Randomly Guessing Guestings before the Next WandaVision Eppy Comes Out!

 Okey dokey, so this post contains spoilers for The Mandalorian, which I have not seen! But of which I know that

Luke Skywalker shows up at the end of season two there to pick Grogu up. 

Whatever that means!

And so I'm really enjoying WandaVision, and there's supposed to be such a moment coming up, a cameo by, somebody CG Mark Hamill-esque, maybe in episode 5! So I'm getting my guesses in now.

1. My first thought when I heard there would be a surprise star cameo was that it would be... Tom Cruise or something! Playing Agnes's husband Ralph whom we haven't seen yet. Why Tom Cruise specifically? Because this mysterious Ralph is actually the demon Mephisto, and Tom Cruise would do wonderfully to play Satan??

2. It's supposed to be specifically more of a Luke Skywalker-style cameo, which means somebody we know but who's unexpected here. We haven't seen The Leader since the 2008 Incredible Hulk movie! It's gotta be Tim Blake Nelson, hasn't it?

3. Seeing how Skywalker was a CG Mark Hamill, Disney(+) are going to reuse the exact same assets and feature... Bucky Barnes, as portrayed by CG Sebastian Stan! Because Mark Hamill and Sebastian Stan look exactly alike! And they can just... or they can just (4) use the real Sebastian Stan!

5? It's gonna be CG Stan Lee, isn't it? Or maybe he filmed a cameo or two for the upcoming television shows before his death? (???)

So that is my thought.

POST-EPISODE FIVE EDIT: Okay, so I kinda saw that coming..., but I didn't see... *that,* coming.

Readshorts: A Blogpost with Three Prologues

 1. Dreamed the night before last that Cailin and I were in the pool table room of Grandpa's house, looking down out at the field, down where there may have been a few workers doing something or other. In the dream there's no fence or ditch that separates the field from the road, and there's a cement truck that pulls in hard off of the road, swinging and broadsiding on of the figures down on the field, who collapses. Horrified, Cailin and I drop whatever it was that we were doing and rush out to see if they're still alive. It's a little later, and we're back in the house, and the man who'd been hit turns out to have been my coworker Oscar. If he's dead then I don't know how I'm going to continue working- but thankfully he's still alive.

2. Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi is about a group of future scientists who have strange, impossible-to-explain things happen aboard their starship, where it eventually turns out that the things are happening because they're characters in a Star Trek-like television show that plays fast and loose with its science. It's a pretty funny book, though truth be told there was only one occasion that caused me to laugh out loud. It's still worth reading because of those three codas mentioned in the title. It's worth reading for those three codas alone. They're, among the most raw human honest things I've read in my life, and each is better than the last. And, like, the rest of the book is pretty okay too, worth reading on its own and not that thick so it shouldn't take longer than a few days if you want. Anyway.

3. At lunch yesterday Dad handed me a couple of bags of cookies that he'd made, for me to give to my coworkers. I've got two of those, more or less. Usually it's Oscar who helps me feed calves, but a couple of days a week it's Joaquim. Before feeding the calves their dinner yesterday I found the opportunity to tell Oscar my dream, and hand him one of the two bags of cookies. I think Joaquim was off yesterday so I kept the other bag in my pocket till I could see him.

Work's at 7:00, and I'm usually pretty punctual and sometimes clock in at 6:59, which happened this morning: walking in, a loader had driven up behind me, lowered its bucket for me to get in, to drive me to the barn. It was Brent, and as I clocked in he told me that with both Joaquim and Oscar in today, if everyone scheduled to be in the barn today came in, I can take the day off. (If not, it would be Oscar and me feeding, Joaquim in the parlor helping to milk.) We'd see by around 7:30, but until then, I started getting prepped to fill the calf bottles, because it takes me just about that long. Prepare everything by the calf room (including heating things up, rinsing things off, pouring in hot water to keep the bottles warm and adding formula which will be mixed into their milk when that gets poured in,) swing the tractor around to in front of the milk room, fill up the bottles with milk, put the nipples on them. We can usually leave around 7:50. 

So I finish up there, head back to find Oscar. I'd seen Joaquim, in the parlor, so I'm not sure by this point if he is going to help with breakfast, but when he sees I'm ready he heads into the break room to get better dressed for outside. Brent had disappeared somewhere, not sure where - so, was I supposed to gauge for myself if he'd let me leave early? But he's with Oscar, in the break room, Oscar finishing up telling him the story of me telling him my dream and then giving him cookies. Brent says I can leave if I want, and goes off elsewhere, and Oscar asks me what I want to do and I say I'm here actually to give Joaquim some cookies as well. And it's perfect, and it feels so scripted, and I decide to stay to feed for breakfast, because it goes a lot quicker with three people than with only two.

