The Joys of Travel

Just got back from a trip to the UK. Was there for the election that resulted in a "hung Parliament", leaving them with a bit of an uncertain road ahead.

Interesting times.

I returned home with a box of fudge and some kind of cold or bug that may or may not be strep throat. I'm waiting to hear on the last bit. Goddamn but I hate flying now. When I was a kid, it was an exotic, interesting thing. Now I find myself in a tiny seat in coach for hours on end just praying to get the hell out of the plane. I avoid the airline food like the plague (which almost certainly saved me from stomach problems) which left me beyond hungry. The only saving grace was that international flights have a fairly good selection of movies.

I got to finally see The Wolverine (meh), Moana (excellent!), Logan (not bad), The Great Wall (terrible, but I enjoyed it nonetheless), Jupiter Ascending (wow... beautiful but horrible), and at least one or two other movies that have left no impression on my memory at all.

It's good to be home, sick or not. There's just something comforting about sleeping in one's own bed.

And it's nice to have cars driving on the right side of the road.

Gotta love those spring colds

Two weeks I've been pretty much down-and-out with sinus issues and, for much of that, a wracking cough.

Just as I was thinking "tomorrow, I think I'll call the doctor", it's started to clear.

Still got the cough, but it's looser. Still have the sinus issues, but they're bearable and less-crippling.

Nature's really got it in for me this month.

Plant Bukakke redux

Now all the congestion has transformed into the inevitable springtime chest cold for me.

Whee.

I'm strangely-relieved, truth be told. I'm so used to this as a pattern that it offers a certain predictability as to what I can expect. My head congestion has migrated to my chest, so I can breathe for the most part and no longer wish fiery doom upon all vegetable life. That's good, as we humans need plants and all that. Also I'm afraid of fire.

So now I'm adding cough medicine to my daily pharmaceutical cocktails. Whee.

Fucking plant bukakke

I currently hate all plant life. Why? Plant bukakke. Fucking springtime comes (heh) with all the little particles of plants sowing their procreative spew. And I'm allergic to it.

Fucking plants.

And California got record rainfall this year. So this Spring is a bucket of allergy-ridden shit.

If I had a flamethrower...

Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2

GODDAMN THAT MOVIE WAS AWESOME!

At this point, anything further I read will be variations on that, so if that's all you wanted to see, you're good.

Set a few months after the first Guardians of the Galaxy film, GoG V2 starts off with action and humor then never really lets up.

While Peter Quill/"Starlord", Gamora, and Rocket remain pretty much the same, Drax is a bit more laid back (though still insane) and Groot is a baby.

The Guardians start off with a crazed job that goes fairly right, then wind up going through a series of misadventures that take them into a showdown with a godlike Celestial. Oh, and there's a fair amount of stuff covering themes of family and all that. Familiar faces (Yondu and Nebula) reappear while some new faces also pop in, such as Mantis, Starhawk, and a few others.

That's as much as I think I can get away with and not overly-spoil the film.

I will say that all the casting was spot-on. The family-theme sub-plots were corny and excessive at times, but woven seamlessly into the film's corny, over-the-top, space opera action. I quite liked the mix of old and new characters as well as the myriad call-outs to Marvel comics trivia. I need to see this flick again.

May the Fourth be With You Where No One Has Gone Before!

So I'm having lunch and the guy behind the bar decides he's going to troll everyone.

He puts on screen "Encounter at Farpoint", the pilot episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation".

Yeah, they went there.

Re-watching that episode really drove home for me how I find ST:TNG fairly unwatchable unlike "Star Trek: The Original Series".

Sure, both shows are over-acted, but I find the self-righteous, stiff-postured, priggy smugness of TNG to be just unbearable when compared with the milder, more overly-sentimental TOS.

And then there's the characters. Sure, TOS had caricatures: the square-jawed, torn-shirt, womanizing James Tiberius Kirk. The crotchety, folksy Leonard "Bones" McCoy. The brilliant, reserved, slightly alien Spock. The hard-drinking Montgomery Scott. Etc. Etc. Those caricatures were interesting! They had actual passion to them! TNG characters were bland, self-righteous, and uninteresting. Sure, Jean-Luc Picard got a little romance later, after he established his love of Earl Grey, but the rest were yawn-inducing or, in the case of Data, utterly predictable plot points to explore human psyche. Worf's Klingon stories, introduced later to give more conflict, passion, and depth, never felt like they fit.

Damn! Now I want to re-watch the old show.

Review: Zombie Tools "The Mauler"

It arrived!



Yes, my latest Zombie Tool and the companion to my Tainto (a blade retired by the Zombie Tools folks), the Mauler is also a companion karambit to my Fox flipper (which I've managed to puncture my arm with. Whee!).

The Mauler is up to what I expect of Zombie Tools standards. It's a solid, mean-looking blade. Sharp and not a toy. It's got sharp edges on the outside and on the inner curve as well as a nasty rounded spike on the ring.


I opted for the leather sheath addition and I am damn happy I did.

Now the hard part will be not accidentally lopping off a body part as I try not to play with the lovely thing too much.