Automotif DCXIII...

This lightly restomodded 1971 Chevelle SS is absolutely eye-catching. I crossed the street to get a bunch of photos, using a Canon EOS R and RF 24-105mm f/4-7.1 IS zoom lens.

.

Sir Not Appearing In This Film

The things you like best about the best Star Wars movie probably came from Leigh Brackett, the "Queen of Space Opera". The original forms of Lando, Bespin, and Yoda all originated (albeit under different names) in her original rough screenplay.

The Luke/Leia/Han love triangle was in there, too, and rather spicier than it was in the final form onscreen in The Empire Strikes Back.

What I love most about the first two movies is how much obvious retconning Lucas had to do to beat them into the eventual Skywalker canon. We all saw that kiss on the Death Star, George.

Remember, Han didn’t just shoot first, Han shot only.

Greedo got burned down without even getting a shot off.

Midweek Meme Day!

Automotif DCXII...

Here's an interesting sight. It's a Toyota Starlet GT Turbo. The second generation of the Starlet, which was still rear-wheel drive, was sold over here from '81-'84, when gas was expensive* and its 39 City/54 Highway MPG rating made it popular.

The one in the pics, as you may surmise from the location of the wheel, is a Japanese market Starlet. It's a fourth generation car, by which time the Starlet platform had become front-wheel drive. As a '90-'91 GT Turbo model, it has a 1.3L intercooled turbo inline 4-cylinder making 135hp, which must feel sporty in a car weighing only 1,962 pounds.

*In 1981 the average gas price in the US was $1.35/gal, which works out to $4.78/gal in current dollars.

Snap Me, Maybe

Back in 2014 I wrote about the niche that small, pocketable cameras filled for me:

While bigger cameras like my old hand-me-down Coolpix 990 from Oleg or the newer Shower Pot SX500 have been supplanted by the DSLR for when I am Going Someplace To Take Pictures, and the really quite decent camera in the Galaxy SII suffices for I'm Someplace And, Hey!, There's A Picture!, there's still a niche for something to slip into a jacket or shirt pocket for I'm Going Someplace Where I Might Take Pictures But Maybe Not.

Therefore it was interesting to me to see someone else writing about reasoning their way through the same thought process.

A Sony NEX-3 next to an Olympus PEN E-P5, both slightly too big for the document pocket in my gun burkha.

Meme Dump!

Ugh.

Imagine me showing you a photo snapped out the window just now showing snow blowing around after yesterday afternoon’s sunny seventy degrees and captioning it “What fresh hell is this?”

That’ll save me the effort of walking over to the window.

.

Memes for a Monday Morn!

Danger Avocado

Someone referred to this Level 1/2/3 severe weather warning graphic as a "Danger Avocado" and now I can't unsee it.

Commercialized Holidays

The Ides of March has gotten so commercialized lately.

Remember the real meaning of the holiday: It's not just about stabbing people, it's about getting together to stab people in groups.

.

Nostalgia Ain't What It Used To Be

Did you know you can get lots of TV for free? It's streaming through the air, all you need is one of these things. It's silly to pay a cable or satellite provider to get local network channels when antennas still work.

The cool thing is that in the age of digital broadcast television, every station gets a handful of additional channels, and they stock these with a host of channels very reminiscent of the old local UHF stations that played reruns and syndicated shows.

My favorite is MeTV and not just for their Saturday morning cartoons. They also have a great Saturday evening lineup* that kicks off with Svengoolie, a classic b-grade monster movie show with a cheesy host character.

Last night they showed the original Friday the 13th, which I hadn't seen since it was still fairly new.

I was in eighth grade, spending the weekend at a friend's house playing Dungeons & Dragons (Module B2, if you must know), and my friend had an older sister who was so cool because she was in college and drove a late '70s Firebird, and she asked us "Hey, do y'all wanna see a scary movie?" and of course we said yes, so we watched the camp counselors at Crystal Lake get massacreed on HBO.

Friends, it scared the pee out of younger me. Like, nightmares and stuff. Put me clean off horror movies... especially of the slasher genre ...for the next decade.

Looking back now, no wonder Stranger Things was right in my wheelhouse.

Funnily enough, that salaciously scary movie I watched in '81 or '82 took surprisingly little editing to be okay for broadcast TV in 2026. They blurred some boobies and might have cut some dialog, but it looked like most all of the gruesome stuff was still there.

Also, it really wasn't scary at all. I didn't jump at the jump scares and the slasher stuff wasn't very gross by modern standards. It was all kinda cheesy in fact. Ah, well.

*After Svengoolie, you get the Adam West Batman, Star Trek (TOS), and Adventures of Superman. If you're a night owl, those are followed up by Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Memes For Sunday!

Meme Dump!

Point, Counterpoint...

There's one view of social media that goes something like this...

Even back in the days of dialup and Usenet, when most debates were reasonably polite, nerds kept yellowing dot-matrix printed lists of logical fallacies taped to the side of their CRT monitors, and there was a thing called "netiquette", there were still plenty of flame boards where you could go and let it all hang out. Given the anonymity of a keyboard and an internet handle behind which to hide, some people can't help but turn into giant offensive twatwaffles.

But, y'know, bathing yourself in a giant boiling vat of argument juices is not good for your temperament, long-term. It warps you over time. Gives you a negative outlook on life. Turns you into one of those people.

Learning to just say "okay" and then actually leave the conversation has really improved my overall mental well being. Just leave and don't go back to see what, if anything, they replied. You do not owe them your attention. You don't have to give their negativity a room in your mind palace.

In the words of the great warrior-poet and Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla, Lord Humungus...

Friday Memes!

Tab Clearing...

• Mimetic v. Agentic: The weird new mutation of grind culture.


• Gulf allies frustrated by lack of warning.


• Microsoft files for a patent on an AI agent to play video games for you.

Meme Dump!