Ok, this has bothered me for a long time.

No spoiler warning, because it's been like a decade since this stuff came out.

So Voldemort has this grand strategy, when he's in like high school, that he's going to be "Super Bad Guy Who Punches Death In The Face, Because Bad Childhood I Guess?  Whatever."  He finds out that you can make a horcrux to hide part of your soul, but you have to kill somebody to do it.  "Sure, that's fine, I'm super committed to this plan," Voldemort says, "Hell, why don't I kill like a bunch of people, and make a bunch of them, as backup?"

"Yeah, that's fine, you can do that," says the rules of magic, who probably were just thinking that he maybe got a bit too smiley when killing people was brought up.

Voldemort does this, and puts a bit of his soul into:

• His school diary.
• Like his mom's ring, I think?
• The Slytherin guy's locket.
• The Hufflepuff lady's cup.
• The Ravenclaw lady's diadem.
• His stupid snake.
• Harry Potter (whoopsie).

He then hides these things in:

• Ginny Weasley's shopping cart.
• His family's crappy run-down house.
• That cave place full of poison stuff and zombies that Dumbledore and Harry go to in Harry Potter and the Fucks He Stopped Giving.  This is the only good hiding place.
• The goblin bank?  I didn't pay attention to how they figured this one out, but it's not a terrible idea either.
• The school where everything happens, wow, this is The Best Idea.
• Next to him.  I guess someplace sneaky before he returns to life?
• His actual main enemy.

Here's what I would do, if I suddenly had the chance to become immortal through a series of murders, and wanted to stay immortal, despite the obvious moral questions involved.  My horcruxes would be:

• A brick.  I'd hide this in a building made out of like, a bajillion bricks.
• A big heavy rock.  I'd hide this at the bottom of the damn ocean.
• A really big iron atom.  I'd hide this in "whatever, who's going to find one atom."
• Can I do a second brick?  Seems like the right option.  I'd hide this on the moon.  You can levitate stuff right?  Just be like "fuck off to the moon."
• The Sun.  Your move, The Good Guys.
• Anybody who is not actively my main enemy.  Maybe like a dog?  People like dogs.

Finally, I'd use my standard "I'm immortal" defense against my enemies: Live a long time, quietly, out of the way, until all my enemies are dead, and I'm long forgotten.  Then, you slowly take things over, realizing that there's no need to be flashy and loud about things.

Saturday: Comic book day.

Specifically Free Comic Book Day.  I guess I've only done it the past three years.  The past two years have also been Marvel movie days, and last year included ice cream and Greek for lunch.  So.  You maybe can guess how today worked out.

I liked the sleepy Bulbasaur on today's splash screen.

In any case, I got up, went to the comic book place in Kalihi, and after getting out of the car, my hair tie snapped.  "I'll just get the backup one when I get done shopping."

There were more people here, but I was able to get a shot with no one.  They also had face painting and somebody was doing sketches.

The only cosplay I saw was a Batman, but he had the cowl off, due to it being the tropics, and the cowl being made of rubber.

And I guess Saga comes in big collected volumes, too?

And then I discovered that IDW has been  re-releasing The Maxx.  I didn't get it as I have the original release, but it was kind of surprising to see.

Anyway.

It turns out that this is just a sample of a collection of the webcomic (specifically The Case of the Forked Road), but it's John Allison writing Lottie Grote.

And the Boom sampler.

I might have gotten more, but there was a family that could only choose FCBD books if they were physically touching the rack.  Plus the Marvel issue this year is garbage that's going to be reconned immediately when the story is done, so it's not like that was going to be something I got.  I did get some Marvel stuff:

I think this is the next volume of Squirrel Girl I needed.

This is the next volume of Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat.

And some more John Allison, with the next volume of Giant Days.

Then I got back to the car and discovered the only hair tie I had was an old crappy one that wasn't elastic anymore.  Which sucked, because the wind was not cooperative today.  Also not cooperative was traffic, which ground to a halt at the Pali merge, for no obvious reason.  Because of that, I didn't get to the Koko Marina theater until twenty minutes after the movie had started.  Slight change of plans, and lunch first.

The chicken was dry today.

I had a lot of time to kill.

So I got some baklava.

Then the movie.  Guardians of the Galaxy 2.  The first one was good, but seeing Twitter reviews made be a bit suspicious of this one.  I mean, it's not good to see two people who you trust about comic book/movie stuff both say that it's a bad movie.  And I don't know all the details, but another "the first was better because this" review isn't good.

It's not terrible.  It's also not the first one.  I saw something else on Twitter that I can't find now that was basically, "wow, Drax is unnecessarily mean to Mantis, and trying to joke it off that he's bad with social interaction is lazy and stupid."  Which was true.  Also, "hey, I'm from outer space, and I'm planting this space plant on your planet" should be like the #1 sign that you're possibly dating an evil space monster who will try to assimilate your planet.  This also had the "villains need to learn to plan" problem.  If your goal is to use your part magical hero son as part of your take over the galaxy plan, maybe be patient.  If he's really immortal as long as he periodically visits, then just let him do his thing.  All his friends will eventually die, and you can use the endless boredom of outliving people to convince him to join on the take over the galaxy plan.  This should be the fundamental thing that immortal bad guys would know: everyone else dies, so just let them.

