Just Sayin'

 I don't know about you, but I've been reading (and by reading, I mean listening because I am all about Audiobooks) a lot more since the COVID-19 pandemic began. I have a lot more down time and a lot more time at home, so reading is a good activity to pass the time.  Anyway, I love a good viking novel. I've been interested in history since I was a kid, and I've always been fascinated by the vikings. There's something about the stories of dragon ships and adventures on the sea that capture the imagination.  And, I'm certainly not the only person who thinks that way because there are  a lot  of books about vikings on the market. Of course, there are plenty of non-fiction books out there, and I've read (or listened to; I love audiobooks) to a couple of them, but novels about vikings seem to be much more popular. That being said, not all novels are equal. Personally, I prefer viking novels that encompass the perfect amount of adventure, drama, and (sometimes) ro...

I'm writing today because I am outraged. OUTRAGED! The good name of pasta, one of the most delicious foods on the planet, has been maligned. It has been shamefully microwaved and slathered in disgraceful cornflakes and sugar and sliced (sliced!!!) cheese. The horror is beyond belief. Like many of you, I mourn the degradation of this once wonderful meal. In case you're really confused about what I'm talking about, let me back up a bit and give you some background before I go in to a full fledged *rant.* One of the silver lining of the coronavirus lockdown is lots and *lots* of weird celebrity news and out and out absurdity overall. Normally, I don't care about that stuff too much, but there comes a point when things become too bizarre to ignore (case in point, Tiger King ), and Robert Pattinson (aka the sparkly vampire that dominated the pop culture of my early high school years) has just broken that absurdity meter. In case you haven't heard, Robert Pattin...

So, yesterday, one of my friends texted me, "Okay, if you want an absolutely DRAMATIC, all-consuming distraction, just watch Tiger King on Netflix. It is WILD." Little did she know, I had just finished watching the new, true-crime documentary series a few hours before. My immediate response was "I know! It was the most insane thing I've ever seen." I don't ordinarily write about TV shows on this blog, so perhaps I should take a minute to describe what  Tiger King  is. As I noted above, it's a new, true-crime documentary series from Netflix. It follows the exploits of a group of people who all own private zoos full of tigers. As you can imagine, all of these people are totally and completely, certifiably crazy.  Murder, mayhem, and madness ensues, spiced with a healthy dose of tigers, expired meat, cults, polygamy, arson, bullets, and explosives. And, guys—let me make this very clear—I am not exaggerating.  Tiger King is the craziest thing I have e...

So, I have a series on this blog called "Serious Thoughts," which I use to write about serious problems that I feel strongly about. I haven't written one of these posts in a while, but there's a topic that's been making me angry recently, so you're going to hear about it. Every time I see an outdoor cat, my blood starts to BOIL. Now, I'm not talking about stray cats or feral cats that have no homes to go to. I'm talking about cats that belong to an individual person or family that are allowed to wander around outside freely. It makes me SO ANGRY. Allowing your cat to roam around freely is a pretty irresponsible thing to do. It's bad for the cat, for other animals, and for the planet in general. Now, I know that in many communities around the world, having pets/animals indoors is a foreign concept. I don't expect them to change over night. However, there are a lot of people living in my neck of the woods (Pennsylvania) who ought to know ...

My Cat (She's very sassy) So, I've had a cat for a little more than a year now, and I'm having such a fun time being a cat parent, that I basically spend all my free time trying to convince all my friends and family to get cats too. Shockingly, some people have expressed some reservations about bringing a cat into their lives, so I've decided to assemble a list of all the best reasons to have a cat. You're welcome. 1) Supplemental Heat - When a cat crawls onto your lap, it's the heat equivalent of wrapping yourself in a fleece blanket. They're so WARM! I think it's a combination of all the fur and their generally fiery personalities. One cat on the lap makes you toasty warm, if you get more than two, you might break into a sweat (but that's unlikely to happen because I have never yet met a cat that will tolerate sharing a lap). Granted, cats are a marvelously inefficient way to produce heat. They require a lot of energy input (chicken and hairb...

