Amaury strikes again

"Doomsday" news

How many of you are even interested? Frankly, I'm not.

I can hear some Karen screeching as she looks at the video's thumbnail: Where are all the women? And the people of color?

"Groundhog Day": review and meditation

L to R: Bill Murray as Phil and Stephen Tobolowsky as Ned "The Head" Ryerson

[WARNING: spoilers for a 1993 movie.]

GROUNDHOG DAY!! (imagine male voices on the radio shouting this at 6 a.m.)

Given my appreciation of philosophy and religion, it's hard to believe I've never reviewed this philosophically dense 1993 film before. (Before you read my review, though, check out the "production hell" video about "Groundhog Day" that The Critical Drinker had done a while back. Director Harold Ramis and actor Bill Murray ended their friendship during the making of this film.) "Groundhog Day" is directed by Harold Ramis (Egon Spengler in "Ghostbusters," Russell Ziskey in "Stripes" among other roles) and stars Bill Murray, Andie McDowell, Chris Elliott, Stephen Tobolowsky, Brian Doyle-Murray, Marita Geraghty, Angela Paton, Rick Ducommun, Rick Overton, and Robin Duke. Murray plays Phil Connors, an acerbic, depressed news-station weatherman from Pittsburgh who is sent to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania every year for the city's famous and "traditional" Groundhog Day ceremony, which involves Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog who is brought out to "communicate" to the town—and the nation—whether winter will end soon or go on for another few weeks.

Someone at the news station must have initially thought it would be cute to send the unlikable, cynical Phil out to meet Punxsutawney Phil every year, which could be one reason why Connors, already bitter, dislikes this particular assignment. Before leaving for Punxsutawney on February 1, Phil predicts that a major snowstorm will miss his broadcasting area, then he sets out for the small town (2026 population under 6,000, making it a third the size of the small town of Front Royal, Virginia, where I used to live) with his chirpy, optimistic producer Rita Hanson (McDowell) and slyly humorous cameraman Larry (Elliott). In Punxsutawney, Phil takes a room at the Cherry Street Inn and wakes up on February 2, Groundhog Day morning, to the sound of his hotel's bedside radio clicking on and blaring out Sonny and Cher's "I Got You, Babe," followed by the DJs' cries of "It's Groundhog Day!" Defying Phil's prediction, the snowstorm closes in while Phil sulkily goes through the motions of covering the Punxsutawney groundhog festivities. With the news segment now done, Phil tries to leave town and discovers his snow prediction was wrong: Instead of diverting to Altoona, the snowstorm rolls into the Punxsutawney area, and Phil finds himself trapped in Punxsutawney for the night. All the routes out of the town are snow-covered, and long-distance phone lines are down (1993 is before the heyday of ubiquitous smartphones): Phil is trapped. He decides to explore the town, meeting many of the townspeople from workers to old bums to unremembered classmates. He despises the locals, whom he views as small-town hicks, and he can't wait to leave the area. At 6 a.m. on the following morning, however, Phil wakes up in exactly the same way: The bedside clock clicks on, Sonny and Cher sing "I Got You, Babe," and the radio guys shout, "It's Groundhog Day!" Phil looks out his hotel window and sees no snow on the ground, and as he moves about the day, he sees the same events and hears the same dialogue he'd heard the day before. He begins to realize he is now reliving Groundhog Day. His third time through this process, Phil drags his producer—who is unaware that everyone is in a loop—away from the festivities to beg her for help; there's nothing she can do, though: She thinks Phil is crazy, and she has no godlike power to affect ontology anyway.

