oh, the strain

well, that didn't take long

I've already finished up Friday quiz announcements through July 3. Currently, quiz announcements are taking the place of regular grammar lessons as I catch up with my quizzes. My eventual hope is to have 60 quizzes to match the 60 grammar units I've created for my paying Substack subscribers. Thus far, I have nearly thirty quizzes done, and these weekly announcements herald each quiz, one by one. I'll get back to generating grammar content soon, but for the moment, it's just quiz announcements. Apologies to my one or two subscribers who are bristling with impatience for more grammar content.

Now that I'm done with quiz announcements, I can at last turn to the one remaining to-do before I return to my movie-review book and quiz generation: Bad Online English. Since BOE will now be a Monday-only thing, I have about ten BOE units to craft. Come to think of it, I also need to catch up on BOE quizzes, of which I currently have only four, which take the learner up to BOE Unit #24. Bad Online English lessons are up to BOE #80 right now, so there's definitely a lot of catching up to do. Each BOE quiz normally covers around five or so BOE lessons. Also—and this is just an aside—since memes often showcase the same stupid mistakes over and over and over, learners get plenty of review.

Lots of work to be done. And the work is never finished.

rent is going up!

with thanks to ChatGPT

I got a call from the downstairs real-estate office this morning. My rent is going up, from W735,000 to W770,000 a month, starting in June. I also have to confirm this by going downstairs next month and signing the new rental contract. Joy. Just what I need in a time of belt-tightening: higher rent. I didn't think my rent would increase once I put down my W10,000,000 deposit, but I guess it's just like in the States. My rent for my apartment in Front Royal went from $680-ish to $850-ish in three years.

mmmmaybe

maybe put it back in your pants

I'm normally a brown-eyed-brunette kind of guy, but I find brown eyes paired with blonde hair to be utterly fascinating and tempting. Maybe I was just unobservant, but I don't recall ever seeing that combination before college. Then at Georgetown, I saw several chicas who all had that freakishly captivating look, and I knew when I saw them that I would sell my soul to them in a heartbeat. Now, I'm not suggesting that that combination is enough to seduce me if the girl weighs as much as I do, but if she's even marginally cute, blonde hair and brown eyes will jack up her Scoville rating to impossible heights. I have no idea why.

And yeah, there are some blonde-haired, blue-eyed cuties that I've liked, but in general, those ladies aren't my type. For me, the default is brown-brown. But blonde-brown just totally upends my inner chessboard. Inner pieces go flying, and there's no inner peace.

Invincible, Season 4: review

the high point of the season: here's what Thragg (Lee Pace) looks like when you hit him full-force

[WARNING: spoilers.]

It is accomplished. Season 4 of Invincible has just finished, and the stakes have become both cosmic and intimate. Several of the season's major subplots include the continuing rehabilitation of Nolan/Omni-Man (JK Simmons), the developing relationship between Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) and his brother Oliver (Christian Convery), the growing menace of Grand Regent Thragg (Lee Pace), the fate of the planet Viltrum, and the tumultuous politics of the galaxy-wide Coalition of Planets, an association that stands against the Viltrum Empire and is led, ironically, by a Viltrumite rebel named Thaedus (Peter Cullen, famously the voice of Optimus Prime in Transformers).

As young Mark—a half-Korean, half-Viltrumite hybrid—discovered seasons ago, the Viltrum Empire has ruled the galaxy by forceful subjugation for centuries. Nolan Grayson, known on Earth as Omni-Man, originally lived among Earth's humans and native-born superheroes as the mightiest hero of them all, letting no one know that he was on Earth both as an assessor of Earth's worthiness to become part of the Viltrum Empire and as a judge of whether humans could breed with Viltrumites to produce robust offspring. While on Earth, Nolan had married Debbie Grayson (Sandra Oh); Mark was the result. He came into his powers in his teen years, and his Viltrumite genes proved so dominant that Mark is effectively all Viltrumite in terms of his power levels. This is important because the Viltrum Empire was reduced from billions to only fifty Viltrumites by an engineered virus called Scourge, which is why the remaining Viltrumites need genetically compatible people with whom to breed and replenish their race. Interbreeding exclusively among the fifty remaining Viltrumites would result in a genetic bottleneck, hence the need to breed with Earthlings. While Nolan had apprised his son of Viltrum's imperialistic agenda, he only belatedly revealed Viltrum's ulterior breeding agenda. (Incidentally, Viltrumites can breed with nonhuman races, which is how the purplish-but-human-looking Oliver originated, but Earth humans have proven to be the most genetically compatible with Viltrumites.)

