Saturday: Mister Doctor.

Today's plan was to go see Doctor Strange.

It was a success.

Unfortunately, I had to go to Koko Marina to see it, since the Kahala theater was only showing 3d versions in the early afternoon.

But Twitter rolled out themed stickers to go along with it.  I've given my hot dog the Cloak of Levitation.

It's pretty good, although any Doctor Strange story has to spend forever telling you his backstory.  The end battle is interesting, and the final solution (Hey, you're an immortal elder horror from beyond time and space?  Great.  I'm going to sit here and annoy you FOR EVER unless you do what I want) is funny.  It was also nice that they just admitted "this is the Time Gem."  Everyone's probably up to speed at this point, no need to drag things out.  The call out to the Living Tribunal was kind of cool too.  

I'm not a giant fan of Bendict Cumberbatch, and there should be a but here, but I don't really have a counter-point.  I just don't really like him that much.  Ditto for Mads Mikkelsen.  This paragraph kind of went off the rails when I didn't have that counter-point, didn't it?  I was also going to say "Chiwetel Ejiofor should probably be James Bond," but I guess he doesn't want it?  Let's start a new paragraph and see if that one works better.

I also don't understand how people still don't know that after a Marvel movie, there is going to be extra stuff.  Most of the theater was gone the moment the credits started, so they miss the scene where Baron Mordo decides he's going to be evil now.  Then nearly everyone else was gone by the time the actual end scene plays, which was kind of a nice set up for the new Thor movie that's still a year away.

It was nice that all of the trailers looked interesting.  I probably won't see Logan, but I like that they have the Patrick Stewart Charles Xavier back again.  The Star Wars movie I'll probably see, just because it's Star Wars, and it looks good.  Ditto to Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which I'm guessing will be more entertaining than Star Wars, if for no other reason than because of Chris Pratt.  The biggest surprise was that the Wonder Woman movie doesn't look like garbage.  As in, "I might actually go watch a DC movie, since this isn't actual shit being smeared on the characters, their history, and the screen."  If they can confirm that Diana's friend at the end of the trailer is Etta Candy, then that'll settle it.  Well.  Guess I'm going to see Wonder Woman, then. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And then I went to get lunch at the build-a-pizza place at Koko Marina:

Yes, I know using the Doctor Strange hair on the pizza is odd.  That's why I added the cat nose.

Sriracha sauce (which isn't super spicy), mushrooms, green onion, roasted onion (which kind of dominated the flavor), and bulgogi (which could have been more flavorful as well) on regular crust.  The crust here is far better than the one in Aina Haina, as it actually rises and creates a crust.  It was a pretty good pizza, but I probably should have skipped the onions.

I then attempted to train up the local gym in Pokemon Go, but got the "Error" thing four times, so I gave up.  Do I still have the shruggy emoji in my copy buffer? 

No.  The answer is no.

And then ice cream, because always ice cream when available.  Doubly so when the ice cream has the Eye of Agamotto.

I did stop in Aina Haina to get some stuff at the grocery store.  I probably should have gone elsewhere, especially since I stood in line for like five minutes while the cashier failed to ring up a bell pepper.  How does that even happen?  Green bell pepper.  It's probably listed under "pepper, green."

I did see these umbrellas, though, so that was cool.

• Pokemon.
• Popplio.
• It only took five companions.
• Not Pokemon.
• A story.
• Everything Bagel.
• I know basically nothing about Tim Kaine, other than that he's probably a good and decent person.  This makes me feel better about him.
• This is garbage art, and I never liked Elektra (or Daredevil to be honest), but the reason I'm linking to this is the travesty that is the cover.  Those aren't just random scribbles, garbage cover artist.  Those are logograms, and you can't just mirror them without looking like a moron.
• I thought this was interesting.  Japanese horror, from the Edo period.
• This was also somewhat interesting, although clicking through to read the full article kind of dragged out.
• But it did lead to me finding this wikipedia page about ancient world maps.
• This is one of the top results searching for "Thanos vs Dormammu."  

Friday: Ugh.

Apparently this was eight years ago today.

Two odd things I discovered looking through old photos for something to use today.  First, a bunch of photos from when I moved in May 2009 seem to have today's date set for some reason.  Secondly, nine years ago I took a photo of Julie's driver's license.  Why?  I have no clue.