So, I have a series on this blog where I talk about music that I think is underrated. I listen to music basically all day long, so I really enjoy writing these posts and telling you what I'm listening to. About a year ago, I wrote a post about the Red Hot Chili Peppers , one of my favorite bands of all time. In case you don't know, RHCP is a rock band/alt-rock band (with an emphasis on funk, as you'll see) that was formed in the 1980s in LA. They've been making amazing music for decades. There are very few RHCP songs that I don't like, so it was tough for me to decide what to put in that blog. I ended up leaving out some of my favorite songs (plus, I have discovered some new favorites since I wrote that blog), so I decided to put together a part two! So, without further ado, let's get into the list: 1. Quixoticelixer from Californication  (Bonus Track) - Wow does this song ever have a vibe ! It has a softer sound with a mournful, almost sad air. But, even...

I recently took on a very big and serious responsibility: I bought a banana plant online. Now, if you think that's over the top, it definitely is. But, if you ask me if it was a necessary purchase, I would say it definitely was. Like there's nothing to cheer you up like a banana plant on your coffee table (except maybe a million dollars on your coffee table, but I'm not holding my breath for that one). Now, I know what you're thinking, "you live in Pennsylvania, what on Earth are you doing with a banana plant?" Obviously, I'm not going to grow it outside because, you know, it's COLD here. I bought a dwarf variety of banana that only grows to four feet tall, which means I can keep it inside. Anyway, my banana plant is named Liam and he is the crown jewel of my plant family. Well, he's the crown jewel for now. I just ordered a kumquat tree, and I'm thinking of buying a lemon tree or a bat flower next. I started down this road about a ...

A Very Professional Cat So, about ten months ago, I adopted a cat. Her name is Pepper Potts, and she is a very busy cat. She's always industriously getting herself stuck in the pantry or trying to crawl into the fireplace. Anyway, her vet office just announced that they're running a costume contest for Halloween. I was chatting to my friend about how I was planning to enter Pepper into the contest, and I jokingly said that I hoped she would win because then I could put it on her resume. We had a good chuckle about that, but then I thought "wait a minute, Pepper should have a resume!" I mean, Pepper has skills. She has experience! She's definitely employable. I mean, she doesn't have thumbs, but, other than that, there's nothing stopping her from getting any job she wants. Plus, today is her birthday, and she's going to be three-years-old, which means she should probably get out into the workforce (you know, so she can start a 401K and all that j...

Okay, so I feel like something needs to be said about this topic. Yesterday, I happened to be at my local movie theatre, and the line of people trying to buy tickets to the live action version of the Lion King was around the block. Now, I like the Lion King as much as the next millennial, but I have a problem with this because there is literally no reason to make a "live action" Lion King. I mean, come on, I can't be the only person who thinks this. Like, what is the point of doing a live action version if they're not going to use real lions? (Not that I want them to use real lions; can you imagine how disastrous that would be?) All I'm saying is, if they're going to CGI the lions, why not stick with the original version of the movie? CGI is a form of animation. So, they're really just re-animating and animated movie. Again, I ask you, what's the point of that? (I mean, aside from money, of course. We all know that the real reason they're rem...

In the grand tradition of making lists of songs (which is something I seem to be doing a lot of lately), today I'm going to talk about my favorite Queen songs in honor of the new Bohemian Rhapsody movie.  Now, I did see Bohemian Rhapsody , and I thought it was great. If you haven't seen it, you should run -- not walk -- to the movie theatre right now because this is a movie that you need to see on the big screen.  I really enjoy Queen's music, but, to be completely honest, I've never really delved that deeply into their catalog. I am a Queen fan, but I don't know their music as well as I could, which is why I haven't written about Queen in any of my music posts before.  However, I am pumped about the Bohemian Rhapsody movie, and I want you to be excited about the movie too, so I'm going to share my favorite Queen songs today. Now, I'm not going to include the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" on this list because I feel like it's a gi...

So, I have a bone to pick with IKEA. I've been wanting the Alex Drawers from IKEA for a while; if you watch makeup YouTubers, you probably know that the Alex Drawers are really popular for storing makeup. I have a lot of makeup to organize (surprise, surprise), so I decided to buy these drawers, naively assuming that I would have the wearwithal to assemble them when they arrived. I mean, IKEA markets their stuff as simple. Straight forward. Easy to put together. When you go into an IKEA store, everything is clean and white and shiny, and you think to yourself, "yes, if I cough up a few hundred (or a few thousand depending on how much furniture you're buying) dollars, my home can also be clean and white and shiny." What they don't tell you is that, in reality, you'll be sitting in your living room, surrounded by random pieces of wood and screws and tiny little dowel rods, saying "huh?" Like, okay, I'll admit that I don't really have the ...

