This is another unanswerable question. There are too many favorites to narrow it down to one. I think it is time for a list, and it is probably going to be on the long side…
Current shows
Rick and Morty (though last week’s episode was the worst they’ve ever made)
Star Wars: The Bad Batch
Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi
South Park
Family Guy
Bob’s Burgers
Shows that aren’t running anymore
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Star Wars: Rebels
Bugs Bunny, especially Loony Toons
The Super Friends
Scooby Doo
Star Blazers
The old Spiderman show, the one with the famous theme song
The Flintstones
The Jetsons
Shows my step kids watched when they were little that were good enough (ie adult enough) that I started loving them too
Gravity Falls
Phineas and Ferb
The Mighty B!
Wander Over Yonder
There are at least 100 more, but this will do for now. Here’s hoping this Sunday’s episode of Rick and Morty is better than last week’s suck burger.
ADDENDUM: How did I leave Futurama and Archer off the list? What is wrong with me?
I’m sure there are things that I could afford to do less of. The one huge thing that comes immediately to mind is procrastinating. I could really afford to cut back on that. Imagine how much stuff I could get done if I just did it. Wasn’t there a daily writing prompt about procrastination? Or was it just my answer to one of the questions? I don’t know. Regardless, I procrastinate a lot and could benefit from doing less of it.
What else should I add to the list? I could do less bitching and moaning about things that don’t really matter. That might make life a little easier for people who get stuck listening to me as I bitch and moan. I could watch less TV. I don’t want to (I’m watching an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine* as I write this) but doing so would probably be good for me.
One thing I won’t be doing less of is pointing out examples of American fascism. For example, why hasn’t everyone, including a certain orange pile of fascist goo, who participated, planned, or caused the January 6 coup attempt in jail for the rest of their natural lives yet? Coming up on three years later, it sure looks like certain fascists are getting away with trying to overthrow the United States of America’s legally elected government, doesn’t it? Of all the crimes people manage to get away with, that seems like one that… you know… shouldn’t.
*Deep Space Nine season three episode 21. The one where the Cardassian and Romulan secret police forces team up to attack the Dominion. The end of a classic two-parter.
Just over a year ago my mother’s older sister, my Aunt Joan, passed away after a long battle with dementia. In February my mother passed away after a long battle with dementia. A few months later my mother’s older brother, my Uncle Jim, passed away after a long battle with kidney and heart problems. Suffice to say the last year has not exactly been teeming with positivity.
We also caught Covid-19 after successfully avoiding it for three years and it ruined a Florida vacation. The negatives just keep piling up, right? Fortunately, there was one particular event that was very positive. An event that for most of us is a once in a lifetime kind of thing.
My step daughter, Bellana, graduated from the University of Vermont with her Bachelors Degree. She will have other graduation ceremonies, assuming she stays on her current academic path, but there probably won’t be another Bachelors. I can’t put into words how proud I am. She’s amazing and everyone who meets her can see it. That kid is going places.
As positive events go, her graduation is the big one from the past year.
Would ya look at that! The bugs in the daily writing prompt system have been fixed! The text box with the responses link is back again, and the question is in sync between the web and the mobile app. Excellent! Thanks, dev staff!
Do I ever see wild animals? Yes, yes I do. My home is technically in a city, a small city at least, but my house is in a very sub-urban neighborhood complete with a patch of woods behind our back yard. We get the usual suburban rodents, squirrels (I hate them) and chipmunks (adorable) and stuff like that. We have a groundhog in our back yard. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but he/she/whatever is exceptionally cute when waddling around. We get skunks who only come out at night too, but we’ve never had an issue with them.
We have tons of birds. The usual fare, robins and blue jays and crows and chickadees and little guys like that. I am a big fan of cardinals and we get a few. We’ve had a whole flock of turkeys visit us. We also get little yellow finches (adorable) and woodpeckers (awesome). The best birds though are the hawks. Redtail hawks mostly, but there have been others that I don’t recognize. I saw something once that might have been a falcon but I’m not sure. I saw an eagle in the distance once, but it didn’t hang out in our yard at all.
We’ve had some bigger, less New England suburb common animals too. I woke up to find a grey fox terrorizing my bird feeders once. I saw something in the woods in the distance that I think was a bobcat. I know we get them around here, but it never came close enough to be sure. I saw a coyote once in the pre-dawn hours. He/she/whatever was hanging out down the street from us a ways, but it was definitely a coyote.
The best non-rodent/non-bird visitors, and the most common (though not that common) are the deer. I love the deer. I want them to be our best friends. I want them to let us feed them and ride them and sing xmas carols with them. The deer are the best. I’ve seen as many as eight or nine at once before, but that large a group is rare. Usually it’s only 1-3 at a time. I don’t care how many we get, I love them all.
This one is sort of evolving. At least I am trying to force it to evolve.
Traditionally I am as much of a night person as one can be. I think I was in high school when I realized that I was better at studying later at night than I was in the morning. That lead to a lot of late nights with crappy sleep. It escalated wildly when I was in college the first time. I still often get a second wind around 10:00pm and that still leads to a serious lack of sleep on many nights.
I said this was evolving though and that is because I am trying very hard to change my routine. After weight loss surgery I was required to exercise daily. I barely ever exercised at all in the 50+ years prior, so that required a major lifestyle change. After a while I worked out a routine where I get up early and do all of my exercise for the day before the work day starts. As the amount of exercise I need increased, I had to start getting up earlier and earlier. I shoot for 5:00am most days even though I often (like today) don’t get out of bed until a little after 6:00am. That’s still crushingly early for me and my tiny little brain.
