Lego Masters: Woke for the wrong reasons

 Lego Masters is "woke" because black people simply can't win, and they're overcompensating to stay on the air.

When it comes down to it, wealthy whites represent the largest portion of people who can afford to buy thousands of Lego sets and have time to get good at sculpting with them. 

You can clearly see that the producers of Lego Masters attempted to diversify the contestants, but the non whites just weren't very skilled. It all boils down to economic factors.

Visually, you can tell who made a great build and who didn't, so the hosts knew they couldn't show preferential treatment to non whites or be accused of discrimination in reverse.

To overcompensate, they have attempted various "woke" things. While 90 percent of it is so subtle that I couldn't quite tell (other than the types of contestants selected) , the MCU themed episode was as obvious as a sledgehammer to the head.

The builds for the episode had one thing in common: Ethnic diversity.

I could tell something was up because each so called "unforgettable moment" from each movie was actually rather obscure and not something most fans would think of in connection to the films.  

At first glance, I didn't think much about it, but then my mind keeps going back to how much Amy stressed the name America Chavez, like it's her favorite superhero in the world.

I honestly doubt anyone's favorite is America Chavez. I think Miss Marvel is a better woke choice because she's not a damsel in distress/human plot device like America, and she's Pakistani.

America Chavez. Frankly, I haven't even thought about that minor side character until Amy brought it up.

Also telling of the show's unsubtle attempt to be woke, although Amy acted like America was her all time favorite, they didn't show any pictures of the character at all.

I like seeing the amazing builds, but this again reinforces why I sometimes don't care when the sound on my TV isn't working.

Avatar

As Avatar 2:  The Way of Water comes out in theaters, promising huge box office returns, I am once again reminded of how God prevented me from publishing a novel that could have potentially embarrassed the hell out of me in front of millions of people.
Long before the original Avatar got release in theaters, I wrote a similar story:  Guy gets cryogenically frozen and taken to an alien jungle planet full of "half human cat people" who ride flying creatures.  
The difference:  Mine was a combination science fiction and inspirational Christian romance...not some half baked Vietnam protest/save-the-environment story.
Also, awkward because I'm obsessed with The Neverending Story, and I thought writing a story about being shy around women would help me to face my fears.  By a similar token...pretend girlfriend.
In my defense, women write romance novels with lots of pretend boyfriends in them, and nobody thinks it's strange, but I'm a guy and this is embarrassing and probably not something I want the whole world to know about anyway.
That being said, I put a whole lot of work into the novel, edited it numerous times, and you're probably curious about how it may or may not resemble Avatar at all, so here's a site where you can read it for free:

https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3365464/1/The-Quaceb

And here's a site where you can buy it in paperback to save yourself some eyestrain:

Book Link

By the way, I made changes to the plot after Avatar came out, mostly out of frustration about how many similarities I thought I saw.  But honestly, not getting recognized for this embarrassing piece of fluff is probably the best thing to ever happen to me.

Judgmentalism

 People accuse me of being judgmental. I wondered why they kept saying this about me until I realized that just about everything on my Facebook feed has judgmental content on it, people mocking and criticizing other people for various things. It's funny, yes, but I blame Facebook for encouraging the constant judging of others.

Don't believe them

 I bought a digital camera that makes avi files that my Sony Vegas 9 program can't read. I saw a YouTube saying I could just go to sourceforge and get a x26yvfw codec, but it doesn't do anything at all. I still only get a red box instead of the video I recorded.

https://www.videoconverterfactory.com/tips/sony-vegas-avi.html

Promised me a "perfect" solution for "free", but it's just trial software and if you don't pay for it, you only end up rendering a black one second video. Thanks for nothing, and no thanks to vmotal for their crap camera that only does avi.

I thought I found a fix for it by using vlc media player, but the program fails to make usable files from the avi. It takes forever, and all I got to show for it was another red video instead of the video footage I wanted.

I know the answer to all these problems, but I can't afford to buy new video editing software. It sucks. I spent a whole night trying to create this video, and I have absolutely nothing to show for it but sore eyes.

Johnny Dare

 Never knew a show that made feel the way they do, yeah they're nuts.

Harleys, aliens, transvestites and freaks, I'm telling you something, they're chuckle butts.

Some say they're weak, some say they're dumb, but look out baby cuz here they come.

Get ready, get ready...

Have you heard the story, about the crematory, the one that thought that burning bodies was a chore? They took the people's money, the next part ain't so funny, they threw threw threw the bodies out the back door...

SCP Item 8100201437060: "Hannigan."

 Item 8100201437060:  "Hannigan."

Class: Safe

Security Level: 1

Containment:  Minimal.

Description:  Bulky 1980's television set with wheeled stand and top loading Betamax player.  Requires electricity to operate.  Betamax tape winds and plays by itself, as if controlled by some otherworldly entity.  Attempts to replace the Betamax with a DVD or BluRay player, VCR or electronic gaming equipment have resulted in technicians contracting Egyptian plagues, which go away the moment Betamax is returned to the machine.

Displays one program, Hannigan, a plodding formulaic TV movie series which ran from 1968-2006.  Hannigan only has 21 episodes in total, but the anomalous television, according to most recent tabulation, has generated more than 367 variations on those 21 episodes, including several in which the detective is brutally murdered, loses his badge, or makes no appearance in the program whatsoever.

The effect of watching the program appears to be harmless.  Programming continues to play, regardless of whether anyone watches it or not.  The device seems to be merely a self contained universe of fictional characters embued with life through unexplained otherworldly energies.

SCP Item 38053563824: "The Death Collector."

Item 38053563824:  "The Death Collector."

Class:  Euclid

Security Level:  2

Containment:  Lock up.  Do not allow access.

Description:  Black Avaya conference phone with telephone headset and associated monitor and tower.  Object was acquired from the offices of Sunbank Private Label Credit Cards, now protected under bankruptcy, with name changed to (REDACTED).  Equipment uses telephone autodialing system to conduct collections calls with the deceased.  These business transactions sound completely mundane, often involving payments with real bank account numbers, but the person has recently died, and often the volume never rises above a whisper.  Customer audio can only be recorded with special equipment.  Only the operator's voice registers on standard recording devices.   

First recorded incident:  Grant Billington, 28, reported fraud on his grandfather's debit card two days after the man died from Hodgkins Lymphoma.  Telephone operator was subjected to disciplinary action, but management could not explain how the OP could consistently hold 5-10 minute conversations with someone they could never hear on recordings, and somehow acquire payment information, nor could they understand why their automated dialing system always appeared to send OP calls from a pool of live accounts, yet only record conversations between OP and seemingly nothing. 

Upon firing three OPS, Sunbank management decided the phone to be at fault, though no official apologies or reimbursements were sent to dismissed agents.

Sliders: Ruined multiverse part 4

 In "Fever," they land on a world with the plague running rampant. It's actually like the year 2020.  A lot like 2020. 

Multiverse impact: 

1. None of them had fully recovered from the plague. There's still a chance they were carrying. Quinn's girlfriend had to recover in a tent. Although their next slide was a world with widespread cannibalism, normal people could possibly encounter blankets or something containing the plague, and spread it to the rest of the world. Of course nobody cares if all the cannibals die.

It begs the question of what kind of microbes they already carry, and leave on other worlds. Maybe they are patient zero for some covid-like outbreak on a different world.

2. They handed several people wads of money from another world.  This would lead to counterfeiting charges, or some serious scientific investigation.

In the episode following, they stop an asteroid, but they had to help a mad scientist create an atomic bomb in order to do it. The impact is obvious: "If anyone messes with us...BOOM!"

Also there's the time travel/sliding device in the basement that Quinn tinkered with. I definitely seem to remember other sliders following them.

Zelda and the bag of poop

 A little disappointed that the stink bag in Zelda: Oracle of ages isn't more versatile.

For example:

Cat: I'm so hungry. I need food!

Link: I have a bag of s#$$. I think that will fill you up.

Man: This windmill isn't running properly. If only there were some kind of grease I could use to make it go faster.

Link: I have a bag of $###. It can make things slippery.

Man: I can't make my mail deliveries because I don't have a clock.

Link: Will a bag of $### help?

Man card

 As I carried in my laundry from the car in the rain, I realized I had two choices. I could cry about being single and having no one to help me, or I could be a man.

People these days make being a man something like a dirty word. They argue that you're not being in touch with your emotions or something, and it doesn't make things not hurt.

To be fair, it's not good to abuse someone and say "Man up." However, there's nothing wrong with telling yourself to man up.

Men had to use the man card when they built the first houses, ever since houses existed, and they couldn't cry about failing to build a house or having no one to help them build shelter. They did what had to be done, because they were men, and they had to get out of the weather.

A butler patiently endures abuse because he's a man, he's tough, and he can handle it. Plus he gets paid a lot, which helps.  When you're a boxer or a fire fighter, you gotta fight through the pain to do what needs to be done.  That's what being a man is about.

The man card is what you show yourself to remind yourself that you can endure difficulty without having to cry over every little thing.

Maybe it's not emotionally healthy, but it makes me feel better to say that I'm a tough man who can handle things on my own, than weep about nobody coming to help me.

If women want to take this idea and run with it, that's fine, but they already can take advantage of something men can't: Feminine charm.

Sliders: Ruined multiverse 1-2

 I haven't watched Sliders since the nineties. I forgot more than I expected. I'm making notes on the issues that never get resolved.

In the second episode of Sliders, they leave the parallel universe of President Oliver North with some interesting unresolved problems.

1. They have introduced two flying wasp spiders into the world. If they are not drones, the world is history. 

Quinn does not kill them due to his inexpert football throw, so they are still out there, ready to be cloned or bred, bringing the end of civilization.

Come to think of it, it would be best if that happened, for:

2. Quinn and Arturo left equations for the construction of a slider device. Someone took pictures. I am pretty sure this will become a plot point later on, but just in case they don't, let's hang on to that.