So, something happened to me recently that reinforced my universal dislike of all athletic events: I got hit in the head with a baseball. And, when I say I got hit in the head with a baseball, I mean I REALLY got hit in the head with a baseball. It was a foul ball at a PROFESSIONAL game. It's a dramatic story (well, it was dramatic for me; it was probably funny for everyone else), so I'm going to tell you what happened. My company hosted a baseball night at the local, minor-league team's stadium. They rented a box and got it catered. Anyway, I wasn't planning to go to the baseball game because I am decidedly not a sporty person, but my work friends ended up persuading me to go. In fact, I was certain I'd never been to a sporting event before this game, until my friend reminded me that we went to a baseball game together when we were twelve (but I guess I blocked that out). Anyway, we went to the game, and everything was going well (minus the fact that I don...

Okay, so I've had a tough couple of months: I moved into a new apartment, started a new job, someone backed into my car, I got hit in the head with a baseball, it's been raining for a month straight, and my bathroom ceiling wouldn't stop leaking, so the maintenance guys at my apartment complex cut a giant hole in the ceiling. I blame it on the Mercury retrograde. Anyway, I was dealing with all of this pretty well, but then I saw something in the supermarket that pushed me over the edge: PEANUT BUTTER WHIPPED CREAM. I am irrationally angry that this product exists. I find it frustrating because you know that this product exists solely for the novelty. People in the supermarket will walk past it, think "that's weird, I wonder what it tastes like?" Then, they'll try it once, It'll be gross, and they'll throw it away. And they'll be $3 poorer, or however much this product costs. Now, I didn't buy this product because I'm 90% sure that...

I have an underrated song series on this blog where I talk about the underrated songs of my favorite artists. I haven't written one of these posts in a while, but they seem to be pretty popular, so I thought I'd write about the most underrated songs of my favorite band of all time: the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Writing this post was really difficult for me because I've never met an RHCP song that I don't like. However, I managed to narrow it down to ten (plus two bonus songs). I should note that the songs on this list aren't necessarily the best or most popular RHCP songs. This is just a list of RHCP songs that are really fantastic and don't get the credit they deserve. I'm excluding songs like "Under the Bridge" and "Give It Away" (which is one of my absolute favorites) because they're too popular. In case you don't know, RHCP is a rock band/alt-rock band (with an emphasis on funk, as you'll see) that was formed in the 1980s...

Today, someone showed me a picture of a goose tongue, and my life will never be the same again. Did you know that geese have teeth on their tongues? I'm going to repeat that in case you missed it: TEETH ON THEIR TONGUES. Yes, that's right, their tongues are SERRATED! It is one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen. I am shocked. I am dismayed. I am horrified. If you want to see a picture of a goose tongue, google it because I'm not going to post one here. Seriously, it's like something out of a science fiction horror movie. Now, if you've met a goose, you're probably thinking to yourself, "this person is really dumb, of course geese have serrated tongues; everyone knows that." I, however, have never met a goose, so I did not know that. Like, I always assumed that geese were cool. I mean, they put geese in petting zoos, how much more wholesome can they be? I assumed that geese were just birds out in the world, being chill and ...

So, I recently read a book called When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin (actually, I listened to it because I'm low key addicted to audio books). I have a lot of thoughts about the book (basically it made me appreciate the music more but think less of the band members as people), and maybe I'll write a whole blog post about rock biographies later, but the net result was that it inspire me to go back and listen to a lot of Led Zeppelin music that I haven't listened to in a long time. My dad really likes Led Zeppelin, so I was exposed to their music at a very young age, but I didn't really get interested in it or appreciate it until I was a teenager. Even though I haven't been listening to their music regularly for a few years, I still really enjoy it whenever I hear it, and I would say that they're one of my favorite bands in so much that I love the vast majority of their music. About three years ago, I wrote a blog called Top 10 Most Underr...