Monday: When does the Pokemon Go event end?

I just spent ten minutes going through my list of Pokemon, and transferring all the ones I didn't want to keep so I could get the double transfer candies.

And then I realized I have enough Meowth candies.

So I made a Persian.

The last Tldr Lovecraft.  For this year, at least.  I don't think there's enough left for another full month, but I haven't really checked.

• Title:  At the Mountains of Madness
• Date:  1931
• Summary:  An expedition to Antarctica splits up, because Scooby-Doo hasn't been invented yet.  The A team goes ahead, and finds a cave with odd creatures frozen inside.  They did them up, and take them back to their camp to dissect and investigate.  They radio the details back to the B team, who forwards it on to their ship.  However, the next day, the B team can't raise A team on the radio, so they fly out to do a rescue.  The A team camp is destroyed, and everyone is dead, with both one person and one dog dissected as well.  "The frozen things woke up, didn't they."  Yep.  But B team doesn't believe that to be true, so they follow the tracks, and it leads them to a ancient ruined city.  They read on the walls of the city all about the frozen things (which obviously work better not frozen), and gets a lot of details from the walls, which is kind of where you call "shenanigans," because I don't think you're going to get this story from there.  In any case, the frozen things used to live there, when it was warm, and also beneath the oceans, until they got hassled by the star spawn of Cthulhu, because that jerk ruins everything.  Despite being indescribable horrors in every other story, this one presents shoggoths as living machines that can make and unmake anything, and the things made them to do all their work, since the things seem kind of awkwardly constructed.  There's a big thing about giant penguins, which when I reread it, totally surprised me.  In any case, the B team finds the frozen things, which are now "all ripped apart" things, and realize that the voices they heard are the shoggoths, who eventually tired of doing all the work and killed all the creatures (except the penguins, I guess [and the ones that got frozen outside, too]) in a kind of horrible monster-on-monster communist revolution.
• Real Villain:  The Proletariat.
• Last line in italics?  Yes.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  9/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Halloweenhalloweenhalloweenhalloween.

• Pokemon.
• The Rock dressed up like Pikachu.
• Halloween Bulbasaur.
• Not Pokemon.
• My understanding from reading this is that Peter Thiel is nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is.  Also from the security stuff, that he's also paranoid and afraid.  Good.
• Cat vs. ice.
• Duck vs. ice.
• Best Halloween costume.
• Best Halloween story.
• Professor McGonagall.

Election Guide.

• National.
• President: Clinton.
• House District 1: Hanabusa.
• Senate: Schatz.
• State.
• OHA Hawaii Resident Trustee: Lindsey.
• OHA At-Large Trustee: Akina.
• Amendment 1 Relating to Jury Trials: Yes.
• Amendment 2 Relating to Excess Revenues: Yes.
• House District 24: Belatti.
• Senate District 11: Taniguchi.
• City.
• HNL Council District 5: Case.
• HNL Mayor: Caldwell.
• HNL Prosecuting Attorney: Yaqoob.  Because of this.
• OMG WHY ARE THERE SO MANY CHARTER AMENDMENTS?
• 1 Relating to the Police Commission: Yes.
• 2 Relating to the Ethics Commission: Yes.
• 3 Relating to the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney: Yes.
• 4 Relating to all about transportation: Yes.
• 5 Relating to Affordable Housing Fund: Yes.
• 6 Relating to why there are no long term infrastructure plans: Yes.
• 7 Relating to forming an Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency: Yes, although Office of Sustainability, Climate Change, and Resiliency would be OSCCR, which would be a better name.
• 8 Relating to why there isn't a Department of Land Management responsible for city lands: Yes.
• 9 Relating to the funding of the Zoo: Yes.
• 9b Relating to how I'm only half way done: Christ.
• 10 Relating to I don't know, but it looks like they sometimes want to do a thing, but there isn't a dedicated fund source for the thing, which stops the thing being done.  This is silly, so this allows everybody to just declare that they like the thing, and that they can get money for it without making it a "whole big deal."  Yes.
• 11 Relating to the Clean Water Natural Lands Fund: Yes.
• 12 Relating to whether boards and commissions should be reviewed for shutdown: Yes.
• 13 Relating to Grants and who can give out the money: No?  I think it's trying to make city-funded grants handled through a single process, but I don't quite understand where the problem this solves is.
• 14 Relating to special elections: Yes.
• 15 Relating to term limits for elected city positions: Yes.  This is actually a weakening from two terms to three, but applies it to the prosecutor as well.
• 16 Relating to the Department of Design and Construction: Yes.
• 17 Relating to getting the Mayor some damn help, so he doesn't have to sign every freaking thing the city needs signed: Yes.
• 18 Relating to the Fire Commission being made up to date: Yes.
• 19 Relating to the requirement that the City Council Reapportionment Commission have no more than 5/9 members from one party be repealed: Yes.  Technically, this invites gerrymandering of city council seats, but I'm not sure Oahu can be gerrymandered in any major way.
• 20 Relating to updating the Charter so that it doesn't break the law any more, and fixes little things that got messed up the first time: Yes.