And then right before feeding the hutches, Joaquim saved my bacon-- so I caught myself in time I didn't dump all the bottles to the ground when I dumped out the hot water from the bottle tray-panel-tub-thing (it's usually closed, bottles held in and locked by the top grate, but the tray had been opened from feeding the group pens before the individual hutches got fed) but he called my name and I caught myself, and everything turned out non-disastrously (maybe the bottles would have gone everywhere, or maybe I would have caught myself in time had he not been there, or maybe I wouldn't have tilted the tray at such a steep angle if Joaquim hadn't been with us in the first place so it'd be fine anyway, who's to say.) And feeding the calves in the hutches I could make sure that the right calves received the right bottles, because the youngest ones get a special mix and I counted it out just right based on how many were born the most recently.

So in Redshirts, they try not to get caught up in The Narrative, because it's where bad things happen and where nothing makes sense... but in my experience of it, this morning felt so perfect, like a Narrative, only my writer is a lot better apparently, and it was humbling and lovely. Kinda working out how to deal with these emotion things, and that feeling, like being caught up in something like a well-crafted story, certainly is one of those.

Twinning

Feels like something I would write, in a lot of ways (thematic, structural etc) and I quite enjoyed it!, so you can consider this a second Spooky Short Story if you want IDK, half a month later. Maybe I should've waited till next year to link it so I wouldn't have to write one myself but it looks like they (VICE) put up one every year themselves, and this is this year's, and who knows if next year's is going to be as, me, as this year's is.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vvz3/twinning-halloween-short-fiction

the rope slackening in your hand

 maybe it comes as a memory. dusk, at the fair with your father, and the late autumn air still warm. a cold front blowing in as the evening sets, a chill finger of wind that tugs at the edges of your sleeves. you two, you're walking together, faster and faster and the crowd seems endless and the fairground seems to stretch on and on and maybe you can't remember arriving in the first place, to be so far lost. you're reaching out to your father and maybe he's reaching back for you and you two are holding tightly as possible (and maybe his hands seem so big and maybe his hands seem so sweaty) and you're in a hurry though you don't know why (maybe he's afraid) and he's so much faster than you, running and running. and you slip and he keeps running and you do too so it's like you're still together, and maybe it's like neither of you are moving at all, if you can stay close to him just the same and if you don't know how far in or out you still are. maybe it's the people around you who are all the ones moving past in an endless procession. but your father keeps running, and you can feel the precise distance between the two of you, and you can feel it grow like a slipping rope slackening in your hand. and maybe you don't cry as you two drift further apart and maybe he doesn't see you get swept up in a line of people lined up so neatly and so eagerly, lined up to go inside the haunted house which you had been so afraid of last time but did not have to enter.

and you can still feel the distance between you grow and grow as he never looks back over his shoulder,  like maybe he trusts you or maybe he doesn't care or maybe he's in too much of a hurry and his mind is on other things, and as it's the queue that's moving and as it's you who's standing still as you run, you're caught up into the building as your father slips away from you. and your voice catches in your throat and you try to turn around and leave out the entrance but the line which stretches endlessly outward pushes endlessly in, the doors of the house open like a maw to accept them. (though maybe there's only a few dozen people, and maybe it's just that you can't see past their legs, though maybe you're taller than that by now, in whatever reality the memory corresponds to.)

and you, still feeling your father slipping away, attuned to his location in the mysterious way that a compass knows where north is, have no choice but to push through the house, race through the house and race out the other side, the neat little line that pours out the back door you know is there. and keep running and following your north and catching up to him. and maybe if you're brave enough and fast enough he'll turn around and never even notice that you had slipped away.

maybe you take a look back out at the sky again, though, blue with orange setting in, before licking your lips and putting your head down and stepping through the doors.

and there's straw everywhere and dust, and fake cobwebs and maybe you remember shrill laughter from another room. and there's arrows on the wooden floor in chalk, and you're hurrying and following the arrows and not looking up and your compass is spinning and you look up too late to realize that it was a maze and that you'd been tricked. and maybe there are employees dressed as monsters and hiding in the walls, and maybe there are other guests around you but in your memory you feel alone and you feel small and you feel like you'll never be more lost in your life.

