disliked blades

judging Mom's cooking

this looks amazing

I don't hate Brussels sprouts, but they're not normally a go-to food for me. This Fallow video, however, might make me jump on the Brussels-sprout train.

the story of the muddy truck

walk blog: Day 3 now done

Day 3 is now done and dusted, as the Brits say. Go check it out. The captions aren't much, but the new commentary, I think, adds something to the experience.

Eleven more to go.

don't feel pressure just because of my opinion

A lot of people don't get this. If I express my opinion, especially if I express it in a general way, not aiming my remarks at anyone in particular, some people feel compelled to respond as though I had personally accused them or pressured them. If these people weren't so insecure, they'd feel no pressure at all to respond, but they do, and they respond as though they'd been personally attacked, thus revealing their insecurity. This pattern repeats itself quite often, and it follows certain political alignments to a T every single time: 

(rightie) General remark. (e.g., "Men aren't women.")

(lefties) Personal offense leading to personal rebuttal. (e.g., "Bigot!")

Sad. How can you teach people to feel secure in themselves?

how much faster could Luke have learned?

What if Yoda had taught Luke more like this father teaching his (extremely advanced) toddler to hit a baseball? ¡Ay, increíble!

hot-air balloons and the hazards of unexpected physics

this needs to be a tee design

 

I may have put up a version of this image before. If so, I apologize. I did, however, add the word "now" to this version.

I think I found John McCrarey's food heaven

Mexican-Filipino fusion? The hell you say! The only way to get the closed-minded McCrarey to eat Filipino food is via a fusion combination. Seriously, though, this does look really good.

precisely engineered croissants

the history of the NATO phonetic alphabet

Sauron the mace-ster

gross sci-fi

I've seen a lot of these, but not "Hellraiser," "Possessor," and "Tetsuo."

gettin' neighborly

After a while, all you can do is shake your head.

walk-blog progress report

Over at the walk blog, Days 1 and 2 are now fully done: pics enlarged, posts proofed and edited (comment if you see mistakes), with captions and commentary in place. And now, I must continue generating content for Substack. The grind goes on, and once again, I want to stay ahead so I can enjoy a week's break between Christmas and New Year's.

If I do one blog post per day, and there are fourteen posts in total to do (the six rest-day posts are all already done, and they have been for a while), and today is December 3, and I've already done two posts, then I ought to finish everything by December 15. Of course, I can't guarantee I'll do one post per day: some of these posts have more than 500 photos, and I'm trying to caption all of them while also adding commentary, so I could be as slow as one post per two days. That could take a long time. Well, we'll see what I can do. I might have to make some compromises to keep to the schedule. Anyway, twelve posts to go doesn't sound so bad.

Gary vs. IKEA

how not to die

O, hole-y night

One of the thin budae-jjigae pans that I use when I make large pies has a tiny hole in it. This isn't consequential for pie-making; any crust will block the hole. But I can no longer make anything else with that pan, so—not being a welder or a solderer—I've decided to jettison the faithful vessel. It's only a thing, after all. How and when the hole came to be, I have no clue. It's just one of those mysteries that will remain forever unsolved.

恐龍

공룡
恐龍
gong-ryong (fearsome reptile [character for dragon])
= dinosaur → Gk. deinos + sauros "terrible lizard"

Bri discusses his... tools

when graphic design goes wrong

Irish sandwich

I find myself thinking of a sandwich made with warm apple-pie filling and Nutella.

post-heart-attack healing

I'd like to get involved with this microneedle-patch thing. Or is my heart muscle now too scarred for such treatment to be a viable option?

A research group led by Dr. Ke Huang at Texas A&M University has created a patch that may support heart healing after a heart attack. The device uses a specialized microneedle system to deliver a therapeutic molecule straight into damaged heart tissue, which helps promote repair and improves overall heart function while minimizing effects on the rest of the body.

Then again, the procedure needs work:

Right now, applying the patch requires open-chest surgery. Huang hopes to create a version that can be delivered through a small tube, which would make the treatment far easier to use in real-life medical settings.

"bite up"

Even in extremis, I'd probably feel the urge to correct someone who spoke in such a retarded manner—even if it meant not being rescued.

unhinge your jaws

solid advice from Grok AI?

I've been trying out the Grok AI chatbot as well as Grokipedia. It all feels kind of shaky. Then I asked Grok how I could succeed on Substack. Here's the reply:

With four publications and just 18 subscribers (only two paid), you're in a classic early-stage challenge: low visibility and even lower conversions. The good news? Substack is designed for organic growth, and many writers start here—some scaling to thousands without prior audiences. Success comes from treating this like a marathon: focus on value, consistency, and relationships over quick hacks. Based on proven strategies from successful Substackers, here's a step-by-step plan tailored to your setup.

Step 1: Consolidate Your Publications for Focus

Running multiple pubs can dilute your energy and confuse potential readers—it's like shouting in four directions at once. Pick one publication to double down on. Choose the one with the most traction (even if it's just a few more opens) or the niche that excites you most. Redirect the others: merge content, cross-post teasers, or archive them with a note explaining the shift.

• Why it works: Niching down attracts loyal readers. "Riches are in the niches"—writers who solve specific problems (e.g., "meal planning for busy Romanian parents" or "neuroscience for quitting academia") grow faster than generalists.
• Action: Audit your pubs today. Announce the focus in a post: "I'm all-in on [Pub Name]—here's why, and subscribe if you love [specific value]."
• Expected impact: This alone could boost your open rates by 20-30% as readers know what to expect.

Step 2: Build a Consistent Content Engine

Quality + consistency is your foundation. Readers subscribe to solutions, not just words—aim for posts that make them think, "I need this in my inbox weekly."

• Pro Tip: Set a small goal like 6 new subs/week. Track in Substack's dashboard—what formats (lists, stories) perform best? After 10 posts, you could hit 50+ total subs if consistent.

