I find it categorically disgusting that credit reporting companies have such absolute and total control over your ability to EXIST in this world, but have absolutely zero accountability for this power they hold over you.

Take for example, Experian. I have to create an online account with them. I fill out all the information they require, but it says they can't verify me. I try THREE TIMES, making extra careful that I was accurate in the information I provided. Won't verify. So I call the number they give you.

No person answers of course. You get some awful automated system that asks you what you want. I tell them I need to verify my account online. It doesn't understand. I try again. THE SYSTEM HANGS UP ON ME.

I go through this crap TWO MORE TIMES, trying to rephrase it in different ways. Not even saying "REPRESENTATIVE" works. So I have to Google for a different number. I call it, get connected with customer service, who proceeds to ask me numerous questions. I answer each question accurately... even looking up specific amounts online to make sure I'm correct. Doesn't matter. I'm told that I answered one of the questions wrong. EXCEPT I DIDN'T. I VERIFIED EVERY DANG ANSWER IN REAL TIME.

So what now? NOTHING! THAT'S WHAT! The rep was going to escalate my to somebody, but their manager refused to talk with me because I answered a question wrong? Again, I didn't. BUT ISN'T THAT WHY YOU TALK TO A MANAGER IN THE FIRST PLACE?!? So what now? Wait 72 hours and try again. I'm not even joking.

I've wasted 40 minutes dealing with Experian, got nowhere, and have to call back... at which point they'll likely find a way to deny verification AGAIN.

How is this legal? If this company has this kind of power over me, they shouldn't get to blow me off when I need help. When a company has this kind of power over me, they should be REQUIRED to resolve stuff like this BY LAW.

Then again, a company shouldn't have this kind of power over me in the first place.

When I became a vegetarian in 1986, there wasn't the abundance of fake meats that there is now. Since I've never been a big tofu fan, this made for tough meal-planning. I ate a lot of Garden Burgers. A lot of cheese sandwiches. Some salads. That was my diet and I was fine with it.

But there was another food I ate quite a lot of... rice.

Specifically, Farmhouse Mexican Rice.

I was (and still am) a massive fan of Mexican food. I needed a substitute for meat in Mexican dishes. One day I goofed around with making enchiladas with Mexican rice and was soon using it for everything. On tacos. On nachos. On taco salads. Everywhere. It was a miracle for food diversity for me...

I've been eating this same box of rice for decades.

Until I couldn't any more.

Last year I found that I couldn't find it at my local grocer. Nor could I find it at non-local grocers. Or online. In a panic I went to the Farmhouse website and saw that it was still there. I just couldn't buy it anywhere. Via Googling I found outdated rice some places, but also found that other people weren't finding it as well.

Pretty sure Farmhouse has discontinued it.

Which is awful for me.

I've found many Spanish Rice mixes (which are not the same)... and a few other brand Mexican rice mixes... but none of them are what I'm looking for.

So now I've been working with recipes to try and find out if I can make it myself. Which is tough because the Farmhouse mix has ingredients which you never find in regular recipes, and that means that they're likely contributing to the taste in subtle ways that I can't figure out. Yet.

One day I'll crack the code. At least I hope so.

In the meanwhile, I'm really missing the Mexican foods that I can't make the way I used to.

It's Koogle all over again.

Finally. FINALLY... after twenty years of attempts to bring the Fantastic Four to film... the actual Fantastic Four from the comics is landing. The Thing finally looks like The Thing. The core concept of the book that is based on a CLOSE FAMILY who are EXPLORERS that go on INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES together has been embraced. And having their story begin on an alternate earth from the 1960's which will differentiate the movie from all the other super-hero movies is absolute genius..

H.E.R.B.I.E.!

THE FANTASTICAR!

THE BAXTER BUILDING!

GALACTUS!

And how flawless is that casting?

Wait... I take it back... The Incredibles was a brilliant adaptation of The Fantastic Four. By far the most accurate, even though it wasn't actually The Fantastic Four. Yet they managed to capture who The Fantastic Four are better than any of the movies with the name did.

The marketing is phenomenal...

My mind is reeling over how the team will be brought to the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper. Will their earth be eaten by Galactus but they're able to cross over to the MCU to try and save our earth from Galactus? Who knows! But I'm dying to find out!

   
I am so tired that I think my brain is turning to mush.