and your father is there suddenly like a vision before you, though you can still feel him running further and further away, in your compass in your rope, and maybe he pulls you up in his arms and carries you to the car and you two drive home together but maybe the memory ends before that, with the thought, or maybe the knowledge, that whatever had come to rescue you, it was not your father.

but you've known fear and held its hand and talked with it the way that some are said to be able to talk with the dead, and see it all around yourself and everyone in the way that some are said to be able to see the dead. you see it in adults in their loves and lusts and their politics, and you see it in children in their breath and in their heartbeat and in their trembling hands.

and maybe you see it in yoursel

Video Games Are Cool

 Drifting off to sleep and I remember this out of nowhere. Maybe just the sheer nightmare of reality breaking down around you. (Not what my spooky story is about this year but not a bad idea.) Video games are cool, but they have edges, but this is something that incorporates the edges into other edges. Not anything that could be accomplished in any other medium. Videogames are cool.

 I could not sleep until I'd tracked it down and shared it. Now I can sleep.

Still Counts

 This is from the day after the thing from last post, though it's been a couple of weeks. The thing from last post it took me a while to swing around to and post about as well, but I figured everything in order and posted that before this, I guess reckoning I'd be around to posting today's post the day after, or even later on the day of. Didn't happen obviously. Executive dysfunction SUX.

Alright so after the calves are around 8 weeks old we move them from their individual hutches into group pens, 8 at a time (four fit in the wagon so we make two trips.) Those calves in the pens get fed once a day, until we wean them by simply stopping doing that. Pens two and five weren't getting fed on this particular day. And I realized. Two and five.

Alright I've mentioned before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTlg0cK-UjE wrong link Deep 6 Eyes here!, I prolly (??) have synesthesia associating colors with numbers- 2  and 6 with blue and orange. Two and five, here I realize, fit together: five is yellow somehow, with two being blue.

When I eat M&Ms I eat them in colored pairs, it's this whole thing, and blue and yellow go together. The two pens here not getting fed, the mathematics of it, reminds me of that, and the rest of it snaps into place.

I mentioned being unsure of any of the other numbered colored connotations, but with blue and yellow in place the remainder snaps in place easily. Or, most of them do. 2 is blue, 3 is green, 4 is ??brown?red?? 5 is yellow 6 is orange 7 is purple 8 might be black and 0 feels white. 1 and 9 are also numbers. They feel like colors imperceivable by humans.

Like I pointed out earlier it's not a literal viewing of those numbers as intrinsically colored, it's more of a vague association. But it still counts.

My Favorite Author Wrote Something Just for Me!

(I mean it was in response to a comment I made on a YouTube video he did, about how soothing the fan in the background is, but that's still pretty cool. eh?)

Not always, but it was a very hot day :)

(Dan Wells is a professional GM now and does videos reviewing different roleplaying systems and splatbooks, and his channel is still small enough for him to be able to reply to each comment he gets.)

Legit tho FATE is such a good roleplaying system. 

Which Reminds Me of This Other Hypnotizingly Good Video Essay

So I watched a few more Errant Signal videos, but like not as many as I'd want to, because video game videos but spoilers? Either I'm interested in the games he talks about but there's spoilers in the videos which I don't want, or I'm not and I don't care about spoilers but I don't care about that? Wavering on whether I should watch his mostly-spoiler-free take on Outer Wilds, the first half of a two-part thing of which the second is the spoilery bit. It's the Fortnite one that I keep on coming back to.

Errant Signal's take on why graphics aren't that important is a pretty good one I think, I mean the video itself is good; Jacob Geller comes to a similar conclusion in his video about the same subject, and of the two I prefer the former, so. 

Yeah so Jacob Geller, also doing video essays about video games (for someone who's so hardcore in how casual I am gaming-wise I sure watch a lot of gaming YouTube; I'm fascinated by the formation of genres and subgenres, and also really into analysis of storytelling within an interactive medium.) Of his videos, the one I keep coming back to is, this:

Speaking of spoilers, this one's got unmarked analysis of Kentucky Route Zero, and the whole thing could be seen as a discussion of that game specifically? (via analysis of other media and games, and other real-life stuff.) And it's like HEY THERE, I'm geTTING AROUND TO IT GEEZ. Warn a fella a little next time.

So This is a Great Video Essay that Blew My Mind Repeatedly

Figuring out Blogger's new interface; got most of it licked but it's reminding me I need to post on Wordpress more. (That's what I'm figuring is going to host my next webcomic, aside from the I-need-to-post-on-any-of-my-blogs-more.) 