Sunday: You suck, Aina Haina.

I had a great plan for the day.  I had three things I needed to do, and I figured I could do all of them in Aina Haina, without having to drive to a bunch of places.  First up, getting lunch.

This was successful.

Next on the list of things to do was to mail out a package, even though it doesn't contain Tentacle #12:

There's like 300 parts to this game, and I missed one, probably when I was organizing them and dropped the green tiles all over a shopping bag.  I'll have to manually take this for Thanksgiving.

I googled, and the Aina Haina post office does have a 24-hour robo-kiosk.  Great.  Printed out the postage, and everything was looking good.  Until I attempted to mail the package.  The parcel drop thing was locked shut.  What's the point of having the kiosk if you can't actually mail things there?  I had to bring it to my neighborhood post office, which does have a working parcel door, but that kind of defeated the point of the "all in one place" thing.

The third thing I had to do was to get gas in my car.  Aina Haina has a gas station, no problem.  Except the gas station is closed.  Like forever closed.  Great.  Thanks.  Jerks.  So instead of being an "all in one place," it was a "you're going to have to go everyplace anyway."

I'm glad they improved to 4rd.  Good job, Forbes.  Way to be edited.

TldrL:

• Title:  The Evil Clergyman
• Date:  1933
• Summary:  A guy is looking through the belongings of a dead evil clergyman, and uses a device to project an image of the evil clergyman.  He then uses the device to kill the image of the evil clergyman, which, sure, whatever.  However, the evil clergyman is able to use magic to make the guy's face look like that of the evil clergyman.  Forever.
• Real Villain:  An evil clergyman.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  2/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Ainahainaainahainaainahaina.

• Pokemon.
• Red and Blue.
• Rowlet.
• Not Pokemon.
• Cat.
• Birds.
• Witches.
• Chipotle.
• I can't believe this became an issue, but then again, people are stupid.
• It's going to be interesting seeing the pound drop below parity with the dollar.

Saturday: A Spooky Burger.

Because of spooky new stickers.

The burger was good, but it goes cold too quickly.  They have the A/C super high, and all the toppings are basically cold, so that cools off the burger as well.

TldrL:

• Title:  The Whisperer in Darkness
• Date:  1930
• Summary:  A guy who lives by himself deep in the woods is being bothered by aliens.  He gets in contact with a reporter, and sends him some photographs and notes and a phonograph record he recorded of the aliens and human cultists doing stuff.  The aliens try to kill the guy, but he has guns and dogs and stuff.  Letters go back and forth and blah blah blah.  Then, suddenly, the guy sends a typed letter (not handwritten) that's basically, "Oh, I patched things up with the aliens!  It's all cool!  Why don't you come visit, and bring all the evidence with you?  It'll be fun!  TOTALLY NOT A TRAP!  Who said trap?  NO TRAPS HERE!"  I mean, come on aliens.  Are you like three?  Who do you think you're going to fool.  That reporter, obviously, who visits, and brings all the evidence, and has a conversation with the guy, but the guy's all weird, and tells the reporter that he let the aliens take his brain out of his body and put it in a metal cylinder, because yes, that's a great idea.  He's going to travel back to their home planet with them, because ???  He offers the reporter a chance to get his brain extracted and put in a metal cylinder too, so he can visit the alien home planet.  However, while pretending to sleep, the reporter hears the aliens plotting to get him, and escapes by stealing the guy's car.
• Real Villain:  Aliens.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  4/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Burgerburgerburgerburgerburgerburger.