As Phil settles into this new, causality-loop phase of his existence, he sets about exploring the town and learns about the individual lives of the townspeople. Devilishly at first, Phil takes advantage of the consequence-free aspect of his new, looped existence and gorges on junk food, has sex with one or more of the local women and, in a fit of depression because of the inescapability of his circumstances, tries to commit suicide many times. Every time, though, he wakes up in the same hotel bed and lives the day over again. But as the loops continue, Phil starts to change. He begins to care about the townspeople's individual lives. He starts to drop his cynical demeanor and perspective. He begins to pick up new skills, learning French and the piano and ice sculpture. He starts acting nice to the cheerful Rita, who means no one any harm, and even to the sneering cameraman Larry. He tries to save the drunken old bum who, over the course of many causality loops, ends up dying again and again from a combination of alcohol, age, and the cold. He rescues a kid who falls out of a tree. Far from being a devil enjoying the consequence-free nature of his looped existence, Phil becomes a sort of superhero: Having learned everyone's routines, Phil times his walks through the town to be in the right place at the right moment to be of service. His relationship with Rita starts to warm up, and one day, Phil wakes up and discovers it's February 3. The loop is done with him, and Phil can go on with his life, forever a changed man.

Time-loop or causality-loop scenarios are a science-fiction staple and have been used in novels, short stories, TV shows like "Star Trek," and plenty of other movies before "Groundhog Day." There's nothing particularly new or innovative about this sort of story, which dates back at least to the 1800s. The rebooted "Battlestar Galactica," with its notions of eternal return, could be considered a long-form version of the causality loop. But ever since the 1993 movie came out, people have referred to such loops as "Groundhog Day" scenarios—such has been the movie's cultural impact. As a comedy, "Groundhog Day" is modestly funny, with no truly laugh-out-loud moments. I think the movie's staying power and cultural impact come less from the quality of the acting (which is fine), the cinematography (which is also fine), or with the direction (Ramis is fairly unobtrusive) than from the movie's philosophical, moral, and possibly religious import. This is a weighty, meaning-saturated movie that uses comedy to smuggle in profound notions about existence and morality, exploring these things through the notion of do-over days. One popular question, about which there exist many articles and YouTube videos, is How long was Phil trapped in his loop? I've seen estimates ranging from weeks to months to up to ten thousand years.

Another aspect of the movie's cultural impact is how major religions like Christianity and Buddhism have interpreted the story from their own perspectives. Christianity—and Western culture is still largely informed and impelled by Christian notions and values—looks at "Groundhog Day" and asks, Who put Phil into that loop? There must have been some conscious power who placed Phil in the loop, then plucked him out of the spin cycle once he had become a better person. Phil's change of character reflects the Christian concept of metanoia (from the Greek meta/change and nous/mind), which can refer to conversion, repentance/penitence, a profound change of heart, etc. This is as much a moral causality loop as it is a spatiotemporal one. Buddhists see the looped nature of Phil's trapped existence as a reflection of samsara, the painful wheel of existence and re-existence on which we're all trapped by karma—the momentum of our actions—until we learn to liberate ourselves through enlightenment. Phil's character arc matches the Buddhist notion of a moral causality loop, but in "Groundhog Day," the time frame is compressed to a single day, over and over again, instead of being stretched out over the multiple lives needed from the Buddhist or Hindu perspective. By Buddhist reckoning, Phil has, at the end, gained a kind of enlightenment such that he now puts others first and acts compassionately, not cynically. It's not a god who put Phil into the loop, nor did a god take Phil out of it: it was Phil himself, through his own actions, through the momentum of his karma (which is the law of action and consequences), that saved him. For even as we are burdened by karma, we also make karma as we live our lives. And we are not merely borne along by the momentum of our choices: Our choices steer us along the trail we both follow and blaze.

It occurs to me that Bill Murray's own life has a kind of "Groundhog Day" aspect to it: Murray has, several times through his career, played assholes who eventually become nice people. Think: "Scrooged" (from the Dickens story that is also about metanoia) and "St. Vincent." In fact, the trope of the meanie who becomes a good guy is found in plenty of stories, a testament to the human belief that we can all improve ourselves through our own actions or improve with help from outside sources.