Also, they were bad with names, so I had no clue who Sylvester Stallone was supposed to be.  Starhawk, I guess.  Meh.  Also the end credits scene with Ayesha talking about how she's going to make the perfect person:

Her: "I will name him...."
Me: "Adam Warlock.  You need to have an Adam Warlock for the Infinity Gauntlet storyline."
Her: "Adam!"
Me: "After this entire movie and everything, you decided the 'Warlock' part was too much?  Really?"

So yeah.  Not terrible, but also not as good as the previous one.

Then I got ice cream.  Blueberry and coconut.  

I didn't bother with the gym, because what is wrong with people that dump Blisseys at the bottom of the gym?

Also this happened on Samurai Jack, but it happened on Twitter before it did on my TV. 😞

• No one gave this a second thought?
• A good dog.
• Bad erasers.
• Owl.
• A friendly chipmunk.
• Radio.

Friday: You don't have the votes.

Unfortunately I have to wait until I actually publish to make sure I have the cut points right.  In any case, it was nice to see that Republicans have no clue how to govern.  That minimizes the damage they can do.  I suspect this also means that the ACA is going to be around basically forever now.  I also strongly suspect that a lot of states run by Republicans are going to start scrambling for the Medicare expansion.  It's fine to rant about how you don't want it when you think there's a chance it'll go away, but now it's just being petty and wanting to hurt their own citizens.

Not that it hasn't always been petty and hurting citizens.

Bitsy Burrito.

And how bad do you think it feels to be Paul Ryan, and have Papa Roach make fun of you?  And to have them turn out to be surprisingly cool?

• Julie pointed me at this story too late last night for yesterday's blog post.  I can't believe how stupid people are.
• David Frum is the only conservative I follow on Twitter.  Things like this are why.
• Pokemon.
• Yeah, I think blocking her is basically admitting she's right.
• I did not know that this meant bad things for cats.
• Raven and Mimikyu.
• Moana.
• Byronic.
• Beauty and the Beast.
• Stop calling it populism.
• Snorlax.

Monday: Totally on time post about New Year's Day (Observed)

The day started with everyone's favorite thing to do in Oakland, eating Korean BBQ.

It continues to be delicious, although I continually wonder if we've over-optimized for a false maximum, and if we could get better results with a different combination of foods.  Then I remember how much I love their gyoza, and stop worrying so much.  I am slowly coming to the conclusion that I like the bulgolgi more than the brisket, based on the fact that the bulgolgi is more consistently tender.  I still love the brisket, it just has such a short window of "super yummy," that I feel I'm always eating it at "just regular yummy."

Mushrooms and zucchini do seem like things we should order at the beginning of the meal, however.  Just get them both, throw them out in a continual stream, and enjoy having stuff that isn't meat to sit and soak up the meat juices.

In any case, there were some errands to run later in the day.

"A bad guy came in, and knitted that, and put it there.  They weren't supposed to do that, but they left it up as a warning."

Sure.  I can get on board with that story.  Those darn bad guys, coming in, knitting things, putting them up to display.  Have you no shame, bad guys? 

Friday: At least I got that taken care of.

It turns out that the end result of last week is that I had to have a filling replaced.  Plus x-rays and a cleaning.  The one good thing is that my love of those plastic flossers means I don't really have bad teeth.

That bird was back, wandering around like it owns the place.

Yesterday I heard that people have been in contact with animal control people, and it sounds like they're working to find it a real home.  Today I heard that it's apparently the survivor of a pair that lived in the area, after the other was hit by a car.  I'm sad for you, giant bird. :(

But you still can't live at work.  Even if you've decided you totally can just live at work.

And I didn't have anything to eat today because of when my dentist appointment was scheduled, and the time it took for the anesthetic to wear off.  The only thing the dentist mentioned was that I should try to stick to soft food for the next day while the filling reaction completes.  This led to the problem at the end of the day of deciding what I wanted to eat for dinner.

What's the most delicious and softest food around?  Lasagna!

• Well that's depressing.
• It's old news, but it's still worth taking time to recognize someone who achieved something great.
• I think the translation is that we're going to cause a robot revolution by making robots do something and then commanding them to undo that work.  Whatever the point, I just like how nervous the red robot looks in the last panel.
• Kaiten yakiniku.  It's probably a good thing that this likely doesn't exist in the US.
• Black Panther.
• Team Cap.
• Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

Which reminds me of something that I realized this morning, based on yesterday's Vandal Savage discussion.  Vandal Savage is immortal.  Stab him, he just laughs at you.  He can't be killed (they do in that TV show I was watching, but that's because they're done with the story, plus he was fighting time travelers, and that kind of ruins the point I'm about to make).  Hive, over on Agents of Shield is also immortal, although he doesn't have the ability to withstand nuclear bombs, as we saw on Tuesday.

