To Stay Or Not To Stay, That Is The Question

My local movie theater now lets you know if your movie has mid- or end-credits.

Like everything Marvel, it's way overdone but I do appreciate the info.

Where Ya Been, James?

Mandu and Chingu both turn four in October.

I'll keep it short -- I put an offer on a house down in North Carolina last month.  Inspection turned up some major issues, including the roof and drainage / standing water.  North Carolina gets a lot of rain, not to mention wind and even hurricanes, so I walked.

I drove down again last weekend and now have another offer out.  It's a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood, and now I'm waiting for another inspection.  If it gets a relatively clean bill of health (roof was supposedly redone in 2019) I'm going to buy it and ideally getting out of Maryland by the end of 2026.

I'm ready to live near, not on, the beach and start a new adventure with these two non-rent-payers above.

Adulting, man.

"that old fear, and that old pain"

"'Lord,' I said. 'Lewis, you're out of sight.'

'Who knows,' he said. 'But I believe in survival. All kinds. Every time I come up here, I believe in it more. You know, with all the so-called modern conveniences, a man can still fall down. His leg will break, like Shad Mackey's. He can lie there in the woods with night coming on, knowing he's got two cars in the garage, one of them an XKE, a wife and three children watching 'Star Trek' as he lies trying to get his breath under a bush. The old human body is the same as it always was. It still feels that old fear, and that old pain. The last time I was near here...'"

-- James Dickey, Deliverance

Mushroom Trail

Seen on a recent walk around my neighborhood.  I can only guess I'm being lured into a cooking pot.  It's been a surprisingly wet summer here in Frederick -- last two summers I swear everything turned brown by the end of July and stopped growing.

Tony: Wut I Thunk

Director Matt Johnson makes some great choices here: three months (a summer) in the life on Anthony Bourdain based loosely on Kitchen Confidential.  Not Bourdain the TV star, the celebrity, the very tragic death by suicide, but just a skinny rich kid who needs to grow up.  This selectiveness is crucial to making the story universal -- because growing up is hard, and learning to love yourself is not always an easy path.  Cue falling for, and chasing, a girl to Provincetown for a summer on the shore and you've got a movie that works best by being a bit incomplete, a bit unfinished, a bit (ahem) under-baked -- always showing more than telling.  Antonio Banderas shines as Tony's reluctant, nearly Puritan mentor who oversees a kitchen pirate crew of burnouts and sex and drug addicts (1975, people).  If not an actual feel-good film, it's certainly feel-decent enough about how downright embarrassing it can be to be young and in love and aspiring to something greater in a world of dirty dishes and crappy customers who wouldn't know a true Lobster Thermidor if it landed on their head.

Five bumps of dodgy cocaine out of five!

Beach Life

Sunset Beach, North Carolina.

I spent the weekend in North Carolina looking at houses.  I found one I like.  If all goes well, I'll be living down here by the end of the year.

I Love You Too

Dolly Parton, dead at 80.

AIDS activist.  Vaccine activist.  Child literacy activist.  Pretty good singer too.

Stay Classy, Frederick

I mean, I don't disagree.  Honey too though.

Five Years

Chingu seems to really like diet soda.

This is as good a time as any to recap the last five years of my life, no?

In 2021 I returned to America from my job teaching English in South Korea.  I moved in with my Dad in Bellingham, Washington.  He was 88 at the time and dealing with, well, age, as well as a very bad romantic relationship that had just ended.  Basically, he needed full-time care, and he couldn't drive any more, and he lived in the middle of the woods.  Neither of us were thrilled by all of this, but it was necessary short of putting him in a home.

I worked a weekend / part-time job with the Whatcom County Humane Society which changed my life, in no small part because I adopted the tuxedo terror (pictured above) and his sister -- Chingu and Mandu (Korean names for "friend" and "dumpling.")

In 2022 my Dad was finally diagnosed with vascular dementia.  It was a secret to nobody, especially his doctor, who seemed strangely reluctant to actually give him the test that would allow for the dementia diagnosis.  These were, understandably, very difficult times for everyone.  I cried when the doctor asked my Dad some simple questions -- Date? Location? Where are you, basically.  It wasn't just that he was "wrong" in his answers, but that he couldn't fathom the concepts of test, date, location, and, well, reality.

My Only Sunshine

This is the Tuscorora Crepe Myrtle blooming in front of my house.  I'll miss it!

"a loaded gun to an infant"

"'Let him speak,' Finn said dispassionately.

'We... I and others, I mean ... instituted an explosive increase of knowledge in the physical sciences, smothered or subverted all the social and spiritual sciences. We cranked your technology to a fever pitch of frenzied production, led you to build yourselves a suicidal ethic and culture, gave you toys like the atom bomb and lysergic acid to play with: we gave a loaded gun to an infant.  We manipulated elections and revolutions, staged assassinations, encouraged government to calcify the ability of its people to endure, touched off riots, provided you with news media that would carry the news of growing cancer among you, and did all we could to bring into the minds of men a frustration and a terror that would lead inevitably to chaos. You, the steers, are nearly ready to butcher yourselves for our tables.'"

-- Spider Robinson, "Unnatural Causes"