3. Rembrandt Brown slept with his parallel universe wife. If she becomes pregnant, the DNA will match the husband who went missing during the Australian war, but he probably will behave like a real son of the crying man, rather than the rebellious snot she currently has. It may have unforeseen consequences in the universe's history.

I wonder if their inability to go home was a butterfly effect from Rembrandt's slipup. Again, it would have been better if the swarm wiped them out.

4. I don't think anyone cares what happens with the commune after their guru left.  I guess, honestly, nobody cares what happens to society when they jump off to a new universe. But it does make you wonder if they made anything better.

Episode 3: Most of this storyline falls under the category of "Don't care, humanity will survive." 

Nothing jumps out as too damaging to the universe, except leaving behind the Constitution. Mainly I wonder if they understand the hastily scribbled document enough to make it into official policy, or if someone kills the prince and society falls back under the monarchy. Or if they left out some details and it's still not entirely fair or American. Hey, they did it all by memory, and a lot of people don't know or remember everything about it.

And what kind of ripple did Rembrandt make my telling everyone about James Brown? If the James Brown there is a doctor or an automechanic...

Also, a crowd of people saw them slide. That has to have some kind of consequence. Of course, this happens almost every episode.

Gays don't bother me

 It doesn't bother me that people are homosexual. What bothers me is how people try to sugar coat it. That's why I think they should have kept calling gay marriage a "civil union" and still give them property rights. Honestly I don't see any other legitimate purpose for those except property rights. 

To me it's about the same as sleeping with a whore. If I slept with a whore, I wouldn't dress it up and say it's something legitimate and holy and good as a real marriage, I'd call it what it is. 

It's one thing to live in sin, it's something worse to live in sin and claim what you're doing is sanctioned before God. And that's exactly what "gay marriage" does.

Just being gay doesn't offend me. The most offensive thing about our modern culture is how we are no longer allowed to call sin what it is.  

Art Commissions

 I don't like art commissions anymore. As I wrote about in the "make me pretty" post, some people can be unreasonable to the extreme. I ghosted, or thought I ghosted this person who expected too much from me, but they came back, weeks later, and said the sketch I made wasn't good, and to try doing like this anime drawing that I sketched already, the same one I drew and sent earlier. What, do you want me to trace the damn thing? 

People don't understand an artist's limitations. You don't go to Charles m Schultz or Scott Adams and ask them to make an amazing Sistine chapel looking thing. Not everyone can do the same kinds of things. If you ask a Snoopy type artist for a Mona Lisa, be prepared to receive a picture of Snoopy as the Mona Lisa, not something that looks as great as the Mona Lisa.

I've learned to accept the fact that I'm not a super great artist, I'm a cartoonist. I enjoy drawing cartoons. I don't like it when people  expect miracles from me, and imply that I'm not a good artist because I can't make pictures like Rembrandt. I can go to my dad if I want that kind of treatment.

You're not the Medici family. If you were, you'd go online and find a perfect artist instead of complaining that I can't fulfill your artistic vision to your impossible standards.

You're cheap, that's why you're asking me instead of a pro who can actually make your perfect picture and charge you full price for the annoyance. You prefer to go the cheaper route and demand premium work for peanuts.

Straight pride

 They don't have straight pride month for the same reason why they don't have rich people soup kitchens.

 When straight people brag: "We just got married, going to honeymoon in Cancun."

Gay marriage is pretty much response like this:

"OH YEAH? Well...I just...got married to this blow up doll."

And then after the honeymoon, when the straight person says, "We're about to give birth to twins! I'm so excited!"

The gay marriage answer is similar to:

"YEAH? Well, I still got this blow up doll... And I'm going to adopt some puppies!"

Escaping Magicant

 In the Earthbound/ Mother video game, I have gotten stuck in Magicant (the cloud city with elves) several times.

No, the game isn't broken. You're not trapped in the cloud city forever.

I just now realized that there's a man inside the well dungeon, near the sleeping dragon.

You keep going down holes inside the well, just keep going down the left one till you reach a dead end, then climb the ladder and go down the one next to it until you find a dungeon that doesn't look like a square.

You go inside the box shaped hole, catty corner from the path above the sleeping dragon and fight the fish. It looks like just another enemy, but you can't get the magic hook without fighting him.

The important detail I kept missing was how that blue blob in the crack near the top of the dungeon wall is a guy that you're supposed to talk to.

If you choose 'check,' it only says 'no problem here.' You actually need to talk to the blob.

 The hook only takes you back to magicant, which sucks, because the door blob guy is blocking leads to a new area with semis that give you asthma. You can't do anything once you get asthma, so it wipes you out and you end up in the Magicant save point again.

Sucks

 Trying to clean up in the corner,

Trying to fit a big assed vacuum in there

But I never seen a Hoover Upright

Do Bare Floor in a one inch square

Vacuum doesn't fit there

Vacuum don't do s### there...

Schweppes

 I've got this song stuck in my head, but I don't know who sang it. It was some kind of musician who did commissions.

It goes like this:

I'm going to steal your Schweppies, your Schweppies your Schweppies

I'm going to steal your Schweppies,

Do you like me?

No we don't,

(Can I have your Schweppies?)

No you can't!

Oh I don't know what to do, I guess I'll spend my whole life eating glue, glue glue glue,

And post its...post its are copyright the 3M corporation.

Jireh

 Gyro... you are enough,

Gyro you are enough,

With some feta cheese, the flatbread's sure to please...

Gyro you are enough...

Gyruss you are enough...

Gyruss you are enough,

Spinning round and round, I shoot the spaceships down,

Gyruss you are enough...

Gyro you are enough,

Gyro you are enough,

You keep my airplane sound, so I don't hit the ground,

Gyro you are enough... 

Gyroid, you are enough 

Gyroid you are enough,

Resetti's mad at me, because I'm not saving,

Gyroid you are enough...

Guinan you are enough,

Guinan you are enough,

On Star Trek TNG, you are always there mentoring,

Guinan you are enough 

Satanism

 Of all the religions you could belong to, Satanism is the most illogical. Even Wiccans will agree. 

You're basically taking a religion and doing the opposite of everything in it, instead of getting your own religion. If you really wanted to piss God off, you wouldn't belong to a religion that says that God exists, and what's that line about "the greatest trick Satan ever pulled was convincing people that he doesn't exist"? 

If you really did everything in the satanic religion right, you'd be in jail, because a lot of federal laws are also biblical. Like "do not murder."

A lot of people belonging to Satanism are either rebellious teens, or mild mannered guys like Atticus Murphy Junior on Todd and the Book of Pure Evil.

I've spoken to a wiccan, and he said satanism isn't a serious religion. Since satanism is basically the Bible on opposite day, I tend to agree.

How I got in Facebook jail

 I think I know how I got in Facebook jail. There was a post about Christopher Walken and they showed a picture of him as a kid. I paraphrased a quote from Joe Dirt and said "mom" instead of "my man" and somebody thought that I was going to "Stab them to n the face with a soldering iron." Since the person was an idiot that didn't know how to report a comment instead of a post, they followed me to my personal group and reported a post I made about MASH and said I was threatening violence. 

Of course Facebook would never explain what really happened or why I got in the penalty box for 30 days, so I can only assume this is what happened.

It gave me an option to protest my being put in Facebook jail, but it actually seemed like the moment I complained, they sent me the list of stuff I couldn't do for thirty days. It's like having the police tell you they were perfectly justified in giving you a life sentence for spitting on a sidewalk, and the judge agreeing to the terms.

No legal process, no jury, just crap and alligators all the way down.

The guy that reported me...I think he "wants to see homos naked."

"Pakistani"

 One time I made a post on live journal complaining about a Persian sounding customer. Maybe he was from Kazakhstan, not sure he kinda sounded like Borat, but I made the mistake of describing him as Pakistani. Practically everyone on live journal chewed me out, and they made a new community policy/rule just for me. 

All because I failed my geography.

"A lot of time online "

 I notice that a lot of guys that dye their hair and start dressing like a girl, or wearing makeup under an animal sports mascot suit generally explain their behavior by saying, "After spending a lot of time on the internet..."

More people need to go outside.

Giving up

 I wonder what percentage of gay people are gay simply because they have difficulty finding someone of the opposite sex that likes them, and have just given up.  People with poor self image who think that they will never find someone of the opposite sex to love them. 

I'm sure someone will argue against that being the case with all gay people, but what about a percentage of them? Certainly it has to be the kind of reasoning that leads some to be gay. They just don't believe they're attractive enough.

I've met a few overweight gay guys. I wouldn't be surprised if they're like that because they tried to pick up women once, and they had a really difficult time with it and gave up.

Badly titled Sweet Pickles books

 If you look in the back of any sweet Pickles book, you'll see a picture of Doubtful Dog with his arms crossed, saying "I doubt it," like some kind of mean skeptic. But if you read No Kicks For Dog (terrible title, by the way, it implies cruelty), it's about self doubt.

Also, "Hippo Jogs For Health" is the worst children's book title you can come up with, for a book that is actually not that boring. A better title would be Hippo's Health Craze. It's about not over exerting yourself. It's actually kind of funny.

Note: The page from Jackal Wants Everything about soybeans and friendship doesn't make sense until you read the Hippo book.  Hippo has a whole library of health tracts he gives everyone.

"Make it more inclusive"

 I was attempting to design a vacation Bible school program for use in churches by Christians. The theme was spiritual warfare for Christians. I posted some of the art on Facebook, and this girl argued that I should make it more inclusive for all faiths. She said she didn't like materials that were for Christians only.

Okay, do you even know what vacation Bible school is? Do you understand what I'm trying to do? I don't think so.

I think if you ever set foot in a Christian bookstore, she would become very angry and demand the owners also be more "inclusive to other faiths." "Who gave you the right to make a bookstore for Christians only!" 

