High-speed grocery-shopping is my superpower. I should put it on my LinkedIn profile.
I just got off the phone with AT&T customer service.
Years ago, I accidentally slammed a car door on my fingers.
The two experiences were extremely similar.
Here’s something I saw while walking the dog.
Sleep is weird and magic.
We sleep more than we do anything else.
We spend a third of our lives in a state of death, much of that time dreaming, wandering around in a spirit world. Much of that dreamtime we are not even ourselves.
Then we wake up and spend the rest of our lives pretending we live in a rational universe that makes sense.
I walk across the deck between my office and the kitchen a million times a day, and sometimes, when I leave the kitchen, Minnie is lying outside my office door. She clearly wants something, but I have never been able to figure out what it is.
Into my office with me? No. Pats? She’s fine with pats, but that’s not what she really wants.
I go inside and close the office door with her outside, and she clearly looks disappointed.
I finally figured it out just now: She wants me to go back to the kitchen and let her in. So I did.
I wish she’d give me a treat when she has successfully trained me in a behavior.
I cannot be arsed to keep up with culture wars bullshit now. Like, there is a young woman named Sydney Sweeney who is I guess famous for something and is super-attractive and hot and she wore a low-cut gown on TV and this killed wokeness?
Also, the Congresswoman who gave the Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union is a Stepford Wife and she made up a story about sex trafficking in the US under Biden that actually happened in Mexico 20+ years ago?
I’ve seen articles pointing out exactly where the Royal Family photos were clumsily edited, and I still don’t see the problems. I guess I just have a bad eye for that kind of thing.
Today I learned that if you spill a nearly full cup of fresh hot coffee on your lap, it doesn’t hurt a lot and doesn’t leave a stain but the pants take a surprisingly long time to dry.
Profile of Steve Nikoui, the Gold Star father arrested for protesting at the State of the Union last week. [timesofsandiego.com] — Nikoui’s son, “Camp Pendleton Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, [was] one of the 13 service members killed near the airport in Kabul during the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
“He was born the same year [the war] started, and ended his life with the end of this war,” the elder Nikoui has said. Nikoui has said Biden used the slain Marine as a publicity pawn.
Heartbreaking what this man has gone through.
Cory Doctorow: Palantir is looting the UK’s National Health Service, under cover of the Big Lie: “There is no alternative.” [pluralistic.net]
Five ways Israelis have changed, after 5 months of war. [kpbs.org] — Israelis believe the world has turned its back on them. They have no sympathy for Palestinian suffering; they believe the Palestinians want to kill every Israeli, and that there is no potential partner for peace among the Palestinian people. Israelis are preparing for a longer and harder war with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Horrible as this war has been so far, I fear it’s just getting started.
I loved all five of Frank Herbert’s Dune books and enjoyed the first Villeneuve movie, but I can’t get motivated to see Dune 2 in theaters.
First, I would need to rewatch the first Villeneuve movie, which I am not particularly in the mood for. Then, I’d need to sit for nearly three hours for the second movie.
What happened to intermissions? Really long movies used to have intermissions. Bring back intermissions!
I like my windows the way I like them
We Talked to the Guy Who Wore a Vision Pro VR Headset at His Wedding. He did it for the meme. futurism.com
This is funny: How Do Dudes Pee? An Earth-Shattering Reveal
I need a nickname. Help me choose one:
- The Bandit
- Big Mitch
- “Mitch” is already a nickname, you nimrod
- Nimrod
I’m having a tough time getting started this morning, so please enjoy this video of Jerry Reed performing “Eastbound and Down,” the title song from the immortal 1977 cinema classic “Smokey and the Bandit,” featuring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed and Fred the dog.
Buford T. Justice was the name of a real Florida highway patrolman known to Reynlods’ father, who was a police chief in Florida. Reynolds’ father was also the inspiration for the word “sumbitch.”
Much of the dialogue was improvised on-set. Reynolds said director Hal Needham’s original script, handwritten on legal pads, was terrible. Needham was a first-time director and previously worked as a stuntman, as did Reynolds early in his career.
Reed wrote the theme song, “Eastbound and Down,” in a couple of hours and played it on acoustic guitar for Needham, who immediately stopped him. Reed thought Needham didn’t like the song and offered to rewrite it. Needham replied, “If you change one note, I’ll kill you.”
Gleason suggested adding the character of Junior to the movie. “‘I can’t be in the car alone,’ Gleason said. ‘Put someone in there with me to play off of.’”
The movie was a breakout role for Sally Field, who previously played virginal characters: as teenage California surf-girl Gidget in the eponymous TV series, as a literal nun in “The Flying Nun,” and as a severely mentally ill young woman in the TV movie “Sybill.” In “Smokey and the Bandit,” she struts around in tight jeans, flirts bawdily with Burt Reynolds swears and flips police the bird.
I think wearing a big cowboy hat inside a Trans Am is perhaps impractical.
Sources:
Smokey and the Bandit - Wikipedia
Smokey and the Bandit (1977) - Trivia - IMDb
Sally Field - Wikipedia
Hell of a great speech by Biden last night.
His Presidency is in many ways like Harry Truman. That’s high praise and I mean it.