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"Since October, 100 emergency calls have come in, Conroy said, with 81 of those involving vehicles crashing into an animal or a dead deer in the roadway. There were seven incidents of deer caught on a fence, eight responses to calls on injured deer and one incident of two deer fighting, the chief said."

Obviously, that begs the question: who, exactly, were those two deer fighting?

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107/2273. The Boys in the Band (1970)
First of all, this movie perfectly demonstrates why I hate parties. Stick around long enough with a bunch of drunks, and shit always goes bad. That said, it's a very well performed play. I don't generally enjoy dramas where the protagonist is an asshole, but here the descent into self-destruction is gradual (but well telegraphed), and, perhaps more importantly, the protagonist is very soundly called out (and punished) for his bad behavior. I enjoyed it.

108/2274. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamera (2003)
This autobiographical documentary of McNamera imparts important lessons about the former Secretary of Defense's philosophy and experiences while still tiptoeing around the topic of how much responsibility he had in the quagmire that became the Vietnam War, largely because he refuses to directly entertain the question. He wants you to respect the man, even if you dislike him. In fact, that's Lesson #1: "Empathize with your enemy."

109/2275. BS High (2023)
Another documentary, this time about the man behind the fraudulent Bishop Sycamore High School that played prep football on ESPN. Some things are just wrong.

110/2276. Cocaine Bear (2023)
Yeah, the bear murders people while high on cocaine, but aren't the real monsters humans? Loved it.

111/2277. Two O'Clock Courage (1945)
Tom Conway plays a man with amnesia who might be a murderer in this noir that's not embarrassed to lean into genre cliches. The short runtime is a real asset, keeping it tight and suspenseful, even if I still don't know what exactly "two o'clock courage" is.

More to come.

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The instructions on the receipt from the vet appointment read "A few pets may experience some lethargy and soreness from the vaccinations." And, yeah, Henry slept for a few hours after he got home. But he must not have been too lethargic or sore because he caught himself a rabbit.

He was so proud.

What, you thought I would show a picture of a dead rabbit? What kind of monster do you think I am?

Granted, I didn't actually see him kill it. For all I know, he found it that way.

But the important thing here is that Henry was (and remains) very proud of himself. They say you're supposed to support your children, so even though I might not be very happy about the fact that I had to bury a hare in a shallow grave, I guess I should say "Good Dog."

I'd hate to give my dog a complex.

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From the I Know Foreshadowing When I Read It Department:

Peacemaker Tries Hard #5, November 2023

The unique "super power," the questionable fashion sense, the earnest determination to right the world's wrongs with only a bee by his side.... Seriously, if you don't love the Red Bee by now, there might bee something wrong with you.

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I'm supposed to have a blog post today, but work has been especially demanding for the past few days, and I just haven't had the time/desire to write something here.

As you can see, while I'm been busy, the boys have found their own entertainment.

Alas, the bus never stops at our house, no matter how hard they bark.

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Questions from Hannah, part 2:

Why do you like cemeteries so much?

Because they are awesome. You can keep your forests and "grand" canyons. I'll take a cemetery any day.

Cemeteries are a reminder that the world wasn't built for me, that life only has the meaning we give it, that the journey is always more important than the destination. Memento mori!

When built right, the Victorian way, cemeteries are a delightful combination of storybook and park, usually filled with a bunch of spectacularly crafted art. As a bonus, most living people treat cemeteries with a serene reverence you don't find anywhere else, so cemeteries are simultaneously full of people and very quiet.

Truthfully, I think the idea of burying people in boxes in the ground is kind of ridiculous, but I love, love, love the stone monuments left above ground to mark their territory. If nothing else, those tombstones say "I was here," and that sort of yelling into the void of eternity speaks to me. What is a tombstone but a very succinct and enduring blog post?

And why do you call them cemeteries instead of graveyards?

Because that's what they are.

In the modern Western tradition, a graveyard is a type of cemetery that is on a church grounds while a cemetery is a community's common burial ground not necessarily connected to a specific church. For example, my town's local burial ground (established 1833) is officially Oak Hill Cemetery, though there are plenty of churches around here with their own much smaller graveyards. It's my experience that cemeteries are often more welcoming to visitors (and usually contain more delightfully ostentatious monuments) than graveyards, but I've been in plenty of delightful graveyards, too.

Personally, I can't say as I like the word "graveyard." A yard of graves sounds so very bleak, while there's almost something celebratory in a "cemetery." I like both of those much more than I like the euphemism "memorial park." The government should make you explicitly declare if you have a park full of corpses.

Looking at Online Etymology Dictionary, it would appear that both "graveyard" and "cemetery" have historically referred to more or less the same thing, so their use prior to the 19th century probably derives from whatever languages were spoken by a region's ancestors. And I suppose that maybe you live somewhere where "graveyard" has remained the preferred term, which is fine by me. Regional differences are fun!

You often mention the fact that you work at night and sleep through the morning; is your brain really more alert in the middle of the night?

I do think I do my best coding and most often find myself "in the zone" between 1 and 3AM, but I don't know if I would say that I am especially more alert in the darkness than I am in sunlight — I'm no vampire. I really like the late night because everyone else is asleep. For one thing, it's useful for my work: coding is easier without distractions, and it's easier to update websites, databases, and video game files when they aren't being as widely used. But I chose my occupation, not the other way around. I just like being the only person around. It's like the entire world becomes a cemetery, and you already know how I feel about that.

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Last week, knowing that Mom would be busy tending to her wounded beau, I sent a message to my standing group text with my friends looking for someone to accompany me to tonight's 7PM football game between #2 UGA and #9 Mississippi. They ignored me.

To add insult to injury, my so-called "friends" were unsympathetic the following day when I complained about people who put up and decorate Christmas trees the first week in November. Are they really my friends if they hate live football and think Christmas should be celebrated before Thanksgiving? I say no.

So I did what any sane person would do: I deleted the group text chain from my phone and went to the game by myself.

Sure, it was cold and drizzly, but I still had a great time (and a hand warmer), mostly because the Bulldogs were totally dominant (and because Mom wasn't there to talk me out of bringing a hand warmer to the game). The seniors were celebrated; the veterans were celebrated; the SEC Champion soccer team was celebrated.... After halftime, it was pretty much all celebration inside the 9th largest football stadium in the world. These are good times to be a Bulldogs fan.

There are still two games remaining on the season, but this was the last home game of the year, an unusually early ending to a (mostly lousy) home schedule. Looking back at the four I attended, Kentucky was the most fun, but this was an easy second place. The question is whether I will be back next year.

It is getting very hard to find people to go to the games with me, especially since I have fewer friends than I thought I did. (Christmas tree-hugging bastards!) So spending thousands on a couple of tickets I can't (and don't want to) always use is starting to seem like a bad use of my money.

I'll see how I feel when the bill comes due in February.

In the meantime, do as Miss Manners advises and "finish your turkey before putting up Christmas." Assholes.

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