• Pokemon.
• I believe this is pointing out that every time Ash calls home, Professor Oak is there with his mom.
• Mimikyuu.
• Not Pokemon.
• Best President.
• That's an interesting plot.
• Deadpool.
• Dog.
• I remember having similar tracks as a kid, and having them never work right because the rubber band that launched the cars wasn't strong enough.
• I'm not 100% sure, but I think this bathroom is bigger than my apartment.

Friday: I guess I don't have a title for today.

I saw this bird today.

TldrL:

• Title:  The Shadow out of Time
• Date:  1935
• Summary:  For being so long, this one is actually pretty simple to summarize.  An economics professor is teaching, when one day his mind is taken over by a weird creature from prehistory.  The creature pretends he's the same guy, just with amnesia, and does rather boring stuff while body-jacking.  At the same time (ish), the economics professor mind is sent to live in the creature's body in a creature city in Australia in the distant past.  Eventually the creature reswaps bodies, and the professor remembers the past only in his dreams.  He goes on an archaeological expedition and discovers the creature city, and even finds the journal he kept, but is chased away by the monsters that destroyed the creature city and the wind hides the evidence.
• Real Villain:  Time.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  7/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Titletitletitletitletitle.

• Pokemon.
• Meme Meowth.  Ok, Persian, but Meowth gives it alliteration.
• I understand, NPC.
• Not Pokemon.
• I did this today driving home, but with a dachshund.
• Dog.
• Harrison Ford.
• I like the yearly Jezebel spooky story post.
• I see.  Juror 4 is a fucking idiot, and the rest of the jury was as well, with the exception of Juror 11, who Juror FuckfaceMcFour got kicked out.  Wonderful.
• Today's Japanese show from 1995ish was about croquettes, and they went to this place.  I'm glad to see that the lady is still running the place.

Thursday: Exactly how I wanted to spend five hours.

It turns out when I made an appointment earlier this week to get my car oiled and safety-inspected, I didn't notice that instead of having a normal calendar showing a month, they only had a week, and that week wasn't this week, but the week of November 7th.

Really?  Nothing earlier than that?

In any case, since I didn't notice this fact, I was perfectly on time for my appointment that wasn't today.  "So you can't do it today?"

"Oh, we can probably fit you in.  Just have a seat, and we'll sort it out."

An hour later.  "Yeah, it'll probably be about an hour and a half, you're next up."

Three hours later, I got the "we're just wrapping it up" alert.

An hour after that, I finally had my car, because they were seriously concerned about the 0.12 degree misalignment of one of my wheels.  I really hope I misread that, because I'm pretty sure 0.12 degrees is not something worth wasting an hour of my time fixing.

And I don't know about this new update.  I simply can't hit Golbats with my Pokeballs.  I can find no angle or speed to put it in the right location.

Nearing the end of TldrL:

• Title:  The Dreams in the Witch House
• Date:  1932
• Summary:  Walter Gilman is a student, and is staying in the Witch House because it's cheap, likely because it's called "The Witch House."  A Witch used to live there, and she could travel magically from place to place.  Gilman starts doing that in his dreams, because he's studied non-Euclidean geometry and other super complicated math.  Except he's not really dreaming, the Witch is helping him math-teleport around.  Eventually he gets so good at math-teleporting that he has to sign an oath in blood to Nyarlathotep, so he basically is just doing grad school.  However, he is able to ruin a baby sacrifice, because he's bad at grad school, and double-kills the Witch.  However, he dies horribly when the Witch's mutant rat-person-thing tunnels through his chest devouring his heart.  Ouch.
• Real Villain:  Math.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  5/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Mathmathmathmathmathmathmath.

• Pokemon.
• Spooky.
• This is an odd story about a bad criminal.
• Not Pokemon.
• Hrm.  Hopefully the Vine shutdown will absorb most of these.  Twitter is still my favorite way to get news, among other reasons I want it to do well.
• Sushi puns.
• Cats.
• Yeah, this is probably correct.
• I don't understand why this is the case, but I have probably thousands of fictional characters I can come up with names faster than I can for real people.
• What I'm learning about the 1930s is that toy shops were basically "choose one of these seven toys."

