Fizzzzle

Someone fairly close to me that I've known for a long time just passed away yesterday. He had parkinson's. I went to work, and it had been obvious that I had been crying by that point. I'm sure my eyes were red and puffy. After a few different occasions where I just had to go and cry a bit, my boss was like "dude, just go home." I don't think he meant to judge by it and I didn't take it that way, but I was just a bit of a mess. I thought I had my emotions in control, but do you know what made me lose control? It was my uber driver saying "how 's it going?" It sounds so stupid, but I've noticed a pattern in how I grieve people that I've lost. I bottle up everything and pretend everything is fine, and the first thing that makes the dam break is the first time a stranger asks me "how's it going?" That's what breaks me. Because this stranger doesn't actually care how things are going, they're just being polite, and my response is "good!" when every fiber of my being wants to scream "THINGS ARE NOT GOOD, I'M FUCKING FALLING TO PIECES," and that effort of lying about how I'm actually feeling causes me to confront my true feelings for the first time and I jsut fall apart. It's like I'm able to pass off as "fine" as long as I don't have to lie about it. As soon as I have to lie to some stranger and tell them "yeah, everything's good," I just lose it. Like the extra energy it takes to lie to people strips away the wall that I had built around myself to get through the day. I don't have the mental energy to both bottle everything up and lie to someone at the same time.

I mean, one thing you can credit New Orleans for, it is possibly the most walkable/bikeable city in the south. Maybe even moreso than Atlanta. Every major road has a median that allows pedestrians to not have to cross 5 lanes of traffic at once, there are tons of bike lanes, and the streetcar runs 24/7. The streetcar is slow as shit and you can't get everywhere on it, but you can get from Tulane to Marigny pretty easily, and the route never fully stops. They also have a ferry that runs between Canal St and Algiers that runs like 20 hours a day. Basically, New Orleans is kind of shit in terms of transit on a global scale, but compared to the rest of the south, it is easily the most walkable/bikeable city. Atlanta has better transit, but it's got more sprawl. New Orleans is fairly compact.

Sounds fucking dope. Wild camping/backpacking/whatever you call it is something that you can't replicate. I hope you had a great time. I'd love to do it again in the western US, but it's like half the year it's illegal to light fires, and the other half it's cold and damp and miserable. No longer can you light an actual fire in Glacier in June. It was a unicorn of a time...

"but if we get rid of the filibuster, what will happen when REPUBLICANS take back control again?!?" What fucking cuck attitude. The last major thing the Democrats got done was Obamacare, and even most Republicans wouldn't dare to repeal a lot of it, because it actually helped people.

There is a market on Royal, which is one street adjacent to Bourbon. There's also a couple open air markets that are really cool by the waterfront.

I mean, that makeup is A+, though. Goddamn.

Honestly, as stupid as it sounds, do one of the walking tours. No one wants to be "that tourist," but they're fun, you just walk around with a tour guide and drink. Bonus points if you do the ghost tours - it's all bullshit but they make it fun. There's a bar called Voodoo on Rampart that is open 24 hours a day, it's kind of a good dive bar to begin with, but there's also a walking tour company that operates out of it. And they give you 2 massive hurricanes for the tour for like 10 or 12 bucks. Watch out for roaches at night, they're fucking everywhere on the streets. You never get used to them. Especially the ones that fly. If you want to party in the French Quarter, I recommend staying off Bourbon Street. Almost everything on Bourbon is a rip off. However, if you like going to gay bars, pretty much every bar on St. Ann is a gay bar. Locals call it the "Fruit Loop." Probably my favorite area in the French Quarter tbh. Don't accept beads from the guys who walk up and down the street. They literally pick the beads up from the gutter from the previous night and try to sell them to people. Those beads are covered in piss and puke. Try to spend some time in the Garden District. That's where most of the good food is. Most restaurants in the French Quarter are overpriced garbage. Hit up New Orleans City Park. There's a bunch of stuff to do around there, too. Also the National WW2 Museum is in New Orleans for some reason. Not sure how that happened, but apparently it's supposed to be fantastic. I've never been myself. Oh and don't walk around Treme at night if you don't know where you're going. I know, I live there, you can stumble into the wrong shit at the wrong time if you're just wandering aimlessly. Best stick to the roads that you're used to.

I mean, I am stretching definitions, and you could argue that the most effective gun is one you never have to fire, but on the other hand, if the entire purpose of a gun is to shoot people, and a majority of lethal gunshots are self-inflicted, then yes, if you own a gun and ever fire it outside of a range, the odds are it will be to blow your own brains out, not in self defense. I'm also conveniently igoring that self-inflicted gunshots are probably more lethal as you're not firing at a moving target, but still.

Because it has become a chore. Groceries isn't just something you spend 10 minutes on buying a six pack of beer and some bread, it has become an entire task with shopping lists and logistics. It might be TWO WEEKS before you see a grocery store again, better get everything you might need! And probably end up throwing a significant portion out because you never actually use it. Or you buy food loaded with preservatives to make sure that doesn't happen. That kind of behaviour is a direct result of car dependent infrastructure.

