Chef Andy helps feed a thousand for a fundraiser

Happy 46, Big Boy!

 

two days before his 2015 wedding

 Sean (L) with my ex-boss, August 14 last year, right after my heart attack

Comparison photo with me here, from October 11 last year. 

Sean and I look a lot like each other; David (the middle bro) looks like us but also a bit more like Dad. Sean's a professional cellist. David is a video-maker who works remotely from New Mexico at a PR firm based in DC (where he used to work before moving west). David's seven years younger than I am; Sean is ten years younger, so when we are all younger, those two, being closer together in age, would gang up against me. I represented something like a parental figure to them, and even though we three never got into any loud, knock-down, smash-up fistfights, we found endless ways to bug the hell out of each other, and there were plenty of moments when I was a straight-up dick to both of them. I'd take it all back now if I could, but I think there's still enough soreness among the three of us that the prospect of ever living under the same roof again for any amount of time is nil. I wouldn't mind living down the street from either of them if I had the cash. All that said, I love my brothers dearly, and if anything ever happened to either of them, I'd be as crushed as when we lost Mom.

I wish Sean only the best with his career. He relocated to a Chicago suburb a couple of years ago after spending most of his life in the DC-Metro area. After moving, he basically had to start all over again, building up a new network of private students, connecting with big and small local orchestras, forming new chamber groups, etc. He works pretty much seven days a week—the life of a musician earning his daily crust. I'm sure it doesn't help that he lives in a not-very-cheap-looking suburb of Chicago. But he's worked with a lot of famous people from Patti LaBelle to Pete Townsend to large, American philharmonic orchestras to famous European orchestras. It's a full, interesting, and pressure-filled life. I couldn't do it, frankly. Sean has my respect for all of his hard work.

Happy 46th Birthday, Big Boy!

confession

Instead of walking tonight, I stayed in and created the third Substack quiz, so I'm now a day ahead with that, and I can devote my Wednesday afternoon and evening to creating (having ChatGPT create) the codes that will allow me to put the quizzes on the blog. So I might be done by Thursday, giving me an extra day to do other Substack stuff. As for my walk: I'll do it in the morning or sometime before 11 p.m. As of right now, the National Weather Service is forecasting that the rain will resume at around 11 p.m. Wednesday night.

Oh, I got another Substack subscriber. A free subscriber, alas, and probably from Instapundit, but you take what you can get. Every free subscriber is a potential paying subscriber.

smart villains?

I'd say half of these villains' plans weren't all that smart.

second quiz done

The quiz for "Nouns, Part 2: Singular and Plural Nouns" is written. I'll write Quiz 3 tomorrow: "Nouns, Part 3: Concrete/Abstract Nouns." Woo-hoo! On Thursday and Friday, I'll wrestle with ChatGPT to produce the code to get these quizzes on my exam blog. NB: all three of these quizzes ought to be absurdly easy compared to the quizzes I'd made for the free Substack. So, John, give these new quizzes a whirl this weekend and report back with your "B"s or "A"s.

Amanda says

I got an email from a presumably human employee named Amanda, who represents Spring—formerly Teespring—the company that makes the tee shirts I wear on my cross-country walks. Amanda's chirpy email assures me that "Support is on its way!"

Thanks for reaching out. We'll get back within the next 24 business hours.

Your support case number is 745416.

Wow! I feel reassured. But I think it went like this the last time I'd contacted Spring. First comes the automatic email, then comes the terse-but-cheerful "human" reassurance of help; finally, there's the actual email with substantive content, either asking clarification questions or assuring me that the process is now coming along, and that my items have been shipped and are on their way.

Amanda's email arrived at around 11:30 p.m. last night, Seoul time, so we're creeping up on that 24-hour promise. I have faith that Amanda, be she human or AI, will respond soon. Don't fail me, Amanda. I want to know that the machines running my life can be relied upon.

In other news: the rain that had been forecast for today is now forecast for tomorrow night, so I'll be going out for another walk this evening.

I don't think I can do this

I think I'd be tempting fate if I tried this.

another day, another quiz

Today, I'm concentrating on making the quiz for "Nouns, Part 2: Singular and Plural Nouns." I still get a chuckle out of the illustration I'd put together in Photoshop for that unit:

This unit deals with the concept of singular/plural, with regular and irregular pluralization, and a little bit with concepts like countable/uncountable nouns. Part 1 dealt with common and proper nouns. This curriculum started off gentle and easy; if you're tuning in only now, you'll need to start at the beginning and catch up. Of course, there's no pressure: go at your own pace. I'm designing these quizzes for the paid Substack to be limited in scope, reviewing only the topics covered in each unit, so do proceed slowly if that's comfortable for you. I'll eventually make a test to cover all of the units in a section, which means that, for nouns, there will six quizzes before you see a test. As you know, my quizzes are only five questions apiece; the test, which will cover all six sections, will be twenty questions. That's going to take a while to get right with ChatGPT. Five-question quizzes are already 400-500 lines of code. And the test will include more than my quirky multiple choice: there'll be fill-in-the-blanks questions (type your answer), matching questions, and maybe even sequence questions.

US/UK terms for the same thing in the kitchen

I knew most or all of these because I watch so many UK food videos on YouTube.

that Saudi Arabian comedy special I'm not watching

It sounds almost as though comedians, who will do anything for attention and laughs, don't even have souls to sell. So much for fighting the power.

I'll be a happy guy if...

If I manage to create three quizzes for my paid Substack before I leave for Busan, I'll be a happy guy. I think I can get all three done by Wednesday (the first quiz was finished earlier tonight), then I'll have to do my usual wrestle with ChatGPT to get the code right. So expect three new and fairly basic quizzes on nouns by, oh, Friday at the latest. I doubt I'll have any tests ready by the time I'm on the bus to go south, but if I do get three decent quizzes done, I won't worry about anything else until I'm back from Andong in mid-November.

I've also been trying to upload all of my photos from last year's walk (still on my phone) to my Google Drive so as to make room for this year's upcoming walk photos. Not that I have to do this: my Samsung Galaxy S21 has enough room for two or three years' worth of walk photos. It's a huge improvement, storage-wise, over the Galaxy that I'd bought back in 2013. In other ways, though, this iteration of the Galaxy is a pain in the ass. Mandatory and secrecy-compromising updates are way too common, and occasionally, the updates are so thorough that they erase previous protocols I'd had in place, e.g., how to log into my Shinhan Bank app. You may recall how, earlier this year, I had to go to the bank in person to get help with logging back into my own phone app. It's highly inconvenient if I have to do that every time my phone undergoes a system update. I'm still getting used to the new login procedure, which requires a different password to log in.