Step 3: Leverage Substack's Built-In Tools for Discovery

Don't rely on external traffic yet—Substack's ecosystem is your low-effort growth engine.

• Notes (Your Daily Must-Do): Post 20-30 minutes/day: Share snippets, polls, or relatable thoughts (e.g., "Writers: What's your biggest block?"). It's like Twitter without limits—28% of one writer's growth came from here. Engage genuinely: Comment thoughtfully on 5-10 Notes daily to get reminders for your profile.
• Recommendations: Swap recs with 3-5 similar writers (find via Notes or search). "Team up and leverage each other's audiences"—one writer gained 10x speed this way.
• In-Post Prompts: Every post needs a subscribe button mid-way and footer. Add a lead magnet: Free PDF like "My 7-Day [Niche] Starter Kit" for email sign-ups.

Step 4: Convert Free Subs to Paid (From 2 to 20+)

With only 11% paid rate (low but fixable), focus on value ladders. Don't push sales early—nurture first.

• Add a Paid Tier Now: Even at 18 subs, offer $5/month for exclusives (e.g., "Deep-Dive Q&As" or "Behind-the-Scenes Edits"). Announce: "If my free posts help, upgrade for [specific bonus]."
• Build Trust: Poll free readers: "What would you pay for?" Deliver one premium post/month to test. Aim for 10% conversion (2 more paid subs) by month-end.
• Freemium Model: 80% free content to hook, 20% paid to retain. Success stories show this sustains growth without ads.

Step 5: Amplify with External Channels (Once You Have Momentum)

Start small to avoid burnout:

• Guest Posting: Write for aligned Substacks (e.g., "My Top Lesson from [Your Niche]"). It's "injecting your subscriber count with vitamins."
• Cross-Promote: Share Notes/X snippets on Twitter/LinkedIn/Reddit (r/NewsletterBusiness for SEO tips). One writer grew 1,400 subs in 2 months via targeted outreach.
• Community Building: Reply to every comment. Host a free AMA on Notes. "Engage to convert followers to subs."

Realistic Timeline & Mindset

• Month 1: 50-100 total subs via Notes/consistency. 4-6 paid.
• Month 3: 200+ subs, 10% paid rate. Compound from recs.
• Track Progress: Use Substack analytics weekly. Celebrate wins (e.g., first viral Note). Growth feels slow at first but snowballs—writers like a college student hit 100/week through engagement alone. You're not "behind"; you're building owned audience in a noisy world. Focus on serving your 18 readers deeply—they'll become your evangelists. If you share your niche, I can refine this further!

it died?

"Death by Lightning": review

Michael Shannon as James Garfield and Matthew Macfadyen as Charles Guiteau

A November 2025 addition to the ever-growing stable of Netflix movies and miniseries, "Death by Lightning" stars Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen as President James Garfield and his assassin, Charles Guiteau. Garfield was the US's 20th president, shot by Guiteau in 1881, barely a season into Garfield's first and only term. The story shows the parallel, intersecting, and radically different life-paths of Garfield and Guiteau. After being shot, Garfield lingered on for another two months before dying of sepsis related to the over-probing of his bullet wound in a vain attempt to find and extract the assassin's bullet. The miniseries is based on a 2011 nonfiction monograph, Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard. I have not read the book; the miniseries, which came out barely a month ago, was suggested to me by my buddy Mike. The series also stars Betty Gilpin, Shea Whigham, Bradley Whitford, and Nick Offerman. Whigham and Offerman appeared together in "Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning." I've seen Gilpin in "The Hunt" and "Mrs. Davis." Whitford is, of course, no stranger to political dramas, having been a regular on "The West Wing" for years. The phrase death by lightning is from a remark made by Garfield to justify his lack of worry about assassination after Abraham Lincoln's death in 1865: according to Garfield, you can't worry about assassination any more than you can worry about being struck by lightning, so the series's title is a metaphor for the assassination itself. One of the series's central themes is lost opportunity: James Garfield, already considered by many historians to have been a great if flawed man, could have been a superb president; Charles Guiteau, meanwhile, lived a life of wasted potential: smart and articulate, he spent most of his final years as a moocher, a grifter, and a well-spoken, mentally unstable fabulist—probably a sign of schizophrenia. Both Garfield and Guiteau have been largely forgotten these days (I know I'd forgotten that Garfield had been assassinated; when I think of assassinated presidents, the three who immediately come to mind are Lincoln, McKinley, and Kennedy); Guiteau's current level of obscurity is highlighted when, at the very beginning of the series, Guiteau's formaldehyde-preserved brain, still bottled, rolls out of a US Army Medical Museum warehouse crate and is stared at by uncomprehending workers sometime in 1969.

Spanning only four episodes, the series covers James Garfield's return to politics after a period spent working on his Ohio farm and living with his wife Lucretia "Crete" Garfield (Gilpin) and their children. Garfield reluctantly accepts the opportunity to back a fellow Republican at the party's convention in Chicago. An honest man and veteran with a distaste for politics and muckraking, Garfield gives a speech on behalf of his chosen man John Sherman, brother of the famous/infamous General William Tecumseh Sherman, who had burned his way through Georgia during the Civil War. But Garfield's speech attracts attention to Garfield himself, and he is placed on the list of Republican nominees, much to the consternation of Sherman. After many rounds of deliberation and voting, Garfield—a progressive reformer—is chosen as the Republicans' nominee for president, and Chester A. Arthur (Offerman)—a "Stalwart" reactionary conservative and "machine politician" who works for fellow Stalwart Roscoe Conkling (Whigham, and Roscoe Conkling was a name I was sure I'd heard before)—is chosen as Garfield's running mate. Some time is spent exploring the idea that Garfield, despite his protestations, actually wanted to be nominated. Meanwhile, the story also follows the life of Charles Guiteau, a man with some talent, a lot of imagination, and very big dreams who is also directionless and reliant on the good graces of his ever-tolerant sister. Guiteau's main problem, though, is his mental instability, which leads to fits of anger, potential violence, impulsivity, and an overactive imagination. Guiteau latches onto Garfield's candidacy and begins to fancy himself a booster who has helped Garfield to gain the presidency; after many disappointing attempts to interact with Garfield, Guiteau eventually sours on him and instead fixates on Vice President Arthur, whom Guiteau is now convinced must become president—a state of affairs that Guiteau will bring into being by killing Garfield.

