Every idiot that tried to convince you to buy some bitcoin is now trying to tell you how great generative AI is. They proceed to make the internet less and less useful for trivial tasks.
Speaking of idiots, Kevin McCarthy is elected speaker of the house after 15 votes over 4 days. Surely this will wake up the republican party to actually be serious about actual governance and not just being whiny children who like to break things.
Bought myself a second set of Lego Muppet Minifigs, mostly so I have a spare Gonzo.
Banged my head on a joist in the basement. The next day I head butt the corner of the mantle in our living room. Somehow I avoid a concussion.
Starting going to a shrink. Did some EMDR. Did a bit of talk therapy. It worked. It gave me a few tools to make life for those around me slightly more bearable.
Don’t waste the time. Time is the final currency, man. Not money, not power—it’s time. – David Crosby
Framing of the garage begins! Only one super scary windstorm happens before the walls are up. Nothing bad happens.
Viola Davis wins a grammy (for the audiobook version of her biography) and finishes her EGOT!
Clorila (Clay, Lori, Lila) give me a children’s book called “Don’t Hug Doug.” I feel seen.
Michelle, who isn’t a big Valentine’s Day fan, decides we should instead celebrate Simon Pegg’s birthday and watch Shaun of the Dead. I’m a lucky boy, y’all.
Doug in Littleton, CO forgets he still doesn’t have my gmail address. In addition to the car parts he’s always checking for, I get a lot of reminders about dental appointments.
I asked ChatGPT, “Why were the luddites right?”, and somewhere a computer wept.
Knowing when to leave may be the smartest thing anyone can learn. – Burt Bacharach
Our 5th, and final, for now, JocoCruise
My workplace of 17 years and I disagree about what my role is and should be. Despite me thinking this was a solved problem. I never thought I’d work somewhere this long. I never thought I’d put quite so much of my own self-worth into it. It’s causing some problems (see Therapy, and April vacation notes)
My buddy @merulloshop made me a wooden Lego minifig made with what I’m told is “Sapele, Purpleheart and Maple.” It makes the official wood minifig product from Lego look like a bad joke.
Picked up the newly released Lips poster by Michael DePippo to compliment my Electric Mayhem posters, and maintain the complete set.
John Wick 4 makes me wince every time I see more than 5 stairs together for the rest of the year.
The D&D Movie is about 40 times better than I expected. Chris Pine is an American treasure.
I lack the words to explain why I needed a vacation just a few weeks after a cruise, but trust me, I did. A lot of it is work, a lot of it was just money stress. So, I ran away to the woods. Snug Hollow B&B was worth the money.
The Garage is ‘built’, we park in it. Miracle of Miracles. Expensive damn miracle, tho.
Kelly Craft loans herself $10 million to lose to Daniel Cameron in a party primary featuring who can be the most completely fucking wrong and still end up with 40% of their state voting for them.
Michelle has her 25th annual Girls Trip! I ain’t got nothing that’s that long-lived.
I have very little regard for consensus if it blinds you to the truth. – Harry Belafonte
Miserable Month is Miserable. It even ended with me getting spammed by the Ron DeSantis campaign.
I bought myself an adjustable desk and new office chair.
Succession ends. We didn’t watch the show. But the company I work for chose to rename themselves “Waystar” about 6 months before this show started. It made my life demonstrably more annoying.
The same week Barry and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (featuring a cameo from a guy I work with!?) also end. But Muppets Mayhem and Clone High come out in May, so it’s not all endings.
We never, ever, do nothin' nice and easy. We always do it nice and rough. – Tina Turner, “Proud Mary” introduction
Went to a Louisville Bats game for the first time in years. I miss baseball.
Another trip to Vegas for “Snowflake Summit” stayed in a MUCH nicer hotel. And made some time to fart around away from the conference. Anyone can find something to do in Vegas, if they don’t mind spending a few bucks. For some reason my phone won’t get a signal on my 31st floor room, but I can make calls from the lobby.
Oh yeah, and I went to see Beatles Love again. Got front row seats again.
Fires in the Canadian wilderness cover much of North America in a red haze that makes it look like we live in an Instagram filter. As the internet kids say, “This is fine.”
Domingo Germán throws a perfect game. Only the 24th in history, and the first in over a decade. But it’s in Oakland, against the As. Who have no attendance, no payroll and an owner that eventually wins what he wants and gets the team moved to Vegas. When doing research for this year’s write up, I also discovered that the actual rarest event in baseball is two grand slams in one inning. It’s happened once, in 236,000 MLB games. Congrats Fernando Tatís. Neat data grid on this article
Juvenile Tiny Desk Concert. I, for one, never expected to see the NPR hosted Tiny Desk Concert telling me to back that azz up.
I crossed the BrimleyLine. I’m officially older than Wilford Brimley was when he starred as the grumpy old man in the 80s flick Cocoon.