This year has been pretty bad for my executive functioning; is it the lack of blogging that's leading to lack of structure, vice versa? It's probably the job; even back when I got things done it was just very very slowly, and I accomplished things at all because I had 8-9 more hours in the day I don't have anymore. 

Video coming ever, though! I should probably chop off a smaller project instead of the huge one, but I'm still down one battery charger, so no way to shoot video; at least with the one I've been working on the past six months, all the footage has been shot and I just need to finish the script and edit film clips together. (I'd be working on it now if I weren't blogging, but that just makes my getting-anything-done seem irresponsible.) I've been working on it *to the best of my ability,* I just have a naturally slow work process as I let ideas percolate.

Waking up early has gotten me this far which is pretty sweet; I read somewhere that executive function for people with executive dysfunction works best at non-daylight hours for some reason. Guess I'll keep doing this then.

even if I were to start taking meds where would I even start with them? It's something I've never done before, so, just spinning blindly in space...

So you watch that essay yet? It's 40 minutes long but probably only 20 minutes if you put it on 2x speed. Watch it again if you want. I've heard of Errant Signal I guess but never really even meant to get around to watching his stuff, even though he's one of the channels subscribed to by Dan Olsen (my favorite YouTuber) but Dan Olsen is mentioned in the video, and linked to it on Twitter, and here we are (and though of course I'd seen Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite several times and knew about the stuff they're (both) talking about here, it still just blows my mind.)

So I've been playing this video game The Outer Wilds, where you're an alien astronaut caught in a time loop as you explore your little solar system and solve mysteries, though it's far more common that you die and restart well before the sun explodes-- and how crazy would it be if there were a Battle Royale just, set in there at the same time as the exploration stuff...

it's time to get good at darts

Give Me a Call (A Song for Mom)

The Very Worst Version of Me

Comic Things, Comnc Thiigs

Darths and Droids has finally, finally begun their Force Awakens story arc. A week ago, but I only checked in today, and hey-hey! https://darthsanddroids.net/ (Darths and Droids is a webcomic in like this, [exhales] so there's this genre that like reinvents the plots of movies and TV shows as being actually D&D-style RPG stories behind the scenes?; this particular one wasn't the first but it is arguably the most influential, and they've been going since 2007 and they're only now getting to the sequel trilogy because they were waiting to see how the whole thing would shake out and the time is finally here, woo.)

Non Sequitur introduced a new character today; that glasses kid has a younger brother with autism. Fingers are crossed??? but we'll see how this turns out??? https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2020/03/29

Third comic thing to recommend, third comic thing to recommend... there's a "I'm married to Betty Boop" thing making its rounds on Twitter or whatever? It's, something. Dare I say, something that exists.

kay bye again for now.

Dog That Speaks German!?!

(first I was reading about the history of tiki culture and there was this seminal restaurant Don the Beachcomber and trying to track down more information about that ran into Don the Dog instead. Also at Smithsonian.)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-don-talking-dog-took-nation-storm-180968867/
Meanwhile speaking of those guys did you hear about the 2.8 million images they released into the public domain for anybody to do whatever with? (it includes 3D models+stuff too.)

⟾https://www.si.edu/openaccess⟽

Aayyy

Wow I'm actually at a computer in the evening finally at all this year. Been meaning to blog but every time I think about it it's all, not gonna get out of bed for that. 

But being into a new decade (it's an arbitrary dividing line but I love it) each thing feels like, oh first of the decade, gotta record this, ye know? First movie watched this decade, Casablanca. First Killers song I sang this decade, Believe Me Natalie, actually? First U2 song, City of Blinding Lights; first twenty one pilots song, Migraine; first Beach Boys song, Good Vibrations. First song from Cats, it's impossible to say. 

I saw two rainbows so far this decade. I'm not going to let this hellworld strip my joy from me.

Shocky Powers pt I

So I had two dentist appointments, one last week one this week, and let me tell you about them? Like the one yesterday, they drained my wet wet mouth with a hoselike thing when it got too moisty in there, but with last week's they stuck cotton swabs in there right against my teeth and gums and me no likey- and then on top of that I had to fend off laughing while my teeth are being worked on because all I can think about is the tweet by the person claiming to be Zuckerberg's hairstylist claiming his ceasar haircut is from saying zucky no likey whenever it's time to get his hair done and swiveling his head in a circle exorcist-style. 

