Die Another Day (2002) opens with a combination sexy girl title sequence and Bond being tortured in North Korea montage, and I like to think that imagining the water droplets and sparks are sexy ladies is his preferred technique for withstanding torture. www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-1H...

Since Memes of the Prophets has a bunch of made-up terms, the first book has a glossary in the back. I figured I ought to put it up on ClockworkAvocado.com, where I'll be expanding it as the series progresses. www.clockworkavocado.com/memes-of-the...

This would be the second time I’ve come across a D$D-themed YA romance and something something two dimes.

Listening to @knowrogan.bsky.social episode where Rogan debates an actual scientist about whether the moon landing happened, and it's really confirming why I find virtually zero value in real-time debate. www.knowrogan.com/joe-rogan-an...

Watching the first episode of Chainsmoker Cat (you know, like the founding fathers). It's about a catgirl who is a serious nicotine addict, and while it has some gross-out humor, I appreciate how it absolutely does not sugarcoat the effects of heavy smoking. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYGg...

The mug I got at the Monterey Bay Aquarium gift shop:

I started listening to the Know Rogan Experience to scratch the Knowledge Fight itch. I like the show, but Rogan has a _very_ different (lack of) energy compared to Alex Jones. I know Rogan gets riled up sometimes, but he really does spend a lot of time speaking quietly and saying "Wow, man."

New on ClockworkAvocado.com, an essay about @rifftrax.com, the most successful of the successors to #MST3K, and (no joke) how it helped me be a better person. www.clockworkavocado.com/the-rifftrax...

Yesterday I stopped off for dinner at the Giant Artichoke Restaurant in Castroville. I witnesses the waiter answer the phone with "Giant Artichoke," and if I had called the wrong number and heard someone just say "Giant artichoke" I'd lose my mind.

Watch our first explosive broadcast here: :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnz6PTSXiI0

I tried garlic ice cream for the first time. It's sort of like unflavored ice cream right up until a garlic aftertaste hits you over the head. I think I can still kinda taste it.

TIL that in the 1800s, American alcohol consumption was completely off the charts. We had a major drinking culture in the 1800s, but farmers started finding it more efficient to turn crops into whiskey, so whiskey became incredibly cheap. www.pastemagazine.com/drink/alcoho...

After watching GoldenEye for the first time, I get why Rare decided to make an FPS out of it. Even more than other Bond movies, it's chock full of set pieces that make great fodder for FPS stages. And hey, there's Sean Bean!

My alternate, even more portable #BYOK setup! #writerdeck

I've seen some people rate the new Supergirl an 8/10, and that seems about right to me. It also has just the right amount of Lobo; he just kind of wanders in and out of the plot when he feels like it.

I'm up to License to Kill in listening to Kill James Bond, and I'm enjoying them making fun of just how Welsh Timothy Dalton sounds. ("He actually sounds like Abby's impression of him!") (OTOH, Dalton was phenomenal in Doom Patrol.)

New on ClockworkAvocado.com, a look at just how varied religion really is and the sheer eccentricity of D&D's take on religion. www.clockworkavocado.com/matters-of-f...

Buying a $400 mini-PC for Steam couch gaming turned out to be the right call apparently. (Granted, it helps that I don't really play AAA games.)

I'm glad I ran into this in the context of a podcast debunking it, because Andreessen said some serious BS about AI. www.knowrogan.com/marc-andrees...

Looking over some Xeroverse stuff and realized that I'd mentioned Austin and Dallas instead of the [Something] City convention I'd adopted, so they became Sunset City and Pegasus City. Joe Average (a Joe Rogan parody) moved from Angel City, CA to Sunset City, TX, and is weird about it on air.

Late-stage capitalism and Chicago School economics explain *so much* about why the world is so messed up and cruel, which explains why its proponents go so such lengths to make people believe the causes lie with literally anything else.

It's currently Prime Day, and if you'd like to support someone who isn't a dystopian megacorp, well, you have lots of options really, but if you'd like to do that for mechanical keyboard stuff, zines, and a few other goodies, I'm running a 20% off sale on WeirdLittleKeebs.com! #mechanicalkeyboard

It's going to go into Book 4, but I started working on an appendix that lays out the regions of Eitania for Memes of the Prophets. It's been a mix of interesting, fun, and messed up. And also I ended up writing a lot about food, because that's a thing in MotP in general.

Over the weekend I looked around the local Bass Pro Shops just to see what this massive store is like. I dunno how they stack up compared to the competition, but I have to assume there are ways to get hunting supplies that aren't so expensive.

Memes of the Prophets not only mentions scrying on occasion, but has enough made up terms that I included a glossary in Book 1. I think I’m going to continue to trust the audience’s intelligence.

Getting back into Memes of the Prophets Book 3 now, which means getting into a very silly chapter where another catgirl demands Erica have a contest to prove who is cuter.

