I have been on a personal journey without knowing it, and ended up in a place I did not expect.

I think I like New York Style pizza.

Ordered it from Domino’s on Friday (pause for mass wailing, scoffing, get-oudda-heah-with-that remarks) thinking it would be like the NYC style I’d come to know. Thin, salty cheese, greasy, and most importantly, foldable. That's what you want in your NYC style: foldability. But it wasn’t. It was almost indistinguishable from their standard “hand-tossed” variety. Why? Because I ordered the medium size, and asked for extra sauce. A larger version might have had that style I wanted.

I mention this only because I had to wait for my pizza, and was made aware of a special new hellish detail that attends the hot-box room where the pizzas are made.

It goes off at regular intervals, and I expect it’s meant to announce a new order. I’m sure you get used to it. The way you get used to someone coming up at regular intervals and sticking a wet finger in your ear. It might take a while. Four months? Six?

Anyway, I googled “dominos kitchen racing sound,” and the first return was a reddit post about “best makeline sounds.”

I’ll bet that’s what it is. And it’s customizable?

Another thread: “can anyone explain how to change the makeline sound? the previous gm has it set to this annoy song for lord of the rings i thing and i would really like to change it”

Replies: “Back Office -> Master Settings -> Makeline -> Makeline 1 -> Internet Alert”

Or: “You need pienet access. Search makeline tones. Add your tones to that forum board from your personal phone or computer. Log onto pienet from the stores computer. Save the file to the file in your system named makeline sounds or something similar. Viola”

VIOLA

PIENET

Saw Twisters. Eh. A worthwhile way to spend two hour hours inside. I will only note this: it seems to reflect the modern-day TERROR OF SEX. It has romance, sort of, vaguely. It’s there, but we end the movie without even a big romantic kiss - and the ending was set up perfectly to deliver it and tick all the Hollywood boxes. But that’s not a box to be ticked anymore, I guess.

The soundtrack was also not present. No themes I could detect. Just a lot of sawing and blowing while people shouted WOOO for the 76th time. There was a lot of WOO and YEEHAW in this one.

Before the movie we had to endure eight trailers. Lots of noise and shooting and also quips before shooting and then maybe quips after shooting and people saying “let’s do this” and also “That’s what I’m talking about” and so on. The one that irritated me the most was Wicked, because I like my nasty green-faced witches to be unrepentantly evil for small, petty, miserable reasons. I don’t care if she was driven to it. But of course the movie is not made for me; it’s made for single 40something HR managers.

Also a Transformers origin story. Because that story has laid beyond our imagination for so many years, and we all have questions aplenty.

“So we’re going to be evil now and fool people?”

“YES! YES WE SHALL!”

“Okay great and what are we going to be called?”

“DECEPTICONS!”

“Uh - “

“WHAT?”

“Doesn’t that warn everyone? Don’t you hear ‘Decepticons’ and think well I’m not trusting those guys with anything?”

“AUTOBOT WAS ALREADY TAKEN”

There was a Disney studio movie about a robot in the woods. Looked as if it might have a few emotional moments of silent pathos as we confront the fact that a machine might learn to have emotions and thus know what it really means to be real, or something. It seems the robot has to be a parent to woodland creatures but it lacks the programming. I gather the lesson is that we all lack the programming and learn as we go along. Which isn't entirely true. But the robot had big eyes and made good beseeching expressions, so I'm sure you're expecting to cry at the end.

By the way, if you do see Twisters, help me out. I watched the first one to revisit the source material (it's generally and specifically better) and this stood out.

I swear that T-shirt is in the modern one. It registered when I saw it in Twisters, and something said it was there for a reason.

Rather obscure call-back, but we're talking about a movie the audience has probably seen 12 times.

I wasn't kidding when I said I had a lot left over. I could do weeks on Edinburgh.

View from the hotel window:

Tombs in the back yard?

It’s the Parliament House hotel, the oldest part of which was an Old Town tenement. The hotel’s website details a lot of its history, but says nothing about the graves.

The older the city, the sadder the graves.

Maybe take the constant rain into account when choosing a stone? IDK that's just me.

This fared better, but it's newer:

Here's his picture.

"To the Memory of Peter Hewat. Late Baker in Ediburgh who died 10th March 1828, aged 72 years."

Well, I should hope he was late.

"They who knew him appreciate his high moral principle, unimaginable integrity, modest yet sincere piety combined with strong affection, and the greatest civilness of heart." There's something at the bottom that starts with ALSO, but the rest has flaked away.

It's not a bad place to rest.

Well, look at this:

Says Wikipedia about Mr. U:

Usher's father, whose name he shared, Andrew Usher (1782 – 1855), was a prominent Scottish brewer who had experimented with the blending of whisky in the 1840s.

Andrew Usher II perfected the eventual blending of whisky and as such is sometimes called the 'father of Scottish whisky’. The subsequent blending and mass distillation enabled whisky to grow from a drink rarely consumed outside the United Kingdom, to be one of mass export.

Oh I think the Yanks had some now and then. Unless we're going to go through that whole whisky / whiskey thing.

Summertime means sci-fi, simply because I remember watching old sci-fi on TV late on Saturday night as a kid. Even the bad ones were fun.

This is a stupid movie, and you know it the moment it begins.

It’s the dreaded Dubbed Mexican Movie.

Most of the action is told in flashback, as some guys sit around a mansion and discuss how the Sole Female . . .

. . . has had some past-life reversion or something and realizes she was an Aztec princess. There was a ceremony . . .

. . . and some Aztec prince dude was mummified. But he comes back to life to find her, for reasons.

There’s a mad scientist who uses mummy blood, I think, to build a robot, with which he will rule the world.

All you need to know about this movie is the dramatic reveal of the robot.

I mean, it's almost frickin' Elektro.

You know, even as a kid, I would've bailed on this.

Oh . . . one more thing!

That was a lot. Sorry.