It's a niche market. You have a target audience. I'm not going to make a vacation Bible study talking about how great Buddha is, that's not what vacation Bible school is about, and I'm not sorry.

But make me pretty

 One of the most frustrating things about being a fine artist is "But make me pretty." Also known as, "Then why don't you make your own damn picture."

It's the reason why some artists charge lots of money for commissions. They're not really sure they want to do them.

 It's when someone asks you for a portrait, BUT. Like, they want to be younger. They want a nose job.

You start the portrait, and you can tell it's going bad when they immediately ask you to make them more beautiful but complain when they see your changes.

It doesn't stop. Ever. You show them sketch after sketch after sketch, and they say no and finally send you a sketch they drew.

And then, after you humor them by doing it their way, and commit the picture to expensive paper and materials, they suddenly chime in with, more and more facial changes, then resignedly imply that your portraits are no good by changing it to a copy of some anime character, which, although easy, seems to defeat the whole purpose of the original request. "Oh well, you're not as good as I thought. Just make it a picture of snoopy, lol."

If you can stomach a customer like this, you are a fine artist, and deserve to raise your rates.

Although I've seen some artists that draw stick figures and overcharge, I think some good ones have been burned by "But make me pretty."

Root cause

 As much as I want to blame this or that thing in society for the Texas shootings, in all honesty, the gunman was likely just a ball of mental problems and child abuse.

People want to blame guns or video games, but it's got to be more or less an issue of the guy not getting psychological treatment, and having parents that do terrible things to him, and teach him to solve every problem with physical or verbal abuse.

If someone at the school did similar things to him, he'd project his parents onto them. And if he felt he couldn't win against them, he'd grab whatever is handy to put himself into the abusive parent role. 

What they don't think about is how they have become just like their enemy, and how they will face police and swat teams and things that will be unsympathetic, and they might just face abuse in a different form from them, or from people in the prison they may end up occupying.

And that's probably why they end up killing themselves or trying to die in a gunfight. If they could think that far ahead, they wouldn't have started shooting.

Childhoods End

 I think my parents are disappointed that I don't have a girlfriend and kids by now. I think my dad thinks I'm gay and hates me for it. They don't realize that I am so attracted to women that I can't get the nerve to ask one out, and now I'm over forty.

I see how people look at me when I go out to eat with my best friend. They think we're a gay couple. Wrong, I just can't find a woman, and I've got social anxiety disorder. If people want to misinterpret what's going on, they can go ahead and get AIDS. At least it won't be me getting it.

I used to think this was me failing as a human being, but today I've become thankful that I don't have kids. 

I never had to deal with the excruciating inconvenience of remote learning due to covid.

I never had to send a kid to school that might potentially get shot up by some punk teen with a gun. Or gives trenchcoat mafia drills in school in addition to the fire and tornado, just to keep safe.

I never had to send a kid to a school that teaches emotion as fact. 

I never had to send a kid to school that teaches kids it's okay for a kid to have two mommies or two daddies, or that they can pick what gender they want. They now have classes about that.

I don't have to worry about them teaching my kid that being gay is somehow normal, rather than something immoral and unnatural. I view being gay the same as people who have compulsive shoplifting problems, but the schools would actually encourage the abnormality. And try to convert my kids. Glad I'm not dealing with that.

I don't have to worry about my kid growing up too soon, learning about sexuality, especially gay sex, or what gay is, from some stranger at school before they even have questions about it.

 I don't have to fight to keep them on the right moral path when everyone is teaching them wrong.

I don't have to worry about telling my son or daughter not to smoke pot when it's now legal and all over the place.  I still think it shouldn't be legal.  They're not even taxing it like cigarettes. I think it should be taxed out of the public at the very least. But no, it's something kids can easily find out about, just like how there's no way to stop them from accidentally finding adult material on the web.

I don't think I'm in the endtimes or am going to experience it, but I definitely will experience a scenario similar to Childhoods End: Where the country's morality erodes so far away that they will welcome an undisguised Satan with open arms, and allow their children to be made into soulless drones beneath his control.

Today's Violence

 https://youtu.be/b3cqhNJkmIs

I was thinking about this clip from the OA when I saw the news today. I considered posting it to Facebook, but decided it in poor taste for anything. I figured I'd be in Facebook jail again.

Now that I think about it further, I often use humor to insulate myself from things that make me sad. It almost got me beat up in highschool, some kid died and I made a joke about it.

Anyway, I realize I should actually allow myself to feel and stop trying to laugh things off like that.

But then I wondered, what would happen if teachers and students really responded to school violence with freakish dance routines. It certainly would distract the shooter. Maybe allow them to become disarmed? Guess it didn't work out so well for the hero of the show, however.

Moody Moose Buttons

 The Sweet Pickles book, Moody Moose Buttons is the only children's book I've ever seen about bipolar depression. Moody gets sad at a random time, gets happy, and gets manic-angry, yelling and chasing around the alligator.

The solution is simplistic. Moody wears a button to show everyone what mood he is in. It's a nice idea, but I don't know if it's practical. I have bipolar disorder, but wearing a button to show everyone what I feel... I'm afraid I'd jinx myself into becoming depressed or manic-angry if I wore a smiley face.

His buttons read "sweet" and "sour", like he's Sour Patch candy. Not sure how I feel about that.

My directorial debut

 As I read about Patrick Mcgoohan and his conflict with staff during the production of the Prisoner, I was reminded of my own difficulties with making an interactive movie.

I had a computer class in college where we worked as a team to make a sort of video game. The trouble was, nobody really got my vision. They were all in college for different things, and this was just an assignment for a grade to them. I was the only one who really wanted this to be a cool entertainment product. It also went into some creative detours I didn't like, and the graphics and some other stuff didn't go the way I wanted. 

The plot of the game was that aliens were taking over Kansas City and using those hair curler things on top of bartle hall as weapons. Your job was to locate pieces of an alien weapon scattered through Kansas City history and use it to blow up the hair curlers. Sounded cool in theory, but it didn't turn out very good.

I don't know if the educational content was required, or just a suggestion at our planning meeting, but I didn't like it. We did a sort of time travel thing with it, but the game wasn't very interactive or fun. In one scene, we pretended to be mobsters from the 1920's, but we recorded the scene in a restaurant that just so happened to be playing the Beatles on the jukebox. That's one thing I'll always regret.

I had a choice to be like Mcgoohan and start yelling at people and chewing them out for quality issues, but I don't think it would have helped, and it was a class so I couldn't fire people who didn't make the stuff the way I wanted. Plus they tended to get real defensive about things, sooo not ready for an actual game company. So instead I sort of mentally retreated, became apathetic and let them do their own thing. It didn't turn out to be a very good game, but at the end, at least I felt like nobody hated me for being a bad boss.

I ended up settling for second best so we could finish the project on time. I think I preserved some friendships that continue to this day, if they don't read this blog, but I wasn't at all proud of the finished product. I wouldn't show that multimedia product to any company that I expected to get a job from. Didn't want to tell our professor what I really thought, probably best that I never did. 

I think this got me into the mindset, like Mcgoohan, that "If you want the job right, you gotta do it yourself." Unfortunately, that mentality makes you overworked. 

In the end, I've decided that I don't want to produce video games or movies, because I can't trust the staff and don't know how to delegate. It's much easier to write a book, or make art, and have a hundred percent control of my artistic vision, and don't have to worry about people who do a job in a way you don't like.

In retrospect, I think I should have just done sort of a sesame Street thing with puppets and limit the computer game and 3d rendering elements so we could have great video and more fun and finish the project faster. Maybe touch things up with the extra time and put in computer effects in at the last minute, if the teacher required it for a grade.

Planting

 This coworker of mine lives in a co-op, and they removed her fence, said she couldn't have it. So we've been working on a solution for quite some time.

She bought these giant plastic vases from Builders Square. We started out putting bricks in the bottom to keep them in place while we thought out how to fill them. 

We looked at a few places, but money was tight, so suburban lawn and garden wasn't for her. We ended up getting some plants at builders square. 

These are big vases, and when she's pinching pennies, she has some strange ideas. Filling up the whole thing with potting soil cost too much, she thought about wood chips, but passed on that too. 

Eventually she got some evergreen things, and made me pack half the vase with styrofoam kernels from the U-Haul store. I didn't know U-Haul had a store until today, I just discovered she had giant bags of Styrofoam.

Anyway, packed in the styrofoam, covered it with some kind of black plastic that lets water through, then packed in the plant and miracle grow potting soil.  Did this for four vases.

Our last vase actually contained a fake plant. We packed that one with wood chips, I'm certain of it, but she doesn't remember that.

A heavy rain hit a few weeks later, and we had three pots full of waterlogged mud with worms in it. The plants all died,  and I ended up dumping slop water for hours. 

She wanted me to try again this year. This time I used a knife to poke holes in the bottom before filling them.

The fake plant vase still contained gallons of rain water and rotting wood chips. When I went to poke holes in the vases, I made a surprising discovery: The pots have a small patch on either side of the base, one a knife can go through with little or no effort.

When I cut open the patch on the pot containing the fake plant, all those gallons of stagnant water came gushing out.

The big lesson: Giant outdoor plant vases need to have a hole in the bottom somewhere, and often it's built into the design, if you just search for it.

Internet

 What people don't understand about any internet service provider is that nobody cares how much or how little you use the service. It's not like water or electricity where you have a finite supply to measure. They only charge you for having it switched on. To them, if the signal is going to the box adjacent to your house, it's on. In fact, unless someone reports an outage in the area, it's on. And they're not required to give money back when it happens. It's not like electricity where you get charged less for not using it.

This is good and bad. If you have your wifi plugged in for months, but can never use it due to the computer being broken, an Ethernet cable being kinked up, or you being in a coma, you will still have internet going to your house, and still owe money for having it on.