As you can imagine, though, I have a lot of questions about the metaphysics of the "Groundhog Day" universe. Let's assume for a second that Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania is, for whatever reason, placed inside some kind of ontological bubble, separated like a pocket universe, so it can allow Phil to relive the same day hundreds or thousands or millions of times until he improves. I assume this means that, when Phil exits the loop, Punxsutawney is removed from the "pocket" and goes back to being a regular part of the United States and the world and the universe we all know. And what about the people that Phil encounters with each iteration of the loop? Like in a video-game scenario, these people go about their daily lives in the same way every single time unless and until Phil comes along and interrupts their day somehow. So if we stay with the video-game metaphor, are the townspeople basically NPCs (non-player characters) bereft of free will, following preset tracks until Phil sets them on new paths (that have no effects beyond Punxsutawney)? One thing I noticed is that, even when Phil approaches people in a different way with each time around the loop, many of them try hard to revert to whatever their preset path is, which seems to be evidence that the townspeople aren't real people in this pocket universe: they're NPCs for sure. For example, the old bum that Phil tries to care for and, later, take to the hospital always ends up dying; another example is Ned Ryerson (Tobolowsky), who always reverts to preset dialogue whenever he encounters Phil, as does the friendly-if-daffy hotel owner whenever Phil sees her. Phil can predict when spills and crashes occur, and he knows what people will say at any given moment. This is because each day is, except for his differing actions from day to day, a perfect repetition of the previous iteration of the loop. So if these townspeople started off as real human beings before being put in the pocket universe alongside Phil, they've been turned into NPCs by whatever karmic or theistic force generated the loop to begin with. It really is like a video game, with the daily reset of the loop restoring all of the initial conditions... except for Phil's memory of previous loops (without memory, you have no experience on which to build wisdom). But this leads to disturbing implications: If everyone around Phil, including Rita (whom he eventually falls for), is an NPC in this pocket universe, then Phil is learning to be compassionate to NPCs, and he's fallen in love with an NPC. That's the price to be paid for learning compassion and unselfishness while living inside a Potemkin universe.

It's also interesting to ponder the theology of a being or force or dynamic that would concern itself with or focus on the life-path and moral health of a single soul to the extent that it would create an entire scenario just to give that one soul a chance to improve—to rescue itself or to be rescued. Christians might nod sagely and see the hand of God in such a scenario: Despite God's infinite greatness and grandeur, he is personally concerned with—and perhaps affected by—even the humblest of his creatures. In Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," it takes the concerted efforts of a dead Jacob Marley and three powerful ghosts to finally turn Scrooge toward his personal metanoia. We can assume these spirits are all working on behalf of divine Providence. With so many stories about character change and moral improvement through great cosmic efforts, perhaps the point isn't that the gods will go to great lengths to save mere individuals, but rather that changing one's basic character is a herculean and often impossible effort. Which could be taken as a caution to us all: If we need to change, that change is going to be hard to enact.

But what makes the universe of "Groundhog Day" un-Christian is the causality loop itself. The Judeo-Christian way of thinking is that history is linear; in Christianity, it eventually leads to an eschaton (the end times), or to what priest-philosopher Teilhard de Chardin called an Omega Point. This belief deeply affects how one views something like, say, the cosmic battle between good and evil. Can the battle in fact be won? If you believe in linear history, then the answer has to be yes—definitively and permanently. I suppose a Christian could counterargue that the movie's message is surely Christian because the loop comes to an end, and Phil can live out the rest of his life. There's linearity in the story.