Well, life keeps me busy even if it's not keeping me paid. I'll do more about branching out once I'm back from the walk. In the meantime, sit tight. As the Starks say, Quizzes are coming.

Uncle Roger vs. Nick DiGiovanni

So there's an umbrella program (channel?) called "First, We Feast." Within that, there's this show, which is called "Hot Ones." And within that context, there's a version of "Hot Ones" called "Hot Ones Versus." Layers and layers.

image from my Sunday walk

Where have all the Joro spiders gone this year?

watch this at 3X speed (it'll still be ASMR for neat freaks)

toe update (Day 2 of no antibiotics)

No sign of reinfection—always a good thing—and the green color at last appears to be fading as the skin heals. The wound with the gray in the center (the left-hand wound) seems to have started growing some skin, and the skin seems to be growing somewhat inside the wound instead of just papering over the wound like last time. I have no idea what's going on with the darker right-hand wound, which looks basically unchanged to my untrained eye. But there are no surrounding signs of infection, which is always a good thing. I might have good news to bring the docs on the 16th. 

It'll be a different office and thus a different team this time; I'll be sure to bring these photographs so they can trace the history of the wounds and the healing visually. This new team will give me the culture results, so I'll be able to confirm whether this was indeed Pseudomonas. And I'll ask the team what I can do to avoid such infections in the future (I'm guessing it'll probably come down to: Keep your toe dry).

One nightmare that just occurred to me would be to suffer a relapse of this crap while I'm on the trail and away from medical facilities—just me, my antibiotic ointments, and my alcohol wipes. Not very reassuring. This whole situation is also a reminder that I'm still very much a creature of civilization. I may be an "independent" introvert, but like it or not, I still need people. That's hard to admit.

a resto to visit if I'm ever in London

Already mentioned at least twice on this blog, it's Fallow once again:

l'haltérophilie while on the trail

I'm bringing along a resistance band for use at the end of the day after I've finished a segment of the Nakdong River walk. Today, I finally created a list of exercises to do while on the walk. It's something of a combination of the exercises I do during a regular week, and it includes exercises that have been "converted," e.g. a heavy-club front press that's been converted into a resistance-band front press. The idea isn't so much to continue the next ten weeks of my ongoing weightlifting/resistance program (I've written my newest ten-week calendar to reflect the skip) as it is to just keep my muscles from atrophying over three weeks. Here's that list (the abbreviation "RB" means "resistance band"; "BW" means "bodyweight"):

☐ RB lateral raises 1 x 15
☐ RB biceps curl 1 x 15 each arm
☐ RB antirotational press 1 x 15 each side

☐ RB triceps extension 1 x 15

☐ RB lat pulldown 1 x 15

☐ RB rows 1 x 15
☐ RB gorilla rows 1 x 20
☐ RB over-shoulder triceps (throwing) 1 x 15
☐ RB standing chest press 1 x 15
☐ RB "deadlift"¹ 1 x 15
☐ RB "plank"² 30 sec

☐ RB club-style front press 1 x 15
☐ RB triceps extension 40 sec 
☐ BW glute kickbacks 1 x 15
☐ BW wall sit 30 sec

☐ BW wall push-ups 1 x 15

☐ BW dead bug 2 x 15
☐ BW bedside squats 1 x 15

¹ This is an unbowing exercise from the front for the lower back.
² Unbowing exercise from the side for the obliques.

I tried to keep the program short, given that I'll be exhausted at the end of a walking day, wanting more to flop into bed, blog the day, and just do nothing as opposed to engaging in two hours of exercise. So as you see above, I'm not doing three sets of anything—it's just going to be a single set (except for the dead bugs) of 15-20 reps for most exercises, plus 30-40 seconds of "static" exercises (e.g., planks, wall-sits). Just enough to allow my muscles to remember what it feels like to be under tension. I should be able to bang out the entire program in around half an hour, which ought to leave me with plenty of time (if not energy*) for blogging.

I know there are experts who advise you to separate your exercises into "days": push day, pull day, and leg day. I think the above eclectic mix can all be done in one session, pretty much every weekday, thus mirroring what I'm currently doing. My only real dilemma right now is whether to take only one resistance band or two on my walk. Two might be better.**

__________

*On past walks, I've staggered into my motel room, showered, flopped onto my bed or into a chair, started blogging, and dozed off in mid-sentence or while I waited for photos to upload.

**Resistance bands have the advantage of being light and portable, but they don't really offer much in the way of tension throughout most of a movement. It's only when you're at around the 80% point of your movement that the band starts to get tense, so when doing reps, you get the most effect if you hold the band in tension and pause for three seconds. I'm never so insane as to go for a feel the burn kind of moment, but I do make an effort to add a few seconds' pause. Bands aren't worth much without taking them to a nearly full stretch. And there's little risk that they'll snap unless you insist on abusing them by wrapping them around sharp edges, etc., without using a towel as padding. Take care of your resistance bands.

Dave Cullen on "the dangers of AI romance"

It's like trying to convince a delusional man with a blow-up doll that his sex partner is, in fact, not human but rather a thing.

Karen in action

You've got to develop dog collars that tighten and cut off both air and circulation (like a rear naked choke—gentle but effective) for these unruly jokers. Blessed silence can be yours.

shootin' rats at the waste dump

I'm surprised he didn't call the waste dump a tip (UK-English term).

...but if you try sometimes, well, you just might find you get what you need

I have now completed an extra paid-Substack piece ("Grammatical Mood, Part 6") to be published on November 17. This means I'll have a few days, after coming back from Andong City, to create more material. The next unit needs to be released on November 20. I'll be back from Andong on the same day I finish the walk, i.e., the 15th, so I can start working on new content either that night or beginning on the 16th (which is more likely as I'll be decompressing). The more units I can craft, the further ahead I'll be, at which point I can concentrate on other things like making more quizzes for the paid Substack, learning more about video-making, shopping around my little book's translated Korean manuscript, looking into the question of a last will and testament (which I still haven't looked into), etc.

the sprint to Christmas

Here in South Korea, we're now done with national holidays until Christmas. November is dry and dead as far as holidays go. But as John McCrarey happily points out, in the Catholic Philippines, the "-ber" months started in September, and since December is the final "-ber" month, Christmas season also starts in September.

South Korea is more like America, though, with the Christmas season—and Christmas commercialism—starting up around late November. Will I have my usual Thanksgiving feast this year? Probably not. I imagine that, whatever I do, it's going to be pretty scaled down. Maybe there'll be a chicken or turkey pot pie, possibly with a regular crust. Otherwise, I don't have anything planned in terms of November celebrations.