Wednesday: I have had a headache all day.

I guess I should have waited for the official announcement?

But whatever, because I got a Hypno today.  

TldrL:

• Title:  The Unnamable
• Date:  1923
• Summary:  Two guys are sitting in a graveyard, talking about this super scary house one of them knows a house so haunted, that it's "unnamable."  The other wants to go explore it, and the first pulls the shocking twist that they were looking at it until the sun set.  Then something "unnamable" comes out of the house and attacks them, sending them to the hospital.  BTW: Randolph Carter is the jerk who takes his friends to graveyards to talk.
• Real Villain:  Words.
• Last line in italics?  Yes.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  5/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Also I made this today, and thought the stream coming of the one galaxy looked kind of cool:

I'm reasonably sure that everything in this image is a galaxy, but I haven't fully checked.  I had trouble getting a good stretch, so everything's kind of saturated.

• Pokemon.
• Pikachu watch.
• Oh no, Snorlax!
• Not Pokemon.
• Squirrel.
• I should go get this this weekend.
• This is good, but I hope nothing happens to the Frederator youtube channels.
• Dug.

Tuesday: Things always work great until they don't.

And I dated yesterday's notes wrong.  Whoops.

And Spooky Halloween Pokemon Go started!

Although I've had more bugs with this version of the game.  See that dot next to Weedle?  That's the shadow of my Pokeball, stuck and never returning to earth.

TldrL:

• Title:  The Nameless City
• Date:  1921
• Summary:  I didn't care to re-re-read it.  There's a city lost in the Arabian desert, and it's super spooky.  It's a spooked up Iram.
• Real Villain:  Geography.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  2/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Agents of Shield keeps being dumb.  "Let's keep lots of secrets!"  "Let's send my uncle out alone, when there's a ghost looking for him so I can burninate a jerk who's already in jail!"  "Let's blackmail the director!"  "Let's help the ghost read the demon book, because how can this sentence possibly get any worse, holy fuck, I literally cannot think of a worse idea!"  I guess there's still one episode before Dr. Strange comes out.

Oh, and then the end bit shows the director working with the whatever-government-lady-senator-maybe who is actually leading the anti-Inhumans?  That's dumb, too.

• Pokemon.
• Eeveelutions.
• It's healthy.
• Not Pokemon.
• I now want to find a place that makes 365 different color shirts.
• This guy died.
• I still want more Peggy Carter.

Finally, fuck you, Charles Djou.  I hope you lose this election too, you smug bag of shit.

Monday: Ugh. I'm super sleepy.

Mostly because I didn't sleep well last night, and waking up from a nightmare about attacking robots isn't ever fun.  Stupid dream robots.

I don't know, I don't have a picture for today, so go look at this thing I did because a tweet didn't seem right.

TldrL:

• Title:  Cool Air
• Date:  1926
• Summary:  Did I mention I was tired?  The guy's dead, he's done science to keep animated, but without the machines keeping the room cold, he can't keep his body from falling apart because, again, dead.
• Real Villain:  Heat.
• Last line in italics?  Yes.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  4/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Sleepysleepysleepysleepy.

• Pokemon.
• I hope they do more events like this.  I even stopped myself from transferring some junk Pidgeys today so I can get the bonus later this week.
• Mimiyuu.
• Not Pokemon.
• Whoops.
• Yeah.  They've kind of fucked themselves by actively fighting the concept of an objective reality.
• This is mostly just here as a warning to Julie that these things exist, and are apparently nearly 200 damn dollars.
• I wasn't super happy with today's Supergirl.
• Good things.
• Lynda Carter.
• Miss Martian.
• Bad things.
• Supergirl being all super-space-racist against Daxamites.  That's kind of out of character.
• The fact that they never really named the bad guy.  I guess she's Scorcher?
• Making President Lynda Carter a secret alien.  Why?  Can't she just be awesome?

Sunday: The default answer is sushi.

I chose the timing correctly to be there when they started filling the belt for the dinner rush.

