Been a hot minute

Dear friends: In recent months I've been largely providing my limited social media existence to Creepy Uncle Mark instead of Creepy Uncle Google.

So if you do that EffBee thing, and we know each other in real life, and you want Creepy Uncle Mark to be able to monetize our friendship, get in touch! Like here, you won't find me there unless you know what to look for, so it'll be easier if you tell me how to find you. And there you can see semi regular photos of food and bikes and an adorable little stuffed monkey. I'm fairly picky about accepting EffBee friend requests, so if I would accept it, you already have my email address.

I'm not planning to take this blog down, but it will continue to only be rarely updated.

In the interests of entertaining the perhaps four and a half of you who still occasionally check this blog, here is a photo I'll file under "Things the Director of Operations Does Because It's Far Easier Than Calling the Head of Maintenance":

Because, who knew, it's not a good idea to pour almost a gallon of soupy liquid with semi-finely chopped vegetable mush down the sink at once, disposal or no. Hint on who didn't know: it wasn't me. Thank god it was all vegan and fresh (no, I don't know why my apartment-mate was getting rid of it.)

Birthday breakfast

One guess where my birthday breakfast is (in addition to Rolla, Missouri.)

mural

A wall mural that I made almost 25 years ago is still here.

And I'm here.

And I just saw a friend who was one of my first professional supervisors.

It's a really good day.

Moving along

As I'm packing to move yet again, I came across this nearly twenty year old list of places to live.

A couple took longer than the ~10 years allotted, but I've managed to check off six.

Movies

I posted last December when I first got the moviepass. Below is the list of movies I've seen since then. Without a doubt, I've seen waaaaaaay more movies in theaters than I normally would. I mean, I really like seeing movies in theaters, but really hate the cost. But when you live in a little teeny town (pop 1,100), there is often nothing much better to do than go to the "big city" next door (pop. 3,900) and see a movie, so the moviepass was a great idea for me.

* Some favorites: The Princess Bride, Lady Bird, The Disaster Artist, and Love, Simon. 

All pretty much excellent. I honestly had no idea what to expect going 

* Least favorites: The Greatest Showman, Justice League, The 15:17 to Paris, Red Sparrow

Okay, look: I really don't like superhero movies as a genre, I hate musicals, the 15:17 to Paris was rah rah fuck yeah 'murika bullshit, and Red Sparrow was full of toxic femininity and a ridiculous plotline to boot. And I have a hard time with movies set in foreign countries, with mostly supposedly foreign characters, speaking mostly fluent English, with bad accents. 

* Seriously meh even though many people raved about them: Black Panther, The Post, Call Me By Your Name.

The Post was kinda boring and overwrought. Call Me By Your Name tried hard and meant well but was really overdone and regularly silly (let's not even talk about the masturbating into a peach scene.) And Black Panther, while an important social phenomenon, was just a shitty movie, full of bombastic overdone silliness, and brimming with hyper toxic masculinity. 

* Movies there is no way I would have seen if not for Moviepass and living in a little teeny town where there is often little better to do than drive to the slightly less teeny town nearby: at least 7/8 of them.

* Approximate amount I've cost Moviepass in the just over four months I've had it: at least $300 (a number of the below movies were in Boston and DC and the ticket price was as much as $16.) Their financial model is a mystery to me, so I'm getting as much out of it as I can before it collapses. 

Note that my theater options (when I'm not traveling) are limited by the fact that I have one first-run theater within easy driving distance (and that's still a half hour each way.) And it kinda sucks. Right now it's playing two bible thumpers (and it plays EVERY bible thumper that comes through), it was playing Jumanji until last week, it had Peter Rabbit on two screens (out of fucking eight screens!) until last week. The upside is that at least five or six times I've literally had the entire theater to myself, and there are rarely more than five or ten other people in stadium style theaters that seat over 100 easily. 

An aside: why do almost all of the movies about queer people have to be about very very privileged, very very white, queer people? I know: Love, Simon ended up having a person of color be one of the heroes in the end, but he notably wasn't featured in any of the pre-movie publicity, and in fact no queer POC characters were in the promotional materials (and fuck you if you say "well, it woulda been a spoiler...") 

Anyway, here is the whole list as of now: 

Chappaquiddick

A Quiet Place

Foxtrot

Annihilation

The Forgiven

Love Simon

Hurricane Heist

Red Sparrow

Death Wish (2018)

The 15:17 to Paris

Game Night

Black Panther

Winchester

Call Me By Your Name

I, Tonya

Proud Mary

Insidious

Darkest Hour

The Post

The Princess Bride

The Greatest Showman

Downsizing

The Shape of Water

Lady Bird

Star Wars Episode VIII

The Disaster Artist

Coco

Wonder

Justice League

Summary: I'm getting plenty of use out of moviepass, and will continue to do so while it lasts. But I'm not super optimistic. 