For the rest of the Korean population, though, it's now the sprint to Christmas, with all of the rest of the holidays mostly out of the way. Koreans do ring in the new year, though, but I normally celebrate that by witnessing the local fireworks that spout off the Lotte World Tower. Ever since I moved from the sixth to the fourteenth floor of my building, I can no longer see the Tower out of my window, so I have to go to where the freight elevator and staircase are located to watch through the window. Not very exciting, but I usually get a minute-long video out of the experience. I normally also celebrate with some non-alcoholic bubbly bought from the Paris Baguette downstairs a day or so before, and I take a celebratory selfie that I then slap up on the blog when it's the first second of the new year. Not a very exciting life, but hey, I'm an introvert, so it's less about being lonely and more about being blissfully alone.

Because most people are assholes. And that's a perennial fact.

All the same, I have a few people I wouldn't mind spending New Year's with, but they're all either in a different country or already planning to do whatever they usually do.

Nerd Cookies cringes at the possibility

Is there a hint that Denis Villeneuve is going to take even more liberties with the story of Frank Herbert's Dune series of novels than he's already done? Nerd Cookies suspects something is up, so I'm wincing in anticipation. This won't be pretty.

toe update (Day 1 of no antibiotics)

The following photos were taken after this evening's 9.4K walk to the Han River and back. The walk itself was okay, I guess... I had to rest during the first ten minutes when I felt pressure building in my chest, but discomfort was minimal for the rest of the walk and actually got a bit better by the end. Otherwise, I was surprised to see no leakage from my toe wounds this evening despite 9.4K of tromping. I can't imagine the same would have been true had I done 14K (to the Jamshil Bridge and back) or 26K (to Hanam City). So marvel with me as we take a glimpse at my healing tonight. There was no rain, and from what I can tell, the skies ought to be rain-free (if partly cloudy) after October 19 (the 15th and 16th might be rain-free, too):

surprisingly stain-free after 9K

a little bit of seepage onto the inner bandage, otherwise a fairly clean wound

classical closeup

Maybe there's hope. Maybe I won't need to buy any more antibiotics.

how do you feel about these practical effects?

Maybe I missed something, but I didn't see the need for the Excelsior's presence in this already-iconic scene. It played no role.

in prepping for the long walk...

I'm always finding big and little typos in what I write for Substack after I hit "publish," so I've spent the past two days combing over the scheduled Bad Online English (BOE) posts on Substack—which are part of the free content I offer—as well as the paid content, which currently runs through nouns, verbs, and verb tenses. I won't be able to correct the errors in the Substack posts unless I take along my laptop, which I might or might not do. I don't normally take it with me. (When I'm on the trail, I blog from my phone.)

Through this month and while I'm on my walk, my paid Substack will slowly dole out the rest of its content on verb tenses, then turn to grammatical moods (indicative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory, subjunctive, conditional—yes, it's a mood as well as a tense). The free content will be what it's always been: a random non-curriculum focusing mainly on poorly written memes and other erroneous things found online. I have only enough paid content to get through November 14; the walk ends on the 15th, so I'm thinking that I should add one more lesson, to be released on the 17th, to give myself a few days' breathing room, after I return to Seoul, to create enough material to get me through at least the end of the year (my current curriculum calendar runs through August of next year, so there's no shortage of material). My free material, by contrast, is done through the beginning of December.

In November and December, I'll also finally start looking into branching out my various efforts, creating more content that will, I hope, eventually include video work and more dead-tree publications to sell on Shopify and Amazon. The work never ends, thank goodness.

Still to create before I leave: quizzes for my paying subscribers. Well, subscriber—singular. Ideally, I need to make enough quizzes to cover nouns, verbs, verb tenses, and grammatical moods. My lone subscriber, who reports already failing the quizzes for the free section, probably won't even bother with these new quizzes (of which there are already four: one, two, three, four), but I'm designing this curriculum with an eye to the future in the hope that there will eventually be more subscribers.

And now—time for a walk while it's not raining (according to the weather site).

Ryan Kinel on the recent Emma Watson/JK Rowling flap

(from 10/3) Emma turned out to be a clueless, pampered bitch.

ululate!

Actress Diane Keaton is dead at the age of 79 after a decades-long career that included a long association with Woody Allen. Her manner of death remains undisclosed, but she had apparently been silent on social media since this past April. For whatever reason, when I first read the news of Keaton's death, I confused her with Michelle Pfeiffer. Keaton played roles in everything from 1972's "The Godfather" to 1977's "Annie Hall." Her career included roles in movies, theater, and TV well into the 2020s. As Keaton got older, her look began to remind me more and more of my high school French teacher. I admit I haven't really followed Keaton's achievements with much interest or enthusiasm, but her name has long been a recurring element of the ever-changing cultural tapestry of Hollywood. It's a surprise that she's already gone. 79 seems young these days. RIP.

lawyer: statistically speaking, should you fight back?

Not in South Korea, where fighting in self-defense can get a foreigner locked up.

a classic from years back

"House of the Dragon," Season 3 announcement

But maybe the one-year hiatus between seasons is a good thing, preventing phenomena like Marvel fatigue. Waiting for seasons is almost like waiting for movie sequels now.

the funniest Lionfield video (the "Approved!" guys)

Be careful how you eat your pizza. Even though I knew what was coming, I still had a laugh.

toe update (meds, Day 5)

Wow. The green color may or may not be fading, but there's real healing going on with the two wounds (one kind of black and scabbed over, the other kind of gray and translucent). Both wounds still seep, though, based on what I see whenever I peel back the bandages. I wonder what's going to happen when I go walking on these wounds tomorrow. Will I undo the healing? I mean, I've walked for weeks on wounds like this before, so it's not a huge deal if so, and I can use the rest of the year to heal.

Alas, I am now out of antibiotics. Today was the last day for my pills from the hospital. This doesn't mean I'm helpless: I could visit my local clinic next week and get more antibiotics, and that ought to help continue the healing. But at the same time, it would throw off the hospital's strategy, which is to see whether the antibiotics have taken the healing in the right direction (i.e., whether the antibiotics were/are appropriate for the infection). I'm not supposed to visit the hospital for another five days, which is plenty of time for the infection to return. Whatever the cause of the infection is, it must be somewhere inside my apartment since, aside from walking, I don't really leave my place for many reasons. If it really is Pseudomonas, references suggest that Pseudomonas mostly tends to be waterborne. The AI god says:

Pseudomonas is a waterborne bacterium that can be found in soil, water, and moist environments, including drinking-water systems and plumbing. It is an opportunistic pathogen that can cause infections, especially in people with weakened immune systems, and it can spread through contaminated water in sources like pools, showers, and even taps and filters.