TldrL:

• Title:  The Music of Erich Zann
• Date:  1921
• Summary:  Erich Zann is mute, and plays violin at night.  When the narrator goes up to visit him, Zann starts to write down his story, but has to get up suddenly to go play violin at his window, because it actually opens up to a generic empty void of space.  Zann dies doing this, and although the narrator was waiting while Zann was writing, he doesn't read any of the pages during that time.  Which is convenient for the "gust of wind" that sucks them all out into the void.  The narrator runs away, and "can never find that street" again, as you do.
• Real Villain:  Music.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  Yes.  Close enough.
• Rating:  5/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Sushisushisushisushisushisushi.

• Pokemon.
• Mario Pikachu.
• Guinea Pig Ash.
• Not Pokemon.
• Extreme poverty.
• This just looks cool.
• Box cats.
• Flying.

Saturday: Things I did today.

I've had the release date for Miss Hokusai on my calendar for awhile now, so I went to see it.

See?

It's a good movie.  It's a series of short stories that take place over a year, as O-Ei lives with her father, Hokusai.  The general theme is that Hokusai is a bad father, but that they're both wonderful artists.

I mean.

And from her wiki page, it appears that a lot of her work is at the Ota Ukiyo-e museum I went to nearly three years ago.

After the movie, I had to get laundry soap.  I'd decided to go to Target, but since I had an album I bought last week that I hadn't listened to, went to the one in Kailua so I could drive.  And have a burrito.

Despite the stickers, this was not a good burrito.  The chicken was cold?  WTF?

Then I came home, and due to a mistake pushing remote buttons, started watching Lady Snowblood.  This is also a good movie, and everything I found on searching for it was "inspired Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill."  I don't like QT's movies, because they always feel like he's copying someone.  Yeah.  Now the sequel is on, and I kind of want to watch it as well.

Tldr Lovecraft:

• Title:  In the Walls of Eryx
• Date:  1936
• Summary:  Guy who works on Venus collecting crystals while casually suggesting genocide against all the native reptile people who worship the crystals on Venus gets stuck in a transparent maze, just like somebody else from his company did, and they both could have escaped if they just turned around.  We learn this when an expedition goes out to find him, and does so just too late for him to be alive.  They also suggest that yes, genocide against the native reptile people is totally the right solution.
• Real Villain:  Glass.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  Yes.  Ha.
• Rating:  4/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Snowbloodsnowbloodsnowblood.

• Pokemon.
• Snorlax.
• Haunter.
• Not Pokemon.
• Oh shit, this one's actually Pokemon, I forgot about it.  Pokeballs.
• Not Pokemon.  Again.  For realsies this time.
• If this picture doesn't make you smile, you're probably in it.
• There is so much good about this.
• Marvel.
• Kansas.
• Western Europe.

Friday: Pizzadventures.

I woke up early today due to a horrible nightmare, which I tweeted about:

Really, it was an awful dream, as shown by the fact that it pulled me awake.

Then, later on, I noticed I had a twitter notification that that had been liked, followed up by a reply.

From Papa Johns.

Now I know that the person tweeting from the PJ Hawaii account is very unlikely to be Papa "Fuckface" John himself.  So that means I'm posting this here, instead of replying on twitter, since it's silly to bother someone who's job is probably to search for "pizza" in "Hawaii" and try to engage.  Still, there's no way in hell I'm buying Papa John's crappy pizza.

I'll get it from Pizza Hut.

 Yes, it's also bad, greasy, unhealthy pizza.

But sometimes you just want to eat the same pizza you had as a kid.

Plus they had a carryout special for a large one topping plus breadsticks for $10, $2 extra to add mushrooms as well.  Not Hot-N-Ready level, but there aren't any of those left on this side of the island.

Tldr Lovecraft:

• Title:  The Thing on the Doorstep
• Date:  1933
• Summary:  Edward Pickman (ugh) Derby marries Asenath Waite, daughter of Ephraim Waite and clearly an Innsmouth mother.  It's all ok, but she's a bit weird, but eventually the marriage drives a wedge between Derby and the narrator.  There are shenanigans, but the crux of things is that Ephraim knows how to switch bodies, and does that to Asenath, before poisoning her in his old body.  Then, he decides that he doesn't want to be female (an part Innsmouth-ian, and literally, those two things are equal: "that female shell that wasn’t even quite human"), so he plans to switch bodies with Derby.  This mostly works, but when Derby gets back to his body one day, he murders Asenath/Ephraim with a candlestick.  He buries it in the basement, but the evil wizard can mind switch still, so Derby gets put back into the corpse, which he eventually dislodges from the basement grave, writes a note to the narrator, and walk/oozes across town to deliver it.  Derby is the TotD.  The narrator goes to the Arkham Sanitarium (where Derby's been confined for a reason I'm too lazy to look up now), and shoots him/her/other him/it to death.  This is an odd story.
• Real Villain:  Marriage.  Especially to your wife's evil wizard father.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  5/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Pizzapizzapizzapizzapizzapizzapizza.

