They are big and you are small, you can’t fight city hall!

This clip lives rent free in my head.

So does Mr. Bighead’s song about hating recycling.

Ah, I must have missed those. Yeah, Real Monsters was a fun one. I really liked that one as a kid. Tried to revisit recently with my kid, and it didn’t hit the same. Then again, neither does Rocko or Ren and Stimpy. Guess I have to chalk it up to getting old or maturing or something. I still classify them as “good” shows, rating them through the lens of youth. Still love Rugrats. My wife and I watched the whole series together before we even had a kid.

Aah! Really Monsters!

Angry Beavers

Rocko’s Modern Life

Hmm… my distro was the second one recommended to me. First was OpenSUSE. I have yet to try that one, but have tested most of the others it recommended. Guess I need to pop OpenSUSE on my Ventoy stick!

No problem, I’d just get the Innernet.

Nah, really though I have a huge physical media collection. The only thing I would really need to do is rip my brother’s blurays of Star Trek TNG. I have TOS, so we’ll just trade. Boom, done. Maybe get some of my 3yo’s shows off the seven seas.

Yes, every single time. Even if I’m camping in the middle of nowhere. Hell, even if I sat down and didn’t even touch my dong.

If I don’t wash them, it feels like there is an invisible film on my hands. I don’t know how to describe it. Like, a film of filth or grease or something. Purely mental. I HAVE to wash them.

I used to have a lot of emotions, too. They kind of just turned off while I was in college. I can’t pinpoint when specifically, I just noticed they were gone eventually. Now, it’s years between periods when I cry. I cried in 2013 when I lost a friend. I cried in 2020 when I lost my grandma. I cried in 2024 when I lost my step grandma. These are all just sudden, too. I felt fine, then without warning in the middle of a sentence, it would just kind of burst out for a minute or so. I cried last year when I lost my grandpa (he was my last remaining grandparent). But that was actually quite brief, and I feel pretty good about that now. He called it quits on his own terms, and we all got to say goodbye. He went in his sleep, with his kids there. I really don’t think anyone could ask for a better way to go.

The most recent time was this February. My 3 year old needed dental crowns. And they were putting her under for it. And the thought of my perfect, precious baby having to go through that just broke me. More than anything I can remember in recent history. Worse than any death. I got off the phone with the anesthesiologist office, all was good, and when I went to relay the info to my wife I just had an explosion of feelings. My poor baby. Was she going to be scared? We couldn’t be in the room with her when they put her under. Was she going to be in pain when she woke up? I wish I could keep her from feeling anything bad forever. Will she be OK? She is so small for anesthesia. I just wanted to hold her and hold her and protect her from everything.

Honestly, it was kind of nice to confirm that I do, in fact, have empathy. I mean, there are things that don’t directly affect me that I have moral feelings about. I donate to things that aren’t applicable to me. But to actually have emotional feelings about things? No, typically not. When I see a homeless person, it doesn’t really make me sad or anything. Someone I knew in high school gets cancer and dies leaving 3 young kids behind? I will briefly think about that being a shame, but it will be out of my mind shortly. I love my wife and daughter as much as I can possibly love another human being. But I still think they love more. I just know my maximum capability of love is probably much lower than them. Like, I feel as if I am missing out on a fundamental part of being human. Almost as if I am Data from Next Gen, and my emotion chip just turns on randomly for a few minutes every couple of years. It is through a lot of conscious effort that I think I’m able to mask it. Like, display this action of affection in this instance. Display happiness here.

I don’t think it’s autism, I used to feel “normal”. Clinical depression, perhaps? Idk, I’m not going to self-diagnose anything. I am very good at picking up on emotions and reading people. And I’m not a fucking Patrick Bateman.

Waterworld!

I love that movie.

Probably because people above the waterline don’t know Mozilla exists, and people below have seen how things have been going lately.