I had to do a comparative religion project in secondary school. I completely forgot to do it, which was the custom at that time. It was Sunday at 7pm and I resolved to do the whole thing in less than an hour.
I searched through the garage and found a small compressed cardboard reindeer that was painted gold as a winter decoration. I used tin snips to remove the antlers and wrote a paragraph on the Golden Calf.

Most efficient B- I have ever received.

For what it is worth, I took a constitutional law course in the latter part of Obama’s second term.

The professor spent a lot of time talking about the accretion of power to the executive branch and very clearly posited that it was a certainty that we would have an issue with authoritarianism in the near future. I remember sitting in class (naively) thinking he was overstating the problem.

Good news though, that same professor has made a lot of headway in eliminating qualified immunity in a few states.

It’s a deep cut but I used to play a ton of The Incredible Machine as a kid and the Zydeco song has always been a banger.

Higher quality remixed version from the 3DO version

I was at a bar with a friend years ago and he kept talking about how much he loves limes. He went on and on about it. Finally, I told him I would bet him $50 if he could eat a whole lime, rind and all. He couldn’t refuse after spending 10 minutes talking about his love for them. The bartender was happy to offer a large one for the challenge.

This kid tried for 45 minutes to consume the lime. The juicy interior was quickly consumed and all that was left was the bitter, leathery peel which had the surface area of a dessert plate. He was chewing on it like he was trying to get someone to guess “chewing” in charades. He, very begrudgingly admitted defeat while me and the bartender were breathlessly laughing.

I only offer this as an alternative, minority viewpoint because I struggled with selecting earbuds for bed - try bone conduction ear buds.

Caveats being, side sleeping can be uncomfortable depending on head shape and pillow stiffness. Also the audio quality is not as good as traditional buds, but not an issue for most audiobooks or podcasts. For me though, it eliminated the uncomfortable pressure against my eardrum and didn’t trap moisture if I chose to take a shower before bed. I also could hear in case there was something I had to respond to.

Just a heads up, this website is loud. So turn may want to turn down your volume before you click on anything. Very cool though!

The soundtrack to Lisa the Painful is really well done. The music is reminiscent of the 16-bit era but is haunting, weird, intense, and sometimes wistful. I would liken it to Hotline: Miami meets Requiem for a Dream having a chiptune collab.

The game itself was just a little too bleak though for a re-listen though.

The short story of the same name is worth the read after seeing how red a Scarlet Ibis is.

NOFX - The Idiots Have Taken Over

Saul Willaims - List of Demands

Earthbound.

The game itself is a quirky but endearing turn based RPG with enduring graphics and score. The game came with a full strategy guide that was set up like a tour guide to the various locations in the game. It was intended to be a companion piece to the story and fleshed out characters and towns. I was so excited to get it as a kid that I measured the box a video rental place with a tape measure and compared it my Christmas presents to make sure one of the wrapped ones was actually it. I replay it once every 10 years or so.

The game was one of the strong inspirations for Undertale.

I encountered him a long time ago and started watching him in earnest a few years ago. Really sad to see how he was affected by the Asheville floods but happy that he has been so resilient.

As annoyed as I was I laughed when he deployed that one.

In college, my roommate did the following one evening:

• Drank the better part of a case of beer
• Tried to get into a frat party but was rejected for being raucously drunk
• Punched his way through a wooden fence in frathouses’s back yard and ran into the party, breaking his hand in the process
• Kicked in a hall closet door and found a can of black paint, opened it and threw it at a wall 3 feet in front of him
• Got thrown out of the party again, covered in black paint and returned to our apartment
• Woke me up looking like Ken Jeong from Community as a Dark Elf because he was having trouble taking his pants off (his boots were still on)
• Got really mad that I wouldn’t help him so he committed another act of closet violence and ripped all the shelving of his own closet
• Called his ex-girlfriend and played the entirety of Amazed by Lonestar into her voicemail and yelled “Amazed at what a BITCH you are” at the end
• Fell asleep in his clothes which he profoundly soiled with blood, piss, vomit, and black paint.
• Woke up in the early morning to move to his bed, which received the same treatment
• Got up the next day and bought a Condolences for your Loss card which he signed and delivered to me.

He dropped out a few weeks later, joined the military, married his ex, and is apparently a sysadmin now.

One weekend when I was in high school, back when burning CDs was popular, I had a little extra space so I downloaded “Enter Sandman” and threw it as the last track on the CD. My dad asked me to go run an errand on Sunday so naturally I got my new CD and put it in his car’s CD player, listening to the first half of it before I returned.

That Monday, he gets home from work and he storms into my room absolutely furious and with no other context yells “SUCK A CAMEL’S ASS, HUH? REAL NICE!” before slamming the door. I have no idea what he is talking about but I wasn’t about to question my angry father and just stood there in shock. A couple weeks later I add that “Enter Sandman” file to a playlist and only to find it is actually the song “Suck a Caribou’s Ass” by Wesley Willis at a horrendous bitrate so it is super loud. I went to tell him it was an accident, but trying to explain to your dad what Kazaa was and how prevalent mislabeled songs were on there worked as well as explaining Islam to your pet hamster. He was adamant I did it on purpose.

To this day if I bring it up he still gets super annoyed and refuses to believe me.

I bought a cheap barcode scanner and scanned all my books and physical games and put it into a spreadsheet. I gave the spreadsheet to ChatGPT and asked it to populate the titles and ratings, and genre. Allows me to keep them in storage and easily find what I need quickly.

I have been working through adding things to a pegboard wall with the help of a 3d printer. Sure it’s not the most exciting but this corner of the universe is not going to shit.

Oh, I wasn’t thinking at all. It was a mistake my body won’t let me make again though.

I have a coworker that has two monitors on a free-moving desk stand and he has monitors as far apart as possible. The monitors are pretty small (24") and there is over two monitor widths between them. He has to whip his head around like he is trying trying to dodge a fly all day to do his work.

He complains about back and neck pain all the time.

Years ago I went to a small bar within walking distance of my place to watch a couple games with friends. There was a beer rep there for one of the big brewers debuting some new seltzer flavors, but no one was interested. I felt bad and the game wasn’t terribly interesting so I talked with him and over the course of 4-5 hours ended up drinking ~8 different flavors of fall themed seltzers (e.g., sour apple, cinnamon, pumpkin, flannel(?!)). A few included a shot of vodka. It was all free so I wasn’t saying no and ended up quite drunk.

The bar was also hosting a fish fry that day and the bartender brought over the leftover fish after the party left and offered it to everyone. In retrospect, this must have been sitting out for hours, but in my drunken state it was ambrosia from heaven and I ate a couple fillets and a bunch of shrimp and walked home.

The next day I was violently hungover and had food poisoning. It was the worst I have ever felt by a wide margin. The absolutely abominable combination of seafood and potpourri flavored alcohol made it an exquisitely miserable experience

Whoa, I was not expecting that song to be so good. Thank you for this.