Holy shit, I finished the first draft of M-Force: Messiah, the second Xeroverse novel! With the main story plus the weird extras, it weighs in at a little over 60,000 words. Now I'm going to take a break before getting back into Memes of the Prophets Book 3.

I've been using a four-pointed star (✦) as a dinkus in the Xeroverse stories, but since Google has basically turned that into a symbol for generative AI, I may have to change it, at least apart from the places where the story is taking jabs at generative AI.

In the Xeroverse the "Blue Shift" was an event where blue light bathed the world for 37 minutes and 1% of the population gained powers. Watching the first episode of Widow's Bay inspired me to include some surreal stories of other stuff that happened at the time.

I had the idea to work the golem into the Xeroverse--it was originally a protector of Jewish communities--so I'm trying to watch the 1915 silent film "The Golem," and I am truly not accustomed to the language of silent film. OTOH 5 minutes in and every set in this is amazing.

New on ClockworkAvocado.com, a look at how D&D plays out the Hero's Journey and why that's a problem. www.clockworkavocado.com/the-adventur...

They're called movie "trailers" because they originally played *after* the movie. Hardly anyone stayed to watch them though, so theaters started putting them before, but couldn't be bothered to change the name.

Matt Taibbi is transphobic and apparently has the worst friends imaginable.

Singaporean artist Leia Ham reimagined LotR as Tale of the Middle Kingdom, since Chinese name for China (Zhōngguó) means "The Middle Kingdom." Her concept art includes the Fellowship, armors, buildings like Bag End, props like Aragorn's banner and Fellowship brooches, and more. #TolkienTrewsday

A friend is having a get-together and potluck to watch the Speed Racer movie, so I decided to make something painfully colorful. I settled on watergate salad, which has instant pistachio pudding as an ingredient. Hopefully no one else will be bringing anything quite that sweet.

My attempt to read "Mere Christianity" was frustrating (Lewis *loves* false dilemmas), but it did teach me what "pride" means in the biblical sense. Turns out it's referring to extreme narcissism, which makes it (1) nothing like LGBT pride and (2) something too many Christians celebrate these days.

I've been watching a lot of YouTube lately, and very few things make me back out of a video faster than realizing that it's a livestream VOD, especially when it's of someone going over someone else's video in real time. Videos made without any preparation are rarely worth my time.

I think I forgot to post about it, but here's my essay on enshittification, which helps explain why so much tech and other stuff sucks these days. I highly recommend Doctorow's book as well. www.clockworkavocado.com/enshittifica...

A thing I put into my Xeroverse stories that I don't think I've seen in a regular superhero story (though there are so many I easily could've missed it) is characters lamenting that their world is so full of fantastical stuff that they can never be sure what's really going on.

I'd like to do some kind of Xeroverse story that satirizes the Surf Dracula phenomenon—it's definitely a thing in some superhero media—but I'm not sure how to convey the feel of a 10-episode TV series where the hero finally becomes a hero near the end of S01E10 without writing the whole thing.

In Xeroverse Book 2, Saber is a parody of Katana in the first Suicide Squad movie. I was considering just forgetting about her after her "I would advise not being killed by her" intro, but I came up with this dumb nonsense to put near the end.

Still thinking about getting an EV (I'm eyeing the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Bolt), but I'm going to wait for (1) my housing situation to shake out (my roommate is trying to buy a house again) and (2) California to get its EV rebate program going.

I just found out that Tim Heidecker did a parody of Kill Tony and it's kinda amazing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip7e...

Apparently Dana White has like $50M in gambling debts, and as someone who plays and occasionally designs games, I feel like gambling games are mostly terrible games that no one would give the time of day without money on the line. Some of them stretch the definition of the word "game" to the limit.

The new Masters of the Universe is incredibly fun, and I think they were aspiring to something like Barbie, in that it explores what healthy masculinity can look like. And now I'm bummed that it flopped, because it means we're unlikely to get any more. (And they were teasing more because of course.)

Making myself angry by writing a fictional op-ed for the Xeroverse, where an economist suggests Empire Studios needs a David Zaslav type to implement "algorithmic production" and stop letting creatives have so much power.

I was looking for ideas for a Japanese superhero name, which led to learning that one of Toei's early tokusatsu shows was 1960's "Messenger of Allah," which takes place in a fictional Middle Eastern country despite having an entirely Japanese cast. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messeng...

Randomly realized that while Taylor Swift is apparently one of the biggest American music artists of the 21st Century, I've never really encountered her music in the wild. Some of that is the kinds of media I consume and whatnot, but it's still weird.

After learning how to roast garlic I've gone mad with power and bought a one-pound bag of fresh garlic (partly because it was either that or single bulbs at the grocery store). It makes an amazing addition to pan-fried green beans. foolproofliving.com/oven-roasted...

My plan is to finish the first draft of Xeroverse Book 2 and then get back into Memes of the Prophets Book 3, which is going to have a bunch of stuff I'm looking forward to fleshing out, and also a lot of fun little details and gags.