The first random thought on this fine Thursday afternoon is that it actually is Thursday and not Friday or Saturday. I mentioned in a post a couple of days ago that my inner calendar/clock is a mess this week and I am not quite sure why, but I was convinced all day Tuesday that it was Thursday, and then I was also convinced all day Wednesday that it was Thursday. Now that it actually is Thursday I can’t decide if my brain is convinced that it is Friday or Saturday, which doesn’t make sense because I don’t work on Saturdays but I’ve been working all day today and still at times I’ve felt like it was Saturday.
My brain is broken. Here’s a cat to make it feel better…
Most work days fine me playing podcasts through the Apple HomePod that’s next to my desk in the new office space in my step son’s room. The last couple of days have been different. I’ve been listening to music. Today has been a playlist made up of all of Peter Gabriel’s original, non-soundtrack, non-cover/tribute records both as a solo artist and with Genesis. I made this playlist a few days ago with the idea being I would shuffle it. Today I started from the first track of his first solo record and let it run. The transition from his second record to his third is utterly stunning. The first two records are good. Not great, but good. The third… it’s weirder, it’s a totally different sound/approach/feel, and it is so infinitely better than what he did in the few years before it that it made my head spin a little. I just started album number five… So… I think it’s safe to say it is the masterpiece of his solo career and again the improvement is dazzling.
Here’s a cat to help you appreciate Peter Gabriel the freakin’ legend…
It is January 25th today. It is 50 degrees outside. I actually went outside without a jacket on this morning. Granted, my shoes sank into the mud field that once was my yard, but other than that it was nice. This time of year the air can actually be painful if you go outside for a couple of quick minutes and are not bundled up. Today did not hurt at all.
Okay, that will do for random thoughts as my lunch break ends. I have some paperwork to finish up today and then I am making hamburgers for dinner. My wife made that request last night and I am more than happy to oblige.
Happy Thursday afternoon, everyone… assuming it actually is Thursday. Who knows, right?
It has been 45 minutes since the last time I ate anything. I have to wait 15 more minutes before I can chug a bottle of water. This is relevant because I am seriously thirsty.
It’s raining out. No, it’s not raining. It’s pouring. Somewhere there is an old man laying in a substandard bed snoring his head off. It’s worse than pouring. It’s noah’s arking out there.
I am worried about my size. I mean, you know that if you’ve been reading this crap of a page because I am constantly talking about weight loss surgery. That’s not what I am talking about. What I am actually talking about is the zit just above my upper lip. It started showing up earlier today and in the last few hours it has grown into a six foot four inch tall nearly sentient partial clone of me. A few minutes ago I was doing a little bit of exercise, walking in place like a bone head, and I swear I heard it call me a pathetic fat ass.
I knew that yesterday was going to be a rough day but for some reason I had this weird positive vibe. Like, it was going to be bad yet somehow a good day.
I didn’t have that feeling today. I knew it was going to be a rough day and it’s just continually gotten rougher and rougher. I’m on top of everything at work right now, but somehow it just feels like everything is trying to kick my ass. I mean, it’s not but it definitely feels that way.
Part of me wants to start screaming, but if I do I’m beginning to fear I won’t stop for hours.
Typical, right?
On the up side, I am officially two weeks post-second vaccination shot. Wanna go to dinner or a movie or a concert or something?
Is our hot water heater dead, or is it just messing with us like the jerk that it is?
I’m working from home today. Hopefully there is a plumber coming to check on our water heater. I had one cold shower yesterday and I don’t want another one. Why is a cold shower such a soul crushingly miserable experience? Why can’t it just be… cold? I don’t get it.
I was talking about the lack of hot water with my step kids yesterday. I said they were probably going to want to skip taking a shower this morning. My step daughter got all indignant (well, a tiny bit indignant at least) and said she was going to take one anyway. Ah to be a cocky teenager again. Wait, was I ever a cocky teenager?
Hey, do you remember when the Olympics were interesting? I do. Back in the long distant past the Olympics were can’t miss television. We used to watch coverage every night. Even the most ridiculous events had us glued to the tube.
