Let's roll some dice, watch some movies, or generally just geek out. New posts at 6:30 pm ET but only if I have something to say. Menu at the top. gsllc@chirp.enworld.org on Mastodon and @gsllc on Twitter.
If you enjoy this post, there’s something wrong with you.
And now for something really stupid.
New, overpriced Star WarsOreos! Will they be Jedi Oreos or Sith Oreos? Only those dumb enough to pay for the same exact cookie with an intellectual property markup will ever know.
Sorry Not sorry for the naughty word.
Somehow, this video received no copyright strike. Go figure.
I accidentally stumbled across a movie I saw as a kid: C.C. & Company. It came out when I was two, but I saw it a few years later and loved it. It’s memorable to me because 1) Joe Namath plays the main character, and 2) it starts out with a scene where Namath is making lunch in a supermarket. That is, he opens a bag of bread and steals a couple of slices, opens a package of cheese and puts it on the bread, etc. After eating the sandwich he just made, he politely asks an employee where the cupcakes are, and then calmly goes over there and eats one.
What I didn’t know then, and didn’t find out until I re-watched it is that Sid Haig is in it.
A Horror Icon
Wait, that’s not right.
There you go.
Sid Haig threw me a little bit. Some of my friends won’t stop talking about the guy’s impact on horror, but because I don’t like slasher-type horror, I never saw House of 1,000 Corpses. (I assume that movie is of that genre.) As far as I knew, this is the only movie in which I’ve seen him, but looking at his credits, I saw him in THX 1138, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2. Not knowing who he was, I never noticed. I wouldn’t have noticed here if Amazon Prime didn’t display the scene’s cast during the movie.
Review
Anyway, a couple of early scenes of C.C. & Company hold up, but the movie in general? Not so much. It’s one of those movies about a particular subculture (bikers in this case) written by people who I assume don’t know anything about the subculture. It’s also quite dated. If you’ve seen it before and have even vague memories of it, it might be worth a watch. Everyone else my age should be watching Cobra Kai. I finished part one of the new season of Cobra Kai the night it dropped.
On second thought, no one should watch it; it sucked.
It seems like once every two or three months, someone I know dies. This is to be expected; I’m 56. However, some hit harder than others, and this is one of them.
In College Park, MD after the UMD-UVA lacrosse game.
Yesterday my friend, Robert Eugene Merlini, tragically lost his life (other coverage here, here, and here). We were fellow students at Good Counsel High School, which then was in Wheaton, MD. (It’s now located in my home town of Olney, MD.) We both went to the University of Maryland, but we never hung out there. Over 35 years later, Bobby and I reconnected via Facebook.
As an old guy, nostalgia is a big deal to me (see, e.g., my many posts on my return to 1st Edition D&D), and Bobby was very much a part of that. Because of him, I’ve recently been to a Maryland lacrosse game (both of us are/were fans, and I’m a former season ticket holder), hung out at bars, and I went to my first high school football game since I was actually in high school. He also is responsible for reconnecting me to our fellow Good Counsel High School alumni, both on social media and in real life. This was as important to him as it is to me.
After his mother died last year, which hit him pretty hard, he found a bit of joy starting his return to piloting commercial aircraft. He had a gig with American and was recently in Ohio for training. He was well on his way. He once posted to Facebook tagging me and several others as his inner circle who had his back during his tough times and his return to commercial piloting. I’m glad to know that I was able to do my part to help him along his way. I wish he could have regained those wings. He earned them.
Yesterday’s post sucked, so here’s something light-hearted.
I’m stupid.
If you know me, you probably disagree.
“How can you get a physics degree if you’re stupid?” “You’re such an intellectual.” “How stupid can you be if you have a law degree?”
Very. The answer is, “very.” Seriously, have you people never met a lawyer?
But those that really know me would say, “Yeah, he’s stupid . . . in his own way.”
The issue here is one of colloquial semantics that most people reading this blog (i.e., gamers) understand. I’m smart but, in many ways, unwise. But don’t worry. This isn’t a philosophical post. Nope. I’m going to tell you a funny story of how stupid I am.