This season, much of the action takes place in outer space. Nolan convinces Mark to fight what is supposed to be the final, definitive war with the Viltrumite remnant. Mark is joined by Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen), Tech Jacket (Zoey Deutch), General Telia (Tatiana Maslany), Battle Beast (Michael Dorn), Thaedus, and others. Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs) remains on Earth; she's pregnant when Mark departs for space, something Mark discovers only upon returning to Earth after months of battles.

During those battles, Mark, Nolan, and Thaedus—with the help of Space Racer (Winston Duke) and his unstoppable gun, manage to destroy the planet Viltrum as a symbolic gesture to persuade the remaining Viltrumites to surrender and choose peace. But the remaining Viltrumites, enraged, fight on. Grand Regent Thragg nearly kills both Oliver and Nolan; he successfully beheads Thaedus, leaving Allen the Alien in charge of the Coalition of Planets. Mark is, in an early episode, nearly killed by the recently self-healed Conquest (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), whom Mark strangles while Conquest rips out Mark's intestines.

Part of Mark's ethical struggle this season deals with his increasing willingness to kill new and long-time enemies as a way of definitively ending conflicts since these enemies, if left alive, always seem to come back stronger. Oliver, meanwhile, is young and prideful about his powers, but he tends to take on enemies who are too powerful for him, which means he's either frequently injured or frequently rescued, usually by his big half-brother Mark. Luckily, Viltrumite healing factors are so strong that, even after being eviscerated, Mark is back in action only a few weeks later, and Oliver is still alive after his jaw is ripped off.

Season 4 was fairly unevenly paced, with at least two episodes serving as little more than "filler" stories that didn't move the main plot forward. Of course, the showrunners shoehorned the juiciest bits of the plot into the season's three final episodes, which were admittedly more interesting than many of the episodes from previous seasons.

In general, Invincible seems to be listening to its fan base and not going too far off the rails in terms of (1) faithfulness to the original comic series and (2) attempts to shoehorn in some sort of sociopolitical agenda. This season feels, for the most part, like good old-fashioned storytelling, despite a bit of race- and sex-swapping here and there. A lot of the season's interest comes in the form of Grand Regent Thragg, who has led the Viltrum Empire since the murder of Emperor Argall (Frank Welker, famously the voice of Megatron in Transformers) by the renegade Thaedus, a Viltrumite who has long been against the empire's agenda of conquest and enslavement. Thragg—who is drawn to look like a muscular Freddie Mercury—is established to be a fantastically powerful Viltrumite for whom even enemies like Nolan Grayson are but puny opponents. One of the most memorable scenes depicts what happens when Mark, furious, slams his fist into Thragg's head with enough force to crack a planet: We see a quick, red flash of what appears to be a demonic skull, possibly symbolizing Thragg's almost-supernatural power and immovability. The flash is over in a moment, but for me, it's the high point of the season. I've heard rumors that some fans are dissatisfied with Lee Pace's voicing of Thragg, and I too have to wonder whether Pace, with his smooth and deep voice that worked so well for his role as Thranduil, is the right choice for Thragg. But overall, I think Pace does a fine, workable job.

One of the season's filler episodes is devoted to Mark's side trip to hell to help Damien Darkblood (Clancy Brown) and his master Satan (Bruce Campbell!) in their battle against another hellish divinity named Volcanikka, who has usurped Satan's throne. This episode is skimpy on action, but it makes up for this lack with plenty of comedy and a truckload of exposition on the true metaphysics of hell and the outer Earth where we mortals live. Earth has apparently gone through a handful of "ages," with different waves of creatures arising in each age. Unfortunately, the creatures from previous ages don't all simply disappear; many giant, powerful creatures from the first and second ages still remain and haunt the world (we're in the fifth or sixth age now), and it's the job of the current hell-beings to keep things under control so that these primordial beasts don't run rampant on the earth's surface. So the beings of hell aren't evil the way our mythologies portray them; they actually serve a salutary, protective function. Mark, despite helping Darkblood and Satan, still can't quite bring himself to think of hell's denizens as anything but evil. The episode is an interesting aside but has no obvious effect on or relevance to the season's larger plot.