Anyway, the point:  if you're immortal, and are fighting somebody who's not immortal, just stop it.  Go away.  Hide in your castle, send a letter saying, "sorry about the trouble, let's just call it all off.  Have a good life!", go on game shows and win both showcases.  Because you can.  Your enemy is going to die, because they're not immortal.  You don't have to get your evil scheme done today.  Again, VS had the issue that he was fighting time travelers, and had immortal opponents as well.  But Hive could have returned to Earth, told Gideon Malick to play it cool, and sent the Shield people a "sorry you killed me, let's be friends anyway" note.  Wait for them to all die, or for the government to stop funding them, or whatever.  Convert a few Inhumans slowly, build up a good team with a good cover story.  Stop excessively murdering everyone in your own organization.  You know, sane things.

This is largely what the vampires in the VHD world did.  They outlived most people, genetically engineered humans to be less of a threat, and the outlived everybody some more.  Then they fought a war against invading aliens, and continued their strategy of "outlive the fuck out of everyone."  Eventually the majority got bored with outliving everything and being awesome, and either left the planet (to go outlive somebody someplace else), died from boredom, or went someplace quiet to avoid running into D.

Because doing something loud inevitably means you kill someone, that person has a friend that runs into D, and D comes in to listen to your taunts before killing you (and like 80% of the time, the friend too, because everyone dies in VHD).  D then leaves to go outlive everyone else.

Saturday: Sure, that'll work.

Sushi is always good.

Although I did end up sitting next to the most annoying couple ever.  She couldn't say anything not in a shout, he said everything in "stereotypical douchebag", and they both were pretty argumentative when ordering.  "Is that crispy on the outside?  I want it to be crispy!"  They were also "glob a bunch of wasabi in the soy sauce and make a giant mess" people.

Today's links are mostly me cleaning out old saved items in my RSS feeds.

• More good Batman stories.
• Excellent timing.
• She is the one.
• Miyazaki and art.

Oh, old TV shows are weird:

1. Wonder Woman's sister comes to visit, and somehow is riding in a car with a general.  The Nazis nearly cause a wreck to stop the car, and kidnap the general.  Later, at the Nazi hideout:  "Now, that girl will contact the authorities, and they'll send Wonder Woman, and we'll kidnap HER instead!  This plan cannot fail, because we are great at plans!  Wonder Woman will be here soon!  She may already be on her way!"  WW's Sister: "Hey, can you connect me to the War Department?  No?  Ok, huh, that sucks."  Nazis: "CANNOT FAIL!"
1. WW's Sister does the spinny transformation thing and gets kidnapped instead, and then I had to do laundry stuff, so I don't know exactly how she and WW beat up the Nazis.  I just think the idea that the Nazis were sitting around for hours and hours constantly going "SOON!"
2. Khan from Star Trek is a creepy pick-up-artist jerk.  "Why do you have your hair like that?  It's stupid and ugly and you're stupid and ugly!"
1. And what was his whole plan here?  Be a jerk on the Enterprise and...?  Why not just be all "it's been two centuries, we'd really just like to settle down somewhere nice and look at all this new technology and totally plan to take over after doing some research."
2. "I apologize."  The original Star Trek has just absolute garbage writing.

Sunday: "If you put a taco in a bag with even the smallest hole, the taco will escape!"

To be fair, they weren't actually talking about tacos, but about tako.

Spicy tan tan.

The kitchen miscounted my gyoza.

So they sent out two extra ones from a second batch.  I just finished eating the chicken, as saving that for dinner is my usual strategy.  Plus, even one extra gyoza made me super full.

• Tanuki.
• Dogs.
• A strange link to my own blog, with the search term "cryptic bullshit" pre-filled in.  Why would this be here?
• That XKCD about cell phones and the supernatural.  This also seems an odd link to have randomly show up out-of-the-blue.
• Oh yeah, they showed a new X-files tonight.  I suspected something was up when my twitter timeline was all "who cares about this stupid football, show X-files!" and suddenly turned to "cats and video games" after it played on the mainland.  The reviews keep suggesting that the next two episodes are better, but I think I'm going to stick with Supergirl tomorrow.  Here are more reasons why:
• "I also have alien DNA!"  I thought we knew that already.
• "Everything from the original series was all a lie!"  That's a convenient way to un-corner-paint the story after the train wreck that was the last N seasons.
• "Ker-splodey!"  Yes.  We have computer graphics now.
• "So, there's this vast conspiracy that are poisoning and manipulating the population with lies about aliens and terrorists so they can lure us all into a state where we give up all our rights to them, and then they can use this to rule the country, if not the whole world!"  Why?  This is literally the dumbest plan ever.  You have "zero point energy" machines.  What do you get by having a planet of slaves?  Do you need them to crank a machine all day?  No.  You have what you've defined as infinite energy.  Do you need them to make food?  No, because again, infinite fucking energy.  Every problem that you can come up with is now forever solved because you have infinite energy.  Need more water?  Make some.  Need more gold?  Make some.  It only takes a finite amount of energy to do that, and we've established that you have infinite.
• "Vast conspiracy!"  No.  There is not going to be a vast conspiracy because people are bad at conspiring.  You can't just murder your way to everyone staying quiet, because you'd need to murder a significant fraction of your organization at some stage, and that makes the whole thing hard to sustain.  Call this the Hydra Principle.
• "I am not actually an ex-FBI agent, I'm more like this excited puppy in the way I can dump decades of previous crazy ideas for brand new crazy ideas!"  Or this puppy.  Or this one.  I found lots of good dog gifs.

