a quick remark on "Rick and Morty," Season 8

"Rick and Morty," the zany sci-fi cartoon adventure series, started well. It was gut-bustingly hilarious, with sly references and wildly meta plot lines that cemented its reputation as a show in its own right as well as a show that comments on other shows and the Zeitgeist at large. I reviewed it, during its early years, here. But this time around, until Episode 4 of Season 8, which was marginally funny, I didn't even crack a smile. I hope the rest of the season can make up for the lack of laughs, but right now, the show feels dried up and too far up its own ass, with overly esoteric humor and repetitively familiar situations. Ever since Justin Roiland, the original voice of both Rick and Morty, got booted off the show, things really haven't been the same. I remember being unsure whether a Season 8 was even going to happen, but sources say the show is slated to go on through Season 12. I honestly don't know whether I'll be interested enough to slog through the remaining seasons.

hooligans

images

I do need a source for these stats.

How's this going? Pam?

Are we so sure it was nobody after the Virginia Giuffre suicide (or "suicide")?

The thing about animated GIFs is he'll be bashing that crotch forever. Like souls trapped in hell.

See above comment.

oh, that narrative: the awkward case of Vance Boelter

57 years old—a year older than I am. We GenXers are crazy fuckers.About those shootings:

Police ID Suspect in Minnesota Lawmaker Shootings as Vance Boelter
Authorities say Boelter should be considered armed and dangerous, and anyone spotting him should call 911 immediately and not approach him.

Authorities have identified the suspect in a pair of targeted shootings of lawmakers and their spouses that rocked Minnesota early Saturday as 57-year-old Vance Boelter.

Boelter is accused of killing former state House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat of Brooklyn Park, and her husband, and seriously wounding Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman of Champlin and his wife in separate, targeted home invasions early June 14.

“We are asking for the public’s help at this point in time in locating Vance Luther Boelter,” Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said at a June 14 press briefing. Evans asked anyone who spots Boelter, described as a 6'1” tall 220-pound white male with brown hair and brown eyes, to call 911 immediately.

“Do not attempt to approach him. You should consider him armed and dangerous,” Evans said.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety has opened a tip line, which includes a description indicating Boelter was last spotted wearing a light-colored cowboy hat, a dark-colored, long-sleeved, collared shirt or jacket, light pants, and a dark bag.

Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley told reporters at an earlier briefing Saturday that the suspect posed as a police officer and used a fake squad car outfitted with flashing lights to gain entry to the lawmakers’ residences.

“This was somebody that clearly had been impersonating a police officer, again, using the trust of the badge and this uniform to manipulate their way into the home,” Bruley said, adding that the suspect fled out of the back of the house, abandoning the vehicle at the scene.

A search of the suspect’s vehicle—an SUV—uncovered a manifesto and hit list. “When we did a search of the vehicle, there was a manifesto that identified many lawmakers and other officials,” Bruley said. “We immediately made alerts to the state. We took action on alerting them and providing security where necessary.”

Investigators also discovered flyers in the vehicle bearing the phrase “No Kings”—a reference to a protest movement critical of President Donald Trump’s policies—that has scheduled demonstrations across multiple states, including several in Minnesota. Authorities have urged residents to avoid political gatherings out of an abundance of caution.

Per the well-known rule: the crazy shooter is almost always a Democrat.

The shooter's manifesto was found and is not being published. That tells you everything: the manifesto doesn't fit the left's narrative that it's only the right that's violent. Patel and Bondi: get that fucker published. You know for a fact that, had the shooter been a rightie, the manifesto would've been the first thing shown to the public. According to the left, the public has a right to know what a killer is thinking only when the killer is a rightie. And how often is that? But as Vince says above, we're still gathering information.

UPDATE: the guy's been caught. Alive, surprisingly. The unaltered manifesto remains unpublished; authorities apparently put out a re-typed and partially redacted reproduction of Boelter's hit list of politicians. People on the right doubt that we'll ever see the whole, original manuscript because, as with the Nashville shooter (a trans person), the full manifesto wouldn't fit the left's lying narrative. The true narrative (which admittedly still needs a bit of confirmation in this case) is: crazy lefties are generally the shooters. Not responsible NRA members. It's never NRA members. See also here and here.

poor Vitaly

He says he's found Jesus, but we all know this is a ploy.

a load of PJW

A UK anti-migration riot is deliberately not described by "journalists" as "mostly peaceful." Could civil war be on the horizon, simmering just beneath the surface? (I find the idea less plausible in the UK than in the US.)

