Friday: No, google. No. Stop it.

Why do you think that's something anyone would want?

And I have legitimately never heard of any of these other people.  Google searching for them suggests that Google Play has attempted to choose the most diverse set of music genres possible for this email.

In other music news, I spent today listening to all of my Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, as Keith Emerson died today.  That story is also significantly sadder than the one I read earlier in the day that didn't list a cause of death.


In less depressing news, I finally got my mailbox open:

Inside of which I discovered that I had a near monopoly on package mailbox keys.  I think there are twelve boxes, and I had three of them.  Whoops.

What's inside?  You'll have to wait, as I'm too lazy to re-arrange photos.  So instead, have this interlude of refrigerator things.

What's that?

It's the "my name" written by my good friend Ramona.  You can see how it has all the letters in my name, all in one word.  I told her I'd put it up on my fridge, and although I did that earlier in the week, I didn't take a picture until today.

 "What's that over on the other side?" you ask?

That's a grocery list and house/tree doodle that I found in my pocket before doing laundry sometime last year.

Back to things I forgot I ordered from Amazon, but Amazon didn't, because that's kind of their job:

Oh cool!  That Nine Inch Nails/David Bowie live album I preordered like months ago!

Neat-o!  Part three of this Vampire Hunter D novel that I don't have parts 1 or 2 for, because when I ordered that volume, it was not-fulfilled by a scammer who was kicked off Amazon for taking money and never shipping!  I should really re-order that volume, since otherwise I'll be totally lost.

Ha ha, jk.  VHD is my preferred book to read while travelling, because it's wonderfully written garbage that requires no thinking.  If you ripped out all of the detailed descriptions and things like that, all VHD novels, and by association, both movies, can be summarized as follows:

Town: "Wow, it sure sucks that we're being terrorized by horrible monsters."
Vampire: "Hey, come on, I only eat like three people a month.  You can totally deal with that.  Besides, I keep everyone safe."
Town: "What about the giant acid owls?  Those guys are killing so many people!"
Vampire: "Pfft...whatever."

Beautiful Female Character: "I will fight the giant acid owls!  Then I will kill the vampire!"
Dumb Boyfriend Character: "I will do it instead!  Because I'm a boy!  Ha!"
BFC: "No, you idiot!  I'm actually a space wizard or something!  You're just some bumpkin!"
DBC: "That explains why I'm dead now.  Whoops."

BFC: "Are you the Vampire Hunter mysteriously named 'D'?  Please, you have to save our town!"
Vampire Hunter D: "No, seriously, I'm just staying the night, I have to go find my dad, Dracula, and kill him because I hate that he brought me to life.  Wait, sorry:"  "No."
BFC: "We can pay you some money, maybe?  Plus, it's not just giant acid owls.  We have a vampire too."
VHD: "Fine."

Vampire: "So, you defeated my giant acid owls!  You can never stop me!  I've been a vampire for thousands of years!"
VHD's Left Hand: "I am actually a parasitic entity that offers snide commentary and do magic tricks, including but not limited to 1) sucking things into a pocket dimension; 2) consuming dirt and stuff to spy on enemies; 3) bringing D back to life when he inevitably gets staked.  Because he's a half vampire."
Vampire: "Wait, did your left hand just talk?"
VHD: "..."
Vampire: "I'm dead now, aren't I.  Fuck.  This went badly for me."

BFC: "Thank you for saving the town.  I kind of have a 50-50 shot to be alive at this point.  Seriously, VHD, you're pretty hard on your companions during these stories."
VHD: "Yes."

In any case, a quick google search suggests that I'm not even half-way through the stories,

Also in the mail:

So, here's the story on this one:

Over the weekend, this item showed up in my RSS feeds, and I thought, "huh.  Ok.  I wonder if Amazon has that."  It turns out that yes, Amazon has pretty much everything, and so $20 later, I had a 1930 edition travelling across country to me.

And the affiliate who shipped it did an excellent job of wrapping it in tissue paper and cardboard to prevent any more damage.  Plus they have cute logos.  Good job, BetweenTheCovers.com.

Continuing the "shit I got today" theme, the Girl Scouts were selling Girl Scout Cookies at the grocery store today.  "You don't take credit cards, do you?"  "This is 2016.  Of course we take credit cards."

I'm not entirely sure that the scout who took my order was fully prepared for my response to her pitch.  "Our best sellers are:

"Thin mints,

"Samoas,

"And Tagalongs."

 "Yes, I'll do just that.  One of each."  When the credit card phone arrived, I had to re-place my order using the silly names.  Not my internal names of "the coconut ones", "those fucking ones that have like two cookies in the box, but there's a giant gob of peanut butter on top of each one", and "thin mints."


Oh look, I have a billion links again today.

• Food.
• I was thinking about pastries today, and remembered the jelly filled pigs from that one place.  Then I couldn't remember the name of the place, just that it was a silly name.  Pastry House Hippo.
• Karaage.
• Ramen.  I think they rated Tenkaiipin too low, but I'm somewhat biased.
• I actually have enough links for an 80s synth pop category.
• There are some that I'd disagree with, but this is overall a good playlist.
• Brad's video doesn't work, but that's ok, I have an mp3.
• Comic book stuff.
• I haven't seen Howard the Duck in close to thirty years, but I remember liking it when I was a kid.
• Also, remember above when I said that Amazon has everything?  Everything except the Howard the Duck movie for prime streaming.  I would have watched that this evening, but I'm not going to pay $4 for it.
• Maybe that's the reason I'm not super enthusiastic about this movie?
• Peggy Carter and Jarvis with their cell phones.
• Politics and shit.
• Ha ha ha!  It's great to see conservatives realize that lying for years and being generally awful has consequences.
• This is an important point on jobs and trade, and is mostly here because I was thinking about this topic while driving home from work.  That thought mostly involved the contradiction in the two claims that "NAFTA shipped jobs to Mexico" and "Mexicans are coming to the country illegally to steal our jobs."  Those both can't be true.
• Breaking news: Monopolistic cable companies will do whatever it takes to continue to extract excessive fees from customers who have no good competition!
• "That's the opposite of a problem."
• "That's the opposite of a problem!"
• Ok, but, see: look at this.  Castle in the Sky on the 2nd.  Kiki's Delivery Service on the 9th.  Spirited Away on the 16th.  Howl's Moving Castle on the 23rd.  The Wind Rises on the 30th.  It's even worse when I googled it, and saw that Kapolei is showing Mononoke, Nausicaa, and Marnie, and Koko Marina is showing Totoro and Whisper of the Heart.  I haven't even seen WotH!  :-/  Basically, my entire April looks like I'm going to be living at the movie theaters.

Hm.  I guess I'm not finishing that British Museum post tonight.