Because this miniseries is done by Netflix, it contains certain "tells" that indicate the political leanings of its makers. When Garfield steps out of a carriage in 1800s-era downtown Chicago, we immediately see black and Asian people dressed to the nines and walking through the streets. A white crowd in front of Garfield's Ohio home shouts "China out!" as if to parody modern conservative sentiments about immigration. Garfield's eldest daughter gets angry at her father when she thinks he's hypocritically ignoring the plight of Chinese workers after having pledged himself to the black cause. The main political conflict we see is between the Republican reformers (who stand in for today's left-liberals) and the Stalwart wing of the Republican party, which is corrupt and roughly corresponds to today's America-firsters. (I doubt Garfield would have been chosen as a subject for a Netflix film had he not been a progressive Republican, but sources contend that Garfield, while being ideologically closer to the Half-Breeds, was trying to bridge the intra-party gap to unite everyone under one banner.) The Democrats, who were pro-slavery before and during the Civil War, are nowhere to be found in the series, which focuses relentlessly on the Republicans' internal strife.

But by the end of the series, I began to see that certain scenes and events depicted in the show could be interpreted differently depending on one's ideological leanings. Garfield could be seen as a compromiser and deal-maker who parallels the current Orange Man in terms of having progressive leanings in some areas. (Trump is still, in my opinion, a 90s-era Democrat with his "America First," pro-worker, anti-globalist ideas.) In the show, Garfield's eldest daughter gets over her idealistic anger at her father once she cools down and recognizes the pragmatic realities of his situation. Chester Arthur's conversion from Garfield's political enemy to his posthumous ally can be seen as a parallel to JD Vance, who started off as a Trump critic but is now a huge MAGA partisan, inspired by Trump himself to embrace his own metanoia. The increasingly unstable Guiteau is made out to be a proto-hippie who spent five years in a "free love" colony, although he seemed to be the only one not engaged in wild sex (the show contains a few moments of sex and nudity); a conservative will pick up on the show's implied association between the hippie worldview and insanity.

The series was full of intentional and unintentional quirks, callbacks, and references. I went snooping around my old reviews for the name "Roscoe Conklin" (not Conkling) and found it: she was Jack Reacher's love interest in Season 1 of "Reacher." I think author Lee Child knew what he was doing when he named her character. Bradley Whitford, as James Blaine, gets a brief moment where he speaks French to Guiteau (who can't speak French despite his French surname), saying "L'habit ne fait pas le moine," i.e., "The habit does not make the monk." You can't judge a book by its cover. In a much later encounter, Blaine flat-out tells Guiteau that he thinks Guiteau is little more than an insistent, persistent parasite. Macfadyen, as Guiteau, was familiar to me thanks to his role as the ill-fated Mr. Paradox in "Deadpool & Wolverine," in which his head is physically invaded by villainess Cassandra Nova's probing fingers. Macfadyen acted the part of Guiteau well, though, doing a nearly perfect, if slightly over-enunciated, American accent. In terms of quirks, I had to wonder at some expressions that sounded to me like linguistic anachronisms. Did early-1800s people say "motherfucker"? Was the phrase "machine politics" really a thing back then? Did people exclaim "Right?!" in vehement agreement with their interlocutors? Did they ever shout "Eat shit!"?

Overall, I found "Death by Lightning" to be a watchable four-hour series that, according to the sources I consulted afterward, was more or less accurate in its portrayal of Garfield and Guiteau's mutual history in the broad strokes. I suspect there were, as with most biopics, plenty of changes and embellishments. I couldn't help noticing that the "Game of Thrones" team was heavily involved in this show: it was partly produced by "D&D," a.k.a. David Benioff and Dan "DB" Weiss, and the series's composer was Ramin Djawadi. The always-changing animated opening credits, a metaphor for politics (and possibly human existence) as a machine, also had that "Game of Thrones" feel to them. I did not, however, think that this series was anywhere near the quality of "John Adams," which to my mind is one of the best historical series I've ever seen.

That said, "Death by Lightning" still gets my seal of approval. It's well acted by all involved, features a lot of charming period scenery and costumery, and is a meditation not only on the question of lost opportunities but also on the failures of the medicine of that era: advances in germ theory and sepsis were only just being made at the time, and Garfield, lying prone in the White House, then in New Jersey, is cursed with an incompetent doctor (Željko Ivanek) who probably causes Garfield's death. Macfadyen's Guiteau gives us a good idea of how one form of mental illness (and/or bad character) might manifest itself, and of how little the people of the time could have done for a sick person like Guiteau. Nick Offerman as the thuggish, pigheaded Chester A. Arthur is the main source of comic relief—sometimes so much so that I couldn't figure out whether I was watching a drama or a comedy. How true-to-life Charles Guiteau's character arc really is in the show, I have no clue. I guess I'll have to read the book, which my buddy Mike has also recommended to me.

weird comment spambots

Instapundit's Disqus-based commenting system gets more than its share of spambots. Most of the bot comments, like the image above, feature the faces of vaguely cute women, but usually with a message like "Make $200-$500 an hour by working for Google." Some bot comments, though, are like the above: just a weird string of letters reminiscent of the splattery death rattle of someone who's been stabbed in the throat. What do these mean? Are they just examples of the bots' having given up and printing gibberish with cute, clickable faces? Are there idiots out there who will actually click on those faces (don't answer that)? Do you ever see these these bot comments in other contexts? Weird.

the missing

it is accomplished (again)

Progress report! One phase of the walk-blog finalization is over: I have successfully enlarged all of the added photos. You may now browse the whole collection. As a practical matter, I've looked up how to speed this mass-enlargement process up in the future, and there are several plausible methods that I'll have to practice, all involving coding of some sort. We'll see how that works out. As things stand, mass enlargement just takes too long.