Looting and Mexican flags = bad for optics!

"Radicalized parallel society seizing on any excuse for bedlam":

the public takes a dim view of Democrats

Keep your moral equivalency to yourself.

genre fatigue

When good movies are affected by the bad movies that came before it.

thieves, thieves, everywhere

And what's the point they make? "Nothing says 'fighting for immigrants' rights' like..."

Dr. V on a good test of compatibility

See here.

I once heard Dennis Prager say on his nationally syndicated radio show that traveling together is a good test for marital compatibility. Sage advice.

Long before I had heard of Prager[,] I subjected my bride-to-be to such a test. I got the idea from the delightful 1982 movie The Diner. One of the guys who hung out at the diner tested for marital suitability by administering a football quiz to his fiancé. That gave me the idea of taking my future wife on a cross-country trip from Cleveland, Ohio to Los Angeles, California in my Volkswagen bus.

[ ... ]

Dear one took the rigors of that trip 43 years ago like a trouper, and [she] passed the test with flying colors. We got married the following summer and remain happily married 42 summers later.

When I told the story to a feminazi some years back[,] she gave me a hard and disapproving look. She didn't like that I had imposed a marital compatibility test upon my lady love. What a bitch! So here's another bit of free and friendly advice. Marry an angel, never a bitch. Life's enough of a bitch. You don't need to marry one. Does your bellicosity need an outlet? Fight outside the home. Home should be an oasis of peace and tranquility.

How many people these days know the phrase is—as Dr. V writes correctly—"like a trouper" and not "like a trooper"? Like a member of a hard-working troupe, in other words. So many people spell phonetically, and when they read something, they retain only the sounds of what they've read, not the orthography. They mentally hear the words they're reading but don't see what's on the page in front of them. What a shame. Written English is a minefield for phonetic spellers and lazy, sloppy thinkers. This is why so many idiots misspell the incompetent governor's surname as Newsome instead of Newsom. They're not seeing what they read.

The point of the travel test described above is that it takes time, and the deeper, more enduring qualities of a person—her honesty, integrity, endurance, patience, kindness, etc.—can only be seen over time. True love and commitment can only be known over time. This is why the long-standing psychological wisdom has been that love is more of an action and a habit and less of a feeling. Romance is a feeling, but feelings come and go. What buoys and anchors the relationship when the initial fire of passion dies down? It's got to be something deep because, if all you have together is superficial nonsense, then your relationship has no true foundation. Underlying all of the good qualities in a person are the metaqualities of consistency and constancy. More practically, these manifest as loyalty, faithfulness, and commitment, with all of the attendant, supporting virtues like forgiveness and a willingness to begin again when one of you has messed up. If you've got all of that, you've got everything.

John from Daejeon informs me that...

There's a chance that Styxhexenhammer666 (real name: Tarl Warwick) might be going to jail for a domestic-assault charge. Styx himself is being coy about what specifically is happening; John referred me to this Styx video here:

I haven't watched Styx in a long while. While the guy is a perceptive political commentator, much more perceptive than I am, he's also lacking in a lot of basic education, especially about language (despite his repeated claims to have studied anthropological linguistics or linguistic anthropology), and he's turned out to be a real shit as a person—not only because he's been accused, in the past, of being a Holocaust denier and a defender of Charles Manson, but because he got married to a Dutchwoman named Elisabeth (she ran a YouTube channel called Elisabeth's Philosophy), had a daughter with her, then abandoned her to come back to America... where he hooked up with the chick now accusing him of domestic abuse. I've since found much better alt-media people to watch, like DeVory Darkins and Brandon Lehman. They lack the nerve Styx had to make bold predictions about how the political tide might turn, but they base their commentary on clear bedrock principles and seem to live those principles out in their daily lives, unlike the clearly amoral Styx. To be clear, I'd been aware for a long time that Styx wasn't a savory person, but I tolerated his character to focus on his insights. At some point, though, it all just became too much.

no matter how much he squirms, he ain't gettin' away

Johnny Somali makes all of us expats look bad. I'd love to see him put away for twenty years, but I'll settle for ten.

the one word they always ignore

In arguments about immigration, what's the one word that the oh-so-pious left always fails to mention?

Meloni's recent victory

What's not to like in Italy? Illegal migration is down 62%, and a referendum easing citizenship requirements fails after Meloni calls for a boycott. Lefties these days are a bunch of tone-deaf idiots who don't understand the needs of their own voters. South Korea just elected a leftie to be president; it's about to rediscover this harsh reality for itself as the country once again gets buddy-buddy with North Korea and proves limp-wristed against China. (Frankly, America needs to be a lot harsher with China—something I've advocated since forever.)

ladies—what the fuck do you want?

