My face right now.

Hegseth is actually the Brian Bloom character from Joe Johnston's THE A-TEAM.

That's my Friday night sorted. Dropkick Murphys have been walking the walk for a long, long time.

I was asked to serve on my school district's new committee for AI policy. I asked if I could bring a sledgehammer with me to the meetings. They asked me to find someone else.

"Shield of the Americas" is an odd name for grandma's farm upstate, but I'm not gonna argue with it.

I finally finished an early polish - not a revision, not yet - of a screenplay that I first drafted two years ago. I have hopes for the thing. Let's just see what happens.

I have an abiding love for Newfie and Nova Scotian folk music, and I've had layovers in three (3) Canadian airports dating back forty-seven (47) years. This has to count for something. I also like hockey?

Wait till they introduce flavoring packs. It'll be a Hamburger Helper speedrun.

In an attempt to face my anger at our stupid, belligerent attack on Iran, I'm listening to Flogging Molly's 2004 album WITHIN A MILE OF HOME, which makes efforts to address our stupid, belligerent attacks on Iraq a year earlier. "'Liberate your people's fate,' spoke a burning Bush." Recommended.

I'm sure this will be very comforting to the families of eighty-five schoolchildren.

I did a community theatre production of OUR TOWN last spring, and I had chills watching this episode of STARFLEET ACADEMY. Masterful storytelling that gets right at why tech professionals and military types need to study the humanities as part of their training.

Not gonna lie, I had completely forgotten about Ann Coulter. Also, in this country, "second-, third-, or fourth-generation immigrant" simplifies to "citizen."

As it's not my job to watch The Speechening, I didn't. Instead I played out of date video games that are significantly harder than I remembered. Fortunately I remembered that they also have a difficulty setting, and this was meant to be fun. The Speechification, I'm sure, was not fun. At all.

This is, of course, why we're also the best funded. After all, as Plato says, um... wait, I'm just getting a note here...

New pet peeve: people who post A Take on a topic in which I have actual experience and even expertise, but then delete their Take before I finish revising my reply to ensure I'm being respectful to their viewpoint.

What the what. Reading older literature reminds us that our experiences aren't unique, and therefore we aren't alone in our humanity. That's not me. That's James Baldwin (paraphrased, obvs). My colleagues know I will fight on this point, and they know that I'll win. Do not surrender our culture.

The dog's name is Nazgul??? Just like that, I have fallen back in love with the Olympics.

*movie trailer voice over*: FROM THE STUDIO THAT BROUGHT YOU...

With great power comes great responsibility.

Roger Clemens had a three-game minor league stop in my town while returning to the majors from retirement. One night he booked a private room in the restaurant where I tended bar. I saw him walk in with his retinue, and a little later I cracked open an Amstel Light for him.

I'm almost 50, and spite is still my favorite motivation.

Useful to remember that German-speaking Austrian elites used to bitch about Mozart writing opera in... German. The goal is the same: deny groups of people access to the arts so that you can then further dehumanize those same people.

I don't know, guys, that was one of the most family-friendly halftime shows I've ever seen.

Well-timed messages of gratitude from students have saved my career more than a few times. I keep a drawer of kind notes from students and colleagues for those days where I catch myself eyeing the exits.

So how much is that in dollars?

I rushed straight from high school to college, when I could've used a gap year or two to grow up. Instead of succeeding, I flunked out (twice) and sound up going back as a freshman ten years after finishing high school. It worked out, I guess.

I think I just saw, right here on this website, someone advocating "pivot to video" in 2026. It's time to log off for the night.

As I'm reading skeets about the stupid restructuring and layoffs at the Washington Post, my work email chimes with the daily marketing message asking me to subscribe to the Washington Post. "Democracy Dies in the Darkness, but the Light Gives Me Headaches"

I did something like this once. The managers of the place had only one question for me after: "Why didn't you clock in?"

This is a mook from one of the Batman Arkham games. He's the guy you take out first to alert the guys with baseball bats and crowbars that you're in the room.

I'm a teacher in eastern Kentucky. Due to a perfect storm of illnesses (not mine), weather, and off-site meetings, I haven't seen my students in two weeks.

It's all right, kids, TechnoPathology is on the job!

I got on the treadmill today for the first time in... um, a long time. Was able to handle 5min intervals at a sloooow pace. Might just be able to ramp up to a race pace in time for an event or two this summer.

INTERNET GOLD!

Enter the Sausage A Sausage Runs Through It On the Sausage Bad Sausage Good Sausage Sausage

I'm two eps in on Wonder Man and digging the hell out of it. While I really do enjoy the Avengers stuff, my favorite comics stories are the smaller ones, no end of the world imminent, just some dude and a problem that's personal. But also with superpowers. That's not too complicated, is it?

The Boss is not here to play around, folks.

I just got completely destroyed in an introductory round of SUSHI GO with my wife and kids, and I quite enjoyed it, thanks.

One of my dear friends is a Vikings fan, and I know how this will sound coming from a Bengals fan, but still: A leave of absence from what? It's the postseason! How is this material penance?

You're cordially invited to the Bluesky Pity Party. Wear something black.

When you've lost the NRA... www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Oh good, it's not just me. I've been on Gmail for 25 years. Time to investigate new possibilities.

I remember a creative writing class I taught around this time who made EVERY SINGLE PROJECT about Harambe. Poems, short stories, all of it. It was kind of cute. At first.

Look, not the point at all, but I had totally forgotten that Wayfair was ever a thing. I haven't seen junk email from them in months! (This is the most marginal of positives, and I don't have to hand anything to anybody as a result.)

Used to have a place called Jax's about half a mile from my house. I'd stop in a few times a week after work, so they kept craft beer around for me. Fantastic bar food, great service, paint held on the walls with tar and nicotine. Fun crowd. I miss it.

Gabe out here basing a lot of assumptions on the "Born in the USA" album cover that are not, in fact, supported by the song, or the rest of Springsteen's career for that matter.

Major crises of the day, Bsky edition: ·Minneapolis ·Greenland ·Greenland 2 ·Holly Hunter's "Ake" tucks her legs under when sitting in the captain's chair

That wasn't tripping. That was slide tackling.

Learning is a human process, which must be undertaken by humans.

Things are terrible, but my first class of the day took what was supposed to be 25 minutes on Langston Hughes and kept interrogating the poem (usefully!) for the entire hour. Teaching runs on hope, but it repays that hope as well.