It is Friday

It is Friday at last. It’s also raining. Son of a…

On May 4th I wrote this big gastric bypass surgery update where I said that I am having far fewer side effects then I did a year ago. The bad experiences are less and less common with each new day.

Then last night I had a piece of toast with my dinner. I took a bite, no problem. I took another bite, no problem. I took another bite… uh oh. I knew instantly that I had taken one bite too many. It took about an hour for all the fun to end. The moral of the story being, don’t be over confident. That thing that passes for your stomach these days can still kick you in the nards, Robert. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Here’s a cat to remind you of your place in the universe.

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Smoke

I heard that there was white smoke in Rome today. This was my first response:

If they announce that it's trump, I'm moving to Mars.

— Rob (@robj1971.bsky.social) 2025-05-08T16:26:27.819Z

Turns out the new pope is an American. Weird, huh? Dude’s going to speak English with an accent that I can understand. Too bad I’m not catholic anymore. It might mean something to me if I were.

Here’s a cat to celebrate:

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Here’s another cat to keep celebrating. The new pope stole the thunder from my birthday. What a jerk. At least he’s not maga. Civilization has that going for it, I guess.

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Art Imitating Life

Sometimes I hate it when art has to imitate life. I hate it even more when the people being called out metaphorically by said art are too fucking stupid to realize the art is talking about them.

Mild spoilers for Andor season two episode nine. If you haven’t seen the episode, or if you haven’t seen Star Wars Rebels season three episode 18 (I think that’s the one), stop reading. You have been warned.

Last chance to bail (Bail Organa, if you will)…

In Star Wars The Return of the Jedi, a rebel leader gives a briefing spelling out the details of the second Death Star. It’s the “many Bothans died” speech. That character’s name is Mon Mothma. She was a senator who became one of the primary leaders of the Rebel Alliance. She shows up in a deleted scene in Revenge of the Sith, then she shows up for real in Rogue One and Rebels and Ahsoka and she’s one of the main characters in Andor. In a novel that is canon and takes place after Return of the Jedi she is actually elected to be the first Chancellor of the New Republic. Pretty sure that’s the job she’s doing in her brief scene in Ahsoka, but I have to go back and watch that entire series again just to be sure.

In Rebels we learn that her last act as a senator was to give a speech where she called out the Emperor as the bad guy for the whole galaxy. She gets chased out of the capital and smuggled to the rebel base by our Rebels heroes. Once at the rebel base she gives another speech that basically calls for revolution and the rest is Star Wars history.

This week’s third episode of Andor gave us the speech at the senate. It was perfect. Both in terms of the story itself and for our current shit show of a country. Replace the name Emperor Palpatine with Donald Trump, or even Orange Shit Clown, and it stops being fiction and starts being reality.

The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.

“This Chamber’s hold on the truth was finally lost on the Ghorman Palaza. What took place yesterday… what happened yesterday on Ghorman was unprovoked genocide. Yes, genocide. And that truth has been exiled from this Chamber. And the monster screaming the loudest, the monster we’ve helped create, the monster who will come for all of us soon enough, is Emperor Palpatine.”

Like I said… I hate it when art has to imitate life, and I hate it even more when the monster and his cult are too fucking stupid to realize they are the monsters and not the heroes. Fucking maga cult bullshit.

That’s all I have to say about that.

54

I was thinking about doing something with this post where I post an image with the old Studio 54 logo. Having lived through the disco era and today being my 54th birthday, I figured that would be funny. Then I realized it would not be funny at all, it would be dumb. So I changed my mind and just went with this.

Today is my birthday. I am 54 years old. I am NOT happy about it. When I was 53 years old I could sort of convince myself that 53 is still your early 50’s. At 54 I can’t do that anymore. I am firmly entrenched in my mid 50’s and again, I am NOT happy about it.