Maybe if you could figure out what you wanted, and were clear about it, men might oblige. But you've bullied men into silence with your cunty attitude. So don't complain about a situation you created.

makes me hungry

If I were ever to go vegetarian, I'd go Indian.

The thumbnail has nothing to do with that sentiment.

Happy Birthday, Mike!

It's the 16th in Seoul, but still June 15 in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where my best buddy Mike lives. The 15th is Mike's birthday—his 56th this time. I hope he's having a good one.

Me and my buddy Mike last year, after my heart attack; it was his first time back in Korea since 1995.

Mike came to see me in Korea in 1995. We had a meal with my Kiwi buddy John Williamson at the Swissôtel—fondue, if I remember correctly. We did some touring around Seoul, including a tour of Changdeok Palace, where Mike lightly flirted with our cute Korean tour guide. Back in the States later that year, tour guide forgotten, he met and fell in love with Rebecca. Not long after that, they got married, and my goddaughter was born in 1997. Mike was good enough to visit me after my heart attack last August. 

Happy Birthday, man! Enjoy the rest of your day.

mostly peaceful

I love how peaceful the left is.

NEW: Look at these flyers found at Seattle’s Cal Anderson Park during the “No Kings” protest. It calls for the assassination of President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. @realDonaldTrump @JDVance pic.twitter.com/DujIkz5XfY

— Jonathan Choe (@choeshow) June 14, 2025

I know it's beside the point, but seriously? "These flyers"... "It calls." This is an error in number. Very basic. Sometimes, the pronouns do matter.

images

I think you mean Dems took less time to go to El Salvador.

a very half-ass attempt at a full English?

another Kurt joke

unh... hrrrrrrrggggggh...

wow... I might be able to save my Blogger blogs

As I've threatened many times before, I'll be migrating over to Squarespace sometime in July. One option, perhaps the most obvious one, would be for me simply to start afresh and to leave all of my Blogspot/Blogger blogs right where they are, allowing them to fade into obscurity. Or—and this might be a better alternative—I can migrate my blogs over to Squarespace. Now, I don't know how plausible this will be, but based on a consultation with the local Google AI god, it's at least possible. To wit:

Q: is it possible to migrate my Blogger archive to Squarespace?

Yes, it's possible to migrate your Blogger archive to Squarespace. Squarespace provides a direct import tool specifically for this purpose.

Here's a general overview of the process:

Export from Blogger:

• Sign in to your Blogger account and navigate to Settings.
• In the Manage blog section, select Back up content and download the XML file.

Import to Squarespace:

• Log in to your Squarespace account and either create a new site or select an existing one.
• Go to Settings > Advanced > Import/Export.
• Click Import, choose Blogger as the source, and upload the XML file.
• Click Begin Import and allow time for the process to complete.

Post-Import Steps:

• Review your Squarespace site to check that content, images, and comments have imported correctly.
• Adjust formatting and styling as needed.
• Set up 301 redirects from your old Blogger URLs to the new Squarespace URLs.
• Verify and update internal links.

Important Considerations:

• Images should generally import, but you might need to manually move externally hosted images.
• You will need to reconfigure SEO settings like meta descriptions and titles in Squarespace.
• Some formatting, especially custom HTML or CSS, might not transfer perfectly and may require manual adjustments.
• Embedded scripts, forms, or iframes might not import directly and will need to be re-embedded.
• The import process includes comments, but if you used a third-party comment system like Disqus, you might lose them.
• There might be limitations on the number of posts you can import during a Squarespace trial.
• This is a one-time import; new content added to Blogger after the import will not automatically sync with Squarespace.

But can I do this with more than one blog? I asked AI:

Q: is it possible to import multiple, distinct Blogspot blogs to Squarespace?

Yes, it's possible to import multiple, distinct Blogspot blogs to Squarespace, but with some considerations. (lists of procedural steps and considerations follow)

So I may be good to go, but moving this main blog over to Squarespace is going to be a huge project that will inevitably experience many fits and starts. Well, I'll just add multiple blog importation to the pile of my other projects. When I do start importing, I'll probably start with my walk blogs first: they're all relatively small since each blog contains only about a month's worth of material, and I'll get to see firsthand whether the importation of photos (the walk blogs are photo-heavy) happens smoothly. As for my main blog... I expect this not to go smoothly because the blog is, at this point, titanic in size (it's existed since July 4, 2003), and images not hosted on Blogger itself (roughly 2016 and before) will need to be imported manually. That's a hell of a lot of images. I'm not even sure I have the originals anymore. We'll see how it all goes. Expect updates.