Fishes and Forks episodes of The Bear. The show actually came out in June, but we didn’t immediately devour it. We savored it, no more than two episodes a couple times a week. A few weeks later we get to what might be the biggest 1/2 punch of tv shows in a decade. An extra long, A-list guest star filled INTENSE family drama, and then a character development episode for the guy you kinda didn’t want redeemed. But it works, so damn well.
The last week of July is super rough for Gen-X aged people, Paul Reubens and Sinéad O’Connor both pass away.
Fight the real enemy. – Sinéad O’Connor
The fence is put up! No more chicken wire and buckets. No more going through the garage to get the garbage to the alley. The garage project has an end in sight…
Our upstairs AC has gone out, again. Turns out the power situation is just bad up there. Several hundred dollars more and all is right again, until next year. Home ownership is dumb.
Mitch McConnell freezes during a press conference. For the second time in 3 weeks. But because old people are a problem, he is still one of the most powerful people in America.
You never know what could be interesting tomorrow. – Robbie Robertson
I take Michelle to see Stop Making Sense remastered and released in Lexington.
Upgraded my iphone for the first time in three generations. Camera updates alone are finally worth it.
Reservation Dogs ended. What a perfect gem of a show. You should pay for Hulu for a month and binge it.
Finally go to Hauck’s Corner, with Clorila, and it’s so much cooler than I realized. Why haven’t we gone back, y’all?
For SCIENCE! I thoroughly evaluate several bags of different shaped halloween Reese’s candies. The experiment was successful.
Stop Making Sense at Stonybrook this time I take Jason instead of Michelle.
In yet another sign that it’s no longer the right place for me, my office completes the first half of the remodel of our cube-hell, and they’re far smaller, far more open, far more enticing to only the type of people who make financial decisions and all have fucking offices.
Kevin McCarthy loses his job as Speaker because of all the face-eating tigers eating faces. Eventually a completely different terrifying zealot gets enough of the really gross elected representatives of a good 30% of the nation to get him the job. For now.
Birthday and Anniversary trip back up to Saugatuck. The B&B we stayed at a few years ago was closed for remodelling during this off season, so we stayed at the “Hotel Saugatuck.” The fireplace alone was worth it. We had a low-key day, a fancy dinner day, and just a lovely time.
One of our neighbors cuts down a giant maple tree. The other side cut down a huge Oak year before. And we lost the last big Ash and a huge oak in the neighborhood last year as well. And yet no one seems to be planting any trees.
Evil Dead: The Musical.
Our deck is rebuilt and the landscaping for the garage is ‘done’. A few weeks later all the straw will be removed by the person raking leaves, and now we have a mudpit, and moose dogs. As the kids say, not a combo.
Discover a feature of the new iOS (I think) that lets you use random themed pictures for your back ground and now every hour it swaps out dog pictures. Sometimes they’re Einstein.
Cleaning out the several boxes of shit I brought home from my desk, I discover my orientation paperwork, from January 2006. That’s a long ass time to be at a job.
Microsoft Teams decided to ask me if I’d recommend the app to a friend and I got to write the meanest paragraph I’ve written in years. (No, I would not recommend the app, y’all)
Every single person who died in Vietnam between autumn 1968 and the Fall of Saigon—and all who died in Laos and Cambodia, where Nixon and Kissinger secretly expanded the war within months of taking office, as well as all who died in the aftermath, like the Cambodian genocide their destabilization set into motion—died because of Henry Kissinger. – Spencer Ackerman in an article for Rolling Stone titled, “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies”
I inventoried all my unopened Lego sets and sealed Magic: The Gathering boxes and packs, and uhh, I have a problem folks. To be fair, I have a lot of problems.
The garage is done, I write the last check to the builders. If anyone is wondering why their xmas gifts from me were unimpressive, you’re welcome to come look at my garage.
Wore my DigDug ugly x-mas sweater to a sort of work thing, and it was a big ole hit.
Paul Reuben’s estate releases an enhanced and cleaned up version of Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special for free on YouTube. Christmas is saved!
Every person who is seeing me now — some are seeing me within months of my saying this, some are likely to see this years after I have said this, but whenever all of you are seeing it — that will be the moment you’re seeing it — as this is the moment I’m saying it. And what that means to me is: living in the moment. The moment between past and present, or present and past. The moment between after and next, the hammock in the middle of after and next. The moment. Treasure it. Use it with love. – Norman Lear on Instagram last year.
Jazz Quartet, ‘Up’ House, Tales of the Space Age, Tranquil Garden, NASA Mars Rover, Hocus Pocus Cottage, Walt Disney Tribute Camera, Dried Flower Centerpiece, Disney Tribute Camera, Home Alone House, Nintendo Entertainment System