• Pokemon.
• Magikarp.
• Ghost types.
• Not Pokemon.
• Click on this.  Go to page 93 (pdf page 117).  THEY'RE THINKING ABOUT MAKING THIS MONSTER A ROUNDABOUT!  The second monster in that post.  That would be so cool.
• Weird guy.
• Usagi.
• This is cool, and usually they have the Chief Justice swear in the president, so that means in Wonder Woman's government, the Chief Justice wears a super sweet cape.
• Good.

Thursday: You lied, Amazon.

I was looking forward to reading the adventures of Squirrel Girl this evening.  You told me it would be here.  It is not here, Amazon.  It is not here at all.

I did get my refund from Target for those sheets I bought.  $130 worth of refund.  I guess it's good that I didn't buy laundry soap at the grocery store this evening, as I can get it with my free sheet money.

The problem I've been fighting at work for so long is finally sorted.  The biggest part of the problem?  After doing an initial fit guess, it's supposed to iteratively refit things, using tighter acceptance criteria.  This assumes that the initial fit is ok, but might have outliers with large variance.  So doing this iteratively will clip those bad points out, letting the fit converge to the true data.

Except the calling function assumes the fit function will do however many iterations it says, and the fit function assumes it's being told which iteration it's working on.  This means it jumps immediately to the final iteration with the tighest criterion, which is why I've been getting such terrible fits.

And I saw a cat and Venus.

• Title:  The Haunter of the Dark
• Date:  1935
• Summary:  Robert Bloch Robert Blake moves to Providence, and can see an abandoned church from his apartment.  He decides breaking and entering is fine, as long as you're really curious, and breaks into the church.  It's full of all sorts of books that probably wouldn't be sitting in an abandoned church.  He steals a journal that's in code, and climbs up to the steeple, where he finds a long dead reporter and an odd stone.  He goes home as the sun sets, and eventually starts to decode the book.  He discovers that he's summoned something by looking at the stone, and that it only hasn't gotten him yet because it can stand light, and the streetlights keep it trapped.  Guess what happens?  There's a storm, the power goes out, and he get's monster-scared to death.
• Real Villain:  Darkness.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  Yes.
• Rating:  5/10.
• Read it:  Here.

blah blah blah.

• Pokemon.
• Koi Gyarados.
• The Battle Subway.
• Not Pokemon.
• Wonder Woman.
• Good job, cat.
• What.
• The best gif.
• President Obama is great.
• This made me laugh so much.

Wednesday: Come on, Amazon.

I noticed something about Amazon today.  I went to check when my order would be delivered, and I saw this:

Not the Squirrel Girl book I pre-ordered four months ago.

It's the "2 other shipments in this order" part in the lower left.  I have though already, Amazon, and I've already read the book entirely.  It's not just this one order that isn't complete yet due to the pre-order.

This already arrived, so it's not "Arriving today."

Ditto with this one.

What's up, Amazon?

TldrL:

• Title:  The Colour out of Space
• Date:  1927
• Summary:  A meteorite falls onto a farmer's farm, and dissolves after being struck by lightning multiple times.  The farm becomes corrupted, with all the produce growing huge and bitter.  It kills his animals too, making them crumble to dust before they die.  It's really bad, is the point here.  Eventually the farmer and his family die too, in equally bad fashion, but not before a neighbor visits and is told about the "colour" that lives in the well that's feeding on them.  The neighbor brings the authorities, who plan their trip great so they arrive at sunset.  They escape the colour, which shoots off into space, dropping a small part of itself back down.  The valley is about to become a reservoir for Arkham, which is A Great Idea.
• Real Villain:  Colors.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  8/10.
• Read it:  Here.

asdfasdf

• Pokemon.
• That's...a bit violent.
• Not Pokemon.
• A long article about Brexit.
• Some good art.
• Chicago.
• I know where Alameda is.
• Huh.  Yeah, I guess so.
• Because fact checking is such a difficult thing.