What makes the movie un-Buddhist, by contrast, comes down to at least three things. First, none of the Indian religions believes that history repeats exactly. As the trite proverb goes: History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. That's closer to what Indian traditions like Hinduism and Buddhism teach. It's what we in the religious-studies biz call spiral time versus cyclical time: repetition, but not exact repetition. One could counter that Phil himself, consistent with spiral time, is different with every passage through his causality loop because his memory is the one condition that doesn't reset, and he's building a storehouse of wisdom from his lived and relived experiences, slowly working against his stubborn nature to become a different person. Second, another problem for Buddhists is the causality loop's unique focus on Phil, which makes more sense from a Christian point of view than from a Buddhist one. Sure, Phil's loop looks a lot like samsara, and his eventual release from the wheel parallels Hindu moksha (liberation) or Buddhist nirvana ("blowing-out"), but why just Phil? No one else is getting this kind of heavenly help? Third, Buddhist rebirth doesn't include the notion that you remember your previous lives: Only enlightened people who have attained the siddhi (sacred power) of seeing past lives (Buddhist pubbenivāsānussati; Hindu jatismara) may do so. Of course, for these people, since they're already enlightened, they don't really need the wisdom of their past lives. Anyway, with the Buddhist view being a spiral view of history, no battle between good and evil can ever end: Those forces are locked in eternal contention because there is no eschaton, no final state. There is only the eternal struggle.

Or—and here's another disturbing implication—are we all trapped in our own solipsistic pocket universes, with everyone around us being NPCs? And what does that mean for things like biological birth? Is my own mother an NPC in my pocket universe? If so, how did two NPCs conceive me and give birth to a full-fledged human being imbued with free will and the ability to learn from experience? Or did Mom and Dad start off as free people, only to become NPCs when I was born? Or—and here's a weird one—what if Mom and Dad are still free people existing in their own pocket universes while the Mom and Dad I know in my pocket universe are NPCs? And if everyone is in his or her own pocket universe, and some of those people also know Mom and Dad, are there Mom-and-Dad NPCs in those pocket universes as well? Just how many copies of Mom and Dad are out there? The ontology gets very messy very quickly as we're pretty much in multiverse territory. Conclusion: As with many movies that jigger with real-world physics and metaphysics, the world of "Groundhog Day" starts to break down and look unsustainable when you think about it too hard.

But thinking too hard is the province of nerds like me. For the regular proles, "Groundhog Day" is a decent story about a man who improves himself with each iteration of the cycle, eventually becoming good enough to deserve to exist among normal people, and normal world affairs, again. Actually, I was wrong: The movie does have at least one laugh-out-loud moment. It happens when Bill Murray's Phil is sitting at a diner, his table covered in breakfast and dessert items, and he nonchalantly stuffs a huge slice of cake into his mouth knowing there will be no consequences for a poor diet. Meanwhile, Rita watches him, mouth agape.

As much as "Groundhog Day might have philosophical implications about the nature of existence, I think the movie's moral implications fall more clearly along religious lines. Pluralist theologian John Hick argued that most religions move us from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness. The turn away from the self is what we see happening in the movie as Phil opens himself up to the lives of the townspeople around him and starts to care about something other than himself. Rita tells Phil, in that same diner scene, that egocentrism is his defining characteristic. By the end, Phil has become a better person—someone who cares, someone for whom other lives have meaning. In the spirit of both Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism, Phil is, by the end, ready to live a life in service to others, motivated by love or compassion, even as he continues to improve himself. One can only hope that Phil doesn't go through all of this metaphysical nonsense only to die in a plane crash on February 4.

See "Groundhog Day." It is guaranteed to provoke thought and discussion.

pole dancers are versatile

She doesn't strike me as having the face of a pole dancer. Not naughty enough.

fascinating but hard for my small brain to understand

I do not have an engineer's brain.

chili!

Which in the UK is spelled chilli.

trim it down

when the dealership deems a trade-in "uncleanable"

It just takes patience and fortitude, my son.

ululate!