There will be no crying that I don't know where my weekend went... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Well Hello Hello! If you want to escape from the horrors of the world, I love the Black Hammer Artisan YouTube channel. The two guys behind it were giving up because nobody found their videos. Then their goodbye video blew up, so now they're back! They make things with medieval blacksmithing methods and it's so zen to watch...

I hope they get a lot of support from YouTube so they can keep going.

   
• Cursives! Things like this bring a smile to my face even as the world burns to the fucking ground...

I am one of those people who thinks that cursive writing is antiquated and unnecessary. Schools need to teach more modern, relevant subjects that will actually get used. Leave cursive to art and history electives. Though this is a highly entertaining use of a dead writing style, so there's that.

   
• Evaporation Blankets! I always keep a heavy blanket in the car in case I have to help somebody or rescue an animal or something. I ordered a new blanket because the one I had was 20 years old or more and was getting a little brittle. The blanket was not cheap because I wanted something heavy enough to insulate from the ground in the cold. I finally got around to opening it and washing it... and what a disaster. The washing machine was filled with fuzz. And now I've run it through the dryer three times in an effort to get all the fuzz stuck to it to come off... and it still needs to be run again. I swear the blanket has lost half of its volume. This is stupid. Why make a blanket that can't stay together through even one washing?

   
• DOON Fumble! Of all the videos dishing on why Dune: Prophecy was a disappointment, this one is right on target...

I too hope that they recover with the second season because I want to love this series. I think they were so hot to make it be Game of Thrones that they forgot to make Dune. That needs to change.

And while we're at it...

If show runners don't want to be "shackled" to an Intellectual Property and feel the need to "do their own thing"... THEN GO DO YOUR OWN FUCKING THING AND STOP FUCKING UP BELOVED IPs!! NETWORKS NEED TO HIRE SHOW RUNNERS WHO **WANT** TO BE "SHACKLED" TO THE IP! THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT OF CREATING A SHOW BASED ON IP!

   
• Fare Thee Well, Dream! Welp. The Sandman is done at Netflix. I mean, I'm glad that Netflix is giving the show one more season... but it being the "conclusion" of Sandman when there are loads of stories left to adapt is incredibly sad. I really, really, really wanted a Death: The High Cost of Living mini series. But nope. Neil Gaiman had to end up being a piece of shit, so now this is all there is...

Very sad to all the actors who don't deserve to have their work cut short because the creator of the source material ended up being garbage.

   
• Old is New! It's not all bad news out of Netflix. Here's a returning show that I'm really looking forward to...

Oh man do I hope it's as good an adaptation as the first season.

   
• Fresh Young! Emily left Linus Tech Tips and started her own channel... her intro is pretty great...

Young is very good at what she does, and her being trans has absolutely zero effect on her ability to do it. If people just get the fuck over themselves and just let trans persons exist, then she likely wouldn't have needed to even address it. She shouldn't have to address it. But... here we are. So many people clutching pearls over something that has no effect on them whatsoever. I wish her the best of luck.

   
And that's it for another Sunday. Time to prepare myself for a return to Real Life.

Weekdays are packed with work at my job... weekends are packed with work at my home. And I'm overwhelmed with stuff to do at both, so I'm having to pick between blogging or napping. Lucky you...

Yesterday I sat down to work and it took all of ten seconds before Jake decided to crawl on top of me. Of course he never wants to sit on my lap when I'm just watching television. Only when I have something important to do...

But it's not like I can ever refuse my cats anything, so I let him fall asleep while I continued my Quentin Tarantino marathon.

Not that Jenny is innocent when it comes to demanding my attention. Both of my cats are demanding attention lately...

Oh well. Who needs sleep?

Here I am opening up my laptop after waking up this morning when I see this...

City-killer’ asteroid has a 1-in-77 chance of smashing into Earth in 2032.

Image credit: Getty Images

And the only thing I can think of while reading it is... I'm so ready. Let's just end it all and the universe can stop worrying about how awful we've become. Shame about the animals though.

Why does life have to be so incredibly messy?

Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors. I love his works. So when I heard that the amazing Colleen Doran was illustrating a graphic novel based on Neil and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens back in the Spring of 2023, I never backed a Kickstarter so fast.