In the meantime, I have to move on to the next phases: (1) proofreading and editing the blog posts, which doubtless have a ton of typos, especially given how exhausted I was every day when I wrote the posts up after walking an average of 28 kilometers on walking days; (2) adding captions to most of the photos to flesh out what was going on; and (3) adding commentary (some of which I've already begun adding) as a way to convey thoughts and insights, thereby rounding out the whole experience for the reader.

I've also got all of my other content creation to take care of: adding YouTube videos to this blog (many with their own commentaries), creating more free and paid grammar posts through this coming January, adding more creative writing, etc. I also need to start thinking about adding images and videos to my creative Substack publication. I also have to develop more puzzles, plus maybe some interactive activities (quizzes? something else?) for my entertainment page. Then there's the video coursework I want to design... lots to do.

we guys all wanna be him

abandoned no longer

I'd been abandoned by my bots (on this, the main blog) for a month or two, but as of yesterday, the final day of November, the bots were back in force, and I had over 65,000 visits in a single day. Today, with the 24-hour period starting at 9 a.m. (I've never been able to figure out why since I've had my time zone set up correctly for years), I already have over 25,000 visits. So: back with a vengeance, like dogs excitedly charging toward their owner, who's back from another day of work. Jesus Christ.

To put this sudden surge in perspective: for the past two months, my daily average was around 2,000 visits. I imagine there'll be another radical dip at the end of this month, too. Bots need their holiday vacations as well.

cat: "Look, I'm gay"

When you gotta come out, you gotta come out.

how they end

British chefs vs. Korean "delicacies"

Chicken feet? It's like eating rubber gloves. No, thanks.

a thought

I want to hike the Four Rivers path again next fall because that would be the psychologically significant fifth time I will have done that trail. But with winter on the way, I'm thinking of doing another, much shorter hike in the cold weather: the Geumgang Trail, which I've never done before. The trail is only around 145 km in length, and at least one of the segments between certification centers is around 39 km in length. What's the distance once I add in lodging? I'll have to figure that out. While I can do 40-plus km in a single go, at least in theory (my "crazy walks" are 60K in length, so 45K ought to be doable), I'd rather keep my maximum distances in the 25-35K range. Then again, if there's lodging right at every cert-center stop, there should be no problem. But in my experience, once you start planning the route, you discover that nothing is as it seems. Still, 145K should be doable in about five or six days at a fairly easy pace. I'll tell you more as I learn more.

low-carb bagels compared

But can they really be considered bagels?

chippie/chippy/chipper

bagelses, Precious

They look good. For a Texan.

Dave Cullen on "Ares": anatomy of a failure

that's a crackin' thumbnail

some primates are toolmakers

"Grace Kelly" with Ryan Reynolds and... Will Ferrell?

This is four years old but still hilarious.

I could be brown
I could be blue
I could be violet sky
I could hurtful
I could be purple
I could be anything you like
(repeat)

Woke-istan, not awake yet

And those idiots, insulated by all of their cash and large properties, will never learn.

"linner" prep

My friend Neil is coming up from Masan, so I'm prepping Thanksgiving leftovers and also making a simple carrot-raisin salad. I have enough dough and filling to make another, smaller pot pie; I'm thinking of baking such a pie for Neil. We'll see. He won't be here until around 3:30 or 4 p.m., so I have time to ponder this minor dilemma. 

There may or may not be photos.

"Having enough dough is tough," the Hominid thought. "I need to be thorough so as to see this lunch through, preferably without coughing, and with no drought in the forecast."

UPDATE: Neil has come and gone, having arrived right on time, just after 4 p.m., as he'd said he would. He might be back tomorrow, or he might not. Otherwise, tonight's going to be a content-creation night for me, which could mean anything from enlarging photos on the walk blog to creating free and paid grammar material for Substack.

carrot-raisin salad

I have fond memories of my Swiss maman's carrot-raisin salad. When I tried to look the recipe up today, I saw the salad billed as "an American classic," and I also noticed the recipe was a little bit different from Maman's. When Maman made it, she used only a splash of vinegar and maybe a tiny amount of sugar to take the edge off. (Otherwise, the raisins brought most of the sweetness.) The American recipes I found used a combination of mayo, honey, and—optionally—apple-cider vinegar.

Here's a pic of a second pot pie, made from leftover pie dough and pie filling:

Bit of a spillover through one of the vents, I'm afraid... but that's what the vents are for.

Neil and I ended up starting off with the above fresh-baked pot pie; Neil eventually went on to take two more pieces, but from the leftover, room-temp pie from Thursday, of which two-thirds still remained. As he said: in England, most pies are eaten at room temperature, so he didn't bother to microwave the cold pie. I noted that many Americans would actually agree with the English, albeit for pragmatic reasons: you need to let the pie cool down so the sides don't run out, leaving you with a hollow shell. Slightly warm is fine. We did let the pie cool down a bit before I attacked it, and by God, it was better than Thursday's pie: the crust was crispy and flaky (probably because it had only recently come out of the oven), and the filling was savory and delicious. Neil and I both ended up eating three pieces of pot pie. The carrot-raisin salad was also eaten, but not as avidly by either of us. As I told Neil, if I ever make this salad again, I won't add a splash of apple-cider vinegar next time. Too tart. Neil proved to be a fan of dessert as well: he destroyed his slices of rum cake and Death by Chocolate cake. We finished off the rum cake; there's no more left. If Neil comes by again tomorrow, I'll offer him the remains of the chocolate cake and the pot pie to take home to Masan. I'll eat the rest of the carrot-raisin salad myself. In shame.

what went wrong?