No one is big-brothering your usage. They don't have time to see what you do or don't do online, anymore than the water company would stand around watching what goes into your sewer. 

The one exception is premium content, because you pushed, or accidentally pushed a button that said "give me this expensive movie". Other than that, they don't have time to care.

Midlife crisis

 I think the midlife crisis is the point in which a person starts to revert to a baby from a teenager.

When you are born, you wear diapers, then you become a child, eventually go to highschool and become an adult a few years later.

When you hit your midlife crisis, it starts going back. You act like a teen for awhile, then dementia hits and you're like a little kid mentally. After awhile you poop on yourself.

And the clock starts bending backwards somewhere around 40.

Word choice

 In high school, my English teacher gave us an assignment: How would I improve the school? Or maybe it was write about how you'd like to have someone improve the school. I don't remember.

At the time, this guy named Brett was constantly throwing stuff at me, and I was mad, so I wrote that killing him would improve it.

The paper I wrote had some funny stuff at the bottom, about sending Brett into space and being made to watch cheesy movies like Mystery Science Theater 3000, but Brett only heard the "kill Brett" part, and after the teacher read it to her whole class, Brett came by in my art class and beat the crap out of me. I also got taken to the principal's office, and my parents got called in.

The moral of the story is: Don't write about killing anyone you know, even as a joke. You don't know how someone will take it...Or if a teacher that you aren't fond of is going to betray you to the student body.

Also, a person who makes funny jokes about people you don't like, but also does mean things like throwing objects at your head may not actually be your friend. Not everyone is like your dad. 

Oh, and thank goodness for pot. Like, for example, if you say that you want two guys dead on a letter, and you put the wrong last name for one of them. If Ed hadn't been high on pot at the time, I would have gotten beat up by more than one person.

Gambling

 Although I enjoy gambling video games (with fake money), I have a moral objection to gambling in real life.

Imagine if you and your fellow human being both approach the same game with the expectation of winning money, but the money comes from your pockets. If both of you put down $200, the results are either one of you walking away with $400 , and the other with nothing, or someone ending up with less money than they started. Both of you are not going to win. If this were not the case, you would simply share the money so that each possess the same amount of money.

Someone had plans to take the wife out to dinner, or pay a bill with that money, and then you win, and poof, there goes their plan.

You are exploiting another person's hope. A slot machine, for example, contains money from several people who hoped to win big, but failed to do so. Some are desperate to win, thinking it will solve their problems. For some, like the addicts, it's their only hope. When you hit the jackpot, are you not taking what belongs to them? A person must think less of the game's previous victims, to take that money without guilt.

To win, someone else always must be left in the cold. All those games revolving around crushed hope. I don't know how I could accept that without guilt. And the greatest guilt of all belongs to The House.

My internal censor

 I am beginning to think that if I want to say something to a person, but am afraid to say it, I should let it sit awhile and think about it before pressing send. Sometimes it's actually a bad idea.

Right now, I want to message this girl and tell her that she's the only one I ever danced with. But if say it the wrong way, she'll probably get creeped out and not want to talk to me again.

Seems innocent, right? But I asked another girl about which guy fathered her children.  It seems it wasn't who I thought, and we're not quite the type of friends I thought we were. Guess that's okay, I just don't like making things awkward, and I have a gift for making it awkward.

Mental photo albums

 I wrote a story where a character gets questioned about emotional stamp collecting. If you don't know what that is, look it up, it's in every psychological journal, though it's probably fallen into disuse because nobody cashes Green Stamps to buy a sewing machine anymore.

Anyway, it got me thinking about what I was treasuring in my heart. Some people fill their memory albums full of hurt or hate, or how others have wronged them. I have to be careful to not keep that sort of stamp collection.

Some people have albums that are basically playboy in some fashion or another. That is another thing I must avoid.

I know a woman who treasures her maladies. I hope I never do that, but there but by the grace of God go I.

How can I keep a good mental scrapbook? That is the difficult question.

Reconnecting

 As I work on editing books of my grandpa's letters from 1944-1945, the radio kept playing New Day by Danny Gokey. That song has a lyric about not living in the past. Very ironic.

But I realize it's more than just my grandpa's letters. I've too often tried to connect with people from my past, in hopes that I'll find love.

It never works out. Every time I try to connect with someone like that, our friendship always turns out to be crappy, and I regret meeting up with them. 

There's a reason why they stay in the past, and why more people don't reach out to me. If they didn't give me the time of day back then, and didn't speak to me for ten years, it's likely the stupid jerk was never my friend, and will never be my friend.

I do not reconnect with people. I mess up old friendships, misinterpret old friendships, and incorrectly assume that they think more of me than they actually do.

Those people in church camp AND high school that were cold and emotionally distant and phony to me back then are still empty to me today. That's their natural state, and time hasn't changed how they won't give me the time of day.

What's important is finding friends now, where I am now. Because those old people who forgot about me a long time ago do not care about me.

 Sometimes buried in the past is better.

Grandma

 My grandmother was a superb painter. I often wondered why she stopped making art after awhile. Why so few paintings.

I used to frown upon her lack of ambition, but she knew something I didn't. Fame comes with the price of your morals.  

Also, as I get older, I understand how frustrating it can be to pour massive amounts of time into an art project and receive no recognition for it. After awhile, you lose the motivation. 

Mongoloid

 There is a DEVO song that goes "And he wore a hat, and he had a job, and he brought home the bacon so that no one knew...He was a mongoloid."

I used to think that was funny, but now I realize that I am a mongoloid, just working and putting up appearances so that nobody knows.

Bible stuff even pastors don't get

 I've heard a few things from pastors that indicate they don't know everything about the Bible.

One pastor didn't understand what a hyssop was used for.

If you watch Shakespeare in love, he brushes his teeth with a reed. A hyssop was the old time tooth brush and scrub brush. 

Another pastor I had didn't understand the tithing of dill and cumin.

Back in ancient times, you made purchases with salt. It's where the word "salary" comes from. Inductively, dill and cumin more than likely had a monitory value, due to the high premium for items that give food flavor.

Heck, even the footnote section in my Bible gets "uncertain" about things. The line about "cast your bread upon the water" for example. That's a psalm referencing the brewing of beer.

There's a famous quote: You don't graduate Bible study until you meet the author face to face. Above are a few examples of that.

Just ordinary

 Nobody talks about what happens after the beast in Beauty and the Beast becomes human. That's where the story ends. The same thing goes for Ariel in the Little Mermaid. No one cares what they do as a regular person. They're just not interesting after they become regular people. They lose what makes them, them. 

Normal is boring. Maybe there's a lesson in that for all of us. 

If Belle kept the Beast as a beast, got married and had a family, it would be an interesting story. How would all those relationships work out? Not sure how the prince from little mermaid would keep her relationship going without him drowning, but I guess Aquaman has to come from somewhere.

Of course, in the original tale, Ariel jumps into the sea and drowns because Ursula steals her man. This reinforces my point about them being more interesting (in this case, happier) before they become a normal human.

Bag of bones

 I think sometimes a book can parallel your life, and give you ironic hints about future events. Sometimes I edit a novel and find certain similar circumstances happening to me in real life. Not the whole story, just parts. It's like the Stephen king novel, bag of bones, where his manuscript is haunted and gives him hints about a ghost. I think that's a mark of great writing, though not necessarily the type that gets published. 

Now that I think about it, it's not just an issue of "prophecy," sometimes your writing can speak to you, tell your future self good advice you didn't expect. That's good writing.

Magic words

 I used to hold to an irrational belief that everything I wrote in a completed novel was magic, and I couldn't change a word of it or jinx myself out of getting published. That's probably why I never got published. I spent a huge amount of time picking alternate sentences for a story, and archiving all its possible iterations, in hopes of striking that magical collection of words that make up a bestseller. 

Now, as I edit my first novel for the, (I don't know, fiftieth time? ) I have come to the realization that I should have focused on just making a book that doesn't sound stupid, and isn't loaded with filler words.

Exodus

 I saw a program on how a lake in Africa turned orange due to a volcano blowing carbon dioxide into a body of water that doesn't circulate enough to disperse the CO2. It killed the livestock.

I have studied textbooks on the Bible enough to understand that God can sometimes use natural phenomena to accomplish a miracle. The manna in the wilderness, for example, was theorized to be excretion from a certain type of insect.

Regardless of whether the Nile turning red was due to a volcano or something else, the timing is miraculous, and it figures in to the part about Egyptian sorcerers being able to mimic the event.

Moses being able to capitalize on such a weird natural phenomenon that even modern Africans couldn't figure out, that's miraculous. Moses wasn't a scientist, but the phenomenon helped the people of Israel to escape from slavery.

I've frequently found that God seems to work through natural events. He created the laws of physics and such, so taking advantage of what He made is probably convenient for Him, although it makes it hard to scientifically prove His existence. Still, you can't disprove His existence, so take it as you can take it.

How film has changed

 Prior to the year 2000, if a movie starred a girl and a gay guy, it was pretty much an absolute guarantee that there would be no pornographic content whatsoever. Nowadays, though, you can never be sure.

Surfing on a dinosaur

 I still use an XP computer to get online. I like it because my XP is my fastest computer, unlike my HP windows 7. 

My windows 7 computer is balanced on top of a dresser. The keyboard is awkwardly positioned on top, the mouse inconvenient. It's in a room that's freezing in the winter. Needless to say, I don't like using it much, except with things I can't do with XP, like video editing. Unfortunately, I seem to be forced to use it more and more these days.

I don't like how the new models look. I don't want windows 10 where everything looks like a phone. I do all my art and writing on XP, I like the speed and how it handles my drawing stylus (on 7 it lags) but slowly things are being phased out, one after another.

