to inundating yourself with all the horrific things going on in the world. Sorry about that.

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.

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.

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'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.

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.