It makes me nervous to think the bacterium might have come via my shower. I should see about disinfecting my shower's head and hose, not to mention my bathroom's floor and possibly my studio apartment's regular floor even though it's not moist. I also need to make sure never to shower with a bandage on my toe: if I forget to change the bandage, it could ironically become a carrier of Pseudomonas.

Meanwhile, I give my foot occasional wipe-downs with alcohol swabs, and I do the occasional foot-soak, though not as much since my hospital visit.

Meanwhile, the toe's healing seems to be on the right trajectory.

this is less about Charlie Kirk's politics

...and more about Kirk's message to a father and son. And the video has almost nothing to do with Dave Chappelle. Thank you, AI voice.

walk tees: why's it taking so damn long?

I had ordered my walk tees for this year's walk way back on September 20, but the order status still shows "printing," which means something has stalled or, worse, I've been forgotten. I just sent an email to Spring to ask what's up. They're normally good about responding within 24-48 hours, so we'll see.

UPDATE: I just got the automated reply from Spring: "Support is on the way!" I love it. It doesn't mean anything, but maybe someone human will get back to me at some point over the next few days. Backup plan: if I can't walk with my desired tee, it's no big deal. I'll wear a black tee, and I'll probably have a jacket on for much of the time, anyway, since most of the walk will be in November. The rainy period in October may soon be coming to an end; we've got a clear day tomorrow for almost exactly 24 hours, so I'll be getting a walk in. I'd rather preserve my feet from getting wet until I absolutely have to get them wet. October really has been a mess these past few years. Here's hoping November is better.

off WhatsApp

There are no guarantees in life, and simply moving off WhatsApp probably doesn't do much to improve my security situation, but whatever—I'm off WhatsApp and on Signal now. I've heard that Kakao Talk is also full of security holes. I'd like to get off that, too, but it's going to mean wrangling with friends and relatives who message me semi-regularly there.

The AI god says:

KakaoTalk has security vulnerabilities, including a history of user-data breaches and the potential for account takeover. While it uses encryption for some chats, this isn't always end-to-end by default, the protocol for "secret chats" has potential weaknesses, and the app has faced issues with data leakage and a significant fine for a breach in its open-chat feature.

Sam, inspired by Fallow

more Star Wars that I won't be watching

Guga, steak, and romesco

fuck the whole Tron series

I've decided I'm not going to write reviews for any of the Tron movies. All of the reviews I've seen for "Tron: Ares" are horrible (even Dan Murrell, below, damns with faint praise). See below. From the two movies I've seen, the entire series is less science fiction and closer to fantasy; it's based more on nonsense magic than on anything remotely approaching science or even real-world notions of AI.

The Drinker steals Disparu's joke and calls the movie "Tron: Arse" as only a Brit can do since we Yanks say "ass."

classic British fast food

As the one guy who speaks fluent Korean (영국남자—find his channel on YouTube) points out, Koreans eat eels all the time, but they're prepped differently. I don't think I've ever had an eel that had been packed in cold, slimy gelatin, and that still had a lot of bones in it.

the French pun I didn't understand at first

In 1993, Jean Réno starred in a French time-travel film about a medieval knight and his squire being magically transported to modern France. The film was called "Les Visiteurs," and while it was hilarious in the zany manner of most French comedies, there was one obvious pun that I missed—a running joke based on Réno's character's name, Godefroy de Montmirail. Perhaps you already see the pun: the name Godefroy is pronounced gode froid, i.e., "cold dildo." Montmirail's squire has a more obviously filthy name: Jacquouille la Fripouille. In the name Jacquouille is the word couille, and les couilles means "the balls." Now, French-language AI insists that the name Godefroy has nothing to do with the sex toy, but once you latch on to the meaning, it's hard to unsee it. I'm sure most modern French folks would agree.

"Les Visiteurs" really is a funny movie. If it's on Netflix or elsewhere, watch it with subtitles. Like most French comedies, it's filled with illogical nonsense, but just roll with it.

Dildo. Balls.

toe update (Day 4 of meds)

I don't see much difference:

Everything looks glossy because I had slathered on some first-aid cream before remembering to take a picture. Sorry about that.

I might buy some iodine (apparently called 요오드/yo-o-deu in Korean, maybe from the French iode) for the long walk since that seemed to be an effective topical treatment by the hospital. Not much leakage last night. Maybe things are finally healing. In that sense, maybe the antibiotics are working even if I don't see any color change (the green still looks green).

la verdad sobre los burritos

Done the Mexican way.

sure, I liked "Boogie Nights," too, but...

"hydrostatic paradox"—how paradoxical is it?

"six degrees of separation"

Dr. Vallicella on ambition and happiness

From Dr. V's little book (Life's Path: Some Trail Notes) comes this relevant nugget of wisdom in a section called "Ambition and Happiness":

Viewed in one way, ambition is a good thing, and its absence in people, especially in the young, a defect. Without ambition, there can be no realization of one’s potential. Happiness is connected with the latter. We are happy when we are active in pursuit of choice-worthy goals that we in some measure attain. And yet, there is no happiness without contentment, which requires the curtailing of ambition. There is thus a tension between two components of happiness. It is a tension between happiness as self-actualization and happiness as contentment.

To actualize oneself, one must strive. One strives for what one doesn’t have. Striving is predicated upon felt lack. But one who lacks what he desires is not content, not at peace, and so is unhappy in one sense of the term. Not only will he not get what he wants, he will fail to appreciate what he has.

To be happy, one must strive for, and in some measure attain, choice-worthy ends. That requires ambition. But the attaining is not enough; one must rest in and enjoy what one has attained. That requires the curtailing of ambition.

And some of us lean more toward ambition, thus denying ourselves the settled feeling of true happiness and satisfaction, while others of us lean more toward contentment, thus denying ourselves the feeling of true and meaningful achievement/accomplishment. It's a trade-off, not to mention a basic difference in orientation.

stand like dem horsies

it's really not looking good at all for "Tron: Ares"

I've watched and been frustrated by the first two Tron movies. The scuttlebutt for a long time has been that the newest Tron movie, "Tron: Ares," is a steaming pile of shit, and sure enough, the initial reviews are all horrible. Poor Greta Lee, who was great in "Past Lives," is being shat upon for some horrible acting. The script sucks, favorite characters from previous films are nowhere to be seen, and even Jeff Bridges, a huge part of both previous films, is given only the smallest of cameos. Jared Leto, for once, escapes the usual criticisms. I think he's a great actor who has proved himself in movies like "Blade Runner 2049" and "Dallas Buyers Club." But Leto's presence apparently isn't enough to save "Tron: Ares." Oh, well.

even worse than we'd thought

You can't move beyond woke Star Wars until you get rid of the woke people.

more slo-mo, eye-popping, skull-blasting death to the tree rats

dafuq is this all about?