Tuesday: Crap, it's only Tuesday? That sucks.

Not having any photos also sucks.

Although I was apparently in Toronto twelve years ago.

• Title:  The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
• Date:  1927
• Summary:  Charles Dexter Ward traces his genealogy, and learns about his ancestor Joseph Curwen.  He was an asshole evil wizard, who specialized in living forever and converting living and dead people into and back from dust.  Eventually he failed at living forever, but hid enough wizard crap around to draw CDW in.  CDW brings him back from the dead, and is promptly murdered and replaced by JC, who just happens to look the same.  Eventually he gets thrown in a "private hospital for the insane" which was apparently a thing.  CDW's doctor re-dusts JC at the end, after accidentally un-dusting some scary thing that heads off to kill JC's asshole evil wizard friends.
• Real Villain:  Accidentally having an asshole wizard as an ancestor.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  6/10.
• Read it:  Here.

asdfasdfasdf

• Pokemon.
• All the shinies from the new game leaked.
• Voltorb and Electrode.
• Not Pokemon.
• League of Women Voters ballot guide.
• Carrie Fisher.
• Bear.
• Taco Crow.
• I learned a lot about pigeons today.
• Agents of Shield was better than usual today, but I think that's because they actually worked like a team, and not a bunch of idiots.  I mean, they still did some stupid stuff, but they at least tried to be team-y.

Monday: So it turns out I turned off all my alarms over the weekend, and I forgot to turn them back on for today.

Great.  Wonderful.  Way-to-go.

I saw these at the store over the weekend, and wondered what they were like, but didn't want to buy a big bag in case they were bad.  So I got a small bag.  They're not bad.

• Title:  The Dunwich Horror
• Date:  1928
• Summary:  Wilbur Whateley dies when a guard dog kills him when he breaks into the library to steal the Necronomicon.  Except it's pretty bad, because he's half monster, because his mom had a evil wizard for a father, and that's pretty horrible to start with.  Except that's not the "Horror" from the title, which is when the "kind of more monster than Wilbur" brother rampages around Dunwich because it isn't being fed once Wilbur dies.  Brave university professors stop the monster with magic, despite none of them being professors of magic.
• Real Villain:  Intentionally having elder gods as ancestors.
• Last line in italics?  Yes.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  7/10.
• Read it:  Here.

I just remembered I have to take a shot tonight.  :(

• Pokemon.
• Bayleef.
• I like that "Alola form" is now an adjective.
• Not Pokemon.
• Ok, fine, but:  According to this, there have been 8000 episodes of Price is Right between 1972 and 2014.  This says that the wheel only appeared in 1975.  So that's still about the same number.  There are 20 spaces on the wheel, so for this outcome to happen, you have a probability (19/20 * 1/20)**3, or about 1/9331.  That makes this article basically "math still works."
• Inequality.
• I don't have a good summary other than more people should read Laurie Penny's stuff.

Sunday: Sure I was over there yesterday, but why not drive out to Hawaii Kai again.

So after all that morning IM fun, I did get up and get ready for the day.  Eventually.  It wasn't promptly after that, but that's ok.  I did have to come up with a restaurant recommendation for Chinese in Chinatown for Dan.  The problem of course, is that Chinatown isn't always easy for parking, so I tend not to go there.  I'm also not regularly up for Chinese, although I do like dim sum.  This was my suggestion, based on going there once.  The yelp scores look bimodal at a quick scan, but looking at the time progression, it shows a general improvement.

And then, as mentioned, drove out to Hawaii Kai for lunch.

I got the same thing I always do at the Greek place.  And I'm positive that hat was centered correctly in the preview.

I didn't feel like making a full harbor mosaic today.

I also noticed that the sign lies.

Zooming in, you can see it suggesting that Walgreen's and the Theater are towards the background.  That's wrong, and would send people into the marina instead of to the actual locations.

And it started raining while I was there.

 There is a gym there.  However, this happened to me:

Yay!  The fun thing where you can't join the gym battle for some reason!