Another turd of a series I never bothered with:

as this morning's walk demonstrates...

 ...however rough my toe might still look, it's completely healed. Today on my short walk, I deliberately didn't dress the toe with anything—no bandages—and I deliberately wore white socks to be able to see any leakage clearly. And guess what? Nothing! Nix! Zip! Diddly! Bupkis! ...Niente. So I'm good to go for more 9K walks starting this coming week. Same schedule: Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, with longer walks on Saturday. Staircase work on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

the healthiness of energy drinks

MattPat may be gone, but Food Theory lives on.

parkour!

we love these stores

⚠️This is what Chinese do at IKEA and any store which has air conditioning. This is why 🇨🇳 is living in 2100.

IKEA is shutting down in China like rest of the brands.

CCP funded Wumaos and paid western influencers will not allow this to go viral.
pic.twitter.com/A5Iv5qaBro

— Arun Pudur (@arunpudur) November 27, 2025

I don't understand the tweet. "China is living in 2100" = "China is living in the future." But the behavior being shown is rude, archaic, and backward—more like "China is living in the 1930s." Make sense of this for me, please. Is the guy being ironic?

I looked up wumao: a government-paid Chinese shill for the CCP.

critical Brett takes on Ron Weasley, done dirty in the movies

Poor Rupert Grint ended up becoming something of a fifth wheel, didn't he? But in doing a bit of research, I see Grint's had a full life and a decent career. Good for him.

toe status

Below is the photo that made my local doc think I should see the neighborhood orthopede:

11/17, T+2 days after the walk's end: The wet, pink wound in the middle looks kind of bad. It's not.

All the doc saw were my photos of my toe; he didn't ask me to take my sock off so he could examine it for himself. He's a very hands-off kind of guy. As a result of his armchair doctoring, I'm pretty sure he assumed gangrene when there was none. Biggest clues that there was no gangrene: no funk of rot and no spreading beyond that localized area. There are different types of gangrene that spread at different rates, but nothing on my toe has spread at all. This is just good, old abuse from all the pounding—tens of thousands of steps per day for fourteen days during a three-week period.

11/18: the wet part of the wound has dried a bit thanks to rest

As you also see above, I used tweezers to peel away some of the flaked, callused skin. This takes time and focus. I next went after the blood-dark, callused skin, and in taking most of that away, I saw that the toe looked a lot better:

11/20: But we're back to having more flakes to peel off.

Here's how things looked after another session with the tweezers and another day of drying:

11/21: T+6 days after the walk's end

The doc did prescribe a week's worth of antibiotics, and from where I stand, that was enough to allow healing to occur. So I never visited the orthopede: there was just no need. I've also been soaking my feet daily in an Epsom-salt solution. Feels good.

11/23, five days ago

Since the above photos were taken, I've been largely off my feet. I'm fasting today; early tomorrow morning, I'm planning to take a 9K walk out to the Tan Creek/Han River confluence and back. There's been no bleeding or leakage or weeping or seepage out of my toe—not for days. The original diabetic ulcer looks to be better healed than ever before. The toe still looks rough overall, but the roughness is at the surface level, where the calluses are. 9K is a short enough distance that I can just walk like a normal person with only my socks and shoes—no need to tape my feet up or wear bandages. So: walking modest distances is a go. By the end of the year, I ought to be almost totally healed.

I had also planned to restart my resistance training this week, but Monday's Five Guys dinner with Charles plus my Thanksgiving indulgence plus leftovers tomorrow are all conspiring together to make this week a wash (to be clear, I'm not blaming Charles; these indulgences, and what to do about them, were my choice). So—Monday morning, fresh start. Fast today, meet a friend tomorrow (Saturday) and enjoy an early-ish dinner, eat a salad on Sunday, then get back to the normal program (fast four days—MTRF—eat three). There's lots of work to be done. As the 1989 Korean book title went: 세계는 넓고 할 일은 많다, i.e., The World is Wide, and There's Much to Do.

Sauron tribute

I don't think anything will ever trump the iconic Darth Vader helmet, but this is very impressive work.

Scott versus "Mars Attacks!"

day of penance

Fasting day today. Balance must be restored. I fear to check my blood sugar right now.

brainless Americans in focus yet again

Max Miller on Ivan the Terrible

"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy"—Dave Cullen is not optimistic

Oh, good! Another series I'll be skipping!

holiday Schadenfreude

Watch porch pirates experience instant karma. Too bad you can't use deadly devices without getting sued by somebody.

single man's Thanksgiving Day dinner

When I pulled the boiling-hot turkey pot pie out of the oven, I needed to give it time to cool, so I decided I'd start with dessert and have myself an inverted or regressive dinner: dessert first, then the main course. That explains the order of the pics you see below.

Chocolate Bundt cake and the cooling pot pie:

I left the chocolate cake out last night. Lack of refrigeration erased the taste of the coconut oil.

rum cake and pumpkin pie

room-temp Death by Chocolate Bundt cake

You can almost see the chocolate chips that melted in the batter during the bake.

And here's the rum cake, with little blocks of "the so-called iced cream." French vanilla and vanilla.

food-porn angle

at last—the pumpkin pie

You probably noticed, above, how the pumpkin pie seemed a bit suntanned after coming out of the oven. It did sunbathe for a bit under the oven's top burner, but the result wasn't burned, and the darker area was soft and moist to the touch. The pie's texture (I ate the suntanned part first) was perfect. Great recipe, and a great piece of pie. Two more shots:

The first piece is always hardest to remove with a plastic cake spatula, hence the cracked crust.

a little sprinkle of cinnamon on the whipped cream

At last: the pot pie! I'm eating a second piece right now.

top view, with vents

A pie ought to be sliceable, not running out both sides. Let it cool a bit before serving.

like a Spartan holding up his shield before an attack

This was a great little dinner for one. Full of carbs, but what can you do? My ex-boss called the other day and joked that his Thursday dinner was going to be lamb skewers. My buddy Charles took me out to a lamb-skewer place once, and it was great, so I think there are worse fates than going to such a resto. The boss didn't sound too disappointed, either.