I can no longer get windows updates or update the scripts on XP. They said my computer is too old. I can't remember if it's flash or java or something else, but they don't want to help XP with it.

Mail.com is requiring that I disable tracking protection. Okcupid always made me disable it. Recently, fanfiction.net is doing the same thing, but a lot worse. It will tell me that it's checking my browser and to wait five seconds, forever. Explorer is pretty much dead for the task, and now I see Firefox is no better. They changed how you handle tracking protection on Firefox so it's done automatically, and fanfiction's server doesn't like it half the time. Today I had to use a windows 7 computer to get in. Of course, I didn't try chrome. I think that might buy my XP a little more time.

I want to use the renpy program and the point and ags studio, but both those things don't work on XP anymore.

Facebook is still kinda working, but with XP a lot of stuff looks bad, and it gets sluggish due to all those flashy features designed for more advanced browsers.

City union mission's donation receipt page comes up blank in Firefox when I'm using XP. The only way I can tell that the charge went through is because there's a box I can click.

My church has a donation page, and I can't even use it with this particular browser and os. 

My bank doesn't accept chrome or Firefox on XP anymore. It used to let me go ahead and get a security code, but now it just gives me a warning message saying that an extra layer of security is required and refuses to move to the security code page.

I'll add more to this when I encounter further problems.

The blandishments of the world

I've had a few heartbreaking disappointments in my life. As a kid, I tried to get into Nintendo, and do comics for Boy's Life, but received rejection letters.

I got an art degree from UMKC, but it didn't give me an art job. I got a prepress certificate, but I only worked in the field a few months before getting let go and never finding work there again.

When Avatar came out, though, I lost all the joy in my life. 

I'd spent years working on a novel that contained a similar concept, and here's a movie that stole my thunder, making me look like I got the whole idea for the novel from watching the movie.

I was utterly crushed. I decided that I wasn't cut out for the entertainment field, and I should get a real job.

It turns out God was protecting me this whole time, by making me blind to the flaws in my novel, making me give up when I incorrectly assumed James Cameron stole my idea, making me afraid of being called unoriginal.

Why is this protection? Because God knew that if I became famous, I would be like everyone else, making stuff that pleases man, but doesn't please God.

If I had become famous, I would have had to cater to the whims of the gay and lesbian community, like every movie and TV show on the market today. 

Even if I got a job in the art field, like graphic design, I would have had to please gay people. I'd have to tell them their lifestyle is okay and even advertise it.

I don't hate gay people. I care for them, but I also care for serial killers and the people who break into my apartment. Am I just supposed to accept what criminals do as okay when they do something wrong? I hope you said no. Why then do I have to accept the sinful practices of gays? 

What the LGBT people are saying online is equivalent to this:

 "I commit fraud on people's bank accounts. I can't help it. You should accept my thieving ways, and if you don't, you're not a true Christian." 

This is why I am not in the entertainment or art industry. I would have to please everyone at the expense of my morals, or lose my job. God has kept me out of this to protect my soul.

I'm glad I have a job where it doesn't matter what people think of me.

Woke television

 I used to be bothered by the "woke" trend in the media, but now that I think about it, television might not have been so crappy for so long if we had more black people in the industry, back in the fifties onward.

I really wish I could have had a black tv show to watch instead of The Monkees, Gilligan's island, Dick Van Dyke and The Honeymooners. 

Although those shows have their moments, I've seen some of those episodes so many times that I want my time refunded, and a lot of them aren't even funny. The world would be better off without the existence of the "Hamlet the musical" episode of Gilligan, or that racist one about the Japanese sailor.

Understand me clearly: I don't want a black version of these "classic" shows. I want to have black people go back in time and come up with something that isn't crappy, to replace those shows. I would have loved to see a black science fiction program instead of enduring the Brady bunch.

For that matter, being more inclusive would have worked, too. 

Mayberry is a monochromatic world, in more ways than one. Putting African Americans in the story would have prevented it from being the most boring sitcom of all time.

  Again please note that I don't mean merely putting them in the cast. I'm sure there's at least one token already, and I'm sick of remakes. What I'd like to see is an honest picture of where black people belong in this wholesome Caucasian dominated universe. If Andy's such a good guy, we could see him maybe resolving a race conflict between the black character and the family of Ernest T Bass. The show was always a bit seriocomic anyway.

Returning to Facebook

 Being in Facebook jail for 30 days taught me a lot. There's no reward for being clever and making clever comments. You got to watch what you say, and not be too clever, or back into jail you go. But you can't post pictures easily on blogger.

Anyway, after scrolling a bit, I realized how much I'd been squandering my time trying to be clever, instead of writing my novel or something constructive. People miss me there, at least a little, so I think I'll just limit most of my action to thumbs up.

7 PM: Already I am angry and seething about something I saw someone post on my friends page. Facebook isn't good for your mental health.

May 6: I'll never be good enough for premium internet curation, so stop being clever.

Crazy People Assignments

 Assignment 559: Once you're on the police force, you can put a siren and flashing lights on anything. Get creative, and try to catch those speeders in a Model T Roadster, an Edsel, a dune buggy, a trash truck, or a riding lawnmower.

Assignment 560: It's time to find out if dog poop tastes as bad as everyone says.

Assignment 561: Write a bunch of death threats to yourself and send them to your house from different addresses. Reference things only you and one other person know about. Report it to the police.

Assignment 553: Cover your chair in feces, then sit down in it and act surprised, horrified, even. Start accusing everyone around you of doing it, even if it is, in fact, your feces.

Assignment 554: Cut your head out of photographs and stick them on pornographic pictures. Make copies and post them all over town, and on the bulletin board at work. Act surprised when you see the pictures, alternating between "And I thought he was supposed to be such a moral, upstanding pillar of the community" and getting outraged that some unknown person would do something like this to ruin your spotless reputation. If someone catches you putting the pictures up, get even more outraged at your damaged reputation, to compensate.

Assignment 555: Dress up a barbie doll to look like you, then stab it and cover it with fake blood and mail it to yourself with no return address. Act horrified and report the threat to the police.

Assignment 556: Get a dead animal head from a butcher or taxidermist, then stick it on your own fence post with a note reading "Your next." Act scared and tell everyone in the neighborhood about the threat.

Assignment 557: If you want to drop live, claw snapping crustaceans, or box turtles on your genitals, no one's judging you.

Cable

 This week I've been cleaning my parents' house, with the tv on. I've been able to watch shows they normally don't watch.

My folks pay for cable, but paradoxically spend most their time watching local channels you don't need cable for. Mostly metv. Time Warner should give them a kickback for all that unused cable.

They went out of town, so I decided to clean up while I can get away with it. Sometimes dad gets real mad when I clear the dining room table.

Anyway, I am tired of metv so I tried the other stations. Daytime TV really sucks. Having cable doesn't really help. I'm glad I don't have it. Plus time Warner keeps freezing up and dropping sound on those hd channels.

I used to watch the history channel nonstop, because I like to be entertained and informed. Unfortunately now it's back to back BS, like ancient aliens and skinwalker ranch. I could feel my brains seeping out my ears when I left the channel on for a couple hours.

Tnt was okay with the supernatural marathon, until I got to a movie I didn't want to watch.

I watched the comedy channel. I discovered there were episodes of Seinfeld that aren't funny. And then I tried to watch the office. Not very funny either.

People talked about castle being a good show. To me it's boring. 

So I watched the forensics files. That's actually some good stuff, but tonight it really creeped me out for some reason. I thought there were people in the house.

The oxford comma

 A case in favor for the oxford comma: I found a devotional that says, "If God created everything good, why do people die and do evil things?" Without the oxford comma, this sentence makes you wonder if zombies exist, or that dead people are knocking over liquor stores. 

I know, technically, you could change "and" to "or" and fix it, but "die, and do evil things" also would work.

Walkers

 We need to brainstorm on how to make better walkers for old people. The rear legs always have skis that get caught on rugs and floor mats. I thought of a design where the back end is like a wiffle ball, and you have rods poking into it to make it stop when you want it not to move, but I don't know how to build that.

Grocery quest

 I couldn't find good kimchi at the roeland park price chopper, just a really bitter tasting one. It's not at the Walmart neighborhood market either. Or hivee. Guess it's either going to be at a health food store or direct from the Korean market on Shawnee mission parkway. 

When I asked a grocer at hivee about kimchi, she didn't know what I was talking about. After explaining it was pickled cabbage, she directed me to the pickle aisle. If they keep it there, they don't respect good kimchi. When I asked the guy behind the sushi desk for kimchi, he just laughed and said no.

I actually found tofu crumbles at hivee. It wasn't at Walmart or price chopper. And only hivee has powdered Gatorade.

Am I vegan? No, just lazy. We can put a man on the moon, and have access to all the world's information by pressing a button on your phone, but you can't go to the grocery store and buy a package of packaged precooked crumbled beef.

Why I'm not fat

 I think the only reason why I'm not fat is because there was never anything good to eat in my house. If I had chips and barbecue in my house all the time, I would have never known when to stop eating. But generally we had salads and stuff. I'd go in the fridge and see cheese and a jar of pickles and ask myself if I were really that hungry. It all depends on what you got in the fridge.

Female Doctor

 Having a female Doctor on Doctor Who doesn't bother me. Jodie Whittaker does. She's condescending, like a host on Romper Room or something. It insults your intelligence. Performance-wise, I don't believe she's an alien. It ruins my suspension of disbelief.

She's supposed to be thousands of years old, but doesn't act it. Also, she talks to herself too much. It's super annoying.

And then there's the bit she keeps doing where she reads the sonic screwdriver like an error proof test. I don't think you should be able to read the screwdriver at all. I never once saw a screen on it.

Obsessive thoughts

 Paranoia and compulsive thought robs a person of creativity. The mind is laser focused on terrible scenarios that are borderline fantasy. You make up stories about the people around you conspiring against you, you invent worlds of terrible insects and viruses. Your mind is so consumed by all that, that you don't have a chance to write something truly creative. You also work hard to appease your obsessions, just so you can sleep.