Since then Doran has been diligently trying to complete the project... even working through cancer treatment to finish. Because of her health issues, the book is way overdue, but I didn't care because I love her art so much. Definitely worth the wait. BUT THEN there's all the horrific allegations of grooming and abuse by Neil Gaiman that came to light.

As a result, the Kickstarter has extended the refund window and stated that Neil will not receive any of the proceeds from the project... so now I'm stuck. Do I cancel because supporting Gaiman in any capacity is impossible for me given how awful he turned out to be? Usually I'd say yes. But Colleen has poured years of her life into this book... and had nothing to do with what Gaiman's done. The idea of not supporting her is really impossible for me.

Ultimately my desire to not punish Colleen Doran won out and I've decided to keep my Kickstarter pledge. But holy shit is this an awful place to be. How many people have to get their lives upended by this one asshole? Because on top of the people making the Good Omens graphic novel, there's the people working on adapting his other works for stage, screen (most notably the amazing Netflix adaptation of The Sandman), and other graphic novels.

This really blows. Sometimes I can manage to separate the artist from their art. This time around it's been really, really tough.

I decided to buy a freezer to stick in my garage.

Being single is incredibly expensive food-wise. It seems like absolutely everything that's affordable at the grocery store is made affordable by being sold in a huge quantities or forcing you to buy multiple packages of the same thing. But I can't do that because I don't have much freezer space. If I purchase some kind of "buy two get one free" deal for "Family Size" anything, then that's all I'm eating until it's gone so I can make room for something else in my refrigerator's freezer.

Small "garage-ready" freezers are actually fairly affordable. Unless you've just paid $1700 for plumbing work, like I have... but still... not terrible. A couple hundred bucks.

If you are happy to manually defrost it a couple times of year.

If you don't want to manually defrost the thing, then you're paying a lot more, even on sale. I bit the bullet and bought the frost-free version because I know for a fact that I won't bother to defrost anything until there's so much ice that I can't fit food into it any more.

So... a freezer will be here next week!

Which means I have to find a spot for it in my garage.

Given that my garage is full of woodworking tools that have been piled up until Spring arrives and I can start building things again (assuming I can afford to buy the wood), making space is easier said than done. I've been throwing out stuff I don't need and donating stuff I won't use in anticipation of buying a freezer since January 1st. But that's only gotten me so far. So tonight I started completely rearranging everything. Which has been quite a chore. But I think I've finally played garage Jenga enough to figure it out. I'm 85% there.

This weekend I'll take another pass and shore up that remaining 15%.

Either that or I won't, which means I'll be parking outside for a while. Which is not great because we've had some seriously cold weather here, and I don't relish the idea of scraping frost off my windows in the morning. That's the kind of freezing I don't want.

I've had two very serious water-related problems with my home.

The first was because the plumber my contractor hired did a bad job of remodeling my upstairs bathroom. Water leaked downstairs and I ended up spending a horrendous amount of money to have everything fixed.

Then while I was over on the coast I had a leak in my garage. I found out about it because the water sensor I installed for my water heater alerted me to it (even though the water heater wasn't the cause). I had a friend run over to see what was wrong, at which time he attempted to shut off the water to my home... only to find out that the "gate valve" that was installed wasn't working properly.

Turns out you should never use a gate valve for the water shut-off because sediment can accumulate and not allow the gate to close properly.

I called my favorite plumbing company to have them take a look, then saved the money it cost to replace the valve with the proper kind. It ended up being more expensive than it should have been because not only did the company that build this place use the wrong kind of valve, they embedded it into the wall! In order to replace it, the wall had to be cut open for access...

Then the pipe had to be built out from the wall to accommodate the handle. And since I was having to do that, I went ahead and had a "smart valve" installed as well as the regular valve. This device (the "Moen Flo") learns how you use water so it can try to figure out when you develop a leak so it can turn off the valve automatically...

The nice thing about the smart valve is that I can use the Moen app to manually turn off the water quickly and easily. So if I'm leaving on a trip for a while, I can just turn the water off so I don't have to solely rely on the Moen Flo to handle a leak.

The app will also tell me what my water pressure is and how much water I'm using.

For the first couple weeks, the app is in "Learning Mode" to try and figure out how you're using your water so it can better guess when there's a problem. It will be interesting to see just how smart this smart valve is going to be. Will I get false positives for leaks that cut my water off? Maybe.

But it'll all be worth it if I can avoid having a third water-related problem.