Second piece (Round 2):

In for a penny, in for a pound.

I'm not sorry at all, but I might be tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving!

What goes into my pot-pie filling?

turkey (I chopped up some thin-sliced deli-style turkey this time)
frozen peas (added in toward the end of the filling-making process)
celery, pan-fried a bit to soften
mushrooms, pan-fried with oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder
carrots, cubed and boiled in lightly salted water
potatoes, cubed and boiled in the same water
corn, from the can
onion flakes (the only way I'll tolerate onions)
onion powder (the only other way I'll tolerate onions)
savory Béchamel (butter, flour, heavy cream, milk, umami powder)
salt (very little), pepper
wee bit of garlic powder
sage (great addition; it evokes stuffing)

The pie crust is a standard one:

300 g medium-strength flour (중력 밀가루)
1.5 tsp. salt
about 300 g cold, cubed butter
ice water, added during blitzing in a food processor

Let the dough rest and hydrate in the fridge at least 30 minutes. Roll out half of the dough and flour liberally; lay it into your standard or jury-rigged (in my case) pie tin. Shovel on/in the pot-pie filling. Lay the other half of the prepped dough on top; crimp the two dough layers however you prefer to crimp them (fork, hands, tentacles). Paint the surface with egg wash. Add vents to prevent in-oven explosions. Bake at almost 200ºC for around 50 minutes. For the first 20 minutes, use both the top and bottom burners in your oven. For the rest of the time, use the bottom burner only to make sure the bottom crust is firm. In my case, the result was perfect. You do have to get to know your own oven, though. Every oven has quirks. All in all, a great pie, which I'll be having again tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving!

ADDENDUM:

second piece of pumpkin pie (I have no willpower)

with ice cream this time

Thanksgiving Day sadness

I went downstairs to my building's basement grocery to grab a bag of dried cranberries for a last-minute cranberry sauce... and the one time I actually need cranberries, the store isn't stocking them. Well, fuck. Dinner is at 7 (the pot pie is currently baking), so I'll make do with just my pot pie, my cakes, and my pumpkin. Poor me, right? It's a simple Thanksgiving this year, folks: no stuffing, no sweet-potato casserole, no mashed potatoes, no green beans, no creamed corn, no dinner rolls, and no pecan pie. Alas.

Here's Adam Witt again, one of the few YouTube cooks who understands that a real pot pie has to have a bottom crust. None of that top-crust-only bullshit that even some of the YouTube cooks I like will try to pass off as "real" pot pie.

Adam Savage goes lunar

How do you simulate building structures on the moon when you're not on the moon, with its one-sixth gravity and its unique regolith?

Turkey Day insanity

This cracked me up. You're welcome.

Happy Thanksgiving

There will be more pics later today. 

I felt blessed by the gods. Two double yolks in a row!

double yolks with normal eggs

pot-pie filling

pumpkin pie

doing birria right

Uncle Roger versus Future Canoe

Future Canoe is one of those presenters who do voiceovers that sound sleepy, depressed, or drugged-up. I can't stand this presentation style (just as I can't stand the whiny-sounding ones like "Chef" Tyler), so I'm glad Uncle Roger (who is whiny himself) is laying into this guy. Chef James Makinson comments.

"The Substance": review

Lookin' kinda rough, there, Demi.

2024's "The Substance" is directed by Coralie Fargeat, who had directed the over-the-top and unrealistic "Vengeance." Like "Vengeance," "The Substance" is mostly a French production, even being filmed in France despite ostensibly taking place in America. From the beginning, I felt a sense of displacement: the main character (Demi Moore) is a famous woman who presumably lives in Los Angeles and has made a fortune for years as an aerobics workout guru, but the film's idea of Los Angeles, an urban space with almost four million people, makes the city out to be a desolate wasteland that contrasts the very rich and the very poor, with few people visible on the streets at any given time. In fact, the studio where Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore) works is often more densely populated than the outside world.

The basic premise of "The Substance" is that Elisabeth Sparkle, managed by her smarmy producer Harvey (subtle, right?), has turned 50, and she's feeling her age. Finished with an aerobics session and forced to use the men's room when the ladies' room is shut for maintenance, Elisabeth overhears Harvey (Dennis Quaid) yelling into his phone about how Elisabeth has grown too old and lost the magic, and the time has come to find new blood to keep the gravy train running. The movie is vague about many things: where exactly Elisabeth lives (presumably somewhere populated by the rich), what studio she works for, who exactly Harvey is (aside from being a producer-manager-headhunter-like entity), what channel Elisabeth's show is broadcast on, etc. It's all left very vague. Feeling depressed after hearing Harvey's rant about her, then sitting at lunch while Harvey explains that Elisabeth is out of a job, Elisabeth drives home distractedly and gets T-boned by another vehicle. She is miraculously unharmed, but her distracted funk makes her largely unresponsive to the doc who tries to be friendly with her. The doc, sensing the depth of her depression, leaves Elisabeth alone with a nurse assistant, a man who slips a USB drive into her coat with a note: "It changed my life." Curious, Elisabeth goes home and plugs the USB into her computer, booting up a video ad for something called The Substance. The ad promises a new, improved, "more perfect" you, prompting the viewer to call a number if s/he wants in on the product or service (the ad is coy about what The Substance actually is). Tempted, Elisabeth calls the number, and a mysterious voice answers. There's a perfunctory exchange; Elisabeth receives an electronic key card in the mail and is given an address in a dodgy part of town. 