OR, and this is key.. allow mixed use development so that you can have a grocery store within walking distance so that you don't need to buy so many groceries every time you go to the store that you need a car to haul them home. When I lived in NW Portland, there were like 5 full grocery stores within a 10 minute walk of my house. With that kind of accessibility, you just get in a habit of buying what you need every day or every other day. Buying groceries isn't some major event, it's just something you do on the way home every day.

I mean, they still got paid. Still, having that on your resume may end up being either a blessing or a curse

But what is that in freedom units

In 2020, in the United States, there were 45,222 gun related deaths 54% of those deaths were suicides. So right off the bat, if you are in possession of a gun, you are more likely to use that gun on yourself than you are to ever use that gun in self defense. I'm sorry, not YOU. My bad, I shouldn't assume. You are clearly not one of THOSE people. You are the exception that would never kill yourself. So how many people WERE killed in what the CDC rules as "legal prevention?" Also known as "good guys with guns?" Surely that makes a dent... Ah, shit... Nope. 611. That includes cop killings, which we know is 100% justified 100% of the time. Okay, but SURELY that means at least 611 people were SAVED by guns. So that's something, I guess. ... Oh, shit... There were over 500 deaths by gun in 2020 that were rules "accidents." So all those people would probably still be alive if guns were never around in the first place... Numbers don't lie. I'm sick of people using "good guys with a gun" as an excuse. The police officers in Uvalde were allegedly good guys with guns. They didn't do shit. But hey, let's just arm all the teachers. Oh, that's right, elementary school teachers make less money than goddamn Starbucks Batista's, maybe putting them in charge of arsenals isn't ideal (how long before a teacher goes postal on their own students or kills themself with the classroom gun) ... But, but we'll TRAIN THEM! Putting aside the fact that at least 98% of gun related deaths in America are intentional, so training people to use them properly does nothing (they seem to figure it out in their own), none of us are goddamn Rambo. If you've never been in a firefight, I can almost 100% guarantee you will freeze like a deer in headlights when bullets start flying. And you're not wrong to do so. People in the military go through a SHITLOAD of training to not do that, and even then it doesn't work sometimes. Military combat training involves like actual torture to see if you'll break under stress. There are plenty of guys in the infantry who have gone through more training than any teacher will ever face who go to pieces in their first combat experience. And that's no shame on them. ... Sorry, just a rant. Don't fucking arm teachers. Life isn't an action movie.

If Disney still gets paid, they have no reason to care.

It honestly feels a bit scammy if you think about it. Like, if they know that if they just released it for home viewing the same day as it's released for theaters that most people will choose not to see it in theaters, isn't that just artificial inflation? Personally, I think Disney realized they hit gold when they found out people will gladly pay $20 to stream a new Marvel movie at home as soon as it's available. Disney gets to keep all the money that way. They still need to get through all of their pre-COVID contracts and shit to do it again (ScarJo lawsuit), but they will absolutely start doing same day streaming releases again. There's a reason they kept lying about how much money they made from the Black Widow release. They want to control who knows about that.

I just jerked off to a de-zoning proposal

I'm taking that as a vote of confidence.

Yes

Their latest music kind of sucks. HOWEVER I fucking hated Limp Bizkit when I was a kid. I was way too cool for them (I was groomed to be a punk/metal gatekeeper from practically before I could read). As I've gotten older and re-listened to some of their music, I have to admit that a lot of it was actually really fucking good. Not all of it, and they certainly had more than their fair share of cringy shit, but they made a lot of music that was objectively good. Ultimately Limp Bizkit just hit a late-90's bingo card for making it in the rock scene. I've seen a lot of people over the years say "Limp Bizkit would have been a lot better if they never had Fred Durst." I guarantee you that you never would have even heard of Limp Bizkit if they didn't have Fred Durst. Wes Borland, John Otto, and Sam Rivers are all fucking S-tier musicians. Pair them with basically the greatest hype man of the late 90's in Fred Durst, and you have a winning package.

I'll take naps on my days off sometimes. I can't take naps when I have shit to do that day.

I'm still cautiously optimistic. The new trailer was pretty good. Most of the people who trash talk the series online are closeted racists who are complaining that having people of color rUiNs thE LoRe. The set designs all look great, the music sounds great, the effects look great... there isn't really much else to go on right now. I do think there is some concern that they're just going to turn it into a generic milquetoast fantasy series. But I'm not going to assume that yet. The fact that they haven't even hinted at Celeborn even being in the show at all as of yet leaves me a little worried that they're going to have some pulpy romance subplot with Galadriel and Celeborn in a later season, which is dumb.

I finished it last night. Not the best thing I've ever seen, but it was fun.

Doesn't he have like 10 kids? I don't know if we're ready for that.

Yeah, I was worried that's where they were going. They still kiiiinda did it, but it felt genuine.

I love that they went with relative nobodys for the entire cast (obviously most of except them Iman Vellani had been in some things before, especially Kamala's dad who's been in a bunch of stuff in India, but the rest have only a small handful of acting credits). A+ casting and direction for the entire show.