Odd Obsession

Format once again ripped off shamelessly from the Librarian in  Black: Books -- The Fraud, Systems Collapse, The Persian Boy, No Gods for  Drowing, Wool, Exhalation, The Man Who Invented the Computer,  Empire of Pain, And The Category Is..., Heart of Stone, A Deadly  Education Comics -- Monica, Kill 6 Billion Demons, Webcomic Name, Daughter  of the Lillies, Achewood Movies -- Godzilla Minus One, The Jade Raksha, Polite Society, John  Wick 4, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Shiva Baby, Spider-man: Across  the Spiderverse, Vesper, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among  Thieves, Center Stage  TV Shows -- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Warrior, Star Trek:  Strange New Worlds, RuPaul's Drag Race, Loki, Slow  Horses, Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, Perry Mason,  The  Sandbaggers, The Only Murders In The Building, The Peripheral,  Ted Lasso, The Mandalorian, Better Call Saul, Dungeons & Drag  Queens, Cyberp...

Recently, my dreams have been particularly vivid and lengthy. The other day, I dreamt a whole movie, including going to see it and researching it later. I was at a Convergence movie showing among a raucous, late-night crowd, excited to see this cult movie from 1982 I’d never seen before, recently released in a restored Criterion edition. Pasolini (no relation to the director of The Decameron and Salo ) is the name of an ancient family that hunts demons from another dimension. They are trained from birth in martial arts by hand and sword (guns, bombs, grenades, etc. being useless against supernatural creatures), as well as espionage and tradecraft in order to discover shape-shifting demons in positions of power. Demon hunters also have limited ESP (like the Shadow or low-level Jedi), which they use to make mundanes forget they saw anything weird. Our protagonist is Eduardo Pasolini, the handsome and charming scion of the family. He has a slight air of melancholy due to a secret fea...

This was from a Facebook post by Outlaw Renegade Radio that I saw on K. R.W.'s Facebook feed. Not sure what constitutes "one line", but I don't really care. Can you name all the songs? Answers are linked at the end.  "But there's no danger, it's a professional career, though it could be arranged, with just a word in Mister Churchill's ear." "Now up jumped the U.S. representative, he's the one with the tired eyes, 747 put him in that condition, flyin' back from a peacekeepin' mission." "If I could stand to be on my own, then I would probably just leave you alone." "Why is the bedroom so cold, you've turned away on your side." "I drank a jar of coffee, And then I took some of these." "He lies on his side, is he trying to hide, in fact it's the earth, which he's known since birth." "I'm all lost in the supermarket, I can no longer shop happily, I came in here for the...

Jfro's 2020  from  ash966  on  8tracks Radio . Format once again ripped off shamelessly from the Librarian in  Black: Books -- Circe, 1177  B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed,  Network Effect, Spinning Silver, The City We Became, The  Mirror & The Light, Ancillary Justice, The Last Emperox, Into  the Drowning Deep,  Every Heart A Doorway, Jade War, Jane  Doe, Agency, Gideon The Ninth, The Traitor Beru Cormorant,  The Tombs Of Atuan Comics -- Solutions & Other Problems, Godslave , Back Movies -- We Have Always Lived In The Castle, Industrial  Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records, What She Said,  Hotel Artemis,  The Old Guard, Greyhound, The Disaster Artist,  Ready Or Not,  John Wick: Chapter 3, 1917 TV Shows -- The Mandalorian, The Queen's Gambit, The  Expanse, Drag Race (US, All Stars, Canada, Holland), The  Boys, The Umbrella Academy, Legendary, We're Here,  Divorce,...

Well, this has been quite a year, yessiree bob. But I’m being thankful right now of what I have and how my powers of Super-Introversion were activated by the current crisis as a laser-focus on learning stuff. Not that there weren’t many long hours of being too tired and paralyzed to move from the couch to the bed and vice-versa. And dusting and many other cleaning activities that didn’t aid in bodily sanitation were left by the wayside. Anyway, I hope that you too can make a list of things that you learned other than the details of the Electoral College.  How to make quick pasta sauce with canned tomatoes How to make instant oatmeal How to make creamed spinach Basic ASL Basic Inkscape Video conferencing with Zoom/Teams/Webex/Meet/Jitsi How to make ink-jet Shrinky Dinks Basic screencasting with Screen-Cast-O-Matic and Camtasia Online training creation with Niche Academy Online playlist transfer with Soundiiz Mask making Cuttlebone casting Intermediate Tinkercad Slide digitization B...