The exterior of the address is dirty, graffiti-covered, and nondescript; Elisabeth cautiously stoops to enter through a gate that lifts only partway, requiring her to lower herself: vanity must first pay the price of humiliation, a metaphor for the casting couch. Inside is more of the same squalor until she suddenly finds a high-tech, well-lit room that is as sleek and clean as a Mac store. Having used her key card to raise the recalcitrant gate just outside, Elisabeth uses the card again to open a locker containing a box. Having been advised by the mysterious phone voice that The Substance would require certain maintenance steps from her to maintain a "balance," Elisabeth opens the box and discovers a set of instructions and equipment. She comes to understand that, once she "activates" the procedure, there will be a younger version of herself who can be conscious and function for exactly one week before the old Elisabeth returns to herself again for exactly a week: old and young must take turns. Some of the equipment is mysterious to Elisabeth, but she shrugs and begins the Substance procedure anyway, naked in a tucked-away bathroom in her luxurious apartment. Injecting herself with the "activator" solution, Elisabeth instantly becomes pregnant with a young-adult version of herself through a form of radical cell multiplication (how this works is never explained), and she gives birth to her younger self through a bloody slit that opens where her spine is. The perspective then shifts to this new, younger self (played by Margaret Qualley, daughter of Andie McDowell). Elisabeth's consciousness has shifted to this new body, and the young woman—who eventually renames herself Sue—now has exactly one week, 168 hours, in which to do whatever she wants. Sue immediately goes to audition for the role forcibly vacated by Elisabeth, reveling in her youth and the return of her beauty, but conscious of the fact that, just as Cinderella's chariot must once again become a pumpkin, Sue must transfer herself back into the body of Elisabeth, whom Sue had hooked up with a week's worth of liquid "food" to keep Elisabeth alive for the week that Sue would be out and about. There are shades of "Being John Malkovich" in all of this, and mind-transfer is never explained except to suggest that Sue and Elisabeth remain essentially the same person, with Elisabeth being "the matrix" from which Sue has arisen, both physically and mentally.

At the studio, Sue nails her audition and makes changes to her exercise show, introducing a more dynamic, energetic, and sexier form of aerobic dance while also accepting whatever new opportunities come her way through a delighted Harvey (who, incredibly, speaks of his wife and kids and never once lays a hand on Sue). The question is whether Sue will, in her returned youth and attendant unwisdom, remember to maintain "the balance" by transferring herself back into Elisabeth's body in time, and whether Elisabeth, back in her 50-year-old body, will remember to do the same. As it turns out, when the young Sue slips up and stays conscious a few hours longer than a week, Elisabeth pays the price as some of her body parts begin rapidly aging, starting with an index finger and part of a hand. Elisabeth and Sue develop almost a mutual kind of Picture of Dorian Gray dynamic, an antagonistic symbiosis.

I'll stop the narrative here, close to the movie's halfway point, right before everything starts to go to shit for both Elisabeth and Sue, because you really need to watch the rest of the movie for yourself. "The Substance" has been billed as a body-horror film in the tradition of David Cronenberg's "The Fly." Yes, the film lives up to this billing, and the carnage reaches a point of such Grand Guignol intensity that I couldn't help but laugh and laugh at what I was seeing. (It's a quirk or flaw of mine that horror movies never frighten me, but they do make me bust a gut as I ponder the stupidity and moral turpitude of the characters in the story.) "The Substance" has strong echoes of Cronenberg, but the mysterious voice on the phone reminded me of "Squid Game," and the first scene in which Elisabeth's consciousness jumps into Sue's body is almost as visually trippy as "2001: A Space Odyssey."

The moral issues dealt with in "The Substance" are obvious from the get-go thanks to some very heavy-handed, on-the-nose visual metaphors. We open with Elisabeth Sparkle's star being put on some Walk of Fame somewhere (we can guess it's Hollywood), and we watch as the star develops cracks over time as people walk over it, showing neglect and mirroring the waning star power of Elisabeth herself as she hits 50. One major issue is the vanity and superficiality of celebrities; in this movie at least, Elisabeth is only too eager to make a devil's bargain to recapture her youth even if it costs her her looks and her soul. Along with this issue is that of the "male gaze": this being a French-made film, director Fargeat is not shy about portraying female nudity (as for male nudity, we get one off-putting shot of a well-toned but extremely hairy male ass), so we initially see Demi Moore in all of her naked glory—nipples, pubic hair, breasts, the works. The camera is no less shy about showing us the younger Sue and her round, firm ass. But also as with many French films, this portrayal of female nudity is so frank, so out there, that it's not sexy at all. If it's meant to be sexy, it accomplishes the feat at the cost of merely arousing prurient interest and its associated feelings of shame and guilt (which are not the same thing). Issues of aging and self-worth, of the pressure-cooker ambience of Hollywood life and the coldness with which the industry will cast you aside, of the vanity and idiocy of both youth and age, are all here to be pondered. But not deeply.

And what is "The Substance" essentially about? One critic I watched wisely noted that the movie will mean different things to different people depending on one's angle of approach. Some people will see a feminist critique of a patriarchal society and how it pressures women with a relentless beauty myth: the voice on the phone is male, Harvey is male, the nurse who gets Elisabeth hooked on the Substance is male, etc. But the film's final moments show us that Elisabeth, despite the hell her body goes through—to the point where she is no longer even human but more like a slimy, crawling horror from a del Toro film—even now hasn't learned any moral lessons from her misery: she's still marinating in pleasant memories of her past fame, hearing the echoing accolades of the sycophantic fans who had once loved and worshiped her. So the film could be seen as an antifeminist critique of the women who choose to participate in such an industry (Fargeat affirms Elisabeth's power of choice), one that revolves around the axes of pride and vanity. Come to think of it, the movie's title, "The Substance," is ironic because of the story's relentless focus on the importance of surface appearances to these celebrities—poor suckers with no understanding of moral reality who are easily trapped by the Devil into living lives of slavery, servitude, superficiality, and unsatisfiable desire. If anything, "The Substance" is about a pervasive lack of substance. And naming Dennis Quaid's character Harvey constitutes a huge, rigid middle finger to Hollywood, to what it does to people, and to the kinds of people it attracts. So yes, this is like all of those inadvertently ironic "use technology to condemn technology" type of movies. Fargeat uses studio-made film to condemn studio-made films. The industry is a meat grinder.

