currently watching "The Expanse"

Along with a few other upcoming reviews, I'll be reviewing all 60-some episodes of "The Expanse," likely when I'm back in Seoul. Without elaborating, I can already say this: all the raves about how the show's spatial physics are "so accurate"—well, they're all bullshit, and you don't even need to be a scientist to figure that out.

from famine to feast

My blog stats dipped under 1000 for the first time in a long time yesterday as the visits continue to do their usual beginning-of-spring shrivel. But today, the stats are already at 25,000 visits, and there are several hours to go. (The blog is still on Seoul time, and every 24-hour period ends, bizarrely, at 9 a.m.)

ululate!

Actor Val Kilmer, who had his heyday in the 80s and 90s, is dead at age 65. He had a good returning role as Iceman in "Top Gun: Maverick," but I probably remember him best for his comic roles in "Real Genius" and "Top Secret." I never saw his take on Jim Morrison in "The Doors," nor have I seen his Doc Holliday in "Tombstone" (but that movie is on my queue). Kilmer had a reputation for being difficult to work with, but from "Top Gun" to "Heat," he repeatedly showed himself to be a talented actor. RIP.

the left is mentally ill

Forget the question of whether trans people are mentally ill. What about the left?

WHAT!?

Disgraced Deep State Cover-Up Artist and head of the FBI New York Office James Dennehy just threw himself a PARADE outside the FBI building after being FIRED by Trump

These people are egomaniacal sociopaths in need of clinical help

Good riddance!pic.twitter.com/1AGdtBLfoR

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 7, 2025

Are you allergic to periods, Benny?

Link Lauren on the Super Bowl

Before this gets too stale:

feel free to disagree... I don't care

Best sign ever. https://t.co/rOKzxSt9sY

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) April 1, 2025

The sign is, however, missing a comma.

the most obnoxious breakfast "sandwich" you'll ever see

This must be seen to be believed. Only in America, right? As I watched, I couldn't help thinking, at the end, that if you're going to pour maple syrup all over that thing, the meat should be sausage, not steak. The flavor profile's all wrong.

a cooler walk

somewhere between Mile 24 and Mile 26 on Skyline Drive

Mile 24 on Skyline Drive is the Elkwallow lot, store, and picnic ground. I left my rental at the Mile 24 parking lot and walked to Mile 26 and back. It was a bright, cool day with a high of 60ºF/15.6ºC. The walk itself wasn't too bad; it began with a downhill that I thought would exact a price on the way back, but the eventual uphill turned out not to be that hard. Since it's a weekday, the traffic again wasn't that bad, so I didn't do too much car-dodging. I did, however, need to wear my jacket: 60ºF on a windless day is short-sleeve weather, but in the mountains at that time of day (late morning/early afternoon), it was in the 40s (5-9ºC) and breezy—too cold for me to go minimal. So I had my jacket on. It was a bright, clear, happy day. I'd forgotten to bring along my portable WiFi hotspot, but I shrugged and, really, it didn't matter. More and more, though, I think a spring or fall walk along the entire length of the Drive is possible if I bring camping gear, a water filter (I have an old, early-edition Grayl and a LifeStraw), and enough dry food to last me for an 18-day walk. (I could eat every other day, thus needing only nine days' worth of food.) I haven't figured out the logistics of cell-phone recharge yet; solar when you're flanked by woods doesn't leave you with many options.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Today's walk was even shorter than the other day's six-miler, being closer to four miles, but it was hilly enough to get my heart pumping (not overly, though). When I leave Manassas on Friday and install myself in my buddy Mike's house in Fredericksburg, I hope to do some longer walks. Mike knows some of the local routes, and I might end up doing some of them twice or even three times.

Actually, what I'm really hoping for is the arrival of my new driver's license—kinda the main reason I'm here. It's been weird to drive around with only a printed piece of paper from the Manassas DMV labeled "temporary permit," whose only real purpose is to have something to hand over to a police officer should I be caught speeding (I've been trying to behave myself on that score, but it's hard sometimes; Route 66 invites speed).