So I guess cyberpunk is hot again. I don't play those newfangled video games, but all this fanfare made me remember my old Cyberpunk 2020 days, when I was Jael Furoshiki, Japanese/Jewish survivor of of a destroyed South China Sea pirate pack trying to make a living in the Minneapolis Red Zone as a bodyguard/food delivery technician (yes, both a pirate and an ninja).  Later she got ported to Interface Zero , which got rid of some of the anachronisms and C2020's crazy-high fatality rate (there used to be a page dedicated to players' favorite deceased characters, sadly now lost to even the Wayback Machine). Anyway, one time I made up musical genres my character would listen to--can't find my old character sheets, but this gives you the idea... TOP MUSIC GENRES FOR YOUR CYBERPUNK GAME: Cambo-Punk Robo-Funk Post-post-post-post-post Punk Really New Wave Black Klezmetal Danish RaiZulu Techno-Jive Country & Western & Gabber Lo-NRG Goan Garage Garage...

When I was a kid, oatmeal was boring. I only started to appreciate it as an adult because instant oatmeal is fast and filling to eat before work when you're not a morning person. Then Quaker came out with the "Real Medleys", which are better, but still have that chalky instant aftertaste, and are a bit pricy for what they offer. Then my friend SR posted this recipe on Facebook, and I saw how much better homemade oatmeal mixes could be. It's so much more flavorful, but has to be refrigerated and tastes best when eaten right away. So, not the way to make a big batch of fruit, nuts and fiber that can be stored in my cubicle and eaten before work.  Back to the Internets for more research! I lucked out and found this recipe  right away. Now, I have to confess that I can't really care about quick oats vs steel-cut oats, so I just used whole quick oats instead of grinding the oats in a food processor. I tried toasting the oats and not toasting them, but didn...

A couple of weeks ago, it would have been Anime Detour 2020. I've only missed 3 Anime Detours ever, and 2 of those were because I didn't know it existed. I've also been planning for and working at the Manga Reading Lounge since 2010, so it was weird not to be doing that. Also, my sweetie was out of town, so I had the entertain myself as best I could. So I did my best to get my geek on. I had ordered a Totoro kigurumi to wear at con and wore it all weekend, including working at my home office on Friday and taking a walk around the river (hope it cheered somebody up to see a little ridiculousness).  Click here for large pics. A colleague of mine who is an amazing cartoonist was doing the six character fanart challenge, so I suggested he do Makoto Kusanagi , and asked friends to suggest some characters for me to do. It took me a week or so, but it was a fun challenge.  Anime Detour decided to have their anime music video contest, virtually, so I wat...

The Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records,  Page 378. So, a few weeks back it was time to get back on the wheels of steel for my reunion radio show. I got two hours and a prime Friday night slot. This year, my theme was 80s compilations, meaning compilations from the 80s , not newer ones focusing on the 80s. It was a tribute to the old days of no Internet and two hours of cool music on a college radio station with bad reception per day, when compilations were one of a few sources for new music. I pored over the list of compilations in The Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records, then cross-checked the Burning Airlines mail-order catalog, or scoured record stories whenever I got to a city. A view from the studio.  Last year, one of the other DJs recommended the DJay app for my iPhone as a way to get nice transitions between songs instead of the iTunes sudden-stop-and-start. I should have practiced more beforehand, but it went OK. Andrea's Radio Show Play...

Remember this post on portable breakfast recipes? As someone who loves breakfast foods but doesn't like getting up before work to cook and doesn't want to spend too much of my money at fast-food joints, I have been working off and on to make my breakfast experience the best it can be. The breakfast sandwich recipe from Lifehacker was missing two things: biscuits (so much better than muffins or croissants) and potatoes. For the biscuits, it turns out Cub sells Red Lobster Cheddar Bay biscuits , which I'd never heard of since I'm not a big seafood person, but turn out to be great. Biscuits take a little more work to cook than store-bought muffins, but the taste is so worth it. You do need a pan like this to make sure the biscuits have the structural integrity for the sandwich ingredients. For cheese, why use cheap shredded cheddar when you can get something good like Kerrygold Dubliner. After some experimentation, for the eggs I went with canned mushrooms, Itali...

