Max @max@smeap.com

Super appreciate the hustle little robot friend, but when we're Spring Cleaning in October, you can trust me that I know my procrastination has consequences. 😹 I've got decades of procrastination experience on you.

My vacuum cleaner decided my house was too messy and it was going to just ignore my virtual walls and wander into other rooms than the one I told it to clean. Then it yelled at me because it got too full. Yeah, that's why I set up the virtual walls, dummy. I know we need to do this in stages. 😹

If anyone else hoards Bandcamp recs in their wishlist in the build up to Bandcamp Fridays, I’ve had an album in my head this week worth sharing, “Failure in Three Parts” by Jack and the Dull Boy:

https://jackandthedullboy.bandcamp.com/releases

This 2021 release was a friend of a Discord friend sort of rec to me that I pre-ordered just on the hard rocking of the one and only preview track: their cover of “Maniac” (from Flashdance). The rest (prog) rocks even harder. 🤘

Anyway, maybe I’ll actually ride something next weekend or the weekend after if I find another lazy Sunday.

If the park had wifi I’d consider “work from the park” next season. I’ve heard of a few software workers doing that in CA parks, setting up “offices” in an amusement park in a good wifi area for a change of scenery. I still could try it with phone tethering I suppose.

Apple Health warned me to try mixing up my usual walking routine so an hour walking an amusement park was just following health advice. 😼 Though I know a place with that much fried food isn’t that healthy for me.

If I also lived in the Bay Area or LA I probably would have been very tempted to save for that total budget. It’s another weird sort of cost of living benefits to spoil myself with. All the parks I want access to. None of them are Disney or even the California version of Six Flags, though one is formerly Six Flags (don’t get me started on that rant).

I’ve an FB friend that shared a spreadsheet they built of the best multi-pass amusement park deals to maximize West Coast park access (between SF and LA). It added some small perspective for me. My local park is tinier and less renowned, but also what I just paid for an entire season pass was a rounding error compared to that pass budget. I could also get passes for two or more of the other regional parks near me for less than the cost of just one CA multi-park pass (of three+).

There’s just something magic about cool weather and bright lights everywhere after twilight on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I bought a whole season pass just to walk around the park for an hour after sunset tonight. It was great. I didn’t ride anything. I just walked meandering figure eights around the park. I don’t know yet if I’ll make much use of the pass regular season next year or if I’ll find more time over the next three weekends. I did buy it just for the one hour.

So this October is like the first time in maybe decades the city’s small, local amusement park has decided to do October weekends. They’re calling it “Pumpkin Weekends”. It’s very cute. They had a deal that next year’s season passes would include these October Weekends.

It’s partly because of sleep deprivation, but I have the strongest nostalgia for October nights in an Amusement Park from the one HS autumn I worked food service at one.

Sexy establishing shot of DS9 followed (rightfully) by:

(Bajoran) Lt. Cmdr. Shaxs (angrily): Tacky Cardassian fascist eyesore!

👏

Hulu keeps recommending all these dumb romcoms to me and I keep watching them. Then more get recommended. Then I watch some of those. This is dumb, I should stop watching them. But now I’m too curious to stop. I’ve got like a decade and a half of them I’ve never even heard of even in passing conversation. Weird blind spot plus strange October mood.

It’s funny trying to remember how to write a check sometimes. Remember those?

Brought to you by “whoops I wrote two different numbers because I forgot how to write numbers rather than just punch them on a keyboard” on my last check 😹

I hate arguing with Libertarians.

They love using their own fascinating dialect of English words with extreme bizarro land connotations. It’s cute, I guess, but exhausting.

They love logical fallacies so much I sometimes worry they don’t understand logic or debate. Even the well read pseudo-intellectuals. Also exhausting

They never have good arguments and I wish more would take MDMA or whatever to understand others have complex inner lives, too

LinkedIn truly is the worst possible social network. “Hey, here’s daily spam about how you should reconnect with this former coworker you don’t recall fondly. Also, here’s exactly how high they failed upward since you last worked with them.”

Fuck off, LinkedIn. No one likes you, they just barely tolerate you because sometimes you help find jobs. Sometimes. Rarely. Barely tolerate.

Star Wars ANDOR has been pretty good so far, but logically I’m waiting for Star Wars XOR and Star Wars NAND to really get stuff going.

I only paid $10 for a liter of beer because I brought the right glassware to the festival (in my backyard). Happy Oktoberfest, y’all

Imagine if everyone told time in The Lord of the Rings based on the first visit Gandalf made to see Bilbo in the Shire in The Hobbit. We all know it was a momentous inciting event. But that’s not a reason build a whole calendar around it.

I realize Star Wars doesn’t really care about worldbuilding, and I’m complaining about something no one really cares about (not even me), but it does take me a bit out of it when titles decide to throw out a Year BBY, sorry.

There’s no reason to celebrate the signing date at the formation of the Alliance of Rebels? There’s no Constitution Day for the New Republic? Everyone wants to tell time by the destruction of the first Death Star? (Even after there’s been seven of them?)

At least the Destruction of Alderaan should have a “Space 9/11 Change Everything” / “Never Forget” vibe much more than “Remember that time a kid shot an exhaust port?” Even if that kid turned out to be a Space Wizard!

I feel like Star Wars could have a better reference epoch than the Battle of Yavin. I get why it is a big deal for fans: it puts things in relationship to A New Hope. Also yeah if you take the title “A New Hope” seriously you can rationalize that battle being critical turning point and see it as an incredibly important moment, but also: only assholes tell time by war battles. (Yeah I’m calling out serious Star Wars fans and George Lucas, I guess.)