And while I'm partially on the subject of cars: I'm still not used to the button-start/stop function. I know these have been around for years, but it's my first time using one. The rental office gave me a key fob; the fob has buttons to lock/unlock the car, pop the trunk, etc., but you don't need keys to start the car: you press the brake and hit the "start" button. At the end of your drive, you don't even need to press the brake: just hit the button again, and the engine dies. I keep wanting to use the key for something. Cars strike me as more trouble than they're worth, but they're undeniably good to have when you need to go any long distance, and when you know the public-transportation scene is nearly nonexistent, as it is in most places outside of heavily urbanized America. Manassas has only one or two commuter-rail stops that I know of, but if I ever had to get to Front Royal via bus or rail, I'd be fucked (actually, not true—but look at the prices! so I'd still be fucked).

So today's walk was brief but a bit of an effort. I'll go back to the Drive tomorrow and do a different section, possibly a longer one, as my heart and lungs get used to the strain. Despite being so mountainous, Korea has a lot of flat bike paths, which is why I try to do stairs work to get my heart and lungs going. On the Drive, by contrast, I don't miss the stairs.

butterfly effect?

 

keyboard humor ("Dungeon Fighter" commercial)

I thought this was hilarious.

Turn on the closed captions and set them to "English" to see subtitles. But the commercial is still mostly understandable even without subtitles.

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Clever (or painful) pun undermined by the lack of a period.

Oh, noes!

My two-year-old said this observation was trite yet profound.

I hope a lot of this has been found and corrected by now.

Don't over-capitalize. Don't over-capitalize.

Where does the comma go, Frank?

Priorities, man. Gotta report on what's important. The people need to know, y'know? (Ellipsis.)

Get it right: Cardi B, not Cardi-B. Also: capitalization, comma.

We're in the aftermath now. Still happy?

D'oh.

Fix the English.

Two commas needed.

I may have posted this one before. As I said last time: She's not the only one.

In my empire, they'd all be publicly and slowly executed.

would you do this for your art?

I don't think I could do this even with a breathing tube.

Wahlberg vs. Clarkson

Raimi's "Spider-Man," ruined by AI

Hilarious. Absurd. Illogical. And one of the better uses of AI.

lame walk

I went out to do the Stony Man Loop trail today, but I didn't get very far—maybe only a few hundred yards before I had to call it quits and turn around. Because my sense of balance is now shot, my best bet is to walk on paved roads, but Skyline Drive's trails are unpaved, rough, root-ridden, and often rocky (as much of Virginia is—rocky, I mean). So I followed the trail as far as I could today, then gave up when I came to a rocky outcropping that would have been easy for a normal person (or me in my youth), but dicey for someone with a stroke-addled brain like mine. When I reached the outcropping, I gave up and turned around. A giggling group of teen or twenty-something girls proceeded onward; I envied their youth and health.

And that was the extent of today's walk. Tomorrow, I'll do a much longer stretch along the road, doing what I can to avoid bears, deer, and ticks. A couple more days of this, then I'll check out of this hotel and shack up at my buddy's house. That'll be a relief: the restaurant next door to the hotel (which also serves breakfast for hotel residents) plays extremely loud dance music at night sometimes, and the "neighbors" I hear outside my door don't always sound like the friendliest types as they speak guttural Spanish or country English. The walls of my room are so thin, in fact, that when I sneezed a night or two ago, a male voice next door loudly said, "Bless you! (in a country where people actually acknowledge your sneezes!)" I didn't say anything back because I didn't want to get roped into a silly, shouted conversation. Those hotel guests are gone now. All of my next-door "neighbors" have been pretty transient, often waking up very early the next day to move along to wherever they're headed.

Right. So I'll try again at Skyline Drive tomorrow, even if it does mean dodging traffic. During the week, I've noticed, the traffic is a lot lighter.