Canadian-American comic actress Catherine O'Hara just died at the age of 71. She was apparently found at home, not breathing. As of right now, her cause of death is undisclosed, but she had been rushed to a hospital. I hadn't followed O'Hara's decades-long career that closely, but I know her as an iconic presence in movies like "Beetlejuice" and "Home Alone." Despite my not having seen that many of her films, O'Hara was/is a noticeable background presence in my past. She seemed to have a special talent for playing goofy ditzes and tart bitches. About her health, Wikipedia says, "She had dextrocardia with situs inversus, a condition where her heart and other major internal organs are reversed from their normal positions." This might be related: My maternal grandmother suffered from a congenitally inverted stomach, which made digestion painful and kept her body weight at around a frail 70 pounds. Perhaps there'll be an update later as to what happened to O'Hara. RIP.

the death of Piggy

Happy February

My buddy Mike, when he had a blog, used to be in the habit of posting "Rabbit!" on the first of every month in the spirit of an old, possibly British tradition of saying "Rabbit rabbit!" upon waking as a way to have good luck the entire month. Well, that's obviously a bunch of superstitious hogwash and balderdash.

Rabbit rabbit!

new types of melee weapons

What if you thought in a more science-fictiony vein about weapons that function well in zero gee and in high gee?

guess the accent

When I lived in French-speaking Europe, I used to be pretty good at guessing what general region a French-speaker came from—the northwest, the east near Germany, the southeast near Italy, etc. No longer. I'm out of practice. And whatever small ability I'd had to do accents has pretty much dried up since the stroke.

after hours of wrestling

I hate MS Word. When you're dealing with documents larger than, oh, ten pages, Word gets unruly. You make changes in one part of the document, and a totally unrelated part of the document decides to shift itself—usually some part waaaaay back in the document, near the beginning, that you thought had been formatted to your satisfaction. Then you get to the point where you want to save your document as a PDF, so you do that, thinking all is well. And as you're reviewing the PDF, you see the fucking dirty thing Word had done, waaaaay back in the document. So you go Fuck! and return to your MS Word document and start combing through it from the beginning, once again ironing out the kinks. And something else goes wrong as you're working, so you have to stop and repair that. Eventually, you get everything where you want it (or so you think, so you hope), and you make another PDF. By this point, hours have passed—just you, getting visibly older and fatter as you hunch over your computer screen, trying to bang out this goddamn document that should have been done half a day ago.

All of the above to say that I think I've finally got a decent, updated version of my book contents uploaded, so anyone who wants to order a hard copy should give it a try.

Fuck. I'm going to bed. But I can't sleep: I'm too stressed out.

Bestiality porn, here I come. O sheepie, give me solace and comfort.

is it the ultimate sin?

I don't normally mind pineapple on pizza, but the local Papa John's does a terrible job with it. Near the old place I used to work at around 2017 or 2018, there was a pizza shop run by a Korean guy who had lived in New York a few years, and one of his most popular pizzas was pepperoni-pineapple. I used to get that one all the time, and it was great. But thanks to the local Papa John's, I now know that it's possible to do pineapple wrong.

meaty budae-jjigae

Inspired by my buddy Mike's son, who had made a ramyeon bowl for his dad, I decided to go whole-hog and make some vulgar budae-jjigae. The main stew came from a Johnsonville(!) package of assembly-line budae. I bought extra spam and hot dogs and tofu, though, and while I had told my buddy Mike (who lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia) that I'd stick in some edamame pasta, I ended up just using the veggie tofu (the white disks you see below). Click on any photo to see it more clearly. The lower image quality you're seeing right now is because this image is just a thumbnail, a rough facsimile of the original.

Before I fired up the burner:

See the frozen hunk of meats in the middle? Took almost ten minutes at full boil to thaw that. (Kimchi not visible.)

After ten or twelve minutes:

We want our meat nice and relaxed. (See the kimchi now?)