I know because I have bipolar disorder and some OCD. Last night, I was obsessed with eliminating bedbugs and making sure my car was locked. I could have been writing fiction instead, and using all that obsessive thought on something fun. I think some people aren't consciously aware of this, or can't make themselves focus on other things that matter. I got swept up in mine, but I was able to catch myself doing it. I realized it's better to put the obsession to work inventing fantasy worlds.

I meet homeless people all the time who work hard to invent elaborate stories about how much they are suffering in their life. Many have a rehearsed "poverty speech."

 It starts out believable, but goes to a point where they are inventing medical problems that science has yet to discover. A woman once told me that her stomach had been surgically removed. Another woman (not homeless, but acted like it) thought the question of how many times you swallow in a minute was a life or death issue. Other homeless people tell you they play checkers with Obama.

One man I met tends to fabricate people in the neighborhood that he knows, and their relationship to him. He will point to someone and tell me a story about them, but the person he mentions does not show any sign of recognition. If he is that well known, why is he asking me for help?

 Just think if an ounce of that creativity got redirected to the writing of plays or music. Or creating a "mind palace".

There is a line in the Neverending Story novel that basically says that lies exist because people stopped using their imagination.

It's not just the homeless. People with houses sometimes come up with elaborate fantasies about how people of other races are talking behind their back and conspiring against them. Or planning a robbery. And they spend huge amounts of time and money on home security.

In summary, your mind is a ship. If you are aware of the steering wheel, think about where you want to go and who you want to be, or you won't like where you end up.

Crazy People Assignments

 Assignment 524: Pick up random objects you find along the ground, pennies, rubber bands, food and little car parts, and put them in your mouth. Also try out those soda and beer bottles full of yellow liquid you see lying about.

Assignment 525: When you clock in at work, dose yourself with laxatives, and keep popping them throughout your shift.

Assignment 526: Go into acting for the sole purpose of ruining the most important scenes by breaking into the DuckTales theme song at the worst possible moment. If you work for Disney, just make it a habit of abruptly walking off stage and giving people the finger.

Assignment 527: Open a restaurant that's only open at random times in the middle of the night. Keep the "closed" sign hanging up all the time, and turn it around on the sly.

Assignment 558: Open a grocery store or UPS store so you can close the door and say you're closed for the day whenever you see somebody you don't like.

Crazy People Assignments

 Assignment 577: People value their mail, but surprises even more. So if you get a job as a mail carrier, deliver on the sly. Sneak it into places they don't expect. Try out a few midnight deliveries and see how their faces light up. Especially when it comes to the cable bill.

Assignment 570: Intentionally buy underwear that lets your junk pop out when you walk, like thrift store Fruit of the Looms a size too big for your body.

Assignment 571: If a homeless person tells you they're a big shot rapper, believe them, and pour about a thousand dollars or so into producing an album with him, accommodating for his frequent alcoholic binges, drug use, and failure to stick to a schedule.

Assignment 572: There's no rule that says you can't use loaded baby diapers to beat percussion on a couple trash cans full of rotting produce and meat.

Assignment 573: There's an easy solution to the problem of an unknown user locking up your computer files and not allowing you to rename or delete them: Voodoo. Don't know any spells? Here's one: Light a bunch of citronella candles and draw a circle on the floor around your tower and monitor with graham cracker crumbs. Next, draw Vin Diesel's tattoo on the equipment with a silver sharpie while playing a Hank Williams record backwards.

Assignment 574: It's time to throw a big spur-of-the-moment picnic. Put a huge sign advertising the picnic on the side of a bank, paint the building all kinds of crazy colors, and wait for people to bring food. All day and all night. Even when bank security guys come and hassle you.

The Egyptology of Sweet Pickles

 I didn't think I would get much out of this theory, but now that I looked up some Egyptian gods, and it wasn't as much of a stretch as I thought.

Jackal: Anubis, Sed, Wepwawet.

Goose: Gengen Wer.

Stork: Thoth, Bennu.

Lion: Pick a name. There are tons of lions.

Hippo: Taweret, Ahti, Ipy.

Rabbit: Unut.

Alligator: Sobek or Khentekhai.

Pig: Set .

Vulture: Tafner, Nekhbet.

Bird characters: Take your pick.

Turtle: Apesh.

Elephant: Heset (he runs a grocery store, and has food in his pocket).

Kangaroo: Trickster Seth.

I have theories for the others, but you have to be a little too creative to say, "Yes, that's what it is."

Also note how the list of characters in the books bear a passing resemblance to the lineup of Egyptian deities you see in some places.

Unknown book

 I don't know what joke book I was reading, but I came across a line about fancy restaurant menus, and it described one of the meals as "Broached strumpet in harrow sauce." I don't know what book that was. Any ideas?

Crazy People Assignments

 Assignment 582: When working landscaping at an apartment complex, aim to do your noisiest mowing and weed trimming next to windows of people who work from home.

Assignment 583: Make a new line of fragrances that smell like a sewage treatment facility and burning tires.

Assignment 584: Check with the county assessor's office and records department to ensure all your office buildings and houses get built on Indian burial grounds and places with a horrible bloody past.

Assignment 573: Produce a small daily newspaper that delivers only to crypts, cemeteries, the back end of bus stations, storm sewers and the water heater rooms of apartment buildings. Keep the material fresh and new every day to catch the eye of your thousands of readers.

Assignment 574: Everybody is tired of The Daily Growl. Be the first to make a rubber newspaper chew toy for dogs with actual photographs and informative articles pertaining to dogs and things important to their lifestyle. Come out with new editions daily.

Assignment 575: Make recordings of the neighbor's dog whining and carrying on, then sneak up beside their house at four in the morning and play it on a loudspeaker while the owner is trying to sleep.

Assignment 576: You can easily fix those pesky scratches on CDs and DVDs with mayonnaise, whipped cream, bacon fat and peanut butter and jelly. Try them independently or all at once. Don't be fancy and wipe them off, just plug them in the machine like that. It'll make them run like new.

Commenting on art

 There is nothing more disappointing than having someone who doesn't like your artwork coming in and fact checking you in a comment. 

Nuts to nightingale

 My top favorite Sweet Pickles books have been Goose Goofs off, The Great Race, Fixed by Camel, Lion is Down in the Dumps, and Who Stole Alligators Shoe. I just discovered Nuts to Nightingale, though. It's awesome. It's about apartment living, and I'm thinking Jackal and Nightingale have a thing together, or had one. And that speech that Stork gives on law is hilarious.

The dinosaur game

 I used to have a video game about dinosaurs for MS DOS. The most memorable thing about it was how every dinosaur seemed to have tapeworms. You had to eat other dinosaurs or plants every couple seconds or you'd run out of health and die. I don't remember the title.

What game was that? Dynamath?

Sweet Pickles employment office

 Sweet Pickles is the only children's book I remember where the characters all have jobs.

Yakety Yak: Taxi driver.

Lion: Paramedic.

Quail: Possibly a paramedic.

Jealous Jackal: Gas station attendant

Enormous Elephant: Grocery store clerk

Smarty Stork: Postmaster and judge.

Clever Camel: Repairman

Responsible Rabbit: Banker, sailor.

Octopus: Sailor.

Accusing Alligator: Plumber, apartment manager

Healthy Hippo: Doctor

X-rating Xerus: Contest judge, might be an accountant, county assessor or legislator

Fearless Fish: Stunt driver and helicopter pilot

I know there are others. Please reply with more

Crazy People Assignments

 Assignment 588: When you clock in at work, it's yoga time. It doesn't matter that your job isn't yoga instructor. Just start doing it, for an hour or more.

Assignment 578: Why not urinate on a police car today?

Assignment 579: There's no law that says you can't intentionally wet your own bed.

Assignment 580: When you clock in at work, take that half hour drive back to your house, walk the dog and take out the trash. Do laundry. Then go back to the office and tell the boss you overslept. For bonus points, drive to Texas and give the same excuse.

Assignment 581: All lettuce should be square. Take a pair of scissors to all the leaves in your fridge, and all the heads in your grocery store. It's your decision what to do with the discards.

Assignment 582: Dress up in black like a concierge and and hang out around hotels.

Jackal Wants Everything

 The Sweet Pickles book, Jackal Wants Everything, is not the kind of book the world is looking for, but it's the one it deserves. It is not a cute story, and it takes a dark turn, concluding that Jackal is never happy, even when he gets everything he wants. It's not a satisfying ending, but it's an important message. Some people just can't be pleased, and will never find contentment because they are consumed by jealousy.

Highschool Spanish

 I can tell when an actor is faking Spanish. If I can speak it better than they do, that's really fake. Giancarlo Esposito speaks that kind of Spanish in Breaking Bad and Maze Runner (I cringe whenever he says hermano). He may have Spanish blood, but no, that's not good. 

I was thinking about that when I heard Will Patton speak it in Outer Range, but Will has  a good excuse. He plays a white guy.

Plot holes

 Don't be afraid of writing stories with plot holes. Fiction is like a dream. Keep it relatively consistent and keep going. Successful people do this all the time.

Advantages of prose

 Only in TV and movies do you need filler dialogue. You don't need to quote the full text of Bible quotes in prose, just mention the verses. You can skip boring stuff, like if a cop is in a car and hears sports commentary on the radio, you don't have to write the commentary. You can bypass sounding stupid and writing stuff you don't know about with a couple skillful sentences. Not so easy with live video.

Sweet Pickles

 I have done some fan art of Sweet Pickles characters. I updated them a little and made them a bit more realistic. I'd actually like to get permission to make a new Sweet Pickles book, but I don't know who to contact. I know Richard Hefter and Jacqueline Reinach have both passed away. Wish I could have written to them and let them know how much I enjoyed the books. Not sure who handles the estates.