The season ends with the planet Viltrum destroyed and the remaining thirty-eight Viltrumites on Earth. Thragg meets Mark in the sky and makes a pact: The Viltrumites will live in peace and anonymity among the Earthlings, quietly breeding and replenishing their bloodlines and population. In return, Mark and his fellow heroes will leave the Viltrumites alone: A violation of this pact will mean the destruction and enslavement of the planet. At the time Thragg makes this pact with Mark, Mark's father Nolan is away in space (with his ex-wife Debbie) to see to his other son, Oliver, who is still recovering from his injuries. Mark feels the burden of representing the entire earth and making a decision that will affect the future of the planet. Thragg's stated motivation for this pact is that his role as grand regent includes safeguarding the survival of the Viltrumite race, a priority that is now more important than conquest.

Mark also discovers, upon his return to Earth, that Eve was pregnant when he left, but that she'd had an abortion while he was away. The atom-moving powers she had lost during her pregnancy have returned, but Eve has also gained weight (entering what I like to think of as her "fat Apollo" phase). The real problem for Mark, though, is that his pact with Thragg was made privately, so no one else in the entire Coalition of Planets knows about this agreement—not Nolan, not Allen the Alien, not even fellow Earthling Tech Jacket (a teen girl with a Blue Beetle-style set of armor). This will obviously cause problems in Season 5.

Overall, this was a very interesting season of Invincible. Despite the seemingly unnecessary digressions from the main story, the continued low quality of the animation, and the often-questionable physics in space and elsewhere, the voice work remains excellent, and even though the entire story is a bloated, typically comic-booky mess, the world-building and plot-weaving remain interesting enough to keep my attention and make me care. The story as it plays out in the comics goes on for a long time, but assuming the showrunners have found their rhythm, I'm not expecting any major dips in quality in the near future.

hole-ier than thou

Walken—emperor of us all

ey'm doon for the neyght

Right... I'm done with adding new puzzles and games through June for Substack, the beast that must always be fed. I've got one new crossword, several more visual riddles, and a new-yet-old thing—transformations, which I've done on this blog before.

Tomorrow, I'll add more quiz announcements, and I've definitively decided that, yes, the grammar stuff will now move to a once-a-week schedule to reduce my workload. This means the curriculum is going to go on for much longer, but since only four people are currently paying to see that curriculum and at least one person is too lazy to bother following it, this change isn't important to the rest of the world. It's not as though I have 250,000 paying subscribers hanging on to my every word. 

Man, it'd be so much easier just to make money writing rants about politics, but as John from Daejeon emailed me, there are people using AI to do that sort of thing already. And it seems a lot of conservatives are falling for that slop.

Right—it's time to watch the final episode of Season 4 of Invincible and the next episode of the already-disappointing Season 5 of The Boys, which has utterly cranked up the wokeness when even Marvel is finally coming around to the idea that woke slop is not what audiences want. (It'd be nice if Amazon would follow suit and cancel the godawful The Rings of Power. But it apparently can't, not without incurring an enormous kill fee that was part of the contract.)

can't get away from the forging

cloudy with a chance of idiots

I realize that humor doesn't always come out perfectly, especially in writing. Tone of voice, in particular, can be hard to convey. But some people really need to try harder if they're attempting to be funny or whimsical. 

Here's a recent exchange I had over in an Instapundit Open Thread. My interlocutor is probably male and over 60, like most of the OT commentariat.

Someone had put up a picture of a young Jennifer Connelly, back when she was breasty:

Various commenters hooted their appreciation, and I left this remark:

Ah, yes—before the reduction surgery. Sweet mamm—uh, memories.

Someone replied:

Why reduction surgery? Generally, I am against government interference is private matters, but reduction surgery should be outlawed.

We'll forgive the "is private matters." Old people often make typos and never bother to check or to correct themselves, and I'm starting to become one of them. Anyway, I detected no humor in the above because the OT threads tend to be hotbeds of rightie rhetoric, so I reasonably thought the guy was being a serious rightie. Doesn't the above sound like something a self-serious rightie might write? So I wrote in response:

I've had some large-breasted female friends complain about how their breasts are unwieldy, creating problems with under-boob sweat and friction/irritation. But the biggest complaint has always been that large breasts bring lower-back problems. Do these women absolutely need surgery? Probably not. I would guess that there are solutions to these problems that don't require any surgery at all. E.g., developing a strong core can help with back problems, and there are doubtless products and types of clothing that can help with mobility and irritation. But for what it's worth, I don't see breast-reduction surgery as a problem on the same level as breast-enhancement surgery, which is almost always about ego and superficiality.