Into a bowl:

up close and personal

I ended up having enough for both lunch and dinner (these days, I normally eat only one full meal a day). Plenty of protein for a growing boy with heart failure. I did, however, forget to put in the promised eggs. These days, I can't be expected to remember everything.

chocolatiers versus chocolate

I came away from this with cravings.

the Amazon hard copy of the 2026 edition of Think Like a Teacher

The Amazon hard copy of my book arrived at the lobby of my building yesterday, and I picked it up just a few minutes ago. Click on the pics to increase their clarity and resolution.

locally printed 2026 copy, 2022 copy, Amazon (still in package, my info mosaicked)

all is revealed (slight order change, L to R: 2022 copy, locally printed copy, Amazon copy)

I just flipped through the newest book, and it looks good. I'll need to read through all of my copies page by page, but for the moment, I'm ecstatic. Everything looks to be in place in terms of images and text formatting. There's some slight page-to-page unevenness with some of the text alignment, but that can't be helped as long as the word processor is set to prevent widows and orphans. And there are risks that come with turning off that setting, too. Damned if you do, etc. I'm not going to worry too much about that particular problem.

So in the bottom photo, the leftmost and middle books are both locally printed, therefore both are in the B5 metric format (176 × 250 mm, or 6.9" × 9.8") favored in Korea. The rightmost book, from Amazon, is a US-standard 6" × 9", one of the print sizes offered by Amazon for people self-publishing print-on-demand paperbacks. The perfect-binding quality of the Amazon book seems about the same as the Korean book; the major difference is in the feel of the respective covers. The locally printed Korean version looks glossy, but it was printed by a color printer. When you run your fingers over the surface, you can feel the bumps of the inked parts, so despite the generally good quality, the book's cover has a wee bit of a laser-printed feel to it. The Amazon copy, by contrast, feels perfectly smooth, the way an American paperback should. The only real hint of cheapness is the line along the spine that indicates the manuscript had been tightly clamped together as the padding compound (glue) was applied.

And luckily, this time, the Amazon copy seems to be holding together well. In 2022, when I received a hard copy from Amazon, the book was much thinner because it was an English-only manuscript. The Amazon-printed hard-copy version was small at 6" × 9" and very thin—so thin that Amazon's on-site cover-design program wouldn't allow me to write any spine text. As a result, I hate the 2022 Amazon paperback version, which is what prompted me to have the book printed locally four years ago. The Korean print shop had no trouble adding my spine design, even to such a small book. Now, this 2026 edition is twice as thick, so Amazon had room for spine text, and the book is thick enough that Amazon was able to add plenty of padding compound to the perfect binding. As a result, the new book holds together well; no pages are falling out. With every hard copy of the 2022 book I'd ordered, the pages would always fall out, and I assumed that this meant Amazon's printer was shitty. Theoretically, it still might be shitty, but now, I think I know why: Too thin of a book means not enough padding compound for the binding, leading to loose pages that fall out. Any book I want printed via Amazon, from now on, should have at least 150 pages.

. . . 

Okay, I paused a bit to look through the text formatting more closely, and there were some spacing problems with the Korean-language manuscript. I can't fix those in the locally printed copies of my book (which I'll simply be giving away as gifts, anyway), but I can fix the problem for the Amazon copies simply by redoing the MS Word manuscript, printing to PDF, then re-uploading the PDF. Amazon automatically institutes the book-content changes, which appear in anywhere from a few minutes to 24 or so hours. All in all, there's nothing upsetting to report. From this point on, any mistakes remaining in these versions of the book are my responsibility. And what mistakes I saw did not constitute a major tragedy—they're more like a minor annoyance that doesn't affect readability. Right: I've got some editing and re-uploading to do. Second time's a charm, I hope.

we're gonna see a lot more of this nonsense

And one day, the cops aren't going to be so tolerant.

last day of January

As always, it's hard to believe we're already done with the first month of the new year. I hope January went well for you. For me, it's been both quiet and busy. I finished up a whirlwind of content generation on Substack and other sites where I have regularly appearing posts. Today, I'll be making a big, obnoxious, meaty variation of budae-jjigae prompted by my buddy Mike's having shown me a pic of a ramyeon  lunch prepped by his son. This variation will have eggs in it, which isn't typical for budae. But when you're hungry, you're hungry.