Thunberg's recent fail

Your day is done, Greta. Your struggle for continued relevance is sad.

a meal for Father's Day

I disagree with the onions. Otherwise—nice. Happy Father's Day.

VFX artists look at Sonic, Daredevil, etc.

how badly did the woke "Snow White" fail?

Perhaps more important: did Disney learn the proper lesson from this?

don't throw rocks at cars, retard

Rock thrower gets instant karma! 💥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/UCubp3QzNJ

— Texas 🇺🇸 (@MustangMan_TX) June 14, 2025

rat buster rat splatter

Avert your eyes, my delicate ones.

Stossel with more on "the woke right"

No movement remains pure forever, and the right's no exception. People should take note. It may be, though, that the video below is trying to conflate terms like woke right, alt-right, extreme right, etc. to make its point.

shot in the head by a tank round

If I'm to be executed, I wouldn't mind going out this way. It'd be instantaneous.

a day in Masan

I had proposed to my buddy Neil that I might go down to Masan, an administrative region of the city of Changwon (Changweon). According to Neil, the monsoon is happening early this year, even up north in Seoul (it is indeed going to be rainy for much of this week), starting later this afternoon (the 15th). As I took the express bus south on Saturday, things went from cloudy to rainy, but by the time I arrived in Masan, the rain had become little more than an aggressive drizzle. Neil suggested that we do lunch at a nearby place that serves a tasty pork/rice soup (which was, in fact, quite good). I spent the next few hours receiving a bit of a guided tour of Masan—a fish market or two, the local "art village," and a walk by the water in a recently constructed area. The weather went from drizzly to just cloudy to occasionally sunny. The walk ended on a bit of a morbid note as we took in a monument to a student, Kim Joo-yeol/김주열, killed during a pro-democracy demonstration in 1960. A big deal was made of the fact that Kim, a young student, was killed in Masan when a rocket-shaped tear-gas round entered his eye socket and shattered his face when he was standing near the water. His body was fished out, and he was taken to a hospital where medical professionals pieced together the cause of death. The area where Kim's monument stands includes a statue plus several dozen banners sequentially describing Kim's death and the aftermath. It was a close thing, as I almost forgot to do this, but I did manage to hand over to Neil my two plastic boxes in which I'd placed (1) several slices of my very rummy rum cake (family recipe; I decided to offer the cake despite knowing it had a funny aftertaste) and (2) a batch of almost-keto almond-flour cookies (the carbs were in the cashews and the chocolate chips).

Enjoy the following photo essay. Any mistakes in the captions/narration are mine alone.

The Seoul-Masan bus's seating chart. I was Seat 9. Red = on the bus; blue = reserved but not on the bus.

It must be spring, what with the rice paddies all covered in water.

more paddies

dwaeji gukbap (돼지국밥), a soup of pork, rice, noodles, and veggies, served with side dishes

side dishes (banchan/반찬)

one of several thresholds we passed through

Koreans love their abstract art. This one lights up.

one of several small galleries we stopped in

an interestingly colored alley

The name speaks for itself.

The platform's name is a pleonasm: the Agora Plaza (아고라 광장). In old Greece, the Agora was basically an open plaza where wise men and philosophers held forth and discoursed. Agora was also a generic term for a plaza where people could gather, sell their wares, practice their religion, etc. Like plazas today.

a meeting of birds or angels...? coincidentia oppositorum?

a purplish space between buildings, leading to...

...CAT-scanned apples?

I'm always taken by calligraphy. This was gorgeous.

Note the combination of fluidity and discipline.

This part of town, the art village, was pretty quiet, partly because of the rain.

photos from times past

August 1989, right before I shipped off to Nice, France for my présession before going on to study a year in Switzerland. I was a French major; at Georgetown, language majors were expected to spend a year abroad, usually during their junior year.

how things change... and how they don't

These pics were part of a "memory tree" occupying this building's wall.

I should have stepped back and photographed the whole memory tree.