His response:

You are being too serious, while I am letting my inner teenager out. Bigger is always better.

Ah. He was letting his inner teenager out. Funny, that! Hilarious!

I decided not to respond with what I was thinking, which is basically that you don't write a humorless response, follow it up with the accusation that I'm "being too serious," then put yourself in the virtuous, superior position by claiming "I am letting my inner teenager out" in supposed contrast to my seriousness. This self-aggrandizing approach is not how you make friends, but it is how you show yourself to be an arrogant asshole.

So I concluded I was dealing with an unfunny idiot and egomaniac who had arrogated to himself the right to be preachy, and I decided to say nothing in response.

Was I wrong to think any of this? What "humor" cues did I miss? I mean, I know I can sometimes be over-literal in a Spock-like way, but was I in this case? Keep in mind, before you answer, that my blog is the space where I vent, so don't come to the conclusion that I'm going to obsess over this all day or that I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. I deal with stupid people like this all the time, and in almost every case, the problem comes down to a combination of ego, incompetence (poor self-expression in this case), and ignorance (think: Dunning-Kruger). In most cases, it's the interlocutor's problem; in some cases, it's my problem. But not this time, I think.

If you're old and believe you're being funny, double-check your tone and ask yourself how others might see your writing. You might be chuckling at the supposed "wittiness" of your response, but if you're more objective, you might just see that the humor isn't coming through. And yeah, I realize this applies to me, too.

repopulating Substack

I'm in the midst of writing up more scheduled posts for Substack. I just finished generating posts for The Creative (stuff that appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays); I'm about to generate material for The Entertaining (games/puzzles that appear on Wednesdays).

As for The Superficial (Bad Online English) and The Profound (my full grammar curriculum), both of which come out on Mondays and Fridays, I might reduce my workload by making The Superficial a Monday-only thing and The Profound a Friday-only thing. With all of the other material I'm putting out there, this seems warranted. The posts I'm generating go through June; some go into the first week of July.

the hallucination is strong in this one

🦔A researcher invented a fake eye condition called bixonimania, uploaded two obviously fraudulent papers about it to an academic server, and watched major AI systems present it as real medicine within weeks.
The fake papers thanked Starfleet Academy, cited funding from the…

— Hedgie (@HedgieMarkets) April 10, 2026

tribute to my aunt

Apollinaire's famous poem on the passage of time, "Le pont Mirabeau," is mostly about time as it relates to love, but there's a couplet in that poem that feels relevant right now:

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Night comes; the hour sounds. The days pass; I remain.

When Mom died, I rode home with Dad from Walter Reed. Without a word, I stumbled into the parent's house, went to my old bedroom, and fell into a depressed sleep for I don't know how long. I remember the first question to enter my head upon waking was, Why am I still alive? Didn't seem fair somehow. But like it or not, time flows ever forward, and life has to go on because that's just the structure of existence. There is no why.

There's only one older-generation relative still alive on my mother's side.

Good journey to you, Emo.

I learned something today

Since all of my friends are white-collar people, I would never have learned this sort of thing from my friends.

Blue collar romance 😂 pic.twitter.com/EUJ8KulK6a

— Rob (@_ROB_29) April 6, 2026

And would someone please tell me what's up with women's eyelashes? I think I'm seeing signs that we're finally starting to move away from those goofy, ugly, ridiculous "wingtip" thingies that Western women have been doing since the early 2010s. God, I hate those. But whatever's moving in to replace that fashion seems kind of like an over-mascara'ed mini-rake, and I can't say that I like the new fashion, either.

Oh, and: Hyphenate "blue collar" in blue-collar romance. Phrasal adjective.

wanted?

Desert Eagle vs. Smith & Wesson

Have a blast.

my aunt has passed away

My aunt (Emo/이모) is on the left; Mom is the next one over, being hugged by a friend from the Korean-American Women's Society (KAWS). The pic was taken in December of 2009; Mom is wearing a wig in that pic, and the glioblastoma had spread to both sides of her brain by that time. Mom was unable to talk as a result, but Dad says she enjoyed the Christmas party and, when she came home, didn't want to take the wig off her head. She'd had to suffer a lot of indignities while she was dying, and now, years later, her big sister has finally joined her. If there's a heaven, I hope they're happy to see each other again.

I just got the news that my aunt, Mom's big sister, passed away less than five hours ago.