Movies

Knives and tinysizing

This is (most) of my current knife collection, trotted out last night for a good thorough cleaning with q-tips, cotton balls, and rubbing alcohol while watching netflix. As longtime readers know, I like to keep my tools clean.

It's kinda like your kids: you love them all, but if you're being honest, you love them differently. Each one of these has a specific role and purpose. Yes, there's a little redundancy with the three Leatherman Waves, but one lives in the car, one is EDC on my belt, and the middle (with the lanyard) is both a really nice tool, and has some sentimental value.

While it's a lot of knives, it doesn't add enough meaningful bulk to my tinysizing project to worry about it much. What's this tinysizing project, you ask? Making everything I own fit in, or on, my car. Used to be everything I owned fit in a two door Ford Festiva. Now the project is to get somewhere back close to that.

In case you're wondering about any of these, you should ask! The weird looking pull knife, second from the right, is the largest blade I could legally carry in Boston, and is pretty wicked looking open:

The pristine waters of Lake Tahoe

Since the statute of limitations for N.R.S. 444.630(2) has passed:

Yep, that's me dropping trow in Lake Tahoe, probably about ten years old, to take a shit. (Hey, loogit: I really, really had to go, and we were hiking in the woods around the lake.) Let the reader who has never urinated or defecated in public cast the first stone!

I'm not sure who took the photo; probably my dad. That's my mom in the upper right (inexplicably) encouraging me, and my sister with the blonde hair and white t-shirt, supervising.

I have no idea why they didn't have me crap in the woods. Maybe implementing the old saw from toxicology that "dilution is the solution"?

Thanks, mom, for making at least a half dozen copies of this gem, so that it has survived the ages!

Pro Tip to parents everywhere: make sure you have a few choice photos of your young kids for blackmail when they start mouthing off as teenagers, or for their partners and spouses to be. My mom was also a big fan of the "naked in the garage holding a broomstick" genre.

Just for W, my most loyal blog reader!

(Well, maybe tied with my mom.)

Potatoing along! 

Tempeh

The. End.

Bartholomew goes hiking!

We went hiking in Greenbrier State Forest with dear friend K, and Rhodi, who tolerated a brief photo shoot.

Walking

This represents about a third of my day. It's less impressive of you don't know that it involves about 25 stairs each time I go south to north and back.

These dogs are barkin!

Avocado. Toast.

Because who can get enough? (As long as the avocados are $0.99 at the supermarket.)

Avocado toast!

🥑 🥑

What's all this bother about $18 avocado toast? This cost about a grand total of $1.07

(Yes, okay, FINE: I mashed it up. I'm not an animal. And added salt and pepper and tomato. So maybe $1.15.)

tattoos and memories

Thanks (but kinda no thanks) to Creepy Uncle Google for reminding me how my day was going three years ago today.

Freedom

I recently watched a really amazing cover by Pink of Janis Joplin's classic Me and Bobby McGee. I really had no feelings either way about Pink before this, but the cover was fucking spot on. Pink was sweating raw energy.

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose..."

Right now, freedom is being able to openly pick the boogers from my nose ring on the BART train because everyone around me is so buried in their phones and devices.

Headed to play indoor putt putt golf with K and 3+ year old niece V!

Yard decor

Bartholomew enthusiastically approves of Mom's yard decoration!

Delightful visit with family, now headed to the Bay Area to see A1, hopefully more family, and be interviewed for one of my favorite podcasts!

Fried tofu wingz for the sooper bowl!

Res ipsa loquitor!

Amtrak #51

How is it that the Republicans manage to fuck everything up so badly? Do they try? Or are they just that stupid?

Can't fix stupid.

Sigh.

Train snack

Bartholomew would prefer banana flavored, but accepts that long distance Amtrak trains are a culinary captive audience situation.

Blowing Snow:

A Story:

I live in a big house at the bottom of a big hill, with a window that looks out onto a driveway and parking lot at the bottom of said big hill, in a valley, near a river, in a Mountain(ous) State. Well, at least the ones they haven't blown up yet.

This makes for very interesting wind and weather. When snowflakes flutter and swirl and float around, it's so beautiful, sometimes nearly hypnotic. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) video and photographs really don't capture it or do it justice. So I usually just look out my window every few minutes and take it in for a while. It's truly lovely.

And then a someone with a "Friends of Coal" license plate shows up and parks like an asshole and roars their tricked out Mustang's engine.

But then they go away, and the snowflakes remain.

The End. 

Books: 2017 report

Well, so, 2017 was a kinda busy year, in multiple respects. My books and pages read this year were markedly down from many previous years.

14 books read
4,252 pages read

Best book: eh. This is tough. I read a number of mediocre to crappy books in 2017. Best? I guess I'd say A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman.

Worst book: this is easy. Without question it was Hillbilly Elegy, by J.D. Vance. An absolutely piece of garbage. You can read my rant here about it. J.D. Vance is a tool.

Okay. On to 2018 reading!

I miss you already.

Alaska. Gosh.

Bartholomew:

Saga of a Bold Monkey