But while I acknowledge the depth of the issues the movie faces, I also found the film to be so obvious, so on-the-nose in its moralizing, that the didacticism was off-putting. The movie highlights and faces these issues but does little more to explore them in any profound way. I'm not seeing whatever it is that so many fawning critics saw in evaluating this story. The film took almost two-and-a-half hours to make points that could have been made in a ten-minute short. And while the over-the-top gore was often hilarious (indeed, a lot of the horror, especially toward the end, is deliberately played for comedy), a great deal of the splatter was, frankly, boring. It also didn't help that all of the actors seemed to be trapped (not their fault) in the exaggerated acting style of the 90s, back in the days of "Ally McBeal" and "Parker Lewis Can't Lose" when CGI was still in its youth, and characters tended to act cartoonishly. Dennis Quaid, as Harvey, is appropriately smarmy and disgusting; early on, the scene in which he informs Elisabeth that she's been fired contains plenty of gross closeups of his mouth as he chews down on cocktail shrimp, forcing us to watch Harvey slurp, munch, drool, and suck his way through his meal as he cheerfully, obliviously delivers the bad news. Visual metaphors in this movie never delve below the 101 level; Harvey's nasty eating scene is a direct callback to a similar scene in "Vengeance." At one point later on, Harvey's mouth, seen in closeup, looks exactly like a puckered anus. I'm pretty sure that's deliberate. Fargeat doesn't do understated. Maybe she doesn't know how.

Another thing I absolutely hated was how "The Substance" kept hinting that it was a combination of sci-fi and horror, but as quickly became obvious, there was no real science in the sci-fi. How the Substance works is never explained. Rules about "maintaining the balance" end up sounding more rooted in metaphysics than in science. You might argue that that's not the point of the film, and I might even agree, but that brings us back to the story's clumsily heavy-handed way of waving its moral lessons in our faces. Even Spielberg at his most annoying could be more subtle and artful.

The movie also shows a decreasing respect for the laws of physics as time goes on. Toward the end, when the old Elisabeth and the young Sue somehow impossibly confront each other, both awake and conscious at the same time, one character kicks the other clear across a room—a moment that reminded me of the ludicrously impossible self-cauterization scene in "Vengeance." Later on, Elisabeth, decrepit with so much of her life force having been stolen by her younger self, proves able to move about her apartment with an utterly unbecoming spryness and vigor. Then there's the problem of Elisabeth's slit in her back, through which she'd given birth to Sue: Sue clumsily stitches Elisabeth closed without any attempt at infection control and with a knowledge of suturing that comes from... where, exactly? Very late in the film, Elisabeth finds herself bleeding profusely, with what had to be a septic tankful of blood spouting out of one of her... appendages, raining warmly down upon a horrified audience. What body contains that much blood? All of these physics- and science-defying aspects of the movie took me out of the story and had me shaking my head in a combination of disbelief and cynical amusement.

That said, I have nothing but praise for Demi Moore, whose performance in this film has rightly been described as "fearless" for allowing us to see a very real vulnerability. In real life, Moore is no longer young (in 2024, she was 62 and playing a 50-year-old). She looks as though she's had plastic surgery; her eyes seem smaller and dimmer than they used to be, and the skin all around her thin-lipped mouth is wrinkled and puckered. Director Fargeat captures all of this unflinchingly: Tempus fugit. Memento mori. You can't get more open than being physically naked, but there's also a nakedness of the soul in Moore's performance that we can see and feel. As Elisabeth and Sue—despite being unified by the fact they they are still essentially the same person, sharing memories and affecting each other's bodies—come to realize that they each have very different agendas, a kind of war erupts between them, and Elisabeth, who can choose to stop her use of the Substance at any time, repeatedly chooses to continue with the program even after everything has gone so horribly wrong. One has to wonder whether Elisabeth even remembers her original reason for using the Substance. Moore convincingly portrays Elisabeth's frazzled state of mind.

So "the Substance" is a mixed bag. In many ways, it's an awful, sloppy mess of a movie that makes no attempt to respect science or physics, instead indulging in the exaggerated and the cartoonish. It's a very obvious morality tale about the traps and dangers arising from vanity, celebrity, aging, suddenly restored youth, the beauty myth, and the male gaze (and female assent it). The movie also seems to smuggle in some Buddhist lessons about the fleeting nature of life and fame, as well as how extreme attachment to something can cause profound karmic damage to oneself (strangely enough, the movie doesn't explore the damage the main characters do to others in any profound way; the movie primarily focuses on self-inflicted horrors). I'm still not sure how much I came away liking this movie. The ghoulish, Cronenbergian gore gave me a hearty laugh several times, especially toward the end, but I didn't come away thinking I'd seen anything deep. As I said: the points the movie was making could have been made in ten minutes. I can say this: See "The Substance" for Demi Moore's performance (and Quaid's, and Qualley's: they're both good, but not as searing as Moore). See the movie for blood and guts, which will remind you of "The Fly" and of the grislier parts of David Lynch's "Eraserhead." But don't see the movie for any deep messages: the messages are obvious, hammered home, shamelessly preachy, and understood within the film's first few minutes, making the rest of the movie effectively unnecessary. Think of "The Substance" as a substance-free treat for the eyes, not for the mind or heart.