AI voice on non-gunpowder guns

But did they have to use a fart-related phrase for the thumbnail?

Mr Inbetween

I've been hearing a lot about an Australian TV series (now finished after three seasons) called Mr Inbetween, a series about a hitman, his daughter, and his various interactions with the saints and assholes around him. Might be worth a watch.

somebody's coming

when a word gets associated with you

"head day"

bro skipped head day pic.twitter.com/2xG4NSScmE

— NO CONTEXT HUMANS (@HumansNoContext) March 27, 2026

Reminds me of the baby-headed Death Eater scene in The Order of the Phoenix.

a fan of those hot noods

stay sharp

Korean 3XL is not 3XL

I ordered a new windbreaker/raincoat from Coupang (first mistake: in Korea, I qualify as "big & tall," and an American expat can't expect "normal" American sizes from a Korean purveyor) to replace the Uniqlo windbreaker/raincoat—a hand-me-down gift from my boss—that got ruined over time thanks to its cheap-ass interior lining. The jacket arrived today, looking suspiciously tiny in its plastic packaging. I pulled the jacket out and liked the feel of the material, but when I unfolded the jacket to appraise it in all of its fullness, my heart sank: I could already see how narrow the shoulders were. Stupidly determined, I nevertheless tried the jacket on, but as I suspected, my arms could barely fit through the sleeves, and the jacket, despite supposedly being 3XL, couldn't even close around my torso.

Because I'm lazy about onerous return policies, and because I don't want to waste the jacket, I'm going to stick it in the clothing hamper downstairs—the one for the poor and homeless. I hope someone will eventually find a use for the jacket. Someone the right size. And when that person finds that jacket, a magical voice will boom from out of nowhere: Well done! And now, O mortal, ask of me your wishes three or face the ass-piglets of the thirty-third hell!

it's high time to switch gears

high time, indeed!

It's April 20, so I'll first wish a Happy 420 to my pot-smoking contingent because God knows I've got a lot of stoners who read this blog to try and improve their grammar.*

But because it's April 20, this also means I need to get back to creating another month's (or two months') worth of content for Substack, as well as two weeks' content for YouTube. Joy. Luckily, content creation shouldn't be too difficult this time around: I'm in the middle of a quiz-making phase, so I'm making 60 quizzes to match the 60 units' worth of grammar curriculum I've developed. In other words, I'm publishing quiz announcements on Substack instead of putting out grammar units, which take a long time to write. Quiz announcements are easier. I will, of course, eventually get back to creating grammar units. The curriculum must continue! What all this means is, starting today, I'll be back to doing the following:

• populating my blog with scheduled posts on YouTube
• adding more "100 Below" short stories to Substack (out every Tues/Thu)
• adding more games and puzzles (out every Wed)
• adding more Bad Online English units (out every Mon/Fri)
• thinking about adding photographic content (out every Tues/Thu)
• thinking about adding cartoons and artwork (out every Tues/Thu)

I still haven't gotten to work on videos, but I promise: Those are coming.

All of this while trolling online for university work.

__________

*Some pedants will argue that try and should never be used: It's try to. But according to this respectable source, that's not true. The locution try and is acceptable. Don't overcorrect.

de-aging

Click to read the full tweet, especially if you're old.

In 1979, a Harvard psychologist sent eight elderly men back in time and their bodies followed.

Back in the 1970s, psychologist @ellenjl ran one of the most provocative experiments in the history of psychology. She invited eight men in their late 70s and early 80s to spend a week… pic.twitter.com/s7Lgip6eJo

— Big Brain Psychology (@BigBrainPsych) April 10, 2026

two more quizzes finished last night

The quizzes for Grammatical Mood, Part 4 and Grammatical Mood, Part 5 are done (or just go visit the Test Central blog and scroll down).

Sample questions follow.

Part 4:

Question 5

(a) A pox _____ upon your village. (indicative)
(b) A pox _____ upon your village. (subjunctive)

was, bewere, bebe, isis, be

REASONING: The indicative mood is for brute declarations of fact and opinion, so the question to ask yourself is: Which verbs convey the meaning of a brute declaration, like a factual sentence in a biography? The subjunctive mood, by contrast, is for things like wishes; necessity; and strong recommendations, suggestions, or proposals. So what fits?

1st possible answer: Yes. A pox was is a declaration of fact: This happened.

2nd possible answer: No. Were is a plural conjugation; pox is singular.

