Only 96 degrees today. A few seconds after I took this picture the butterfly burst into flames.  

Speaking of which: can you tell why this bothers me? It's on the contractor-grade stove at Fred Base One. It's not bad, and I'm fortunate to have a gas stove. With a hood! But this . . . this isn't right.

That's an adjective doing the work of a verb.

Good dinner, though. Spicy meatballs with that sauce about which I regaled you yesterday. No post-supper walk, due to heat and Birch being logy from the anti-anxiety drug I gave him so I could do errands without having the foyer destroyed. The hallway was quiet when I returned!So I thought NO HE'S DEAD but no, he was wagging and waiting. But he's been strange all night. Low-key and slow. I hope it's the drugs, although I've never seen this long-lasting effect, and he hasn't wanted any walks.

We just got back from hitting the hydrant and he walked down the hall like he was 16. I hate this. He usually bugs me for his midnight snack about now; nothing. Just prostrate on the couch. Then again, he's always prostrate on the couch or floor at this time of night. I'm probably reading too much into it. But I have this sudden terror of losing him soon now. I know I complained a lot about being tethered to him constantly at the start of all this, and it's still something that shapes my whole day, but on the other hand, it shapes my whole day, and I don't - can't - think about his absence. He's all I have here.

Update: he just had his midnight snack and some water, so that's good.

Some news from old British comedy that probably won't make any stateside impact:

I was at his house after our show at the Keats Library in '24, the last good year. Natalie and I spent most of the evening in the garden out back talking to his lovely wife, and it was a delightful conversation. I learned she was a writer, and pressed her for details so we could talk shop. Turns out I couldn't really talk shop, as I have never written for a show about sentient trains. She'd not only written for Thomas the Tank Engine, and was co-head-writer for Bob the Builder. What a night! What a day that was.

Anyway, you know your place in the culture is secure when you're a reference in an Alan Partridge morning show interview.

In preparation for the premier of Strange New Worlds season 4, I watched the end of season 3. I had bailed on most of season 3. It seemed silly. It had lost its way. What started as smart hard Trek got oddly lightweight, because fans responded positively to the levity in seasons 1 and 2. Pike lost some of his weight. They never patched the hole created by the needless death of albino Andorran chief engineer - yes, I know, they had to make room for Scotty, but the two of them working together would’ve been perfect. All I know is that it used to grab me, and then it didn’t, and that hurt, because you know I am a Star Trek fan since childhood. Discovery, Academy - just junk.

I am here to report that I am not a fan of characters suddenly developing Powers, which usually mean their hands glow and their eyes glow and they can wave their hands and things happen. This was the case with Pike’s girlfriend, a very nice woman who was boring and plain but also the savior of the universe. It wasn’t an impressive piece of work. There was a nice “Inner Light” sequence in which Pike gets to live his life if she hadn’t sacrificed himself and he hadn’t had the accident that put him in the Chair, but if you didn’t have much invested in them, well, eh.

In the last few weeks I’ve been revisiting some old favorites. Watched the starting eps of Battlestar Galactica, which hold up - but I recall that it all got convoluted, everyone was really a Cylon, and the Theory of Moral Relativity was invoked enough to let us know that humans sucked, too. We put Cylons in Gitmo! Or something like that. TNG holds up, if you watch the right eps; I noticed something that made me smile.

What I really miss is the 90s, I guess. The expectations of the decade suggested that this was a reasonably possible future, providing we developed warp drive and replicators. We'd best get cracking on that. fast.

BTW, the season premiere was absolutely great Trek, says me, who wants to like things, but according to a lot of dorks on Reddit, it violates the spirit and tradition of Trek! As if the old show wasn't 67% dispensible shows that would drop world-changing plot points and never get around to them again.

I mean, if someone from THE FUTURE went back to 1975 and said "this is the Trek you'll get some day, we would have been astonished.

"Wow! When is that coming on the air?"

"You'll have to wait."

"Well yeah of course, but how long?

"Fifty years."

"Fifty?"

"Actually, fifty one."

What bothers the dorks: I can't say, without spoilers. What bothers the haters of all recent Trek: too much girlbossery. I am not a fan of unearned girlbossery, but A) Number One is literally a character from the Pilot, B) Uhuru is original Trek; C) the woman on horseback is a nice ticking-bomb plot landmine because she's La'An Noonien-Singh, a name fraught with all sorts of callbacks, and D) the navigator, Ortegas, loves to drive. Unlike the Discovery characters, she looks as if she could pass the PresidentislPhysical Fitness Test.

I can't tell anyone in Discovery apart except for the spindly dude.

It’s 1992.

Photoshop is popular, and graphic designers have discovered the “Feather” tool.

Or was this done manually? It looks so dated now.

Lord & Taylor’s, one of the big names in Gotham retail.:

Bankrupt in 2020, and all stores closed the year after. The brand was sold to outside investors, who converted it to an online shopping site. Which isn’t the same, of course. At all. The investors went bust a few years later and another group has the brand now.

The decline of American branding, in one image:

The future!

Google AI summary:

The Philips Compact Disc Interactive (CD-i) was a pioneering multimedia system released in 1991. Originally priced between $799 and $499, it aimed to replace TVs, VCRs, and PCs by offering interactive encyclopedias, virtual museum tours, and games using CD-ROM technology. It is now most famous for its infamously poor licensed Nintendo games.

A flop, more or less. But I remember when these things were going to change everything. The way that disk tray slid out with the push of a button, the shiny silver CDs. We had no idea how quickly we'd dump them when they weren't needed anymore.

We were all quite pleased to be living in an era where one of the leading beauties was Ingrid Bergman’s daughter. The Bogie era didn’t feel that far away if we had her daughter.

She’s 74 now.

When you know your brand has almost perfect recognition in the target market:

I wish they hadn't chickened out, though. If it's mystery it's even better.

"Uh professor this is a calculus class, right? We all paid for a calculus class”

There was a peculiar time in popular culture when teachers and academic settings were somehow hot.

The man couldn’t turn down a commission.

But I’m a fan. He also did a line of home products for Target, boosting their rep without diminishing his at all. I’m sure the other architects were annoyed, but they weren’t cashing those sweet Target checks.

That said, this thing probably isn't getting multiple bids at Sotheby's.

That'll do. Sorry for the scant top-of-the-fold, but I have another piece to do and I'm worried about Birch. Comic Sins now, and Joe's up at 11 with another tale.