I go out of my way to be kind of a dick to people in the hope that they'll leave me alone. I do this even to my own family, especially my Mother's sister, Kelley.

My aunt has a very soft spot in her heart for dumb animals, which is why she has a house full of cats and tolerates a handyman who is literally too stupid to use a shovel effectively. Because I'm so much trouble, Kelley had this handman bury her most recently deceased cat. But the location he selected turned out to be full of tree roots, so he dug only a shallow hole and covered the shoebox coffin with a thin layer of dirt and a paving stone.

Can you guess where this is going?

In the night, another animal detected the decaying corpse's scent and dug it up. But not fully. The excavator didn't have the strength to remove the whole cat from the box. Kelley later discovered the dead cat's head emerging from the ground, like something from Pet Semetery. (And yes, there were maggots involved.)

Desperate for help, she bit the bullet and called me. So my strategy of being a dick ultimately resulted in my having to dig up a dead cat and re-bury it properly. In the rain.

As a reward for my hard work, my aunt gave me this:

Please click for sound.

Lesson learned. From now on, I'll be twice the asshole!

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Google suggested that I would like to read an online article titled "People are less satisfied with their marriage when their partner is not interested in social interactions, study finds." That's not a very interesting headline, is it? But I did click on it, if only to see if I could learn why some scientist was studying the obvious. I still don't know.

What I did learn is the term "social anhedonia," which Wikipedia defines as "a disinterest in social contact and a lack of pleasure in social situations." WebMD puts it even more plainly: "You don’t want to spend time with other people." That's why I love WebMD; it's talking directly to me!

I'm sure there's a spectrum for this social anhedonia — extreme cases are apparently linked to schizophrenia, which the voices in my head tell me I don't have — but I'm certainly on it somewhere. There's a reason I'm typing this in a basement in an otherwise empty house in the middle of the night.

I do enjoy spending limited amounts of time with friends, but "limited" is a key word in that sentence. I am keenly aware of my distaste for social interaction, and that self-awareness is a key part of why I am not interested in getting married. (I also don't much care for being touched by other people, which is apparently something psychiatrists call "physical anhedonia." Who knew?)

There have been other studies that say that married people live longer. People who spend time with friends live longer. People who are awake while the sun up live longer. In other words, people unlike me live longer. But if I have to be married, spend time with people, and wake up with the sunrise, why would I want to live any longer than I have to? That's not a reward, that's punishment.

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UGA football legend (and gameshow-host Donald Trump's best "see-I'm-not-racist-I-have-a-black-friend" friend) Herschel Walker won the Georgia Republican party primary for U.S. Senate with over 801,000 votes (68%). He literally won every single county in the state. He trounced his closest opponent, Gary Black (13%), who has been the state Agriculture Commissioner for the past 11 years! If I was writing headlines, this would read: Football Culture Trumps Agriculture.*

Now Walker will head into the general election to face sitting senator Raphael Warnock. So far Walker — who it should be noted has a net worth upwards of $29 million yet has sent me, a UGA football season ticket holder, at least 7 letters asking for campaign contributions — has refused to describe any specifics of his platform (other than "Teamwork good" and "Democrats evil") or debate any of his Republican rivals, instead relying purely on the goodwill garnered in college in the 1980s. And it's easy to see why he's so reluctant to speak up. When asked on friendly Fox News what he would do to prevent future mass murder of elementary school students like the 19 who died this week in Texas — Walker's home state for the past decade, right up until he decided to run for Senator of Georgia — he said this:

You know, Cain killed Abel and that's a problem that we have. And I said what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You know, you talked about doing a disinformation. What about getting a department that can look at young men/women that's looking at their social media. What about doing that? Looking into things like that? And we can stop that that way.

Yes, poor Abel would still be alive today if Adam had only kept his eyes on TikTok instead of Eve's fig leaf.

Besides, Cain killed Abel with a rock, the Daniel Defense DDM4® V7® AR15 with Improved Flash Suppressor rifle of its day. No one would ever try to ban rocks, so why would you want to ban 30-round magazine automatic rifles? (According to Christian dogma, the rock was given to Cain by The Devil, which I'm sure Walker would insist in no way reflects on for-profit gun manufacturers selling military-designed long guns to 18-year-old civilians.)

Sadly, I think there's every chance that bible-thumping, gun lobby-supporting, social media-spying Walker will win a seat in the U.S. Senate on nostalgic name recognition alone. And if that is the case, Georgians will be getting exactly the representation in government they deserve. That's democracy in action, folks!

* While Trump did indeed endorse Walker, it's not like Black wasn't trying his damnedest to earn his evil overlord's favor too, including refusing to admit that Biden is the lawfully elected president of the United States. Trump's endorsement in this race means far less than Walker's 82 touchdowns as a Georgia Bulldog.

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In hindsight, do I watch a lot of movies about death?

39/2048. Death on the Nile (2022)
There's a lot in this that sequel to The Orient Express that will feel not quite right to hardcore Christie fans, but I was more bothered by the CGI used to replicate 1930s Cairo than the anachronistic cultural mores or addition of Poirot's backstory. Don't get me wrong, I still liked it and would definitely keep watching Kenneth Branagh Poirot movies.

40/2049. The End (1978)
In this blackest of comedies, Burt Reynolds plays a man so afraid of pain that he is determined to kill himself before his terminal disease can. When this film works, it's usually because of Burt's natural charm, though it does squeeze some good comedy bits from very real human situations. (I found the third act slapstick to be too broad given the dark matter that preceded it. Your mileage — and tolerance of Dom DeLuise's over-the-top antics — may vary.)

Drink Coke and die!