Wednesday: I apparently attempted to buy a book from a scam seller on Amazon.

Not this, however.  I really do have an order that's not scheduled to ship until like a year after the first part shipped.  It's a super long preorder.  Also: Amazon, maybe just say "Next delivery: Way off.  Don't worry about it.  You're cool."

I ordered the scam book around Thanksgiving, hoping it'd arrive before travelling at Christmas.  It didn't, and that seemed odd.  I filed a complaint when I got home, and went today to try and check on that.  Still no book, and no comment from Amazon about it.  I complained again, and then checked the store's reviews.  8% positive in the past three months, and the review page full of "never received book" comments.  And they'd been cut off from Amazon.  Complaining again did get me my $7.95 refunded, making this one of the crappiest scams ever.

• Not mistakes.
• I didn't think about it until watching that top gif like a dozen times, but getting hit in the head with a bag of coins probably is medically serious.
• Me: "Wait, is that Monica?"  Yes.  It is Monica.  (On the far right, having worse problems).
• Brooklyn 99 switched times to be on at the same time as Agent Carter.  I should probably add it to the DVR, since otherwise I'm never going to watch it again.
• A) I had that guy teach a history class in undergrad.  B) I miss the rye buns at Peanut Barrel.  Mushroom burger, though.
• Mistakes.
• That is just a way to justify murder.  "No, she was sitting on the side seat.  Totally didn't mean to run her over."
• I should watch these Lego versions of the Star Wars movies.
• Puppy.
• The internet.

Thursday: Pastrami

I discovered that there's an "extra meat" option at the sandwich place by work.  I went with that instead of onion rings, and ended up with too much sandwich, so I brought the second half home for dinner.  This was a good plan.

• Germany.
• Princess Kaguya.
• Ok, Leviticus has what, nine letters in it?  If you get to the midpoint of your canvas, and you're only at the "v", then you've clearly fucked up.  So, just go ahead and cram in six letters in an illegible mess.  And here's a tip: if you're going to be right-justified, like in the word "burn" there, why not start with the "n", and work backwards?  Then you can control the kerning a lot easier.  "Lies" almost works, but it looks like the "s" is too far away to keep the same letter size.  Finally, if you're going to be a bigoted jackass, at least try to plan your vandalism better.  Otherwise, your message gets lost in the fact that you're clearly a moron.

Wednesday: I simply don't have a title for today.

"What?  This skeleton was totally like that when we got here and sat down."

• Squirrel strategy.
• Bunny.
• Wonder Woman.
• I'm nearly at the end of the Wonder Woman book I bought at Thanksgiving.  It's interesting how you can divide up the people in the book.
• Jerks.
• J Edgar Hoover
• John Augustus Larson
• Margaret Sanger
• Bob Kanigher
• Wonderful.
• Elizabeth Holloway Marston
• Olive Byrne (who really should have a wikipedia page)
• The kids
• Wonder Woman
• The reason they have those "don't sleep with your students" rules.
• William Moulton Marston
• It's really an interesting story, but if WMM wasn't so optimistic and well-meaning, it would probably be a tragedy.

Wednesday: New office tomorrow. For realsies, this time.

I hate you, the 50s.

• Pandas.
• Cool.  Although I'm not a big loco moco fan.  And it looks like you have to call the farm ahead of time if you want to buy rabbit.
• This is going to be terrible.  Why?

First, some background: after reading Season of Mists, I picked up the first volume of Lucifer.  Although there are bits that I didn't like that much, as a whole, it is probably one of the best comics ever.  Need a reason why?

Mona Doyle, murdered friend of Elaine Belloc, daughter of Michael: "How about -- hedgehogs?  They're small and they get run over a lot.  Someone should look out for them."

Lucifer: "Very well. You are the tutelary spirits of this world. Though none will name or bless you, even in their thoughts. Mona Doyle, I set you over hedgehogs. Elaine Belloc, I set you over everything except hedgehogs. Keep the noise down to a reasonable level. And in case you should be tempted to look over my shoulder -- don't."

That is one of my favorite lines ever.  In any case, Lucifer tells a brilliant story with detailed characters who have actual personalities, and I can't imagine a TV show is going to accurately portray it.  It's simply not going to have the budget necessary for things to not look like they're TV-grade computer graphics.  I also don't believe that they're going to be able to pass all the stories through without people freaking out.  Changing the stories to make people more comfortable with them would ruin things

For example: they can't do the Season of Mists story.  That's almost certainly part of the Sandman package.  So they just have to allude to what happened, so he ends up in LA.  But Lucifer spends like zero time at Lux during the story.  The very first story has him leaving to go on the mission that grants him the one thing he needs to launch the entire rest of the storyline, which in turn plays out mostly in Hell, various other similar locations, and then completely different universes.  Are they going to explain who everyone is?  I'm reasonably sure 99% of the TV watching public have no clue who Bergelmir, Susanoo-no-Mikoto, or frankly, even something easy like Fenris are.