There is nothing as boundless as human stupidity. Not even space compares.

for those playing the home game...

The quiz for BOE Units #13-24 is now ready. It's a more ambitious quiz that still has five questions, but for this quiz, each question has six possible variants, so the randomization is even deeper.

Fallow gains traction on YouTube

With almost 1.6 million subscribers, the London restaurant Fallow, and its chef ambassadors, has been gaining a lot of traction online, at least among food-lovers. Below is a classic fish and chips. I'm guessing that chips, in British English, doesn't refer generically to French fries, but more specifically to what Americans might call steakhouse fries, i.e., fries with a thicker, heavier cut. I prefer my fries thinner, but Britain, you do you.

I saw Emma fall like lightning

It won't happen for another few years, but I can see the beginnings of how ol' Uncle Emma is eventually going to age into a man. She'll try to stop the process with the usual Botox and surgery, but you can't stop the inevitable. Once she's got enough moustache action, she should at that point transition—surgery, hormones and all—and confront JK Rowling directly as her new, proud, manly self: Emmett. That would take balls... or whatever engineered neuticles (s)he might be sporting at that point.

"Battlestar Galactica: Razor": review

L to R: Edward James Olmos (Adama), Mary McDonnell (Roslin), Michelle Forbes (Cain), Stephane Jacobsen (Shaw), Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck), Jamie Bamber (Apollo)

[WARNING: spoilers.]

"Battlestar Galactica" (BSG) spawned a few spinoffs—there were three "TV movies" (at least one of which started out as a series of webisodes but got spliced into a full-length movie) plus a spinoff series named "Caprica," which got no traction and lasted only one season. The three "TV movies" were "Razor," "The Plan," and "Blood and Chrome." I reviewed "Blood and Chrome" way back in 2013, but I don't think I've ever properly reviewed either 2007's "Razor" or 2010's "The Plan." "The Plan," directed by Edward James Olmos, was frankly terrible (not Olmos's fault) and not worth reviewing; it added nothing to the overall storyline and gave a piss-poor explanation for what the Cylons' overall plan was. "Razor," which I want to focus on here, was a much better production, but it had its problems, too.

"Razor," directed by Félix Enríquez Alcalá, is full of time-jumping flashbacks to different eras, from the first Cylon war to the second, but its "present" takes place somewhere around Season 2, at the time when Galactica and its ragtag fleet encounters the battlestar Pegasus, commanded by Admiral Cain (Michelle Forbes, one of the original, awesome tough-girl actresses from long before annoying girl-bosses were a thing). Lee Adama has been given command of the Pegasus after three of its commanders have died in rapid succession: first the ruthless Cain, then the corrupt Fisk, then the micromanaging Garner. The movie deals with Cain's backstory—how she had abandoned her little sister right at the end of the first Cylon war, and how this cowardice haunted her present, turning her into a hardened admiral capable of executing her second-in-command right on the bridge of the Pegasus after his conscience prompted him to refuse an order that would send soldiers to unnecessary deaths. We also get to see a young Bill Adama (Nico Cortez) flying like a madman in the first Cylon war (against old-school Cylons from the original, 1978 BSG!) until he ends up crashing on an ice planet where he discovers the Cylons' first Hybrid (part human, part machine, and able to see metaphysical realities as all successive Hybrids could do) as well as whatever bloody project the Cylons had been working on (creating more Hybrids, presumably). But "Razor" mostly focuses on Kendra Shaw (Stephanie Jacobsen), a character created specifically for this show. Shaw is an ambitious, young officer who ends up assigned to Pegasus, and while she doesn't make a good impression on Cain at first, she ends up proving herself many times over when the second Cylon war erupts.

"Razor" is, overall, an even deeper exploration than the main series into the morality of war. It's also an exploration of human character—of what we do when we're faced with extreme situations. Do we abandon our little sisters? Do we shoot our executive officers (XO) when they balk at an order? Do we fire a nuke at a target when we know our own troops are still there and not done with their mission yet? At the end of "Razor" is a discussion between the older Bill Adama (Olmos) and his son Lee "Apollo" Adama (Jamie Bamber) about who Admiral Cain was and what could have been done differently. The older Adama contends that he can't judge Cain for her ruthlessness and cruelty because he had never been put in her dire situation. He also notes that, unlike Cain, he had voices of conscience "in my face" like President Roslin (Mary McDonnell) and his own son Lee, aways keeping him from taking the extreme path. Cain had no such brakes... unless you count her XO, whom she killed. 

Kendra Shaw is the thread connecting the events of "Razor," an ambitious young woman who proves to be as ruthless as Cain, executing passengers on a civilian vessel that Pegasus is raiding for parts and crew so as to be able to continue its war. Shaw quickly rises in the ranks, and she even becomes, after Cain's death at the hands of a betraying Cylon, Apollo's XO. In the end, though, Shaw ends up as part of the away mission to rescue human soldiers who had been captured by the Cylons and taken to an old Cylon base ship; when the nuke her team is carrying has its remote detonator damaged, Shaw, wounded, elects to stay behind and blow the nuke manually. While in the base ship, she encounters the same Hybrid that Bill Adama had encountered all those years ago during the first Cylon war, and the Hybrid tells her the prophecy that Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Katee Sackhoff) is "the harbinger of death" who "will lead humanity to its end." Unable to do anything with this knowledge, which she unsuccessfully tries to relay to Pegasus, Shaw ends up paying for all of her sins when she sets off the nuke inside the base ship.

