Hummus! Five ingredients, five minutes, a full batch. All you need is a food processor and you’re good to go.

• Garbanzo beans

• Garlic

• Salt

• Tahini

• Lemon juice.

I usually throw in some cumin for a minor twist on basic hummus.

It feels to me like staying in New York City as taxes rise on the hyper-rich would be the ultimate flex. You’re so wealthy you can’t even be bothered to notice the plebs have raised taxes on you.

Some marketing team needs to get working on this angle, lol.

There isn’t really anything I can add to what’s already been said about these malicious idiots, only that I’m so very grateful to live in Washington state where sanity still prevails.

Kitty needs a small container so it can assume its natural liquid form.

We’ll duh of course it’s a puppy. Everyone knows she likes 'em on the young side.

/shrug

I don’t care for tea in any form as a rule, but I’m not going to take someone to task who does. Life’s too short to get outraged that someone likes the taste of something I don’t.

I swear it’s like he’s sundowning. He focuses each day on whatever story confused and frightened him the night before.

This Frankenstein-like doozy’s from the surgery to rebuild a destroyed condyle after getting run down by a car in a crosswalk while I was cycling home from work. Last thing I saw in the headlight glare as the guy ran the red-light at speed was the shadow of a head popping up from the wheel. My assumption is the asshole was on his phone. Hit and run of course.

The impact also broke my pelvis, snapped my left femur, broke my left tibia and fibula into 7 major pieces and a lot more smaller bits. It’s the right thigh’s condyle at the knee that still poses the most problems though—there’s rather a lot of scar tissue I’m still working on as I try to get full range of motion back into it. The knee’s got about 19 pins and screws and a plate pulling the bone confetti back together. Four bolts through the pelvis, two rods running the length of the left leg, upper and lower, along with stabilizing screws at either end of each rod makes about 36 titanium implants overall.

Was in a wheelchair from January to March of 2024, then a walker until May, then used a cane until September. Was back on the rebuilt bike in December and spent the past year riding semi-regularly, even making jaunts up to 60 miles. Been a long, long, slog.

Huh weird. I’ve always liked waking up right before the alarm. It makes me feel like I’ve somehow done something just a little bit badass, plus I don’t have to hear the alarm.

Bonus points in my eyes for just waking up naturally rather than being dragged rudely out of sleep and left all groggy, but YMMV.

Yeah it’s a bar soap, commonly used for both skin and hair.

Aleppo Soap

If you like the weird scent of coal tar—I’m not judging, I do too—you might also like pine tar soap. Pine tar serves much the same function in soaps as coal tar, so that’s a bonus as well.

It’s clearly a scent derived from pines, not coal, but it appeals to my nose in much the same way. They’re both in the same family of weirdness.

Aleppo soap finally resolved it for me after years of fighting the yo-yo effects of medicated shampoos. It’s just an old hard Castile soap made using olive and laurel tree oils. Laurel tee oil is apparently pretty good for skin, and works fine to clean your hair.

I don’t go in for woo, but it is kinda fun to be using a soap recipe that goes back a couple thousand years. Mileage may vary of course, but I’ve found it to work extremely well, and as a bonus has a pleasantly neutral smell—herbal as you might expect. 20% or so blends of laurel tree oil seem to do the trick.

Too late! This subscription ain’t coming back for the collaborating corporate appeaser. They’re not gonna weasel their way back into my wallet.

It feels like fascism is saving me so much money, 'cause I’m canceling subscriptions left and right.

The was quite literally the playbook of Andrew Wakefield when he published the 1998 fraudulent paper in the Lancet that purported to link MMR vaccines to autism, kicking off our entire modern round of anti-vax nonsense.

He stood to make millions selling test kits to people suddenly fearful of vaccination, IIRC. They’re all scum, seeking to rake in money on the very fears they’ve stoked.

Haha as a queer gamer that just makes me think, “Welcome to my world.”

I don’t mean that in a snarky manner, but the fact is, nearly all gaming is hetero-focused. I can relate to scenes and choices making you feel uncomfortable, because that’s my life. Gay representation is practically non-existent in gaming.

I recall when Blizzard added a couple of gay characters and quests to WoW and people lost their goddam minds complaining about representation being forced on them, though it was but a miniscule set of quests with unimportant side-characters. And never mind that straight representation is forced on all of use very day—that level of self-awareness was lost on the people whining loudest.

Merely acknowledging the existence of gay humans is too much for some.

Haha yeah.
Once when bicycle touring an older lady cornered me and kept grilling me on what method I was using to stay hydrated. I was puzzled by her repeated questions and eventually said, “Oh! I use a method honed to perfection by 500 million years of vertebrate evolution.”

She looked puzzled a moment, so I clarified: “I drink when I’m thirsty.”

She stomped off in a huff.

I always have a well balanced breakfast of coffee and more coffee.

The differences between the classic American and English breakfasts are one of those things that make travel between the two countries so pleasing, at least for me.

Different enough from one another to feel mildly exotic, yet similar enough to make you feel (mostly) at home.

Did wonder while I was over there ages ago why no one had shown them you can fry green tomatoes too for a bit of variety. Searing a ripe one just kinda makes a mess, lol.

Corporate “wellness” speech for a concert, sounds like.

See 1974’s Phase IV for another take on ants as the story’s antagonist. It’s notable for being graphic designer Saul Bass’s only directing credit, as well as that general 1970s slow-paced creepiness that is as much atmosphere as story.