So I suspect they'll make the pilot, it'll be weird, and they'll not get picked up.  The only good thing I can see coming from this is that hopefully Mike Carey will get a decent amount of money out of the whole thing.

Tuesday: And then the entire state went batshit crazy.

I left work tonight, and decided to stop off and pick up take out grocery sushi for dinner because I didn't feel like getting groceries last weekend since I'm leaving.  Unfortunately, the first store I went to had no parking, and people had completely blocked all the lanes, so even if people wanted to leave, they couldn't.  Second store?  Same thing, just with more crazy.

The end result is that I drove all the way back to work, because I can park at work and walk to the store.

The problem?  Everyone is treating Iselle like it's the end of the damn world.  Safeway had zero water.  No water.  All the water?  Gone.  There is no more water to buy.  The soup section?  Half empty.  Gross ass canned tuna?  Same thing.  Do people not buy anything until there's a storm coming?  I pretty much always have soup and a case of water.  It's just a regular thing to have around.  When I run lowish, I get more.  That way, I don't have to clog up all the damn stores and attempt to destroy the normal logistics systems that deliver everything.

Plus, it's not getting to Oahu until Friday at the earliest, it's being shredded by the standard trade winds, and the current forecast has it passing over the Big Island before getting here.  The Big Island, where we keep all the giant mountains.  Hilo has some justification in panicking, but by the time it gets here, it's not going to be a super disaster.

My biggest concern at this point is that my flight on Thursday doesn't get fucked up (especially since I think I can get the upgrade for at least the first leg), and that it doesn't kill the power at home.  It might not be a bad idea to grab a mysqldump of my rss reader stuff, so I can install it on my laptop and run it from there if the power goes down for a long time.

Basically, I'm saying it's not this.

• Maybe Capcom should come up with new games.  Will they just keep remaking Resident Evil every three generations?
• Bruce agrees with me.  Hush is a fucking joke.
• It's far harder to be a dick when the people trying to fuck over are standing right there.  Publicly shaming politicians should be a standard tactic.
• I was going to comment about how I could save like $8 if I could get rid of the channels I don't watch, but then I remembered I don't pay directly for my cable.

That led me to go look at things that are powerlaws, and so I plotted up my DVR channel usage ranking:

Doesn't quite match the best fit model, mostly because Cartoon Network is 51% of all recordings ever, and I didn't feel like excluding that point to fit the rest of the channels.  A quick guess suggests it should only have about 800 recordings to match the bulk trend, so it's about 6x higher than a super simple model would account for.  I wonder what this looks like in hours.

Friday: WTF, Murder Team Five?

Mission to Kill.  Murder Team Five.  The wacky Japanese drama where two cops and three other "normal" people murder the shit out of bad guys.

Two weeks ago, they murdered all the teachers at a school.  Because they were all corrupt except for the one clean teacher that the other teachers had killed.  Corrupt teachers.  Apparently you can be corrupt in inventive ways in Japan.

Last week, Young Murder Guy fucked up his kill, had to smash the target's head in with a rock, and totally got caught by a cop.  But not one of his fellow Murder Cops, a proper "let's solve crimes and track down bad guys before sending them to some kind of trial" kind of cop.

I assumed YMG was going to get sentenced to death or something.  Because that would make sense.

Nope.

MT5 doesn't bother with "making sense" when it can stretch things out.

This week, they recapped the end from last week, but then suddenly Murder Guy throws a sharp needle at the regular cop to make it look like YMG is innocent, and then Old Murder Cop wanders over complaining about he was just nearly knocked over by someone running away.  And then OMC tells RC that he knows YMG, and how he's a real cool and totally not a criminal.

And with that, it's like last week's cliffhanger never happened.

Except when RC stops by YMG's place to say that they're still investigating things, because everyone in that house was dead when they went inside, and that's really odd.  Oh, and by the way, YMG, this lady I just met was asking about you because she's your mom.

YMG was an orphan, and blah blah blah, this lady is not at all his mom.  We know this because she goes and gambles and has some sort of plan to do something to fool somebody to money something whatever no one cares.

But it's somehow essential to have YMG go talk to the guy they're trying to fool and talk to him as her son.

YMG's son thinks things are weird, and doesn't trust Not-Mom at all, especially when he sees her talking to people.  He tries to convince YMG, but YMG is dumb.  So, the kid takes his money to go hire Murder Team Five to murder everyone to protect his dad.  The kid knows to do this because he's the real son of a victim from an earlier episode that YMG adopted, so he knows how MT5 works.  I'm not entirely sure that he knows his dad is part of MT5 or what.  I don't think so, because you would probably just ask your dad's murder friends to help if you thought he was in trouble, and not hire them.

Anyway.

The kid's right, and NM and her gang somehow can't wait any longer, so instead of whatever money something whatever they were going to do, they just send in thugs to kill that guy and steal all his money.  Why they didn't start with that instead of going this YMG-scam route is an excellent question.