I looked up Ruth Lerner Perle. She seems to be alive, but doesn't have a website, and she was just the editor on the books. I saw a series of books she came up with that appear to ride on the popularity of Sweet Pickles theme without continuing the series.

I'd like to get a biography of these people. Why did they make the books? Where did they get the inspiration for the outfits? And it's so seventies!

Did they intentionally make the characters gender ambiguous? In Turtle Throws a Tantrum, Vulture looks very feminine, but the blob-like turtle is the girl. Any thoughts?

Were these characters in any way inspired by Egyptian gods, or is it just coincidence? 

How about the racial equality of the books? Hefter was white, and Ruth is African American. How did this affect the production of the books, and the message?

What was the unveiling of the first Sweet Pickles books like? Was it huge, or did they just sell it person to person like a micro brew? Are there photos of the first book signing?

Did they ever have a big banner in Times Square or something? How did they make that commercial with the bus? What happened to the animal suit?

Did anyone model for Sweet Pickles books? Were any personalities based on real people? Was Xerus based on someone that made it hard for them to publish?

Do Sweet Pickles action figures or stuffed toys exist? And what's the story behind Stickybear?

Creativity prompt

 If you're stuck and unmotivated to finish a project, like a novel, add a sentence you're excited about, then work on something else, adding a sentence to that. If it's not writing, add some other equivalent piece to your project and bounce back and forth.

Crazy People Assignments

 Assignment 593: Open every manhole cover in the city, searching for trapped children and ninja turtles. Set up cones in those problem high traffic areas, wearing an orange safety vest. You know, for the children's safety.

Assignment 585: You know when you hear something near the jukebox in the bar making that steady tapping sound? That's a child trapped in the basement, sending you messages in Morse code. Decipher it, and check all around those employees only areas. Make sure the owners know your intention is to free the children from their evil clutches.

Assignment 586: Never eat mashed potatoes. They give you elephantitus. 

Assignment 587: Never believe online song lyric sheets. Go online and forcefully argue for the lyrics you know to be correct, even with the musicians themselves.

Always turn in your equipment

 One thing my job has taught me. Always take the cable equipment back to the store when you're done with the service. Don't trust the apartment manager with anything. They will not return the equipment, they'll let someone else use it, and leave you with the bill. 

I can only hope I remember when it's time.

Also, never trust the post office to forward your mail. If you owe someone, make sure it's completely paid, and you notify them of the address change. You can get put in collections and not be notified, if they keep sending everything to your old address. 

Get a pet

 Some people have dogs or cats. Other people can't have pets, so they dress up like a dog and sell cakes and hot dogs from a roach coach. Don't be that guy.

Bassoon

 Nothing says British drawing room mystery more than a soundtrack heavy with bassoon.

Bassoonists need to have incredible skill with their tongue. I wonder why nobody talks about this.

TA agents

 I have a love hate relationship with outsourced transfer agents. They bring me paying customers, but they don't know how to do a warm transfer.

Ideally, they should tell me if they got the customer to verify security or not. Instead they just tell me a mangled version of the customer's name and dump the call. "I have Jen Dmalther on the line" when it's John Smith. Often I accidentally slip and say the mangled version without thinking about it.

I have the same computer system. When the call comes in, I can clearly see the name. I want more information than that. But, alas, they get paid for the amount of live people they send over.

To their credit, they will hang on the phone like a dumbass until I at least grunt in response to them reading the name off the file. So it's a "warm transfer," but only on a technicality.

Duh, I know "you have Ron Demelter on the line", or you wouldn't be talking to me.

I look at their computer notes in vain. Although sometimes it says they verified for security, a lot of times it just says "Clear, yes, transferred to agent." What the hell does that mean.

The worst part: Sometimes they will sit on account and go to lunch, which makes it impossible for me to edit the account. It's locked.

Bad books

 The worst novel you will ever read is your first one you wrote ten years ago.

Chinese monopoly

 I suspect that Chinese companies are using shell companies to bypass American monopoly laws. I've ordered a few things that have other company names on Amazon, only to find the real name is iefiel when I get it.

Safety tip

 If you ever find a huge wormhole through time in the middle of your farm property, make sure to take careful measurements before attempting to cover it with a tarp or pieces of plywood. If you don't have access to surveying tools such as a rangefinder, tie the end of a roll of twine to a spike driven in the ground and walk around the hole to the side opposite the spike to get the diameter. Simply mark the twine where the hole ends and take the twine back to the workshop to build the first board across the hole. You might want to get someone to help you, but it's up to you.

Home Babysitter

 People who made computer software in the eighties were a little optimistic. Take for example "Home Babysitter" for the Commodore Vic-20. It taught you the alphabet and math and some other stuff, but could it watch the kids while you took the wife out for the evening? I think that's putting a little too much faith in a device that saves data on cassette tapes.

Currently att yahoo

 The AT&T / Yahoo news site is full of inaccurate story titles. They posted one about Franklin Graham with a title saying something about perversion when it was really about how people said he was perverted due to praying for Putin to have a change of heart and stop the war.

Today they had one that said a "convicted actor" got arrested. I didn't know you could get arrested for acting.

Silver lining

 I've always spoken English. I never really thought about why it's so difficult until I thought about it recently. 

My pastor told me about how his Chinese Bible student didn't know that "bought the farm" means dying. 

Honestly, I don't know why that means death, but it got me thinking about something that has bothered me all my life: What the hell does it mean when you say that every cloud has a silver lining?

I've heard it used both positive and negative ways.  "Well, I totaled the semi, but there's a silver lining to all this - insurance paid for a brand new replacement." 

But then I hear it used the other way: "I inherited the estate from my rich uncle, but there's a silver lining - I have to pay a huge property tax every year."

C'mon, what the hell?

Crazy People Assignments

 Assignment 589: Become a door to door salesman. In the hardware store. Where they sell all the doors. Don't worry if people aren't standing behind the doors, or that you can walk around and check. Just keep knocking all day and all night , on each door. If they call security, you can buy some doors and take them home to keep going.

Assignment 590: To change a color picture to black and white in Adobe Photoshop, open the file, go into the "image" menu, drop down to "adjust," select "levels" , click "cancel" in the levels window, go to "file", select "close", open the file again, and repeat the same process three thousand times.

Assignment 591: Everyone loves gambling. Find a malfunctioning toilet and have people place wagers about whether or not the toilet paper will flush.

Assignment 592: Write out an elaborate book of beautiful poetry, using sandpaper and an ink pen.

Contentment

 As human beings, we strive to achieve various goals and think "if I just manage to get that thing," or "If I just accomplish that, then I'd be happy." But when we get what we were striving for, it's never enough. There's always another goal on the horizon. 

I've been laboring under the impression that if I just got famous, or got a girlfriend or both, I'd be happy. But now that I think about it, I'd probably be looking for something else after that. That's why people who make big movies feel compelled to keep making more, even though they don't need to. It didn't make them complete or happy enough.

Historical BS

 Recently I've been seeing movies that begin in the ancient past of the 1980's. Having grown up in that era, I call it BS.

It gets me wondering about all those movies I've seen about paranormal events dating from the roaring twenties or world war 2. I'm thinking there were senior citizens groaning and rolling their eyes when they saw those films.

Fiction to historical fiction

 Wonder Woman came out in the 1940's. The people who produced it just wanted a story about a female superhero in the present day. New movies set these stories in the past, to give it more authentic flavor, but if the author were alive today, they probably wouldn't want to see it depicted as historical fiction.

The same goes for a lot of things. Like Dracula, or Tarzan. When they were originally written, they set the stories in the present day.

The downgrading of literature

I, like so many other writers and artists, have aspired for the wrong thing, making our end goal getting a movie made from our creative works. We forget to make them something to be enjoyed on their own.  

The crowds that go to movies are often the lowest common denominator, so the films reflect what is popular and unoriginal. Simple stories. "Good cheeseburgers."

It takes a person with an imagination and an attention span to read. That's why the best books are unfilmable. 

I thought about how Christian fiction rarely gets movies, how mainly bible stories get filmed.  We don't have a Christian equivalent to Star Wars because Christians believe that kind of huge budget should go to the poor, or a gospel film. 

But it's not just that. Christians are "people of the book," and they have an attention span. And imagination. Christians can be satisfied with books.

Although there are Narnia films and Left Behind movies, things like that are rare, and often flawed.  Christians don't need those anyway. They can read.

Another thing: I fail to understand the rating systems of fiction websites. I think if you are adult enough to have the patience and skill to read a book, you shouldn't be told you can't read it until you're 13 or 17. It's a restriction they took from movies and tried to make it apply to plain text.

Prose generally has no pictures. You have to come up with those in your mind. If your kid's mind is thinking up pictures inappropriate for a child under 13, then they've already been looking at actual photographs or video they shouldn't have seen in the first place. 

I think the blame really should be placed on the countless thoughtlessly unimaginative authors constantly uploading stories to those websites. Their excessive use of profanity and lack of vocabulary makes the more respectable authors look bad, especially when it comes to the writing of romance and erotica. Some so-called "erotica" is so coarse and tasteless that I often wonder if the author is a rapist writing from jail.

Conformity for profit

 I'm human, so I get jealous of other people's fame. That being said, after watching the Dumbledore movie, I'm glad I'm not famous. Anymore, if you want a popular entertainment product, it's got to appease the LGBT community. Since nobody has signed me on a movie or book contact, I don't have to choose between earning an income and pleasing God.  Only people in entertainment have to bend over backwards and compromise their faith to earn a profit. In other careers, people don't care who you are, or what your morals are. Only in the media do people say that you hurt their feelings when you said immoral things are immoral, because you're on TV being heard.