Oh, yeah: I saw three walkers, all my age and older, hoofing it along the road today with packs and trekking poles. How long had they been at it? How many days or weeks? This inspired me to think about coming back here to hike the entire length of the Drive. It's 110 miles long (177 km), which makes the Drive shorter than the trails I've done in Korea. But it's also a generally hillier route, and I'd probably have to camp all along the way. Still, it's something to think about, not to mention good practice, especially if I one day want to do the Alaska Pipeline walk, a system of trails from the south coast of Alaska to the north coast. That, too, will take some major planning and prep, and probably someone's help. (Frankly, that's more of a bucket-list walk than something I'm seriously planning right now. And I'm not looking forward to Alaska's skeeters.)

why are eggs cheaper in Mexico and Canada?

Headline (paywall):

Why Eggs Are Cheaper in Mexico and Canada
Highly pathogenic bird flu is present in Canada, and continues to crop up in Mexico, but both countries have different approaches.

While all three of the largest countries in North America are dealing with outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu, egg prices are consistently lower in Canada and Mexico than in the United States. Consumers may wonder why.

In Canada, the average price for a dozen eggs was about $3.30 in January, according to Canada’s national statistics agency.

In Mexico, the price for a dozen eggs is around $2 or lower.

Meanwhile, according to the most recently published federal price data, Americans are paying more than $5 for a carton of eggs on average.

[ ... ]

Notably, both Canada and Mexico have active federal measures to control the price of eggs, while the United States does not. Since the 1970s, Canada has used protection measures to control its supply of eggs and the price of the commodity. In the face of high inflation, the Mexican government recently enacted price controls on key goods, including controls on the price of eggs.

Mexico has dealt with outbreaks of various strains of highly pathogenic bird flu since the 1990s. However, it utilizes vaccines to combat the disease rather than culling large numbers of birds. U.S.-based sources told The Epoch Times the country also has lower sanitary standards for eggs.

Canada’s supply-controlled agricultural economy and far lower national population allow Canadian farmers to operate much smaller egg farms than their American counterparts. Smaller poultry barns prevent large-scale bird losses if the disease is detected and a cull is necessary.

So, anti-free-market measures like price controls and lower health standards (as we see in Mexico) militate toward cheaper egg prices. Duly noted. So—get sloppy and undemocratic, America! We have a lot of catching up to do!

(Unfortunately, there are other aspects of the food industry where I think Europe has stricter and better standards regarding quality and impact on health, and we might learn something from the Europeans, especially regarding chemical additives to preserve shelf life and various dyes that are potentially carcinogenic. I saw a recent comparison of US Coca Cola to Mexican Coke. Mexican Coke uses natural cane sugar; US Coke uses processed sweeteners, and while both versions of Coke are unhealthy in terms of sugar content, Mexican Coke is consistently favored by Americans over US Coke. It just tastes better. We could learn from that, too. RFK is right: let's stop feeding ourselves crap.)

they finally got her in their bullshit net

BREAKING:

Marine Le Pen found guilty by a Paris court moments ago for embezzlement of EU funds.

Her sentence will be delivered within minutes.

She could both be sentenced to prison and be banned from running in the 2027 presidential elections, which polls have her winning. pic.twitter.com/WNZlX9G7sK

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 31, 2025

This kind of undemocratic nonsense is happening all over Europe—in the UK, in France, in Germany, in Romania. The leaders will do what they can to avoid giving the people what they want. Eventually, the people will answer the question posed in Langston Hughes's great poem "Raisin in the Sun." Or have they been sufficiently pacified by tech?

UPDATE: is France still a democracy?

the problem with Jean-François Charles

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Are we mixing metaphors here? Melting = Wicked Witch of the West; cross = vampire-stopper.

I want to hear more of this "conspiracy theory."

Not so fast: the net will also catch some Republicans. Probably a lot of the Never Trumpers.