Is getting up stupidly early every day turning me into a morning person? Sort of. Maybe? I still feel like I am better later at night, but I am at least able to function in the pre-dawn hours and that is a notable change of pace for me. I guess the answer to the question at hand is that I am still a night person but I am doing my best to spread out when I am at my best. Let’s call it an on-going goal and put a pin in it until the daily writing prompt inevitably asks this same question again in a month or so.
I’m trying to answer this one on my phone while sitting in a hotel room in Vermont. I’m not sure how the tags should go, but I’ll figure it out.
I have no issues with eating meat. None at all. I eat chicken all the time. I used to eat beef all the time but since having gastric bypass surgery it’s a bit of a challenge chewing up little bite sized morsels enough that they don’t cause problems for me when swallowed. It hasn’t stopped me from eating beef, but it does take me a long time to get through small portions.
Pork is okay but we don’t have it often. Turkey is amazing but prepping it is a ton of work so we don’t have that often either. I’ve dabbled in duck before and liked it, and I’ve really enjoyed bison in the past, though I don’t think I’ve had it since surgery (have I?). I’ve never tried venison but that might be because we have deer in the woods behind our house and I want to be friends with them.
I’m not opposed to vegetarianism at all, in fact I sort of have a curiosity about it. I wouldn’t be fully on board, chicken and steak and turkey are way too delicious to swear off, but I’ve thought about declaring one or two days a week as veggie days.
So meat is good, but no-meat is pretty good too. As long as you are getting the nutrition you need, go with whatever floats your boat.
Not a lot of substance with today’s question. It’s an easy answer but it won’t generate much discussion from me. I’ll see what I can do though.
They are asking for my top two, but to give a full response I need to up that to my top three. Jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. That’s it. Weekend/telecommuting attire at it’s finest. As casual as casual gets without wearing shorts. That’s me, Mr Casual Man.
I don’t mind dressing fancier, I just don’t like doing the work. I’ll wear a suit when I have to, but ties are a pain in the ass and I hate them. Once they are on and tied I deal, but getting them on frustrates me and sort of ruins my mood. Having said that, I don’t mind tuxedos, but only because I generally look damn good in them. Well, I did look good in them. I haven’t worn one since the weight loss surgery so I cannot say for sure, but it used to be true that the tux look was a good look for me.
What technology would you be better off without, why?
Daily writing prompt
There are a lot of technological breakthroughs that are just plain dumb. The big one that comes to mind for me right now is what we laughably call Artificial Intelligence. It is just a language model combined with a Google search. You ask a question, it searches the web, and then the language model summarizes the search results in a way that makes it look like an uncreative person wrote it out for you. That is not artificial intelligence. No need to worry about Skynet at all. We could definitely do without it.
Self driving cars are dumb too. They only work if you are okay with killing your neighbors. Once I would have thought that no one in their right mind would be okay with killing their neighbors in exchange for a tiny reduction in inconvenience. Then we lived through the Covid-19 pandemic and clearly learned otherwise. Self driving cars is a technology that is probably 10 years away from being perfected. Unfortunately it will still be 10 years away 10 years from now, and it will still be 10 years away 20 years from now. You see the trend? It’s dumb, we don’t need it.
I’d like to add chemical and biological and nuclear weapons to the list of technologies we don’t need, but unfortunately the research into these evil nightmares has also lead to some positives. That probe that flew by Pluto a few years ago? It had a nuclear powered drive system. We wouldn’t have that without the effin’ bomb. It’s disgusting and painful but that’s how it happened. It sucks but I don’t want to say we can do without nuclear power when it brings us to other worlds. Am I a hypocrite? Probably, yes. Shit.
What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?
Daily writing prompt
Nope. Not going there. It’s way too soon. I’ll tell you what but I won’t tell you why. That will have to do.
First, we had to put a DNR order into place for my mother. DNR stands for Do Not Resuscitate. If you don’t know what that is then Google it. I don’t have the heart to explain.
Next, when the hospital could do no more to treat her, we had to move her to Hospice. That included instructions to do nothing beyond making her comfortable. That easily topped the DNR as the hardest decision. It was literally decided to make her comfortable in her last days before she died. It took a lot longer than we thought it would, and every day was utter torture right up until the end.
Okay. That’s way more than I was planning to share. That’s enough. I’m sorry.
Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?
Daily writing prompt
I’m thinking, I’m thinking. I don’t think there is anything specific to any holidays, but there are a couple of things that we usually have that we happen to usually have around the holidays.
Jen makes deviled eggs and my step kids devour them like their lives depend on it. I don’t think she does it for the holidays, but that is when she usually makes them. In fact, she whipped up a bach for Thanksgiving and Bellana and Harry attacked them with merciless vengeance.
Jen’s family traditions include a christmas eve party and that party includes a lot of food. Much of it is prepared in an army of crock pots. Jen and her mother make a couple of types of chicken wings and meatballs that we generally don’t have at any time of year. Are we having them for the holiday or are we having them because of the holiday? I don’t know. I just know that it’s all delicious and it makes me feel like christmas, so I think it counts either way.
So, do we have any special dishes for the holidays? Yeah, I guess we do. Cool, huh? Happy/Merry.
Inside the Red Head's Head 