MT5 meets up to plan the murders of the bad guys, and YMG shows up and says that he'll take NM.  Because he really wants her to be his mom.  Even though Murder Woman did her research and has some proof that she's a crook.  MT5 agrees, and murder murder murder, and then we go watch YMG.

YMG tells NM that he knows she's not his mom, and that he wants her to turn herself in.  She agrees, and then falls over and claims to have hurt her leg, so she can't walk anymore.  YMG agrees to carry her to the police station.  Can you guess what happens?

"He gets his stupid ass stabbed by the knife she's hiding?"

He gets his stupid ass stabbed by the knife she's hiding.  I'd already ranked you the worst member of MT5, YMG, but this is just ridiculous.

The ranking is of course (low to high):

• Young Murder Guy.  For shit like this.
• Murder Cop.  He's just a bit too "let's go murder people" about things.
• Murder Woman and Old Murder Cop.  It's a tie.  They sit back and comment on everyone else, and are just wonderful to watch.  OMC probably edges things out just because he's actually the same guy who was in the original 1979 show of the same title, so he's been doing the MT5 thing for thirty years.
• Murder Guy.  He has the best way to kill people, he justifies his actions by claiming it's justice, and he's basically just Batman.  A murder-y Batman.  So kind of like Batman.

Anyway, NM totally taunts YMG about how stupid he is, and that she'd never turn herself in because she's a master criminal, and now he's dead and the only thing worse than being stupid is to be dead and stupid.

Except he's not dead, he has the strength to pull out his murder string, shoot it up and through a cherry tree, and then back down around her neck.  He pulls her up into the tree, using his last strength to pose with the string around his hands, so her weight on the string balances his corpse.  Then MC arrives to cut the string, and they both fall down.

The credits scene is MT54 and YMG's son around YMG's funeral pyre, where they cremate him with his murder string.  So maybe the kid does know they're MT4?  In any case, this kid has lost two dads in this series already, so I'm thinking he's cursed.  The scene ends with YMG's eyes opening, before the pyre collapses and MC says something about "you can never escape hell."

WTF, MT5?

And while I'm thinking about eyes, NM's actress could not keep her eyes still when she was "dead."  It was kind of funny to watch.  "Excellent, I've fooled them into thinking I'm dead!  I am the best con artist ever!"

• Snorlax.
• Wendy's.  Also: Pokemon.
• I had a similar reaction to this story.  I can't imagine that anyone would try to make a Captain Marvel movie.  Ever, pretty much.  

Friday: Murder Team Five!

Links first, so I can put the 116 screen shots from that Japanese Drama below a cut.

• Harley and Ivy is one of the best episodes.  Interesting fact: the car that gets blown up has, from left to right, Ted Blackman, Eric Radomski, and Bruce Timm in it.
• A triple burger is a bit excessive.
• It's a good idea for them to use this new X-men movie to rewrite the movie continuity.
• Charlotte Grote is brilliant.

Now, MURDER TEAM FIVE!

Friday: At least I have two days before I have to fight that stupid supercomputer again.

This is the key that flew off my keyboard when I hit it.  Multi-million dollar fucking supercomputer, and I have to be the one to point out that one of the four randomly selected connection hosts is down?  I spend an hour trying to figure out what I changed and the answer is "no one noticed that we sometimes send your requests to the trash"?  Fuck you.

And then I came home and watched this TV show: Mission to Kill.  I've seen three episodes or so, and they all follow the same track.

1. Someone is clearly an Asshole, and does obvious asshole things.  One of the Women in the background seems to be listening way too closely to the asshole scheming.
2. Someone else (we're going to call them "the Victim" for soon to be obvious reasons) needs money/assistance/help finding their puppy/something.
3. The Victim befriends the Hero dude.  This usually happens at the same time the asshole does something so mean, the townspeople get angry.  The Cops show up, and settle the situation.
4. The Victim decides to ask the Asshole for help.  This is often the only bad thing the Victim does.
5. The Asshole betrays the Victim, who objects, and gets stabbified until dead.
6. Oh yeah, there's an Old Dude and a Young Dude.
1. That's Old Dude in the picture at the link.
7. The Woman, the Hero, the Top Cop, Old Dude, and Young Dude gather in their secret hideout.  The Victim conveniently left some money sitting somewhere, as a way to thank his friend the Hero.  The team divides the cash and leave.
8. The Asshole is partying about how wonderfully he's assholed it up this time.  The Woman is there, and signals when to start the plan. Old Dude and Young Dude murder up any goons that could screw things up.  Hero sneaks up to the Asshole, and uses a giant needle to stab into the Asshole and puncture his heart.  I'm not kidding.  They go x-ray vision so you can the needle stab the heart and let out a little poof of blood.
1. X-ray vision.  So you know exactly how the Asshole died.
9. The Top Cop shows up, and picks off the Toady.  Yep.  Top Cop is also clean-up assassin. WTF?
10. The Victim's family gets a letter so they know he's dead, and the Murder Squad go about their daily business with kind of knowing "Man, I love murdering assholes" looks to each other.
11. There's this weird side story endcap thing, that I think is the Cop's family?  He tells jokes and things, letting you know that after straight up murdering an asshole, while pretty much having the opposite of that as his job description, he's still just your normal everyday psychopath.

