There's a beautiful island by our JP office. Around back, after you walk through a shrine, is a little beach. Walking the concrete path I saw a young couple down on the sand and, a few yards further, stepped over a plastic caddy, made to hold two beers, with "Ideal Day" printed on it. Have fun kids

You get the really cool kei cars once you reach the suburbs

I'm the Jack Benny age now (in Japan)

My platonic female friend IS real, you just don't know her. She goes to school in Japan

Back at it again

Nobody's talking about Weird Al's music video for "Dare to be Stupid." And to me, that's a mistake

Pale imitation of the Super Pad 64, which had a great and 1996-appropriate melted look

The hardest part of planning the moon launch is getting the phase right so you don't try to land on the part that's missing and shoot off into space

For me (12) it was more that it had not occurred to me that it could be bad. Took me months to figure it out

Time to do a little Thackeray Posting. The last sentence in this passage, which I think about a few times a year, is a great moment in the history of gently ribbing your hero. A weary pilgrim in very tight boots

Turns out the new Weezer single is written by their drummer, whose music I've always liked. Great excuse to repost the first track from his first album (~1996), which is VERY clearly about being pissed at your band's lead singer www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSiq...

Lindsay hung up this piece of homework from Nancy's backpack in our entryway a few weeks ago and I think about it now as our household's version of the Play Like A Champion Today sign

When people mention Sarah McLachlan they think they're going to put one of the tearful-dog-type songs into my head, but I'm actually hearing the massive hook from "Fallen" in there every time. And there's nothing they can do about that. Frankly that's what CBT is all about

True

Opening Day... celebrating by getting my Formal Cardinals Hat off the little torture rack I bought to make it fit my head

Please do not write thinkpieces about or otherwise acknowledge the viral fruit slop microdramas

Was on a plane for five hours Sunday and now my knees hurt whenever they travel through the exact angle they were in at the time. I am doing more cardio than I have ever done before in my life (which is not very much) but after a certain age you can't outrun "it hurts because I sat down too much"

Had to borrow my dad's 2025 car to drive to the airport because there was something wrong with Lindsay's and (inadvertently) tried adaptive cruise control for the first time... I'm permanently an Old Car guy but all the new cameras and sensors are very, very nice

I need our remaining news outlets to stop doing these "Something went mildly viral on social media and that's news" posts. Undignified

I only ever see these goofy neon signs at the airbnbs where my college friends get together for the NCAA tournament, but I always see them there. Which means that in my case they're actually true. A harsh lesson but important

They name public places after Saul Bellow novels here, that's so neat

One thing I've noticed during this year's tournament is guys aren't running into the corner trailing two defenders and then picking up their dribble anymore. Huge advance in college basketball strategy

I thought I took a bunch of photos around Chicago yesterday (meeting college friends there for the first weekend of March Madness) but when I looked at my phone it was mostly just photos of this beautiful copy of Diner at a bar. It's so good

While I'm glad that GM minivans continue to live on in China, I don't like the styling here one bit... when are we going to accept that Chrysler perfected minivan design in 1996? The jet should also be this shade of green btw

Really bad umpiring all WBC, which is not to say that I won't accept this gift

Rough WBC for Kensuke Kondoh, a guy I always hoped would play in the majors. In spite of that AB an incredible contact hitter

We're still waiting for the first pitcher in the history of organized baseball to successfully throw the ball to second base

Road trip

[Bono voice] in the name of son!! It's Melv in the name of son!!

Meditating on this

Today Melvin has told me "I am a good boy." and "I am a big boy." New sentence structure coming online

Do you have the guts

The World Baseball Classic is so good. Sad that we've been bamboozled by the World Cup and the Olympics into only doing these every four years (or so)

I'm going to be thinking about this AI-generated comic for the rest of my life. Every inch of it rewards closer inspection

World Baseball Classic season, baby... if you want to watch the best Czech and Australian baseball players in the world match up in Tokyo it's the only game in town

Nancy (to me, in the car): When you're a baby and just born do you think you're afraid? Me: Huh... I don't know that you can really understand your feelings like that when you're a newborn. Melvin (unprompted): I scared of the fan in mine room. Because it looks like Ghost Face.

Landed on a Wikipedia article about a random comic called The Norm. Have not read the comic but am now reading the archived website... it was a great moment in time when the major feature on your comic's website could involve telling people to watch for it in their newspaper and mail you a clipping

Read "Cathedral" by Raymond Carver for the first time since grad school... he's still got it

Found another book in my favorite pseudogenre, "business nonfiction from the 90s where nervous execs and teams of engineers are using a mix of computers, physical models, fax machines, etc to build or use a cool thing." Lots of fun so far

Lindsay and I, with the help of some friends, in the process of making a large, permanent choice about our home decor

Have never had a beer or run 10 miles in my life but if someone wants to put up the $50 mil I'm ready to go for it

Every night before bed Nancy has me play an NES game for ~15 minutes on her little TV while we talk about it and lately it's been Little Nemo. I hope I'm modeling patience and a cheerful recognition of my limitations for her because I'm definitely not modeling being good at videogames

Sometimes YouTube will get me with a Norm Macdonald late show joke I recognize that's been hacked into a Short and I'll click it. And man, they're worse after they've had the vertical video edits bolted on. Oh he's stopped abruptly in mid-sentence, thank you for zooming in on his face to ruin that

Yesterday the kids were playing loudly but happily by themselves for multiple hours, then they got quiet, then they ran over to me and announced, in the manner of someone explaining an evil plan to James Bond, that they had stolen my hats. Yes, I hate when you guys wear Cardinals gear, please stop!!

Unbelievably cool Geo Metro convertible on Marketplace if anybody with fewer stupid car plans than me wants to hop on

A sliding door would look so good on this

Now that's the good stuff

Imagined a CNG-powered plug-in hybrid and felt a real sense of loss knowing it will never exist. Attaching something that looks like dental headgear to your car every night and filling it with two separate things that could blow up your house... it couldn't get better than that

Melvin and I had a very congenial daycare commute today, he's totally caught my fondness for upmarket baby-boomer guitar pop. Asked me to replay "Off The Ground" by Paul McCartney on the way in and "Great Heart" by Johnny Clegg & Savuka on the way home.

Was an honor to have been vaporized in a second one of these