Changdong Art Village (Yesul-chon/예술촌)

a peek in a window

We entered a small gallery where the lady proprietor was also the resident artist. Her main medium was golden wire, which she sometimes used in short segments as part of a larger work and sometimes used in long, chaotic curlicues. I asked her what the filaments represented, and she said time and memory, flowing and eddying hither and thither. I took her to be saying something about the nonlinear nature of time and experience. Einstein would have appreciated her since, according to him, time flows at different speeds in the universe according to the warping of space through gravity. As a result, there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity. Just because it's 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday in Seoul doesn't mean it's the exact same time all the way across the galaxy.

a flower pot of filaments

Title: "The Right Season" (I think)
Artist: Jo Eun-gyo (the proprietor)

time descending...?

Maybe it's time descending like snowflakes: the title of the piece is "Accumulation of Time."

One work or many little works? It's like asking whether there's only one sanshin for all mountains or a bunch of separate sanshin (mountain spirits).

a second example of one-or-many

out of the gallery and looking at a printed cloth in a different shop

See the little jangseung perched on the sculpture?

I'm not sure what that says on their "chests."

The store's name appears to be "Happiness Terra Cotta."

These were fascinating.

made by kids, I gather

Blue background in the middle: "I love Changdong."

Hoo diss? (On another wall.)

threshold at the entrance/exit of this alley

with a Korean flag, no less

street view

We approach the water; Neil says they've been building (on) an island.

Danger Guy! "Watch for slippage."

a barefoot mud walker, like on my walk to Hanam City

looking out across the water

This was all built a couple years ago, says Neil.

A nifty-looking footbridge connecting us to the island, but the island isn't ready for the public quite yet.

closer, ever closer

a performance space, being used

up we go

Going up those steps was a bit of a challenge. I should note that I don't normally eat and then walk. It leaves me out of breath and with pressure in my chest—probably a sign of other blockages in my coronary arteries. There's no painful angina, but the breathlessness and pressure are worrisome. However, when I fast and then walk, or when I walk first and then eat, I have no problems. I really hope nothing untoward happens to me this year; if it does, I'm pretty sure a second heart attack or stroke will be the end of me. But if that happens, and if it's like last time... well, that's really not a horrible way to go. I won't even know I've carked it.

moving along the footbridge

almost as if we were on a ship

Note how part of the bridge splits and loops under.

another loop

I wonder what this looks like during high tide.

a narrower part of the walk

the Korea Democracy Center

I suddenly feel as if I were in Europe.

the center's name in Korean (Minju jueui Jeondang/민주주의전당)

click to enlarge

Neil in a pensive moment

This should've been the establishing shot.

We then moved on to the tragic and (at least in my opinion) morbid memorial for Kim Joo-yeol, the student who inadvertently became the face of the pro-democracy movement in 1960 (the Daegu Democracy Movement).

the main statue, with Kim in a noble pose

"Kim Joo-yeol, Patriotic Martyr" (note the etched panel with his blasted-out face)

The tear-gas rocket entered his right eye; the panel says he was fifteen.

Roughly: "The firework  flame of democracy was lit."

A rough translation from ChatGPT: "Statement of Purpose: This monument is erected in memory of the late Kim Ju-yeol, a youth of our province and a symbol of harmony between East and West, to honor his sacrifice and to carry on the spirit of the March 15, April 11, and April 19 democratic movements that opposed injustice. It also commemorates the son of Namwon who offered his life at Najasan, and through the April Revolution, it seeks to reflect the ideals of the people who began to think critically and of the citizens of Changwon who joined in that spirit." I'll let my expert readers tell me how accurate that translation is.

just a random directional marker that has nothing to do with the monument

approximately where Kim was dragged out of the water

"Kim Joo-yeol, Patriotic Martyr: In these waters, democracy's torch was raised."

a replica (in green) of the rocket-shaped tear-gas canister that struck Kim in the eye socket

a Korean/English plaque at the spot where Kim's body was taken out of the water

a closer look at what entered Kim's face

This is kind of morbid, but it's an effective way to keep people mindful of the tragedy.

yeesh

Kim's memorial photo

family pic

Can't get much more vivid than that.

placed in a boat

The caption at the bottom says the doctors at this hospital try to determine the cause of death.

Wow. No words.

From the look of it, the gas canister must have burst inside his head to produce that wound.

I belatedly noticed the swastika pattern. I wonder what Koreans think of this.

Let's end on a more pleasant note. Neil sent me this photo, taken with his camera by a gallery staffer earlier in the day. I had on my jacket, despite the heat, because the drizzle had been a bit strong at that point—but not for much longer after that.

And thus ended a Saturday that was much better than it had any right to be. I know a little bit more about Masan, and if possible, I'll be back that way again. Neil later texted that the wife liked the rum cake, and that he had enjoyed a cookie.