The 1990s
In 1994, I was working as a contractor at Bolling AFB. Things were different back then. Widespread ownership of a Discman or something like it was relatively new. I finally bought one, and when the headphones wore out, I bought a nice, new pair. The problem with the new pair is that the audio was always too soft for my liking. So, I replaced them, then when the replacements ran out, I just stuck with the “quiet” pair. About a year later, I was on a business trip in Miami, and I finally realized that the headphones had a dial for controlling volume independent of the device I was using.
Now, this isn’t so bad. That sort of dial was a new thing for headphones. Besides, I was in my mid-twenties. Every one is stu . . . errrr, unwise in their twenties, right?
Fast Forward to Today
I bought my house in January, 2022. That’s about 2-1/2 years ago, and by “about,” I mean almost exactly to the day. One thing about the house that’s been super annoying but not worth spending money to fix is that the light fixture in my master bedroom, despite lightbulb changes, has always produced far too little light.
You know where this is going, don’t you?
Last night, I accidentally discovered something.
That small slider to the right of the switch acts as a dimmer, and all it took was 30 months of using the fixture multiple times almost every day for me to discover it.
On May 15, 2024, I adopted two kittens. The boy is Tezcaatlipoca, and the girl is Ishtaar. (The double a’s in their names are intentional misspellings of their mythological namesakes.) I have tons of Caturday posts, including discussing my preparations leading up to the adoption, yet since adopting them, I haven’t posted about them even once to this blog. In fact, I didn’t even post about them to social media until I was (amusingly) scolded for it. I’ve been a bit busy and at times distracted. More on that in a moment. For now, here they are:
Tezcaatlipoca (“Tez”), born 8/1/2023
Ishtaar, born 6/22/2023
Ishtaar, when feeling good, is remarkably social. She always wants to be near me, and usually wants to be on my lap. She’s also remarkably easygoing, accepting whatever circumstances she’s given. Tez is somewhat antisocial. That doesn’t stop him from crying for attention, especially when he feels Ishtaar gets too much of my attention, but if I acquiesce, he usually runs away. Occasionally, he’ll allow me to pet him, but that quickly devolves into a clawing and biting attack. It’s playful, and he can control the intensity of the bites, but he has no such control over his claws, so I often have cuts on my hands. That’s okay, though, because I like playing with cats, and he’s far more active in that regard. Overall, though, they’re both good kitties, just in very different ways.
The Bad News
Ishtaar got (I guess you’d call it) a cold. Lots of sneezing and an eye that eventually swelled shut. It was time for their first vet visit anyway, so I took them to my local vet. Long story short, Ishtaar is very sick. She was running a fever for which she’s on antibiotics, but that’s not necessarily related to the underlying issue. After several less-invasive tests, she had a surgical biopsy last Monday. The results should have come in no later than yesterday (Friday), but I’m still waiting. So, we know she’s sick, but we haven’t even diagnosed her yet.
It’s images like this that convince me she’s not going to make it regardless of what she has. She’s disturbingly thin. If I ran my fingers down your back, I could feel you spine (right before I was arrested), but I couldn’t feel the sides of your spine. There’s “stuff” in the way. Her spine is almost complete exposed, and I can make out her entire skeletal structure by feel. I know she has two kidneys, two lungs, a heart, a small intestines, etc., but I have no idea where she fits them. They must all be so small that they can’t function properly. She has good days and bad days, but her bad days really suck. I’ve had to isolate her because Tez attacks her. This makes matters difficult considering she’s reluctant to eat unless he’s nearby. She actually likes him.
Though I can’t figure out why.
I’m getting her all the care she needs, but if the worst happens, my next question is whether to get a replacement cat. Not only would Tez be bored without a companion, but he needs to learn social skills. It might be helpful to get him a cat that could put him in his place but not be aggressive, simply defensive. That’s a tall order, I suspect.
So, this post became a downer, but this is my current mood.
Play What You Want 