I also have a fun story about driving home today.  I was driving down the street as usual, when a car pulled out of a driveway, and stopped right at the edge of the street.  However, this was done without bothering to look anywhere, resulting in a biker having to drive off the sidewalk into the street to not get hit.  I stopped, since running someone over isn't something I wanted to do.  The other driver waited for the biker to pass, and started to pull out again (since I was stopped) nearly hitting a second freaking biker.  Apparently looking to the right to make sure you don't kill two people is really hard to do.

• Pokemon.
• Ghost types.
• What.
• Dogs, I guess.
• Look at this doggo.
• Poor puppers.
• Talented subwoofer.
• All sorts of floofers.
• Other stuff.
• I now know more about Botswana, and I'm glad.
• Ghosts.

Thursday: Today was one of those days where I don't see my car when I'm leaving work, so I think it's been stolen, but it's actually just hiding behind a different car.

The other bakery is open again, and they now have pastrami/cheddar buns.

• Pokemon.
• Pokemon Go.
• I like slightly annoyed Pikachu.
• Not Pokemon.
• Squirrel.
• All the damn time.
• Crab link 1.
• Crab link 2.
• The Vampire King.
• So it's legal for me to do now, but technically wasn't back then.
• I guess we have to wait and see if Parliament is willing to unfuck the UK.

Wednesday: I think I figured out a solution to a problem we didn't want to bother with.

I think it's basically this going on.  It's actually not too hard of a thing to solve, but it'll require checking a lot of stuff and writing a quick model.

• Pokemon.
• Cool.  Daily bonuses will make Pokemon Go even more fun.
• I know I mentioned it last week (I think), but we all knew this, right?
• Not Pokemon.
• The Cubs finally won the World Series, so here are some otters.
• Father Jeff Bayhi is a festering pile of shit, and the Diocese of Baton Rouge should be ashamed for pulling this shit.  "[A]ffirms the sanctity of the Sacrament of Reconciliation." GO FUCK YOURSELF.  What the fuck is sacred about not reporting the abuse of the child who is in the damn confessional?  Fuck this shitty coward, fuck his shitty church, and fuck the Supreme Court of Louisiana.
• Best dog.
• The last gif.
• This is an optimistic map.  I hope that at the end of Hillary's presidency, we have a nice permanent Democratic majority.

Tuesday: I'm about to bitch about Agents of Shield again.

But first:

Sushi chef Kitty-chan.

The moon did a cool thing.

Zoom!

First up, I'm glad AoS isn't new until the 29th.  That means I don't need to try and make other people hate-watch the show with me.  The good thing: making Ghost Rider's uncle be the actual big bad guy, not any of the ghost people.  Still, the ghost people did kill a bunch of people, so I'm glad they've been Ghost Ridered.  The first stupid thing: the new director abducting Science Pal Lady.  Why?  That's dumb.  Why is he so dumb?  Is it because he was friendly with evil senator lady?

The second dumb thing: are Science Pal Guy and Coulson now ghost people?  Can I just go "Ugh" and get across the level of angry annoyance?  Last season you mailed Science Pal Lady across space, and it was all "we have to do everything to get her back!"  This is just the gender-flipped, doubled-down version of the same thing.  "Ghosts aren't outer space."  It's the same stupid break-up-the-team bullshit.

Third dumb thing: why is the new director so dumb?  "Coulson, you're a LOOSE CANNON and OUT OF CONTROL!  You've got to hand over your daughter substitute and this super powered dude so they can face trial!"  Really?  That's the best you can come up with?  I really hope that the speculation that he's not really human, but is really a Life Model Decoy is true, because then that at least there's a reason for him to be so stupid.

Fourth dumb thing:  why did they introduce the first actual LMD at the end of last season, and then use her to do two things: a) jack; b) shit.  I get that even fricking Ghost Rider is more interesting than LMDs, but still.  Can she do something useful at some point?

Fifth thing:  I assume the episode on the 29th is just going to be the team sitting down and eating shwarma for fifty minutes before having Coulson say, "Good thing Dr. Strange (movie now in theaters!) decided to stop by and solve this mystical problem we had, given that THAT'S KIND OF HIS DAMN JOB."

ETA: Second good thing: Having Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider give powers to Robbie Reyes Ghost Rider.  I like tying things together like this. 

• Pokemon.
• Ghost types.
• Pikachu.
• Not Pokemon.
• This is all good to read, but the tldr best point is the Arlie Hochschild quote about halfway through.
• Gender bias from astronomy citations.
• A good dog.
• This works so well.
• A She-Hulk and a Squirrel-Girl.
• Ghost construction.

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.