What's the punctuation problem? Why is it a problem? How do you fix it?

Why should the comma be removed?

Zuby's in the UK, so I'm OK with his UK punctuation.

This makes me think of the chick with the floor-to-ceiling closet of purses.

Sage advice no matter what you think of Piers.

We need to hear all the suppressed stories of post-trans regret. (Oh, and add a period.)

Capitalize, add apostrophe, capitalize, add a period. Anything else from the illiterate?

(I think the counterargument is that tats aren't permanent.)

Come on—who hasn't fought police while high and wanking?

"threat to the rule of law"

Are Trump’s deportations a "threat to the rule of law"? A reply to the letter of complaint against Trump by a coterie of predictably leftist and hypocritical Harvard law profs:

Where were the letter’s signatories when federal prosecutors took the unprecedented step of bringing dozens of criminal charges against a former president, who also happened to be the leading electoral opponent of the then-incumbent president? Where were the signatories when Jeff Clark, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and other lawyers were disbarred or threatened with disbarment, and indeed prosecuted, for their representation of President Trump? Was this not a threat to the rule of law? Where were the signatories when radical activists menaced Supreme Court Justices in their homes, or when a mob hammered on the doors of the Supreme Court itself? Where were the signatories when the Senate Minority Leader shouted to an angry crowd outside the Court that “I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions”? Were these not also literal threats to the rule of law?

Do click the link. There are other replies.

follow the bouncing titties (or lack thereof)

Cleverly designed AI can create hilarious songs out of tweets and comments.

make your own kadayif chocolate

It's a fad for sure, but I think I'm already over it.

Joerg's "apocalypse bike"

ululate! Poor Richard

Actor Richard Chamberlain is dead at 90. He was the king of 80s-era miniseries, starring in "Shogun" and "The Thorn Birds," and he was a big fixture of my childhood. As I grew up, I came to understand that he was a lusted-after sex symbol for many women, but in 2003, Chamberlain revealed he was gay. Whatever his orientation, he loomed large when I was a kid, and the world is a dimmer place without him. I might actually remember him best for his role as Prince Edward in the musical "The Slipper and the Rose."

another Trek I won't watch

It failed a while ago, but the failure lives on.

bad news from my boss

My boss emailed to say that his attempted deal to get office space at that property we'd visited in Suwon fell through. The landlord apparently had a sudden attack of amnesia about the cheap rental rate he had initially offered the boss; he abruptly wanted about 50% more, claiming not to remember the initial, cheap offer. So the boss, who had been on friendly terms with the guy for years, walked. This probably means that I won't be able to move into that apartment in the same building, which might be for the best since I'd rather stay in Seoul, anyway, even if that means a smaller place that's still bigger than a studio. 

I hadn't said anything to anybody, but I kind of thought that the boss's initial deal, not to mention the offer he'd tried to get me for my apartment, sounded too good to be true. For me, the offer was only a million won down for the deposit, then W500,000 a month for the rent, plus utilities. That would be insanely cheap with Suwon being so close to Seoul. The initial arrangement for the boss was an office space at W300,000 a month, which would have been astoundingly cheap for a space meant for a boss and two underlings.

So I'll be doing my own property hunting when I get back to Korea, and maybe some of my own job-hunting as well.

Democrats: et tu, NYT?

It's a rare scintilla of truthfulness, and it comes from none other than the New York Times, one of the chief propaganda arms of the US left.

Headline:

The New York Times Drops a Massive Truth Bomb on the Democrats

The New York Times editorial board just discovered what conservatives have been saying for years: the Democratic Party is completely out of touch with everyday Americans.

It’s a stunning rebuke from a paper that typically carries the water for Dems. The Times finally admitted the obvious: Democrats' obsession with identity politics and their "scolding, censorious posture" have driven voters straight into Republicans' arms.

“In the aftermath of this comprehensive defeat, many party leaders have decided that they do not need to make significant changes to their policies or their message,” the editorial board writes. “They have instead settled on a convenient explanation for their plight.”