3rd possible answer: No. Be would make the first sentence subjunctive. Is would make the second sentence indicative. Exactly backward.

4th possible answer: Yes. A pox is is a declaration of fact: This is happening now. Be is used for the present subjunctive when making a wish or expressing a desire.

Part 5:

Question 1

Which, if any, are correct?

If I ever see that damn fox again; I’d kill that little fucker.If you sass back one more time, I’ll eat your toes, too.We would never have hired the strippers if we’d known the party was for Father O’Malley.Would they have bought suicide vests, if they’d thought their leader was serious?

REASONING: This unit is largely about if-conditional sentences, which follow certain rules of tense and punctuation. Look at these sentences: If you do that again, I'll kill you. I'll kill you if you do that again. So if the if clause comes first, use a comma. If not, don't use a comma. In this particular example, note how the clause tenses go: (if) present → (main) future. Since you've obviously read the lesson (cough), you know there are, in fact, four situations when it comes to the tense grammar for if-conditional sentences:

Keep all of the above in mind.

1st possible answer: No. The semicolon ruins everything. It should be a comma.

2nd possible answer: Yes. Everything fits—punctuation, tense grammar, etc.

3rd possible answer: Yes. Everything fits—punctuation, tense grammar, etc.

4th possible answer: No. The if clause comes last, so there should be no comma.

So—good luck with the quizzes. You'll have noted that, every time the quizzes reset, you get different questions, and the positions of the answers to each question will also shift (which is possible because a given question might pop up again in a subsequent version of the quiz). I built this order-randomization into every quiz to prevent silly people from trying to memorize answer patterns instead of just studying and learning the old-school way. I also create three or four versions of each of the five quiz questions, and I also randomize the order in which the quiz questions appear; that's three levels of randomization. My ex-boss saw this randomization when he visited my place once, and he made a face as he realized the misanthropic degree of my mistrust of humanity. As always, the quiz questions are multiple choice but designed in such a way that random guessing generally won't give you a 25% probability of being accidentally correct: the probability is more like 1 out of 16.

I'll eventually be working on other types of question formats: fill in the blank, matching, sequencing, etc. Those formats will appear when I eventually start putting out tests. Oh, yes: test are coming. Those will be 20 questions apiece—a lot of work to create.

le look

For the record, I think the character's name is actually spelled Marsellus.

carnivore burgers, take 2

probably fake, but still funny

question, axed and answered

my favorite—but now usually skipped—meal of the day

Alton Brown does breakfast... noodles?

interesting reaction

Over in an Instapundit Open Thread, I announced that Grammatical Mood, Part 3 (imperative mood) was now up and ready. Here's one reaction I got:

I need to go back to high school freshman Latin in order to answer those questions.

Or you could become a paying subscriber and read a lesson that prints out to only one or two pages, learn or relearn the material, and get a 95% or 100% on the quiz.

Think about the psychology: A person doesn't study the material but just takes the quiz and bombs it. This immediately puts the person into an "I can't do it" quitter's mindset, which is the opposite of what I'm trying to achieve. True, the quizzes are free and open to the public, so this invites random quiz-taking from passersby. To that extent, maybe it's my fault for just leaving these quizzes out there. 

But by taking the quiz with no study, these people hope to accomplish... what, exactly? Are they measuring how much they remember from when they were in school (if so, a single quiz doesn't offer much data)? Are they doing the quiz just for a lark? I wouldn't blame the random quiz-takers if that was really their motivation, but what's frustrating is that, the moment I suggest subscribing and putting in the effort to learn/relearn the material, they shy away. And that's mostly a matter of laziness. If they're willing to pay five bucks for a slice of pizza per month, they've definitely got the funds to pay for a month's worth of lessons, so it's obviously more laziness than finances.*

The economic dynamic at work here is that most of these people will take the quizzes out of curiosity, then flit flightily away, onward to the next superficial distraction. But out of several hundred or several thousand of these hummingbirds who hover close, maybe one or two will decide to stick around and go deeper. I can't force anyone to do what I'd like them to do, and that's the nature of capitalism, at least at my level: It's about decisions and agreements. So I'm building my flower garden and hoping a lot more hummingbirds eventually come helicoptering my way.

Here's a sample question to ponder:

Question 2

Which, if any, are commands?

Please stop with the throat-singing.Never get close to the caged monkeys when they’re horny.Ending the payments to your grandmother is your choice.Stir the mixture to ensure even heating.