41/2050. The Green Knight (2021)
The classic legend is about a knight on a quest to have his head chopped off, but this modern telling is more acid trip than road trip. Every line of dialog only makes the story more confusing. It might be more tolerable if it wasn't all filmed in a dark forest without lighting. Blech.

42/2051. The New Mutants (2020)
Whenever someone wonders what "studio interference" is, point them to this movie. The writer and director were very clearly using trying to make a horror film about adolescence and sexual awakening, but the studio wanted more traditional superhero fare. The actors seem completely confused (disinterested?) about what they're supposed to be doing, and the result *is* a nightmare, just not one that anyone would want to see.

43/2052. Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off (2022)
The old footage and glowing interviews about Hawk's early days are cool. Unfortunately, Hawk is unable or unwilling to examine his adult life outside of the world of skating, so in the end, he seems almost a victim rather than a champion, especially as the story ends wallowing on his inevitable physical decline. Was the intention of this documentary to make him a martyr?

44/2053. Closed for Storm (2020)
Another documentary, this time about the doomed New Orleans Jazzland theme park, from its conception to its destruction by Katrina to its abandonment by Six Flags to New Orleans' continued inability to do anything with it's remains. Honestly, it's the last part that I found most interesting because that was when the film veered from mere morbid nostalgia to something bordering on political activism against corrupt governance. Rage against the dying of the light, indeed. Of course I liked it.

More to come.

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Today we put down my father's 7-year-old poodle Scarlett because we discovered that cancer had eaten her liver. She'd been lethargic for the past week, had stopped eating, and at the last, her skin and eyes turned yellow. But she didn't complain. She wasn't that kind of dog.

Scarlett's last haircut, Oct 5, 2021

Scarlett loved chasing squirrels, walkies (especially when she was stalking a squirrel), belly rubs, and escaping through open gates to chase the squirrels who wouldn't stay inside her fence, probably in that order.

Scarlett wasn't my dog, but she kind of was. And I miss her. Even the trouble.

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Disappointment is a side effect of expectations.

I liked Executive Producer Mike Richards as Jeopardy! MC. I thought he was among the best of the "guest hosts" who have been substituting for the late, great Alex Trebek. I wanted Richards to have the job permanently.

But Richards (or his bosses) made a mistake. When they told the general public that the new host would be "one of the guest hosts," that set the expectation in the minds of the public that the job would go to the host they personally liked best. Hence the widespread disappointment from LeVar Burton's legion of well-earned fans when the least known (but best connected — and probably also the cheapest) of all the temporary hosts got the gig.

Thus the door was opened for the inevitable amateur yellow journalists digging up every negative thing Richards has done or said in his 46 years on the planet. Sadly, not everyone can be as perfect a person as Alex Trebek.

If any of Richards' innumerable sins (mostly misogyny & bad jokes) is truly unpardonable, it was that as Executive Producer he had the inside track on selecting and auditioning hosts. Even if he didn't have the final say himself, he should have known that when you're in the race, you can't also be the referee. Americans expect their game shows to be fair, and they're always disappointed when they aren't.

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Last month Ned "Otis" Beatty died. This month it's director Richard Donner. Twenty Twenty-One is proving to be a bad year for people associated with Superman: The Movie.

Should we start a pool on who's going to be August's victim? As you might expect from a 43-year-old movie, there really aren't too many principal cast and crew left. Long retired Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor) is 91. Valerie Perrine (Ms. Teschmacher), 77, has been fighting Parkinson's for years. The longest odds go to Marc McClure (Jimmy Olsen), a comparatively sprightly 64.

Somewhere behind the camera, executive producer Ilya Salkind is 73 and editor Stuart Baird is 74. Only one of the five credited screenwriters, Robert Benton survives at 88. And who wants to live in a world without John Williams in it? He's 89.

Fortunately, all three of the Kyrptonian villains from the opening scenes of Superman: The Movie are still stalking the Earth. Terrance Stamp (General Zod) is 82, Jack O'Halloran (Non) is 78, and Sara Douglas (Ursa) is barely older than Jimmy Olsen at 68. One would hope they get to keep terrorizing Planet Houston for years to come.

I don't mean to be callous. It would be nice if someone could fly around the world fast enough to reverse the flow of time and stave off death. But that sort of thing can only happen in the movies.

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Good help is getting increasingly harder to find.

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That PSA was published in 1949, when the USA had a population around 150 million and 25 million registered cars. For comparison, today there are about 350 million Americans (+133%) with 287 million registered vehicles (+1048%) resulting in over 42,000 traffic fatalities (+30%). Obviously, roads have gotten a lot safer in the past 3/4 century, and I think we all know why.

Thank you, Superman!

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From the God Is Dead Department:

You may recall that when the cosmos needed him, Red Bee was resurrected from the grave to join the heroes in the fight against the evil gods manipulating all of time and space.

The heroes won that fight ('natch), and the universe was reset into its previous state, which in comic books really means multiple universes. In the aftermath of the fight, we got a peek at several of those alternate realities, including one that looked reasonably familiar to fans of super heroes active during World War II.

Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Crisis on Infinite Earths #1, 2021

That's a lot of heroes! If you squint, you may be able to make out one fellow in particular wearing a red top with pink blousy sleeves. Here, I'll zoom in for you.

In this reality, the Earth is threatened by Surtur, a Norse demigod destined to set the world on fire. That would be bad, so once again, the Red Bee flies into action against the sort of menace that would be a difficult slog for a whole team of gods, much less a part-time lawyer with a trained bee.

It goes about as well as you might expect.

His not to reason why, his but to do and die.

Poor Bee. No respect in any universe.

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