They then point out that Democrats are in denial about their electoral struggles, clinging to the idea that they are merely victims of post-pandemic inflation and poor messaging rather than deeper political failures. Party leaders insist their policies are popular but that voter apathy—rather than a genuine shift toward Trump—led to their losses. DNC Chairman Ken Martin claims Democrats simply need to “connect” their message better, while Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz dismisses the idea of winning over Trump voters, instead focusing on mobilizing those who stayed home.

“As comforting as these explanations may feel to Democrats, they are a form of denial that will make it harder for the Democratic Party to win future elections,” they warn.

I don't think the right should be all that satisfied with or gratified by this admission by the NYT. The admission doesn't guarantee that the NYT won't say something stupid and/or manipulative in the future, and it certainly doesn't signify a sudden swing to the political center from an organization that's been so reliably leftist. And yes: because politics is pendular, the left will one day inevitably regain power, perhaps sooner than one thinks. Why? In part because so much of the voting public is fickle and stupid. Just enjoy this rare NYT moment and move on.

GogiGo: a somewhat surreal experience

I don't have any photos of last night's dinner, but I went out to GogiGo, a new, Korean-ish restaurant in Fredericksburg, with my buddy Mike, his wife, and their eldest daughter Rachael (my goddaughter). I was all prepared to try to banter with Korean staff in Korean, but as I should have expected, all the servers and hosts and other staffers were non-Koreans. Mike ordered a rather steeply priced ($31/person!), all-you-can-eat option for all of us; we had to select which meats we'd like to have, so Mike did pork and beef while Rachael did squid, which was sauced up and cut into calamari rings (no tentacles).

Our table was done in the Korean-resto style, i.e., the middle of the table held a round, heated griddle that used gas instead of the more typical and traditional lumps of charcoal (to be fair, some Korean restos in Korea use gas). The gas didn't burn quite as hot as it does in a Korean resto in Korea, I noticed, but the proteins cooked up just fine. The all-you-can-eat option came with a bowl of gonggi-bap (standard scoop of rice in a small, metal bowl; you can get seconds, and even thirds); Mike gave me a bibimbap-sized bowl, and while he cooked the meats, I transferred my gonggi-bap to the bigger bowl, went over to a "bibimbap station," and ringed my rice with assorted veggies. The bibimbap station was laid out like a salad bar, with most of the usual ingredients there, including sesame oil and liquidy gochujang (Korean-style chili sauce). The only weirdness I saw at the station was the inclusion of shredded lettuce (is this a thing in Korea with bibimbap? I don't think so) and shredded cabbage. I ignored those in favor of the more standard, familiar bibimbap items. Oh, yes: at no point did I ever find a fried egg, which is normally a bibimbap topper, sometimes being the only protein in an otherwise-vegetarian dish.*

The menu showed this wasn't a purely Korean restaurant, but rather a fusion place. Appetizers included such non-Korean items as spring rolls, mozzarella-cheese sticks, tempura-style calamari, etc. The entrées and à la carte selections included non-Korean novelties like "Hawaiian bulgogi" and teriyaki chicken, further confusing and conflating Korean and Japanese culture in people's minds.

To be fair, Korea does its fair share of attempts at fusion, too, and as I've said before on this blog, most of them are unsuccessful—either in terms of popularity or in terms of my own opinion. Just as I was sitting there in the resto noting how This is isn't Korean; that isn't Korean, I wouldn't be surprised if a Westerner were to come to Korea and be aghast at the way Western food is, even today, often misinterpreted in creative and uncreative ways. 

Well, you can't push the boundaries of food if you don't try, but that thin layer of success (e.g., budae-jjigae) sits on an ocean of failure (e.g., cheese ddeokbokgi and its cousins).