I seriously read a post from someone on Facebook that said that their feelings were hurt by what someone said on their television.  And I thought I was crazy.

Americans are so self centered that they actually think the people on the television are talking to them, and know who they are speaking to. Those celebrities don't know you from Adam. 

It's a symptom of a greater problem. A coworker of mine was absolutely convinced that our manager was speaking to her directly when she gave a speech about how our performance needs to improve. She took it personally when it was really about the company as a whole. Americans are quickly forgetting the distinction. 

Sign boards

 My friend from work gave me a bunch of TV trays that look like dry erase marker boards. I started to use them to do cute messages for the Easter season. It started out nice, the neighbors liked my palm Sunday sign, but then today the landlord beat on my front door so hard I thought I was being evicted, interrupting my job. 

Apparently I was not allowed to "block the hallway" with the sign. I guess I can kinda see that, but I tried to keep it out of the roadway. Oh well it was nice while it lasted. Not sure what I can do with it now. I don't use TV trays for their intended purpose.

Don't worry, I removed the signboard. I admit it was a little irresponsible in terms of fire safety, but it mainly just endangered my safety, like obstructing my exit from my apartment, so I didn't think it was a big deal. 

God of the top of my head

 Frequently, at around 4 in the morning, I have a strange vision. It's like this swirling red pattern beneath my eyelids, accompanied by ringing in my ears, and it's like the voice of God is speaking to me. 

It's always angry, always condemning me for the tiniest of infractions. Basically if I do anything Jesus didn't do, it condemns me for it and threatens to end my life if I don't change it and make myself super perfect. Jesus didn't play Tetris for three hours, so that's idolatry, and I could be punished for that. Or other minor things. Writing a science fiction novel is "idolatry".

There's no grace involved here, just the end of the world and judgment. 

Recently, I've discovered this has almost always coincided with my frequent need to go to the bathroom. Maybe I'm just fearful of wetting the bed. I don't know. 

I have bipolar disorder. I started seeing the red thing a lot when they put me on Paxil. I don't use it anymore, but the wrathful God voice keeps visiting me. 

It's not biblical, really. It's like religious compulsion. That's my problem with it. It tells me to go to extremes that no normal God believing christian would go to, for reasons that aren't always scriptural. I really have to be careful and make sure that I'm hearing the still small voice of God and not the thing in the top of my head.

Gumby

 I don't think I'll ever get rid of the guilt I feel for killing my pet ferret, or the way it soured my appreciation for the Gumby show. 

One summer many years ago, I owned a pet ferret. Owning one is a constant cleanup job. They can really stink up the place. 

I took the cage outside, on that hot day, sprayed the cage out, then set it out there in the heat to dry. Being the idiot kid I was, I put the ferret in the cage too.

I went inside in the air conditioning and watched TV. The ferret burned up in the meantime. I found its little corpse curled up in a ball. It peed on itself in attempt to cool down.

Gumby was on around at that time. I could hear the ending credits music as we stared at the dead animal. It was like funeral music.

Parking

 My apartment complex put out fliers saying you couldn't park in certain areas or get towed, because they were doing construction. I was thinking it unfair because the maps they made were confusing to read. 

Also, towing is expensive, and it takes time and manpower to move the car all the way to the impound lot. Imagine if you were the Incredible Hulk and could just pick up a car and move it to a safe spot until construction ended. It would be a lot less distance and wouldn't require the gas and expense of towing. 

Can we make some sort of machine that can move cars like that? A special car forklift?

Fake coupons

 Facebook takes the most minimal of infractions deathly serious. I created a joke coupon for something, and Facebook froze my Snuggle fan page.  Some lady with no sense of humor thought Snuggle made super tiny bottles in the supermarket, didn't seem to realize how it didn't look like a real coupon, and that Snuggle probably wouldn't give you a discount on chainsaws. At any rate, I don't miss the Facebook police.

Australia

 I used to have a Mickey mouse picture book about Australia. It said that kids over there had school through the radio. This was back before the internet. I used to think that was weird, but now everyone in America has internet school.

I've seen a lot of shows with Aussie stereotypes. A lot of them are depicted as backwards and dumb. If there's any truth to it, Americans are going to end up just like that with all this cyber schooling. If the parents are deadbeats, they won't commit to making sure the kids get their lessons, and we'll have a bunch of ignorant hicks running around.

Crazy People Assignments

 Assignment 600: Cook a huge pot of spaghetti, then "accidentally" spill it all over yourself and the floor. Third degree burns are really fun.

Assignment 601: When mom tells you "Use your words", reply in Japanese about how you want to stick lemon popsicles up your butt.

Assignment 602: Whenever you see a sign telling you to not park there, try your best to get the car in there anyway. He who pays the impound lot the most, drives best.

Assignment 603: If a new business takes over a building a different company used to own, don't let them go easy. Demand they still provide the service the old company used to give. That Mediterranean grocery should be able to do your laundry, damn it. And that adult novelty shop should still serve taco John's menu. Liberty Income Tax, you're not exempt. Where's your White Castle food. Spirit Halloween, yours is the heaviest burden of all.

Gender fluidity

 The problem with our progressively gender fluid society is how easy it is for people to commit fraud. There's no more BS detector. It used to be that if you sounded like a girl and called in saying you were Ray or Steve, you could say "Yeah right" and they'd confess to lying. Now people get hormone treatments so you don't know what's real and what's a lie. Someone can pull fraud on you, claiming to be your wife, and now it doesn't matter what they sound like, because they can say it's a same sex marriage. 

The states that are smart have put in laws saying businesses can't talk to the spouse without customer consent.

Hee hee funny

 The worst episodes of any TV show are about comedy, and talking about what's funny. They're never funny. They're always cringe worthy. If it's set in a comedy club, and it's the center of the plot, it's not going to be good. The only time I've seen it work was the opening of Seinfeld, and one episode of the new Twilight zone, but the latter was a horror story.

Carnival games for dogs

 You know that game they have in arcades where you have a shelf, and tokens roll off the edge? They should make one of those with dog treats. They play with some kind of gadget at the base of the table and they either get a plastic chew toy or something they don't particularly like, so they keep going back to get the treat.

A lesson from sitcoms

 The Honeymooners spends huge amounts of time in one set. The actors make it work by verbal storytelling. There's a whole world we can only take their word about, but it works, and with nothing but words and a few cheap furniture pieces. This is the secret of effective theater. You don't need to spend huge amounts of money on special effects and set building if you have actors who can weave a good yarn with just their mouths.

Sports cars

 Why do people buy a car that can drive 180 miles an hour when they will only get to drive a maximum of 70? Also, do they realize that cops aim their radar guns toward your car first? Just a hunch, but that car with the stripes and racing fins probably isn't going the legal speed limit.

Here's an idea: Try leaving the house a half hour early for Junior's ballet practice.

Mistake to solution

 Sticky notes were created when a guy made a weak glue. Listerine began as a chemical to sterilize and treat wounds. A person who isn't creative will think of such things as an unwanted mistake. But if you think about any mistake the right way, it has some sort of application, maybe to a problem you weren't trying to solve.

A24 films

 I wanted to watch Everything Everywhere All At Once, but I don't trust A24. I will never watch another one of those movies unless they make a rated PG film, because that would be an American Rated R. 

Hereditary had bare breasts and a decapitation. Midsommar was an assault on my eyes. I should have left after the pie scene. Lighthouse and The Green Knight had handjobs, to put it mildly. Okay, in Lighthouse, it's a solo job, but I didn't want to see it.

That sheep movie, eew, didn't want to even know. Maybe when their multiverse movie comes out on video I'll watch it. Right now, I'm too afraid it'll have some scene where they flash someone's junk.

B movies

The first Sonic the hedgehog film cut a lot of corners. It eliminated all the extra characters and set the story on earth, getting a lot more bang for their buck. It worked enough to merit a sequel. Godzilla, likewise, spends half the film with ordinary people, a lot of times not even delving into disaster film territory, or even the main plot. Adding humor or a romance is a good way to fill time. It saves a ton of money, and still works enough to earn a profit. How can you pare down your project to its bare essentials and accomplish your goals with half the money?

Accents

 I find it hard to feel sorry for people with British accents. Even in the face of their greatest hardships and adversity, they can always have their accents to fall back upon.

Caffeine

 Although I think the poor suffer when you throw away food, I throw away caffeine without guilt. It's not really good for anyone. I dump out leftover coffee and soda. It's better than drinking it.

Sims

 I heard that Sim city was inspired by the making of Raid on Bungling Bay. I tried playing that game. Sure it resembles sim city, but all the fun appears to have happened on the developer side. It's not really fun to play.

Credit reporting

 "I'm not going to pay you until you delete this from my credit report." Well look. We never would have heard a peep from you if you hadn't seen it there. The whole purpose of credit reporting is figuring out how well someone can pay back loaned money. I personally try to avoid borrowing at all if I can help it. If you give me an ultimatum about not paying if we don't delete the report, just think about other companies, or the company you gave the ultimatum to. What if you pull this stunt every time you borrow money, not paying until you get reported?

Someone is probably going to argue with me, saying they had an unfair situation with this or that company. Well, you're the exception. A lot of calls I get are not like that.

Phone voice

 People on the web think I'm a horrible person because I'm a bill collector. What they don't know is that I'm a lot nicer on the phone than I am online. I sound a lot more caring on the phone, I do more stuff to help people than you think. I don't know these people that well, so I tell them I hope their surgery turns out well, and stuff, even though they might actually be scum, and might not merit it. I don't really know, they could be nice.

Apple spam calls

 My parents keep getting spam robo calls from Apple, allegedly. They have no apple devices at all. These people call all day and all night. 

One time I pushed a button to speak to a representative, and this creepy Indian guy said "I'm going to keep on calling, I'm going to keep on calling..." In a sing song voice. I asked why, and it got even creepier. "Because it gives me pleasure!"