All Tomorrow's Parties (Velvet Underground) - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Japan, Apoptygma Berzerk Black Betty (Traditional)- John Spencer Blues Explosion*, The Melvins*, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath) - Flower Travelin' Band, Type O Negative Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (Klaatu) - Babes In Toyland, Langley Schools Music Project Cold Turkey (Plastic Ono Band) - The Godfathers, The Soft Boys Dancing Queen (ABBA) - Carol Douglas, Milo Binder Don't Slander Me (The Roky Anderson Band) - Lords of Altamont, Lou Ann Barton Fever (Little Willie John) - The Cramps, Eno & the Winkies, Adam Freeland & Sarah Vaughn, The Jam, Peggy Lee, Suzi Quatro House of the Rising Sun (Traditional) - Flower Travelin' Band, Camodian Space Project I Got You Babe (Sonny & Cher) - The Dictators, UB40 I Have Always Been Here Before (Roky Anderson)-Julian Cope, The Nomads I Heard It Through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the ...

Blu-ray player Apple TV/Television Record player Cassette player VCR Subwoofer Computer Another year, more tech stuff breaking down. My receiver was only 11 years old, but I guess it was its time. Back when I got my first receiver in high school, it was assumed that it would basically last forever, but nowadays the technical changes come fast and furious, so at least it came with some updates. My parents decided to go with bluetooth speakers and forgo the receiver when they moved to a smaller space, but I have a lot of analog media still.  At least the new speaker plugs are just kind of annoying, instead of utterly maddening like the old ones you had to hold down while simultaneously trying to push in the speaker wire.  The main new feature is receiving Bluetooth signals. I can send music from my phone or iPad (or even my iMac, but there's Airplay for that) to the receiver. It even knows the names of the songs somehow. This works for iTunes or apps lik...

Thread by @ash966: "@SecretGamerGrrl What kind of terrifying plot summaries do these guys have in their heads? @SecretGamerGrrl Alt-right Star Trek: WHITE GUY D […]" I unrolled this thread for you, because it's hard to find old Twitter threads, especially replies.

Guys, I am really sad and mad right now about Universal FanCon.  I hadn't heard of it before it was postposed/cancelled one week before it was to occur, but seeing tweets from so many people who were planning to go was heartbreaking. So many artists and vendors losing their first shot at sales/networking and cosplayers and other attendees who never felt accepted at other cons losing a safe space for geeking out.  I'm proud to be an exhibitor and co-creator of the Manga Reading Lounge at Anime Detour and my July staycation at Convergence is a highlight of my year. I can't imagine having an experience like that taken away so suddenly.  The other sad thing is, it might not have failed if the founders hadn't 1) tried to make their first con some huge, money-making endeavor when most cons barely break even , 2) failed to vet one co-founder who had been involved in failed cons before, and 3) they had asked for help from experienced con people. The Twitter conve...

Jfro's 2017 from ash966 on 8tracks Radio . Sorry this is so late, guys.  Format once again ripped off shamelessly from the  Librarian in Black :    Books --  Who Fears Death?, Universal Harvester, Fingersmith, The Collapsing Empire, City of LIght, City of Poison Comics  -- Ooku, Over Easy, Genshiken Second Season, Order of the Stick Movies --  The Shape of Water, Free Fire, Thor: Ragnarok, The Big Sick, Willow Creek, The Boy & the Beast, Atomic Blonde, Mifune: The Last Samurai, Get Out, The Nice Guys, Okja, My Cousin Rachel, The Love Witch, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Gimme Danger, Logan, Moonlight TV Shows --  Stranger Things, Taboo, Black Sails, Orphan Black, Halt & Catch Fire, The Walking Dead, Insecure, GLOW, Billions, The Expanse, Bojack Horseman, Orange Is the New Black, The Path, Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce, Veep, Train to Busan, Travelers, Silicon Valley, Sense8, RuPaul's Drag Race, Transparent, Powers, The Unb...

Everyone who knows me, knows I love me some breakfast. Even if I wake up at 4 PM, I like to start with some breakfast-type food. Unfortunately, this conflicts with my desire to stay in bed as long as possible on workdays. My solution is to bring portable breakfast items that I can eat between the time the bus drops me at work until the time I have to be on a desk. My go-tos are Quaker Real-Medley oatmeal cups and Jimmy Dean Delites breakfast sandwiches. The only problems with them are that they are 1) full of preservatives and stuff, 2) OK, but make you dream of better food, and 3) kind of rubbery from the microwave in the case of the sandwiches. I'd been trying to find a breakfast sandwich recipe for a long time, but trying to make good eggs for a bunch of sandwiches just seemed really intimidating. I've just mastered making scrambled eggs a few years ago, and they require careful watching to come out right. Then, this article appeared in Lifehacker. The sheer g...