In all, GogiGo was a good experience. Since I prepped my own bowls of bibimbap, I knew they'd be good, and they were. Mike (in charge of the beef and pork) and Rachael (in charge of the squid) both cooked their proteins to perfection, and I piled the beef and pork onto my bibimbap creation. My blood sugar, which has been suffering for days, was at its worst this morning, but that was also partly because of a regular Dr. Pepper I'd had last night (some sort of strawberries-and-cream flavor that was a lot better than the awful blackberry one).

Fusion is a thing wherever you go in this postmodern world. Cultures that probably shouldn't be slammed together get slammed together in strange combinations, especially in the context of a third, surrounding culture. As I'd noted earlier, in the US, you can find Japanese-Korean restos as well as Indo-Pakistani, Indo-Nepali, Sino-Japanese... I can add Vietnamese-Thai and all sorts of other combinations. Korea's becoming just as pastiched, following America over the postmodernist cliff. This isn't inherently good or bad; syncretism is how it's always been, but along with the jumble, it's good to have the more traditional holdouts as well.

Would I recommend GogiGo as an "authentic" experience of Korean food? I can say that the food I ate was perfectly Korean, but the menu offerings contain enough non-Korean items (probably necessary for culinarily timid Americans) for me to hesitate on the question of authenticity. As for the more basic question—did it taste good?—well, yes. It did.

Some days from now, after I've fasted a while, I'll be chowing down on some "inauthentic" pizza. As an old priest-professor of mine once said, "It's all syncretism."

__________

*Let me clarify: bibimbap comes in a million different variations, so a lot of what I might think of as strange has doubtless been done somewhere. In other words, bibimbap, varied as it is, isn't inherently vegetarian; you can use marinated ground beef, or strips of marinated beef, or seafood, or whatever protein you desire. I'm sure some French-run resto has done a frou-frou bibimbap using a high-grade lobster topped with the best caviar. But my point is that even the simplest bibimbap, which would otherwise be vegetarian, will often have a fried egg on top. Of course, hardcore vegetarian bibimbap won't have the egg.

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Daughters! What say you?

She is, in fact, a relative (cousin) of Chuck Schumer.

I need to find this restaurant. Sounds great for a date. And where does the comma go?

canine version of the Sisyphus problem

Go figure. And capitalize "Earth" if you're specifically naming it. If there's a the, then just earth.

Periods. Vocative commas. Quotation marks.

I wonder what a real 23rd-century Enterprise would be like.

Top line: I'm not drunk!
Bottom line: You're talking to a cat.

There's a "taste the wood" joke in there somewhere.

What eponymous means.

must be related

Bruce Wayne's pad after Wayne Manor burned down.

Chaya needs a hyphen. So does Lisa. Otherwise, Chaya is clever in a lawyerly way.

I love how the lefties turned against MSNBC. They do love to eat their own. And... hyphen. Comma.

roaches

My first night in this hotel, I saw a huge cockroach. It furtively disappeared under some furniture. A night later, I saw a second roach and lightly kicked it. It skittered across the floor and lay on its back, legs flailing. Lucky shot on my part. I grabbed some toilet tissue, wrapped the roach in it, and squeezed. Problem solved. I then resolved to go back to Walmart to buy that can of Raid I'd mentioned earlier. I saw a third roach the next day and went for my Raid. As happens in horror movies when you look away for an instant, the bug disappeared, but I was lucky enough to see it as it disappeared, and to find the nasty hole into which it had gone (at the bottom of my bathroom's door jamb). I sprayed that hole, soaking it with chemicals. The day after that, I saw two roaches in the vanity area (where there's a sink and a mirror) on the other side of the floor from the roach-hole. Both were on their backs, dying. The spray had worked its evil magic. I spray that entry point twice a day now in an effort to keep the beasties at bay. Haven't seen a roach since. But they could be out there. 

dying roaches, now dead after another spray for good measure

 one side of the roach hyperspace portal (bathroom door)

the other side of that same jamb—bigger hole

a wider shot

As the fake Mad Eye Moody used to say, Constant vigilance!