I was eventually able to get in after flipping airplane mode on and off, but I lost both of my battles, as in the mean time, Team Valor took the gym over, and dumped a 2100 CP Gyrados into the bottom location.  Gym battles are easier when you have people working together.  Plus, as you can see, my phone battery was about to die, limiting what I could do.

So I got some ice cream instead.  Chocolate orange flavor.

TldrL:

• Title:  Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
• Date:  1920
• Summary:  Sir Arthur Jermyn is dead, because he lit himself on fire.  No one really liked the family, even though they had a title.  Boring genealogy occurs, telling us all about the last five generations of Jermyn's family, and their trips to Africa.  Jermyn attempts to find a mummified "white ape goddess" from a shrine, and has it shipped to him.  Then he kills himself, because guess what?
• Real Villain:  Accidentally having gorillas as ancestors.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  No.
• Rating:  3/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Lovecraft really had problems with this.

• Pokemon.
• Whimsicott.
• Team Leaders.
• Not Pokemon.
• Mitt Romney.  Also, I should probably watch Fresh off the Boat more.
• Urbanization.
• Duckmancy.
• Daniel Radcliffe is a good person.

This was going to be part of the regular blog post, but I think that has too much in it already, so it's a separate thing.

I woke up this morning at like 7:30, had a half-remembered IM conversation with Julie.  I then went back to sleep.

Three hours later, I received this from Julie:

Kofflax.

This was followed by these:

Moltysaur.

Dugysaur.

 Finishing with the best of the set:

Wigglykazam.

Wiggly-fucking-kazam.  Holy crap these are still as funny as they were forever ago.  The generator is here, and here are the ones I came up with.  Mostly I set one side fixed, and randomly loaded the other side until I liked them.

Zape.

Pikasect with such a tiny face!

Krabby is a great face source.

Krabchop.

Krabnine.

 But I think Chansey is my favorite, because it has such a silly tiny face.

Changey.

Chantly.

Chanfing.

Chanizard.

Chansea.

 Fucking Chansea.

Saturday: In hindsight, my plan of "sleep later than expected and then still don't get out of bed" wasn't the best.

I mean, it did mean I got to see this really stupid ad for Coke on twitter.  You don't need Coke to make a banh mi delicious.  You just need to not put cilantro on it.

Eventually I decided on getting chicken.

It is very good chicken.

And I took these too-close shots of their pictures of the old Pali highway to maximize the camera distortion effects.

 I took the long way home, and saw a very nice full moon over the ocean in Waimanalo.

Here it is over Koko Head.

TldrL:

• Title:  The Shadow over Innsmouth
• Date:  1931
• Summary:  A guy goes to Innsmouth to explore, but Innsmouth is filled with half-human/half-sea monster people.  They try to kill him by not running the bus out of town, and then ambushing him in his hotel room, but he gets away from them and has a daring escape from town.  He calls the government, and they go in and kill/imprison the population and bomb the reef where the sea monsters live.  This would be a great place to stop the story, but instead, we learn that the guy has ancestors from Innsmouth, and he's actually turning into a half-human/half-sea monster person as well.  He plans to kill himself, but instead writes the last four paragraphs describing how he's going to go live with the sea monsters and it's just a really odd way to end the story.
• Real Villain:  Accidentally having sea monsters as ancestors.
• Last line in italics?  No.
• Writer writes instead of fleeing?  Yes.  I mean, not technically, but highlighting how you're going to go live with monsters is just so weird.
• Rating:  6/10.
• Read it:  Here.

Separator sentence to prevent the lists joining together.

• Pokemon.
• Spooky.
• Very spooky.
• Geographically specific food stuff.
• I wish more places had rye buns for burgers.  I still miss their mushroom burger.
• I was thinking about sandwiches, and couldn't remember the name of the best sandwich ever.  It's the "Jon & Amy's Double Dip", and this is what it looks like.
• But they don't sell it any more.  I can't understand why this would happen.
• And it's not just me, either.  This guy ate every sandwich there, and named it one of his top four.
• This isn't a link, because I hate closed the tab and don't feel like finding it again.  That contest mentioned in the last one? J&ADD didn't even rank.  What the absolute fuck is wrong with people?
• Everything else.
• I really like these subway stations.
• Doggo.
• I am glad that some things are getting better.
• Panda bread.