REASONING: The lesson this quiz refers to (see here if you're a paying subscriber) was about the imperative (command) mood. By the end of it, you ought to be able to recognize what a command is and why it's not the same as a statement in the indicative or subjunctive mood. You've learned that commands can begin with Please; they can also be one-word utterances that aren't verbs, such as Quiet! and Gently! Commands can be an imperious order, a suggestion, advice, or caution. The lesson teaches a few other things as well.

1st possible choice: Yes. Please stop indicates an imperative.

2nd possible choice: Yes. Advice beginning with Never + verb is in the imperative.

3rd possible choice: No. This is in the indicative mood, being a statement of fact (...is your choice).

4th possible choice: Yes. Cooking instructions are in the imperative, and this one is obviously verb-first.

Two more coming out later today.

__________

*So, the question of financial caution or even stinginess also comes up. While $5/month isn't expensive by any standard, a person who is already subscribed to various services can feel overwhelmed, "subscribed to death." I'm not a mind-reader, so I can't judge each person's individual situation, and frankly, I can relate to feeling overwhelmed. All I can do, then, is shrug at the ones who sniff and walk away; I then wait for the next prospective customer. (That said, I suspect there are a lot of lazy people who hide behind the "subscribed to death" rationale to avoid making any intellectual effort. Of course, I have no way to prove that.)

bold and beautiful

Full-figured Jim, properly hyphenated.

taking another stab at "carnivore" burgers today

Stay tuned. There will be pictures. The burgers won't look this good, though:

found en ligne

twinses, Precious

I sense bubbleheadedness:

we hates the alienses, Precious

the egg-nog question

Yes, this is an oldie from Christmas last year.

first 9.5K walk in a while

I hadn't gone out for a walk in a while, so today was the day to step out. We're now in the last half of April; the day was bright and sunny, and my walk went from 12:30 p.m. to 2:50 p.m., which is about a 4-kph pace. Not great, but not bad.

Spring in South Korea is always beautiful but short, and I can already tell that summer—which starts in May in Korea—is just around the corner. Today's high temp was around 26ºC, or 79ºF. While that's not extremely hot by any standard, it's a sure indication that summer, like a horror-movie monster, has already slipped its fingers through the space in the door and will soon be forcing its way in. All of this indoorsy toe-healing means I've basically missed the opportunity to walk during the waning coolness of spring, and today's session was enough to convince me that any further walks will be at night. I should do another nighttime 33K walk from Yangpyeong to Yeoju before things get too rainy.

Today's route was the typical one—9.5 or 10K out to the river and back. Lots of bikers, three or four of whom rudely strayed onto the pedestrian path (I'm not counting a father-son duo who biked onto the pedestrian path just to pull over and take a break; I don't mind that sort of thing at all). I didn't bother photographing any biker transgressions today; there seemed to be no point. But despite the heat, it was a beautiful day, and everyone I passed seemed happy. Spring has sprung! A few walkers and runners were also out, including several foreigners, one of whom was a slim, sleek white chick on rollerblades. I wanted to stop her and ask whether she'd ever rollerbladed along the Four Rivers path. In theory, she could easily do the whole thing in under a week given how fit she looked and how fast people can be on rollerblades. 20 kph for eight hours = 160 km per day. The Four Rivers trail is only 633 km. Four days if she can maintain that pace and tackle those occasional big hills.

With the sun shining so brightly, I was happy to be wearing my black, long-sleeved Under Armour shirt, which I now use instead of toshi (arm-protecting sleevelets mainly for bikers but also useful for us walkers). There was plenty of under-the-bridge shade along the way, though, so I didn't get sunburned. I was able to do the walk out and back without experiencing any angina, but by the end, my blood-sugar level was still frustratingly high at 138.

I wasn't really in a picture-taking mood, but I did snap a few shots. Enjoy the humble photo essay below.

Top of the berm that parallels the Tan Creek. Can you see the fluffy white seeds wafting in the air?

lower left: fluffy white seeds, out of focus

fluff on the ground

Anyone know which plant these seeds come from? Interesting to think in terms of parallel evolution since dandelions do roughly the same thing to spread their seeds.

Jamshil in the distance

'tis the season for the gawky birds (egret, heron, stork, whatever)

I'm surprised it let me photograph it. Most of these birds are skittish and fly away when you stop moving.

returning home—a different view of the Yangjae Creek, which flows into the Tan

I was having trouble remembering which trees got cut down. Which trees had such thick boles?

