This is the way.

New Colorado law will ban sales of dental floss, clothes, & other household products…

Me: Yo, what the fuck is going on in Colorado?

containing toxic “forever chemicals”

Me: Oh, that makes sense.

I was trying to watch the original Nosferatu but the version I was watching had dogshit Casio keyboard accompaniment. I muted it and had Spotify put on a playlist based on “Danse Macabre.” Much better. That said, a proper silent movie with live accompaniment is fucking fantastic. I saw Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall that way and loved it.

Proverbs 28:27

Those who give to the poor will lack nothing, but those who close their eyes to them receive many curses.

versus

Matthew 6:6

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

But they can’t be expected to actually pay attention to their own scripture.

Virtually anything with a Newberry Medal is highly likely to have a traumatizing beloved character death somewhere in it. Maniac Magee and Bridge to Terabithia were good examples from my childhood.

If you believe that laws forbidding gambling, sale of liquor, sale of contraceptives, requiring definite closing hours, enforcing the Sabbath, or any such, are necessary to the welfare of your community, that is your right and I do not ask you to surrender your beliefs or give up your efforts to put over such laws. But remember that such laws are, at most, a preliminary step in doing away with the evils they indict. Moral evils can never be solved by anything as easy as passing laws alone. If you aid in passing such laws without bothering to follow through by digging in to the involved questions of sociology, economics, and psychology which underlie the causes of the evils you are gunning for, you will not only fail to correct the evils you sought to prohibit but will create a dozen new evils as well.

Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

And has a theme song from They Might Be Giants, which is right at the intersection of a corporate behemoth making the rare right decision and a beloved weirdo niche band selling out in a fairly impressive fashion.

Hell, I’m a married dude with a child, and I wear a rainbow flag. Ain’t nobody that straight.

I have real love for TNG S1E16, “Too Short a Season.”

The Enterprise is dealing with a hostage crisis on a planet where the local government wants this old admiral who had negotiated a truce there decades before to come back. He shows up and it turns out he’s taking experimental de-aging drugs to grow younger. It turns out that when he had negotiated the original truce before, he had violated the prime directive and given weapons to some rebels, but he told himself that he made it even by giving the same weapons to the other side, which led to decades of bloodshed.

The writing is just okay, and the old guy / young guy makeup is pretty bad, but the scene where the admiral dies while looking into his wife’s eyes gets me. I also like to imagine that the ep might have originally been written with Kirk in mind as the old guy, because the whole “Well I made it fair by giving weapons to both sides” seems like the kind of cowboy insane shit that Kirk would pull and then never consider the consequences. The episode feels a little bit like it’s revisiting some of the times when Kirk would do his thing and then warp off into the sunset while definitely leaving some loose threads behind.

“My grandpa worked at the gives-orphans-cancer factory until he died of cancer, my daddy worked at the gives-orphans-cancer factory until he died of cancer, I’ve been working at the gives-orphans-cancer factory for the last twenty five years and by God I’m proud of my recent cancer diagnosis, and I will fight with every fiber of my being to make sure that my son grows up to work at the gives-orphans-cancer factory!”

That’s the Iconian gateway system, and it’s pretty boss.

That’s how I got into the majority of my relationships! I realized that I had like no game whatsoever and I just stopped trying, and weirdly enough that seemed to work okay.

Into the Night by Benny Mardones wouldn’t necessarily sound so bad, but then you see the video and hooooooo boy it is not okay, not okay at all.

Laser thermometer. It makes cooking things at really specific temperatures a lot easier.

Some long-handle sundae spoons. They’re incredibly useful for getting to the bottom of a deep jar or yogurt tub.

Collapsible screw-together travel chopsticks. They take up virtually no space, come with their own holder so they stay clean, and you’ve always got some nice chopsticks to eat with.

Blue painter’s tape. You can label anything (especially stuff that’s going into the freezer), and it’ll peel off again without leaving any residue.

Beaded reusable cable ties. It’s always nice to be able to tie up a power cord.

A nice headlamp. It’s really nice to be able to put on a headlamp and have your hands free when you’re doing stuff outside at night. Fair warning: you may fall down a nice flashlight rabbit hole.

We got the under cabinet Un-skru kind, and it works like a dream.

I got a Zojirushi at the thrift store and I love it, but then I realized that the pot has a nonstick coating inside, and there doesn’t seem to be a replacement that doesn’t have nonstick. No more rice cooker for me. :(

Slightly less than one boob and one testicle. Just like the average person has slightly less than two legs.

Everyone should read Motel of the Mysteries.