"Razor" has a lot going for it. The movie provides a lot of the background information that viewers of BSG had been craving. We learn about Bill Adama's early days as a hotshot pilot (which is why he bonds so well with Starbuck in the present day); we learn about how Admiral Cain became so Machiavellian; we meet (and eventually lose) the cipher that is Kendra Shaw; we learn a bit more about the mysterious Cylon Hybrids. We also learn more about the Number Six (Tricia Helfer) who betrayed Admiral Cain and the Pegasus, and who eventually murdered Cain: this Six, named Gina Inviere, masqueraded as a tech expert and was Cain's lover. Like all Cylons, Gina is excellent at manipulating human emotions. If you watched the main series, you know that Gina, after murdering Cain, hides among the Galactica's fleet with the help of Gaius Baltar and eventually sets off the nuke that attracts the Cylons to the planet named New Caprica by the remaining colonials, killing herself in the process. The movie also gives us plenty of fan service and memberberries in the form of old-style Cylons and Cylon fighters reminiscent of what we'd seen in the old, 1978 series—the kind of fighters piloted by three robotic Cylons working in sync/tandem. But thanks to improvements in special effects, these "toaster" Cylons are all CGI in "Razor," not guys in bulky suits, and their fighters are a lot more nimble and dangerous-looking than in the original series. Actor Nico Cortez is utterly convincing as the young Adama: he's got Edward James Olmos's mannerisms down pat, and he totally inhabits the role of a younger, fiercer Bill "Husker" Adama, fighter pilot extraordinaire. The old Cylon Hybrid (Campbell Lane)—a man instead of the usual woman—is also a fascinating character, buoyed along by his weirdly occult metaphysical awareness of pasts and futures that no mortal could ever know. Even Helena Cain gets some of my sympathy given the trauma she suffered at the end of the first Cylon War when she abandoned her little sister, not knowing that her sister would be scooped up by the Cylons for their foul experiments right as the first war was ending. The hard-nosed discussion of war's morality is also a point in the show's favor: "Razor" doesn't pull any punches in its discussion of the role of utter ruthlessness in combat, especially against an implacable, machine enemy.

At the same time, "Razor" had its bad points. The actress playing Kendra Shaw, Stephanie Jacobsen, struck me as way too baby-faced for the role of an ambitious, hard-bitten young officer who sees Pegasus merely as a stepping stone toward her own command. Jacobsen is a Hong Kong-born Australian with an annoying habit of uptalking too many of her lines. The showrunners should have found someone with a grittier, less delicate appearance and delivery for the part. Another problem was that some of the special effects showcased bad physics. BSG was infamous for having sound in space, like the Star Wars movies (and so many other SF films and TV shows), but during the initial Cylon attack of the second war, we also saw battlestars burning in orbital shipyards, and the smoke as these floating hulks burned drifted upwards for no good reason (the BSG main-series finale episode also featured a brief moment of the same bad physics after Starbuck jumped the Galactica to our Earth). In space, when you're far enough away from any gravity well, smoke doesn't drift upward: it basically stays in place and just gets denser, possibly even extinguishing the flames producing it. Perhaps most disturbing of all was the Bill Adama problem: Adama was addressed as "rook" by the veteran pilots, possibly implying that this battle in the first Cylon War was his very first. By the end of the action sequence in which Adama had shot down several Cylons and crashed on the snowy planet below, the first Cylon War was already over: the Cylons had signed an armistice and retreated immediately, pulling all of their ships away to some mysterious location. So did this mean Adama was, in reality, an inexperienced pilot despite his potential? He seemed to have fought in only a single battle. I've read some nerdish attempts to explain what was happening; it's possible, for example, that Adama was being called "rook" simply because of his youth and not because of his inexperience, but most of these nerdsplaining efforts have felt hollow to me. The movie "Blood and Chrome" further characterized the young Bill Adama as a hard-charging go-getter with rakish charm and an eye for the ladies, and he was also portrayed as a skilled, experienced pilot with, it was implied, a long combat career ahead of him. I choose to believe in this latter version of Adama; I like the idea that he's a grizzled veteran who's seen it all. I also wish that Nico Cortez had played Adama in "Blood and Chrome": the guy was so convincing as the young Bill Adama that I'd almost swear he was an Olmos relative. (Adama was played by Luke Pasqualino in "Blood and Chrome." Pasqualino was fine in the role, but Cortez would've been miles better.) And the weirdest bit of badness had to do with the movie's title "Razor": Helena Cain had in her possession a switchblade with a story behind it. She would pull it out when she wanted to drive home the point that the people under her all had to "become razors"—sharp, alert, and unsentimentally combat-ready. But, dammit, that wasn't a razor—it was a switchblade! Every time I've rewatched this movie, that strange disconnect has never failed to bother me.

Well, you can't make a movie without all sorts of mistakes and problems creeping in, so maybe I shouldn't be too hard on "Razor." Overall, given how many times I've rewatched it, I think it's safe to say that I like the movie for its good points more than I hate it for its bad points. It's a worthy addition to the BSG mythos in that it provides crucial backgrounds for Adama, Cain, and the Cylon Hybrids. It also gives us the interesting character of Kendra Shaw, there and gone, who undergoes at least a little bit of a character arc as the movie proceeds to its conclusion. We even learn a bit more about the relationship between Admiral Cain and her betrayer, the Cylon Number Six named Gina. These points are all in the show's favor, and they outweigh the sometimes laughably bad VFX physics and the Adama problem, which may have a plausible in-universe explanation. If you've never seen "Razor" before, I'm sorry to have spoiled it for you, but I'd still recommend that you give the movie a watch, especially as a way to fill in the gaps in your BSG knowledge.

another quiz coming up this evening

It's been a long time coming, but I have another quiz that I'll be vibe coding (thanks for teaching me the term, Charles) this evening or night. So look out for that. And there will, of course, be another Substack Note about the quiz as well.

so should I get rid of WhatsApp?

I suspect that my privacy has been fucked since I was a kid. I remember hearing my dad talk, way back when I was in elementary school in the 70s, about how the goverment "has all of your records." This problem is nothing new, but it is getting more insidious.

scheduled-posting update

I now have enough scheduled posts for this blog to last me through my upcoming walk—assuming I'm still doing it. I took my second round of antibiotics today; from what I can see, my toe doesn't look any different. Optimistically speaking, the lack of any worsening is a good sign, but part of this trial (i.e., trial by the hospital) is figuring out whether regular antibiotics will be enough: if this is indeed a resistant strain of Pseudomonas, there could be a worsening in my future. We'll see. Today's toe photo:

no real change that I can see

I have to wonder: after a Pseudomonas infection goes away, does the pigment remain? The AI god responds: "In general, the pigmentation from a Pseudomonas infection is temporary and will fade as the infection is successfully treated and the affected tissue, such as a nail or skin, grows out or is healed."

My wound-cleaning procedure has changed ever since I discovered that you shouldn't use hydrogen peroxide to clean inside a wound: I now follow the more standard procedure of cleaning around the wound with H₂O₂ instead of stabbing into the hole with a peroxide-soaked Q-tip. I let the wound area dry, then apply what remains of my antibacterial first-aid cream, then put on my standard bandages. Et voilà—the wound is dressed.

am I a "creature of habit"?