I should DVR it next week, and point out how that episode fits to this format.  Plus: then I can screenshot the X-ray murder.

Today's links are a bunny, and then a bunch of "no."

• The bunny.
• First no: this is not how shows should be run, but is totally how they are.  "Missed Target Demo" has to be the dumbest part.  People are watching the show, but they're not who you wanted, so you cancel it?  Just sell the stupid ads to someone else, dumbass.
• Second: Koffing.  Koffing doesn't care, he's happy all the time.  Putting him at #137 is just wrong.  I'm guessing they used the "look cool/powerful attacks" strategy to rank things, thereby missing out on the most important part of the Pokemon world.  I'll sort together my own list tomorrow.  I have all the data, I just need to put the Pokemon into categories, and then sort them in those categories.
• Third: Godzilla for the NES is one of the very few NES games I actually still have (somewhere in my apartment).  That's because it's wonderfully done.  If this dummy can't get through the first level, he doesn't know how to play video games.  Godzilla is built like a tank, and you have four different attacks with him.  Some of the boss monsters are cheap (I never found a way to defeat Gigan with Godzilla.  You have to use Mothra, because you can avoid Gigan's chest sawblade), but there shouldn't be much of a problem to play.  Yes, it's not super colorful, or advanced, but compared with other games at the time, it's not bad.

Sunday: Fuck it, I'm just going to eat a slice of cake for dinner.

And no one can stop me:

The other possible title I had for today was: "Who the fuck came up with this new 'let's put a banner bar that never moves at the top of every page on the internet' idea, because I kind of want to punch them in the face?" but that was a bit long.  Seriously though, that's a terrible design choice.  Everyone has widescreens now, so forcibly allocating a vertical chunk allocates a large area that is remarkably low-information.  I know I'm on the NYT page, NYT.  Besides, do people actually click on those subject links?  People really go to the main page, scroll down a bit, and then think "I want to read Fashion and Style stories now.  Here, just after the top of the headline story"?  You too twitter.  You don't even use your words for most of that.  I hate those stupid "floating sidebar thing that stalks you as you scroll down", but that would at least not waste as much space.  Especially given that below the top half dozen or so tweets, you waste the space that holds the "say shit" entry box and "trending crap" stuff.  Just make that stupid shit a floaty sidebar thing that reuses that space.

It's like people who come up with web design trends are morons who have no concept of utility.  "It establishes our name brand!" No, it makes your webpage look like someone from 2002 who installed every custom toolbar.  They weren't necessary or useful then, this shit isn't necessary or useful now.

• I mean, I get annoyed that the google auto-translate thing thinks I need to be reminded permanently that it changed the language of this page from Japanese to English.  Duh.  I know that.  I saw you do that, when everything was changed from Japanese to nonsensical machine English.  In any case, this is kind of a cool house.  I'd be concerned about moisture behind the shower curtain/partition doors.
• I'm surprised that they don't have more guards.  I mean, it's got a fence, but a baby could hop that thing.  I also don't understand why you'd try to break in.  It's a museum, they have everything cataloged. You wouldn't be able to sell anything.
• Yes, yes, cute koalas, but my actual thought was, "who buys 97% fat free ice cream?"  Then I went and ate my cake.  Out of spite.

Tuesday: All the exciting stuff was yesterday.

Wait, I'm confused here.  Did the (let's say) cop kill the ghost's human, wait for it to be buried, then go out at night, dig up the corpse, and then release the ghost?  The ghost was trapped and had to be dug up to get out?  Just...just leave the damn ghost buried, dude.  That's it.  The alternative is that he got a call, "hey, somebody's digging up stuff in the graveyard," and when he got there, the ghost had dug up the coffin itself.  That's kind of overly dramatic for a ghost, isn't it?  Just go to his house.  "Boo.  You killed me.  You totally killed me.  Time to get to the haunting.  Why don't you just tell me the stuff you like best now, so I can break it first."

• Boring grown up stuff.
• Wages, and how none of the bad things people say about raising them has any empirical support.
• Onions in India.
• Inheritance.
• China, their military, and a persistent public misunderstanding about the US and our relationships with other countries in the region.  
• "This includes Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan, who are the three running dogs of the United States in Asia," added Dai, a researcher at Beijing University's China Centre for Strategic Studies. "We only need to kill one, and it will immediately bring the others to heel."
• I mean, shit like that.  
• Who even says "running dogs" anymore?
• Didn't we totally blow up Vietnam for more than a decade?  They're our running dog?
• In any case, this is like parts 1-3 of a big series, so I'll have to forget about this until after New Year's probably.
• Not grown up stuff.
• "And who the hell plagiarizes Yahoo Answers?"  I saw this last night via the twitter, but didn't care to follow up on the details.  I am supremely delighted I waited until today for the facts to come out.
• I see this shit all the time.  Subway was advertising something similar last month.  
• Another Young Justice gif clip.  Batgirl.
• Dear Japan, I enjoyed visiting last month.  However, I have to ask what the holy fuck is going on here.  Well, until I get to number 6, and maybe I just don't want to know.