Oh, check it out! Synchronized Swimming is on again! Yeah!
When did that change? Was it the end of the Soviet Union? Was it when they added snowboarding? Was it when they let professionals compete thus creating “the dream team” and crap like that? Was it the year the network (was it NBC or CBS?) tried to tie in a pay per view option? What did they call it? Olympic Triple Cast or something like that? I only remember David Letterman ripping the whole thing to shreds on a nightly basis. It was probably a little bit of all of the above (but mostly snowboarding).
I still get really excited for Olympic hockey during the winter games, but other than that? Snooze. Rio this week will mark the first games held since we ditched cable TV and I don’t regret it for a second. I’ll be visiting my mom for a while tonight so she might have the opening ceremonies on. Otherwise I won’t watch any of the coverage at all. Part of me misses the pageantry of the whole thing, but given the mess that Sochi seemed to be two years ago, and the disaster that seems to be shaping up in Rio… well, maybe it’s time we start re-thinking the whole thing.
I didn’t post to my wordpress.com blog yesterday, but I did post to medium.com. Does that mean I am done with wordpress.com? Probably not, but maybe I am for a day or two. We’ll see. One thing that is infuriating me about medium is that it refuses to let me put two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence. I hit the spacebar twice but the bastard cursor only moves once. That’s definitive proof that medium is an evil, unAmerican enterprise. Two, two, two spaces following a period at the end of a sentence! Damn you and your markdown menace!
When I first started looking at medium.com as a blogging option, they had an iOS app but it was read only. You couldn’t post from it. That wasn’t a deal breaker but it was damn close. Now you can write and post and upload images from the app (at least from the iPad version).
This very post, in fact, has made use of both the iPad app and the web app. I started writing this while sitting at my computer. I got about halfway through the stuff about the Olympics and then had to stop for a little while. When I picked it up again, I went to the drafts list on the iOS app and continued writing. After finishing the Olympic stuff I had to stop again and now I’m back on my Mac. Pretty cool. I never did that with wordpress, although I know I could have. Still, living in the future is kinda fun.
Speaking of living in the future, I just turned on the lights in my living room, and my air conditioner using apps on my iPhone. Yes, living in the future rules.
I have to ask a serious question about a not-serious topic. When did Hollywood lose the ability to make a decent DC Comics movie? The first two Superman movies are classics. The first two Tim Burton Batman movies are fantastic. Batman Begins is excellent, and The Dark Knight is about as good as comics movies have ever been. Now though? I didn’t hate Batman v Superman as much as most people did, but some of it was just laughably bad. Hey, what was it that made Batman and Superman stop trying to kill each other and become BFFs? Yeah, that’s what I am talking about. Now Suicide Squad comes out today and, while I really had no interest in it at all, the reviews are vicious. Is it really that bad, or has Marvel just bought out all of the critics? Maybe they took some of that massive Disney money and did just that.
My step kids and I watch the DC TV shows. We all love Flash. They love Arrow (I think it’s okay). We just started watching Supergirl so the jury is still out. My only beef at this point is, why does Jimmy Olson look like he could bench press a mini-van? Isn’t he supposed to just be a nerdy little guy? Regardless, DC is getting the TV shows right but getting the huge budget films terribly wrong. At this point I can’t imagine it is simply bad writing or bad directing on an individual movie basis. If it’s a trend then it has to be coming from higher up the management food chain, doesn’t it? Is Suicide Squad going to be bad because the parameters within which it was written, cast, filmed, directed, edited, and marketed bad? It’s starting to feel that way. It’s starting to feel like the DC movies are going to be awful before the stories are even conceived. It’s like they have three strikes against them before they even start.
The little Justice League tease they released at the San Diego Comic Con was pretty exciting, but when push comes to shove… who cares, there’s a Star Wars flick coming out in December.
Okay, so I’ve been picking at this for an hour now. Do I have anything else I need to leak out of my brain? Nope, just going to wait for the plumber to check in.
Inside the Red Head's Head 