Yes, I am a creature of habit. We all are—if we're honest adults. Habits and routines overlap, so anyone who engages in the routine of going to work is, automatically, a creature of habit. Get up, hit the bathroom, shower, shave, eat breakfast, go to work, eat lunch, go home, eat dinner, relax in the evening. If we have hobbies that we return to time after time, we're creatures of habit. A person who does something completely different, completely unique, every single day is an exceedingly rare creature.

At the same time, no one ever does exactly the same thing every day. No habit ever involves absolutely perfect repetition. Every single day is, in fact, different in how it plays out. Some people appreciate this nuance; others, distractible and easily bored, don't.

I follow many of the same paths when I do my walks. Partly, this is out of convenience. Local routes to the Han River, for example, start from my apartment building and lead back to it. And I have favorite routes that I do over and over: the route from my place to Hanam City; the route from my place to Bundang; the route from Hanam to Yangpyeong; the route from Yangpyeong to Yeoju; the Four Rivers trail (which I've done four times); lately, the Nakdong River trail (which I'll be doing in its entirety for only the second time). 

But are these the only routes I've walked? Only people who cherry-pick what I've written on the blog would think so. I've also walked the route from Oksu Station to Uijeongbu twice. I've walked along the river from Gayang Station in western Seoul to Unyang Station in Gimpo. I've done most of the east-coast trail (never again—too busy and traffic-heavy for walkers). I've walked parts of the Jeju Olle trail as well as the roughly parallel Fantasy bike trail. I've walked along a section of the North Han River from Gangchon Station to Chuncheon Station. And in the future, assuming I'm in shape for it, I'll be exploring (1) a recommended path across the Korean peninsula, (2) the Geumgang bike trail, and (3) other paths that start on the north bank of the Han and lead inland and northward.

If I were that closed-minded about exploring new paths, I would never have done my first trans-Korea walk in 2017. So I'm not going to worry about critics who think I'm just a "creature of habit." Let them look at themselves and see whether they live a life of no habits. There is nothing wrong with trying new things, liking some of them, and sticking with them while continuing to try—at a moderate pace—yet other new things. If other people are impatient with that attitude, let them stew. And that's the last time I'll comment on that.

Babbel is okay, but...

Babbel annoyingly reminds me, every day, not to break my streak with my Spanish lessons. I had set Babbel up to give me lessons on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but the program seems to have ignored that completely. The other problem with Babbel shows up whenever I do reviews using the "writing" function (i.e., type your answer with your phone's keyboard): Babbel, which scores your performance, will score you wrong for no reason, especially with answers requiring that you type a space. Example:

Babbel asks: ¿_____ eres? (Where are you from?)

I type: De dónde

Babbel says: Incorrect

Babbel shows: De dónde

That's what I typed!

Very annoying. So I've learned not to worry about my score. Maybe the secret is to ignore the space and just type Dedónde, then let Babbel figure it out.

seeing is believing

A nerdy British guy proves to be a talented freestyle rapper. Go figure.

your heartwarming dog vid for the day

I'm not really a fan

...but I'd love to try making my own Western version of these.

Egg McMuffin, sexed up

Substack update

I have now filled in two missing November posts on my paid Substack: two review pages are up and ready to publish on November 3 and November 10. I still have only one paying subscriber, and he flat-out told me he only subscribed to support me, not because he's serious about improving his grammar, so for the moment, I'm doing a ton of work for no good reason at all.* Ideally, I'd like people to do more than care that I care; I'd like them to care enough about themselves to want to—and to strive to—improve. Unfortunately, as the saying goes: You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think. My paid grammar Substack requires effort; otherwise, what's the point? I mean, hey, thanks for the cash, Subscriber, but it's money wasted if you're not benefitting from the service I'm providing. I realize, though, that a lot of people don't want to make any effort.

Since people on Substack seem to pay-subscribe to material that demands nothing of them but merely satisfies a curious itch or a need for rage-bait, I'll be giving myself even more work by adding new "publication sections" (as they're called) to my Substack in an effort to drum up more paying subscribers. Luckily for me, this won't require making a new URL. As it turns out, I'd gotten rid of the URL called "tastygrammar.substack.com," and all that remains is "bighominid.substack.com," which makes for good, generic, omnibus branding. Right now, the only two publication sections there are my free and paid grammar/language newsletters. So it occurs to me that, instead of creating whole, new URLs requiring people to subscribe to them as separate entities, people can just subscribe to the current URL, find the publication section they want to read, and start reading. No pressure, no need to do anything else—merely be the consumers they were always meant to be.** So I'm going to start up a creative Substack where I'll slap up bad poetry, short stories, essays, and maybe—once I get good—photos and videos. I'll try to keep politics out of it, but no promises.***

All of that is coming, but not right now. I'm too close to my long walk to think about branching out in that way quite yet. Maybe later in November, or sometime in December, or possibly next year. Right now, the grammar Substack alone is a handful.

__________

*I'll at least be leaving behind the legacy of an entire grammar course... but it won't be visible unless people subscribe.

**I realize I'm being snide and ungrateful, and that I should appreciate with humility any and all subscribers who choose to invest time and money in my various products, but it's going to take me a while to tamp down the teacherly urge to look down my nose at those who make no effort—who only consume and never produce.

***I've already renamed bighominid.substack.com from "BigHominid's Tasty Grammar" to "BigHominid's Many Flavors" in anticipation of the new publication sections I'll be creating. Let the Ewoks dance with joy.

seems like an interesting guy

back from the ER

I didn't visit the ER last night despite a halfhearted try. I stood out in the rain, waiting for a taxi. They usually run by my place fairly often, but it was close to 10 p.m., so it might just have been a dry hour for taxis (although I've seen plenty of taxis on that street at that hour), and it was also Chuseok night. I took out my phone and tried to use the Kakao Taxi app to call a taxi, but the rain on my touch screen made the screen go nuts, and I was looking for an excuse to go back into my building anyway, so I retreated for the night, resolving to hit the ER during the day on Tuesday. Which is what I ended up doing.