Wednesday: I'm going to bitch about GIMP again

Mostly because I sat down to make this image:

That's me on the left.  This is why youtube has been extra fucking shitty the past month.  I'm getting a fifth what my neighbors are, and 1/15th what I fucking pay for.

So I was already pissed off, doubly so since I can't find anything with my fucking account number on it.  I pay using magic credit card payments, so I don't get paper bills.  This means I have no good way to figure out how to log in to see what's up with my account, and I'm sure if I tried to talk to the chat people, they'd ask what my account number is too.  So, again, already pissed off.

But I again ran into this stupid "oh, you have to export now, because we're gimp, and we know what we're doing better than you, and besides, you shouldn't even be using our high-end program for that, because it's too good of a tool for such work" bullshit.  First of all, it's pretty clear that the gimp developers, like those at gnome, have crammed their heads so far up their asses, they don't have any fucking concern for anyone else.  Second, this claim that it's the right way to do things because it preserves all the data.  No.  You want to preserve the data?  You want to make this motherfucker bullet proof?  Here's what you do.  Define a directory.  That's where everything goes now.  You open and edit a file.  Boom.  It lives in the directory as a super-xcf forever.  Everything you do is now saved in that file.  You resize it?  Nope.  You just saved a "resize 50%" operator on the processing journal.  Sure, you can have a current working copy that has that applied, but the original plus the journal are the only true representation.  Anything using a random operation?  That seed is written in the journal.  There.  No data is ever fucking lost, ever, and you can infinitely roll back to any revision.  Saving?  You fucking mortal scum never fucking save anything.  GIMP saves it all in the journal as it happens.  Then, (third point), if you want a copy of the image that you can fucking do something with (since despite checking the wiki page, I don't see "a goddamn printer" or "my fucking webpage" on the list of things that support xcf), you export your current working copy of the image.  We can now just call this "save," as the journal based super-xcf contains the one true version of the image.

Now, here's the best part:  if someone doesn't give a fuck about that magic god-image you've saved in the directory?  Just let them set that to /dev/null.  Now, it's either in memory and they're doing shit with it, or it's gone forever, scattered to the four winds.

Christ, why is it all these fucking software developers sit around and talk about "visions" when they could instead note that they're bitching about an already solved problem and move the fuck on?

• Technically safe-for-work because it's text.  Also: why this list of one item, a second item, and the third item uses two commas.
• Ok, Wolfram Alpha, you've won some points with me today.  I'm still not a big fan because I don't quite believe this is the way to solve problems, but you get some points.
• This is kind of cool.

Saturday: I bought really nice looking salmon today

I plan on eating it for dinner this week.  That's pretty much the most exciting thing that happened today.  There was the little girl at sushi today who ate three plates of tamago.  That's not entirely truthful.  She ate the egg part of the three plates of tamago, and then piled up the rice into a tiny wall.

I also saw this at the store, which seemed crazy:

Knock off Harry Potter "Butterbeer," I think.  I didn't buy it, because butterscotch soda sounds terrible.

• This sign.
• That's kind of horrible.  In the standard category, I thought art theft worked like this:  First, find someone rich who wants something unavailable.  Second, steal it.  Third, exchange item for money with pre-identified rich person.  Why would you steal something famous if you didn't have a buyer already lined up?  It's not like gold or diamonds, where it's hard to track back.  There is literally one copy of that painting.  People are going to know it was stolen.
• I've saved this, and will use it next time there are computer problems that I need to discuss.
• Tiger meets dolphins.
• This seems like a bad idea.  My understanding was that most people didn't like the new Superman movie.  Why let them ruin Batman, too?
• This also seems like a bad idea.  Loki was set up as a villain for Avengers by his appearance in Thor.  Adding Thanos at the end didn't complicate that, since people can understand "bad guy boss controlling visible bad guy."  Using Ultron as the next villain is going to be complicated.  He's a robot guy, who was built by another Avenger (that wasn't in the first movie, so he needs to be introduced, too), who is taking over the world for like the 99th attempt.  That's not so simple to explain.

Wednesday: It is not Tuesday.

I had that confused for a large chunk of the day.

It turns out that I need to sit down this weekend, and do some serious clean-up on the code for the paper that's back with the referee.  Nothing is really wrong with it, but a reorganization and splitting functions into sane components would help with maintainability.  It's still reasonably clear, as I was able to prototype and implement a new element today without any major issue, but it's somewhat close to a tipping point of mess.

As a sidenote, I need to clean up the command line options too, especially since I just now realized how the "flag" option in the long_options struct works.  Go me for being great at reading documentation.

Unrelated point: Grapes plus more grapes totally equals a salad.  It went well with pizza.

You...you're just the worst spy ever, aren't you, Comrade Brown Suit? First thing off the train, and you're blabbing your plans from Moscow?  Fucking amateur hour. 

• I really would like to know how the story ends.
• Thanks, Obama.
• I have no third link, so here's the getopt long example that I also have open.