Because that's a very funny image.

And it's the worst to imagine when you need to not move your mouth.

At the dentist yesterday them sticking in a couple of things, a suction thing I think and a, more pokey thing maybe, I felt this jolt in my mouth like electricity. And the suction thing is just plastic and the pokey thing is non-electric so it couldn't have been either or both, and maybe it was the tiny hole in my mouth where the numbing agent had been injected or something? And I'm like what was that and yes it turns out it doesn't make sense that that happened.

So I at least hoped that I was coming down with superpowers? Like, my mouth could spontaneously generate electrical shocks, and maybe I could train and harness that?

And I guess I would have forgotten about this if not for the strange coincidence of today...

to be continued I guess

The Pros and Cons of Catching an Opening Night Star War

So guess what bub but I've got conflicting feelings on Rise of Skywalker coming out in a week. Like, should I see it or not, and what does its existence mean, and am I even excited for it?? I have assembled a list of reasons, both contra and pro, in the hopes that it would help iron some of the issues out in my poor little heart, and, well, it's definitely helped with something...

• Pro: heckin' Star Wars man; after TLJ, I came on record as officially excited for how Abrams continues/concludes the saga from the ending, what with TLJ both overturning the tea table and ending on a stirringly conclusive note
• con against pro: it doesn't really matter
• pro con con: of course it does
• Con: Dec 20th was the deadline i'd set for myself to get my webcomic up
• con con: i'm not getting my webcomic up by December 20
• con con con: i mean there's still time but
• con con pro: none of the other woodbadge goals i'd set are getting accomplished
• con con pro: 20th is a Friday. webcomic updates on Sunday. TELL ME HOW THAT MAKES SENSE.
• Pro: avoiding spoilers like the plague so like the sooner I get on this the better
• pro con: they slip through anyway because of course they do
• pro con pro: and I'd already seen the teaser trailer to begin with
• pro pro: but other than that I'm doing a decent job
• Con: seeing Cats instead
• con pro: unironically excited for Cats guys
• con pro pro: new Taylor Swift song in collaboration with sir Andrew Lloyd Webber
• con pro pro con: Oscar bait songs are weird and often boring
• con pro pro con con: um not always, and
• con pro pro con con: they can grow on you
• con pro pro pro: it's going to be called Beautiful Ghosts, and, like, I am just the biggest sucker for songs about ghosts, like legitimately there's never been a song about ghosts that's not a total bop
• con pro pro pro pro: Ghostbusters theme, Danny Phantom theme, Grim Grinning Ghosts by Thurl Ravenscroft et al, Ghost Party by Watsky, Kicking the Ghost by Malcolm Rollick, The Ghost by Trevor Something, Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts by Wolf Parade, Ghost Pressure by Wolf Parade, Same Ghost Every Night by Wolf Parade, heck Wolf Parade sings about ghosts a lot and I just love 'em for it, Coldplay's entire Ghost Stories album...
• con pro pro pro con: um the Casper the Friendly Ghost theme song I guess?
• con pro pro pro con con: I mean it's alright
• Pro: I need to update my Facebook profile pic probably, and the one I've currently got is from catching Force Awakens in theaters so like it would be the perfect photo op
• pro pro: i've got a beard now whereas I did not before
• pro con: I can't replicate the photo exactly because 
1. I was sneaking popcorn from the bucket of my cousin who is on his mission currently so I can't do that, and
2. it was at the Fallon Theatre, which I can't match because they don't get first run Disney movies anymore-- which speAKING OF,
• Con: I don't want to give Disney any of my money at all
• con con: but they don't need it
• con con pro: The New Star Wars Movie, it's guaranteed profit for them anyway
• con con pro: and people more politically active than I am against this sort of thing are like whatever, let's go see a Disney movie
• con con: besides already saw Ford V Ferrari and Ad Astra, both Fox films which makes them Disney films, and also would totally have caught Jojo Rabbit, were it playing anywhere near?
• con con: what the hexk i guess i'll go see Frazen 2 now why not?
• con con pro: HACK YEAHS Frazen 2 instead of Satyr Warts
• Pro: still soliciting local business
• pro con: they don't need it with all the others coming in
• pro con con: but yeah they do

so umm

~~Christmas day sounds like a bombad time to catch a Star Wars movie...!~~

~~And also Cats like three more times...!~~

avoiding spoilers for five days, eh I can manage.

