Back in May, Google drove through my neighborhood to update their Street View (for the first time since March 2022). Right now this is what you get if you Google my house:

The good news is that Google is very concerned about my privacy. Per their Google-Contributed Street View Imagery Policy (google.com/streetview/policy/):

We have developed cutting-edge face and license plate blurring technology that is designed to blur identifiable faces and license plates within Google-contributed imagery in Street View.

That's nice. But sometimes it isn't enough to blur just a face.

"I see you've noticed the ears. They're actually easy to explain...."

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Immediately after I say I'm running to the store to buy milk, Mom asks, "What are you going to bring back for dinner tonight?"

"I've made dinner for the past two weeks," I say. "So the question should be what do *you* want to make us for dinner?"

Mom didn't even pause before replying, "I guess we're going out to eat tonight."

By which, it has now been revealed, she meant that I was to order take-out. So now, in addition to my trip to the grocery store, I'm also making a detour to the local barbecue joint.

Me and my big mouth.

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Fifteen years ago, the top ten keywords at Wriphe.com were "comic books," "football," "news," "holidays," "batman," "superman," "movies," "television," "wriphe.com," and "uga" (which at some point in the past decade I changed to "georgia" because I now use Uga exclusively to refer to the UGA Bulldog mascot).

As of today, the top ten keywords are "movies," "comic strip," "poodle strip," "walter," "poodles," "football," "comic books," "news," "holidays," and "havanese strip."

The five constants there are "comic books," "football," "holidays," "movies," and "news."

I don't know what that means, if anything. I just thought I'd point it out.

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Today, Friends Ken and James dragged me to a movie theater to watch

78/2510. Superman (2025)

It's the first time I've seen Superman in a theater since Superman Returns (which I really, strongly dislike). And I have to say... it's okay.

To explain why my rating is more-or-less "meh," may I remind you that a few years ago, there was a then-new movie adaptation of the book Emma (which I really, strongly love). But the reviewers for that movie kept harping on how accurate to the Jane Austen source material it was, which, in hindsight, only proved that they themselves weren't particularly familiar with the source material. Maybe they read the Cliff's Notes version.

This Superman is kind of like that.

Sure, it's got a lot of silly comic-booky elements, but it really is a typically James Gunn script that isn't particularly interested in being accurate to any characterizations, stories, or even costumes that have ever appeared in the pages of any DC Comics. (Particularly Krypto. I just couldn't get past Krypto being a shaggy, simple-minded dog. In the comics, he is neither, and, as much as I love dogs, this movie never gives me a reason to forget that. And don't even get me started on the character assassination of Supergirl in service to what must have been a Superboy and the Ravers fanboy in-joke.)

All the reviews for the movie, both good and bad, praise both Lois Lane and Krypto. I certainly agree about Rachel Brosnahan, who was as underused as Lois always is, but I find it surprising that more aren't singling out Mister Terrific being terrific (in a modern take of a blaxploitation superhero). There are several moments where it actually feels like his movie and I am there for it.

But I recognize that all of the things I have to complain about are more a feature than a bug of these sorts of blockbuster movies, especially in the superhero genre. Gunn's muddled plot moves real fast and hopes you wont notice that nothing really lines up, a fact that Gunn himself lampoons with a final post-credit scene. If that sort of tongue-in-cheek metafictional humor floats your boat, this is definitely for you.

Even though Superman often seems superfluous in his own movie, it still is the best live-action Superman film in 40 years. Take that however you will.

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A quick catch-up with my family:

In order to take over the accounting for our rental property, I needed to get the password to our accounting software from my mother. She pulled out a pen and wrote a twenty-five character string on a pink square Post-It. When I commented that it was a little long for a passphrase, she corrected that she hadn't given me the password itself but the mnemonic she uses to remember the password. She proceeded to explain to me what each element represented. However, when I tried to type in the password later, it was denied. Turns out that Mom had mis-remembered her own mnemonic.

My nearly octogenarian father, who suffers from arthritis and COPD so badly that he cannot easily walk to his own mailbox and back, has decided that he wants to take a trip to a beach so that he can watch girls in bikinis. But he won't go back to Panama City, where he used to live, because "they're all assholes," and he won't go to the closest beach, Tybee Island, because "it doesn't have an amusement park." So instead he's planning a trip to Nashville, TN, because "they've got plenty of bars."

My mother's sister's sister-in-law lives behind us, and my aunt frequently visits her to use her swimming pool. Which means my aunt frequently visits our house and uses it as her personal pool house. When I came home from the store the other day, I walked in from the garage to find her standing naked in my kitchen, she screamed, "I thought you would knock first!"

Not so long ago, partially in memory of my father's mother who always said "you have to write letters to get letters," I hand wrote a letter to my father's sister, who lives in Alabama. She eventually replied with an SMS text message and explained that she was much too busy to sit still long enough to write reply letters. But she strongly encouraged me to drive the four hours to her house for a visit when I had the time.

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