The weather is nice right now. That’s good. Of course the forecast is calling for rain later so that’s fitting. Blah. I filled the bird feeders because I wanted those little monsters to have a nice celebration on my birthday. I took a couple of pictures. This one is with the aperture wide open, f1.8. Blurry background, babie!

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This next one is the opposite. This one has the aperture closed down as far as it goes. f22, which means the shutter speed is super slow which is why it’s a little soft on the focus. Image stabilization helps, but it’s not perfect. Note that the background is not blurry at all.

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Now when you compare the two photos you know how your lens aperture controls your depth of field. See? You didn’t realize I was going to give you all a photography lesson for my birthday, but there you go. Happy birthday, hohoho.

Nutz

Today has been insane. I took the morning off so that I could take Miss Robin Sparkles the cat to her vet appointment. I dropped her off, ran some errands, went home, re-watched most of last night’s three episodes of Andor, went back to the vet’s office to pick her up, came home, ran another errand, ate lunch, and punched into work at 1:00pm.

That’s when it hit. I had meetings scheduled from 1:00-5:00. Bam. All of them. One after the other. At the same time I was getting hit with all sorts of customer issues and questions and hectic stress and wow… It’s 5:31pm now. I can punch out. I need a nap!

Here’s a picture of the clock downtown. It’s not a good picture, and don’t let anyone try to tell you that I thought it was a good picture… because it’s not a good picture. Whatevs, I’m going to go cook dinner for the love of my life and then go to sleep.

Season Two Episode Eight

Two new episodes of Andor down and still one to go. My spoiler free review of episode eight:

HOLY SHIT! Andor s2e8. Was that the most intense 40 minutes of television ever? I say again, HOLY SHIT! I swear my heart rate increased by about 300% over the course of the episode.We are the Gor!

— Rob (@robj1971.bsky.social) 2025-05-07T03:16:48.385Z

I was planning on watching seven and eight tonight and then watching nine in the morning. It’s 11:20pm now and I cannot wait until tomorrow. On to episode nine, right now. HOLY SHIT!

Another Crazy Day

Hope you are all having a happy, fascism-free Tuesday.

I was having a calm, yet somewhat productive day today. The minute I finished lunch all hell broke loose. It became a crazy, hectic, tense, productive day. You know how it is.

Now I am about 20 minutes away from the end of my work day and hopefully things are calming down. Everything seems covered at the moment. Breath in, breath out. You’ve got this, Robert.

I have half a personal day booked for tomorrow. Robin the Cat has a vet appointment. Just her annual check up. I have meetings booked all afternoon though, so it’s going to be busy tomorrow too. At least I’ll have three episodes of Star Wars Andor to plow through before the work day starts. They come out at 9:00 Eastern time tonight. I am ready. There was a new episodes of The Handmaids Tale over night last night. I watched it while doing my morning exercise today. It was excellent. Here’s hoping Andor holds serve on the which-show-about-people-fighting-fascism-is-more-awesome sweepstakes. At this point it’s anyone’s game.

Oh good. 10 minutes away from quitting time and it just started to rain. It’s freakin’ pouring out. Good, good.

I Am Trying

I am trying today. I am doing my best. My best, however, ain’t gonna be good enough.

I am trying to not get mentally bogged down by idiotic shit going on in the federal government. I just want to have a day where I ignore the morons and concentrate on work for a change. Something tells me I am not going to be terribly successful in this endeavor though. Don’t get my wrong, my work is getting done. No worries there. I just find myself distracted by all the other bullshit.

I am in the office again today. This makes four business days in a row for me. Ugh. Yesterday I left the house at 7:30 and got to work at 9:10. Today I left the house at 7:20 (makes sense, right?) and got to work at 9:10. Oh for crying out loud.

On the way out the door I told the cats to take care of my wife while I am out. I always tell them that. I don’t know if they ever listen though. They aren’t really team players, you know? They just do their own thing and mostly ignore anything I say. They’re cats that way.

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