Fred

I realized once as a kid watching Mr Roger's Neighborhood that Mr Rogers was mortal and that one day there would be no "next time." (That's how he ended every episode, "see you next time.") And I was right. And I went to go see It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood today because I felt like I needed a good cry, but not even I suspected that I'd be bawling my eyes out before the opening logos had even finished. It was the music; that little glockenspiel or whatever, that really took me back, and, just, heck. Heck.

So yeah Andy Levy is a film twitter guy now.

So the decade is ending in... a month. That's something.

And it's like, WELL WHAT WERE THE BEST FILMS OF THE 2010S? And it's like, shoot just this year was a decade unto itself, and like, you expect me to be able to answer that? (I know I've said that about the year 2000 before, but I'm speaking relatively here and not literally. The year 2000 culturally took up a decade's worth of cultural capital; each year 2016ish to date has taken up a decade's worth of cultural adjustment.)

So anyway I'm not sure I have to compile a list of my own because someone with my apparent exact same taste has already done so; I've never felt so known. Alright that's not true, but... yep. (The most known I think I've ever felt was the Peirce Quincuncial projection analysis from this XKCD comic, speaking of xkcd.)

https://twitter.com/andylevy/status/1199494525292630018

And apparently that's... the same, Andy Levy? who was the ombudsman on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld?, so long ago, back when Greg Gutfeld still hosted Red Eye, and also wasn't you-know-what? So uh yeah GONNA TAKE A HARD POLITICAL TURN NOW (I don't want to outright call Greg Gutfeld faschie just for being a host on Fox News, and I'd have to look into his current politics more (I remember catching the first episode of his solo show, where he made fun of Tr*mp a whole bunch, and that was the tea,) but, I've seen a clip from The Five where he says that Quid Pro Quo is, okay?? because that's kinda what 100% of human interaction is, is give-and-take??? and it was pretty contrarian and tongue-in-cheek which is on brand I guess but mostly it was like, oh Greg what happened to you. His Twitter is right there off of Levy's in the suggested similar people thing, but I can't bring myself to actually click there; Gutfeld meant so much to me as a teenager and I don't want to have to go through the pain of formalizing the knowledge that we've drifted so far apart politically.) 

Also S.E. Cupp is on Twitter and she appears to be, like, genuinely liberal now? Which is... I mean she was on Fox, she was one of those, fake-libbies, an atheist who argued that religion is necessary for morality somehow, as if that were an inherently self-coherent position at all, and... Seeing her argue actual leftist positions is, strange, to me, but there you go I guess.

So yeah Andy Levy is a film twitter guy now.

I wonder what's become of Bill Schultz....

A Few Articles from Around

• This combines a few of my favorite things in an interesting way. Like that whole Corrupted Blood thing on WoW, everything being virtual and thus being able to scrub back through the history of this and track developments as they cascade? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/11/18/planet-zoo-is-temporarily-a-game-about-mass-producing-knackered-warthogs/ Wish they'd gone into more detail/that there were more journalism on the topic in the first place (it's the idea of the thing more than this specific article, though the article itself is fun and breezy for what it is,) but, heck, I also wish there were more journalism on that Black Cauldron-themed restaurant they had at Disneyland back in the early 90s, so, like... 
• speaking of... http://destdisney.blogspot.com/2009/10/gurgis-munchies-and-crunchies-1990.html It was called Gurgi's Munchies and Crunchies, and this blogpost is about the most comprehensive reportage of it as exists in the world, which is sad, because if there were this, like, Power Broker-length book on nothing but that restaurant I would still totally read that book because I love the idea of that resto so much.
• So this is happening, and it's concerning as someone who's a fan of movies, and of going to the movies, and who works at a movie theater that shows old movies sometimes, including yes Rocky Horror at least once a year. https://www.vulture.com/2019/10/disney-is-quietly-placing-classic-fox-movies-into-its-vault.html Louder for those in the back, I firmly believe that Disney ri'now have all too much power and someone needs to stay their sinful hand. But anyway.
• Alexander Pushkin was mixed race apparently? And is a black icon? And his grea'grea'grandaddy was a spy? And it's like, sheesh, right when you think somebody can't be any cooler, they totally can be. https://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/5334/red-africa-gannibal-race-russia-pushkin The Calvert Journal is this journal of culture and photography focusing on the New East (Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Russia, Central Asia) and it's pretty fascinating because these geo issues aren't things you see in the West much but they're our cousins so it's like, hey wow. 
• Man there's still so much neat stuff in the world.
• MAN OH MAN.