Getting a taxi today was no big deal during the daytime, and I scooted less than a kilometer up the road to Samsung Seoul Hospital, where they (the nebulous "they") know me well. I arrived about 11:50 a.m.; there were only a few people in the ER's entranceway, where a row of chairs had been placed for patients to wait after they'd had a chance to fill out an intake form and hand over their ID card for verification. I got examined by a frazzled-looking doc (I think he was a doc; he might've been a male nurse) who took my vitals and spoke to me in a mix of English and Korean. I showed him cell-phone photos of my infection and explained the history of my two toe wounds, one of which my readers are familiar with, the other of which is a more recent thing. After the doc had had a chance to look at my photos and then to look at the wounds directly, he sent me back into the hallway to wait. A male nurse came by some time later and led me to a side room. There, I saw my name on a "take a number" monitor. A female nurse came in; I got a wristband, which alarmed me at first because I thought they might be admitting me into the hospital as an inpatient, but no one said anything about admitting me: once I'd been wristbanded, I was led to a different exam room. Another nurse looked at my toe wounds and asked me about their history; she too spoke in a mix of Korean and English. While my shoe and sock were off and my toe was still exposed, she told me the likely procedure would be to get a culture, dress my toe, give me a prescription for antibiotics, then invite me back in a few days to check on my progress. The nurse said that the lack of pus in the wound meant that getting a culture would be difficult. She then left.

I waited about an hour before a male nurse came in, quickly examined my toe, and asked if I'd had the culture done. I said no—there'd been no one since the female nurse. He left, too, then he came back maybe twenty minutes later with someone else in tow, and he took a swab of my wounds before slathering iodine on my toe and dressing it again. He told me where to go pay and get my prescription. With all of these people so briskly coming and going, I couldn't say "Happy Chuseok" to anyone until right as I was leaving. I found the desk where I had to pay and receive my prescription sheet; the girl behind the counter told be to go down to the B2 level of the main building (just outside another heavy, metal door) to find the pharmacy where I'd receive my meds, which were already paid for (that's not how it usually works for me on my regular checkup visits—meds are a separate payment). I went to the main building, then down to B2, and walked through a network of very sterile-looking, white hallways that reminded me of death's anteroom until I found the bleak-look pharmacy in question. It was just a window in a wall, and a sign said to push the button for service, so I did. Another sprightly young lady took my prescription sheet, tore off a crucial corner, and went to find my meds. She, too, spoke to me in a mix of Korean and English, advising me that I had five days' worth of antibiotics, and that I should take them after breakfast, once per day, without fail (빠짐 없이/bbajim eopshi). I was tempted to salute her.

Although Samsung Hospital is, in its own weird way, a fairly organized place, it moves at a fairly glacial pace, which is another reason why I was hesitant to visit the ER, and today was definitely a slow day. The last time I'd had a toe infection, it was during the strict COVID protocols, and because I'd had a fever at the time, I had to wait outside for several hours before they'd take me. This time, I didn't have to wait that long, but there was still a full hour during which I sat on a cushioned exam table like an idiot, one foot bare and exposed, while I passively waited for someone—anyone—to see me.

But all in all, the visit went about as I'd thought it would. I'm supposed to visit Samsung's infection clinic on the 16th. I have enough meds for four more days (I took my first dose as soon as I got back to my place), so I think the idea is to see whether this is a drug-resistant strain of Pseudomonas or a less virulent strain; I think they deliberately gave me only enough meds for a few days so that, if it's a virulent strain, the infection will come back over the remaining time. I think they're all morbidly waiting for the infection to worsen and start oozing pus so they can finally get the cultures they'd originally wanted (cultures also take a few days to produce results). As things were, they had to make do with a superficial swab for something called a "Gram stain." I hope they got what they needed from my toe, and I hope they confirm it's Pseudomonas.

So: arrived a bit before noon; out a little after 2:00 p.m.

And here's what you've all been waiting for: pictures of the green stuff!

Sunday, October 5. The green was disconcerting.

Pseudomonas is "classically" green, the AI god says.

October 6.

Today, October 7. Happy post-Chuseok!

As you see, there's been no real progress over three days, and all of those pics are from before I went to the hospital today. I hope we've nailed this thing before it's had a chance to begin working its evil work in earnest.

Carl Jung and his... two things

1. How do people treat those perceived to be of a lower station?
2. Do these people keep their promises, or do they over-promise and under-deliver?

ER

I'm at the ER. I had an initial exam, and now I'm waiting for further consultation. This ought to be an outpatient procedure. More soon.

UPDATE: I got examined by a different nurse in a different exam room. She seemed disappointed that there was no pus coming out of either wound on my toe (there are two wounds, one big and one small). She said the lack of pus would make taking a culture difficult, but they would try anyway, then bandage me up, then prescribe me meds, then either ask me to come back to the clinic once they've got the culture results or visit my local doc after Chuseok break to check my progress. 

UPDATE 2: A guy just came in to take a culture, and he also noted there was no pus. They're trying to take a "Gram stain" instead of a regular culture by lightly rubbing my wounds with a cotton swab. Not long from now, they'll re-dress my toe, print out a prescription, and send me on my way. 

weird SF aircraft

Simple answer: because the designers for the movies don't care about the physics.

I think Korea's been following these standards for a while

My own BP monitor puts me in the yellow zone if my BP is a classic 120/80. Absurd.

AI Trek humor: the "HR Troi" situation

It's still early days. Keep improving the script, the voice-actor delivery, and the animation, and these sketches will have the potential to become truly entertaining. As it is, this one is just mildly funny. Too bad the cartoon Troi doesn't look anything like Marina Sirtis, which clashes with how faithfully rendered the cartoon Picard is.

whew... major Substack posts done

On the assumption that I'll still be walking the Nakdong River trail starting at the end of this month, I've finished creating and scheduling Substack posts for both my free and paying subscribers. I now have free content going all the way to the beginning of December, and I have paid content going all the way through November 14. I'm scheduled to be done with the walk on November 15, so I should have a day or two to create the following post (i.e., for November 17). When possible, I'll try to stay ahead of when all of these posts publish; as I've mentioned before, my Substack content—free and paid—comes out every Monday and Friday.

I have a few more things to add to the paid Substack, and that'll take a few days. Since I'm apparently resting this week thanks to my toe infection, I have time to create that material. I'm also considering various ways to branch out on Substack, e.g., by adding videos to my paid section and/or creating other, totally separate sections devoted to things like bad poetry, short stories, off-color humor, religious wisdom, etc. And I have several other courses in the works; they'll probably all go into a single Substack "newsletter" so that people who subscribe to one course won't feel obliged to subscribe separately to the other courses: one single subscription will cover all courses, but I obviously can't lump those courses in with Tasty Grammar, which is too specific a label. The courses I have in mind have to do with religious studies, philosophy of religion, and religious diversity. If I'm brave enough, I might also craft basic courses on Hinduism, Buddhism, and the general topic of interreligious dialogue. But all of that is in the future. As things are, I have my hands full with just my grammar Substack.