I'm still trying to understand why some arboreal cross-sections look flat while others don't.

This one in particular fascinated me. What species of tree was this?

Really looking at the curling paint for the first time.

AI tells me this is a flowering quince. Do you trust AI?

My toe is still a problem, but it's good enough for me to start doing these walks again.

I never quite know what to think

Once the random bits of metal get melted down and turned into a block, the process is all the same, it seems to me. Whether it's "sword from a rusty clain" or "hammer from random cutlery" or "silverware from Auschwitz rings" (okay, maybe not that last one), once everything's been melted and turned into a block, there's really nothing new to see. But I still watch because, well, forging stuff (and sharpening it, and buffing it) is cool.

things were more exciting in the 70s

Ha ha, you almost fooled me with that one! That's the Sixties!

the cow says, "Moo"

Pardon the bad grammar:

When your dog have been spending a lot of time with the cows this is what you get 😂🤣😂 pic.twitter.com/HqCmo8Q8qH

— Rubi (@RubiRubidoooo) April 6, 2026

at a time when you're being bred into nonexistence...

 

two more quizzes done!

Having gotten through quizzes for verbs and verb tenses, I am now turning my attention to—gasp—grammatical mood. The first two quizzes of a six-unit section are now done: Mood, Part 1 and Mood, Part 2. Below are sample questions, one from each quiz.

From Grammatical Mood, Part 1:

Question 5

The five grammatical moods are:

indicative, interrogative, imperative, subjunctive, and conditional.declarative, illustrative, demonstrative, palliative, and modal.indicative, interrogative, ordinative, subjunctive, and conditioned.declarative, interrogatory, imperative, subjunctual, and conditional.

REASONING: The relevant lesson (which is for paying subscribers—Grammatical Mood: Intro + Indicative Mood) starts with an overview of the five main grammatical moods, so at this point, you either know them or you don't.

1st possible answer: Yes. These are the five moods. Note that conditional is both a tense and a mood. As a tense, it's the would tense, often referring to a hypothetical, unreal, or imagined future: I would tap dat ass. As a mood, it refers to if-then sentences (NB: The subordinating conjunction doesn't have to be just if—it can also be when, as in When the wolves howl, my scrote howls in response.), i.e., sentences that show how effect Y proceeds from cause X.

2nd possible answer: No. The word modal has appeared in my lessons in the context of modal auxiliaries. The word palliative is used in the field of medicine to refer to the easing of pain and suffering, usually via drugs. So palliative has no place in a grammar lesson. If you thought illustrative was a mood, then you really weren't paying attention. And demonstrative adjectives appear in the adjectives unit (Adjectives, Part 5).

3rd possible answer: No. While indicative and subjunctive are indeed moods, there's no such thing as an ordinative mood, and conditioned is just wrong: There's a conditional mood. This answer is designed to see if you're a random-guessing moron.

4th possible answer: No. We use declarative in contradistinction to interrogative, but declarative isn't a mood the way indicative is. The other words are all bullshit terms except, of course, for imperative and conditional. If this answer seduced you, I hope you feel shame.

From Grammatical Mood, Part 2:

Question 2

The question “How long are you planning to hack up centipedes?”...

...becomes a Wh- question when you remove the “How long.”...is considered a Wh- question....is a type of choice/option/alternative question....becomes a yes/no question when you remove the “How long.”

REASONING: Hack up in the sense of cough up, not chop up. This unit explicitly discusses how Wh- questions (which include How... questions) are basically yes/no questions with a Wh- element tacked on. Example: For a question like Why did you do that?, if I strip off the Why, I'm left with the yes/no question Did you do that?

1st possible answer: No. If you remove the How long, you're left with Are you planning to hack up centipedes?, which is a yes/no question. See more below.

2nd possible answer: Yes. As explained above (see the brief parenthetical in the REASONING section). How... questions (i.e., questions beginning with How, How much, How long, How many, How often, etc.) are basically Wh- questions. Think of it this way: The word How contains both a "w" and an "h." (Being a Yank, I say an "h" because I don't pronounce H as "haitch" the way some people in the British Isles do.)

3rd possible answer: No. An example of a choice/oprion/alternative question would be Eddie Izzard's Cake or death? That not the type of question shown.

4th possible answer: Yes. As explained above. How long are you planning to hack up centipedes? becomes Are you planning to hack up centipedes?—a yes/no question—once you remove the How long.