Enjoy the final dregs of January and steel yourself for February. In the States, you've got Groundhog Day and Valentine's Day coming up, not to mention Black History Month and Mardi Gras, Presidents' Day, and even (I never knew this) National Chili Day. I might make myself some chili dogs on that day (February 26).

Here in South Korea, from February 16 to 18, we've got Seollal, the lunar new year, to look forward to. I'll do my usual thing and avoid what the Brits call the rellies (relatives), unless I decide to deliver cookies or something. Otherwise, for me, February just means more work, work, work on various projects, then during the final week of February, I need to start generating more Substack content to last me through April so I have breathing room to continue working on books, videos, and other things.

Oh, yeah—today, as promised, I need to think about contacting that publishing house in Daegu. It's an email thing, so if I don't get to it today, it's not a tragedy, but I'll nevertheless aim for doing it today. January dregs!

UPDATE: Charles had a busy January as well.

retrenchment

A couple weeks back, I cancelled my Shopify site. There are already platforms on which to sell art and other items, ranging from eBay to Etsy. There are other platforms on which to sell books, the biggest being Amazon. But Shopify costs a few tens of dollars per month to maintain. On top of that, I had created an independent domain that also costs me money to maintain. That, too, sets me back several tens of dollars per month, and I'm thinking I might get rid of that, too, for now. Everything costs money.

as the old joke goes

Gee! Ah'm a tree!

talkin' Rocky and "Project Hail Mary"

A lot of people like Rocky's creature design, but I'm not a fan. They could've made him more organic-looking and less Muppety.

Chef Andy talks saving money on steak

a bunch of "Stranger Things" Pitch Meetings

I never saw a single episode.

dead-tree books—the unboxing

I need to read through these to make sure they're okay, but at this point, they're all printed out, so they'd better be okay. Right?

I felt bad being in Charles's neighborhood, walking right by his residence on my way to the print shop, and not bothering to say hey. But he may have been on campus for all I know. I don't know his class hours or his travel habits. Anyway, I got the twenty book copies I'd ordered. I'll be handing a few out to local people. Here's the unboxing:

"Miilk" is a common brand of copier paper here; it's just a leftover box into which they put my copies.

Just a reminder: If the photos look a little grainy, click on them to magnify, and they'll also look sharper and clearer.

Peekaboo! Stink Like a Teacher, Slink Like a Teacher...

Spine seems okay.

I look really sunburned. What happened with the tint?

Margins look better this time around.

facing page

Korean-language Chapter 7

again, facing page

I did get a chance to flip through a book while typing this. Everything looks the way it did on the PDF for both the English section and the Korean section. The lady at the shop, like in 2022, was still not enthused about the cover design; I think she thought the lettering was too big, thick, and heavy on the front and back covers (childish?). That's fine; I'm not a fan of thin, fine fonts, especially anything Sans Serif, which look weak and can be hard to read, whether inside the book or on the covers. Especially when such font is large.

If you want a copy of my book, and you're a friend or regular reader, shoot me an email with a mailing address, and I'll send you a book for free.

There was an older gentleman working in the shop as well, and he rather grandly told me that they were giving me twenty-five copies of my book, but I just counted the copies, and I saw only twenty. Maybe he'd forgotten to include the five extra copies. Or maybe I misunderstood, which wouldn't be the first time that's happened. Not a big deal. I got the twenty copies I'd ordered. The guy also wanted to know how I'd found out about the place in 2022, asking why I'd go all the way across town to get my books printed. I gave Charles credit for that and told the guy that Charles had recommended the place (I honestly can't remember whether that's true or not, but whom else do I know who lives in that neighborhood?).

Right—so there's one dead-tree version of my book. The other is available on Amazon as a print-on-demand paperback. I have a copy coming to me, estimated to arrive during the first week of February. Some other mystery person has already ordered a copy for themselves. If that person is in the States, s/he will get his/her copy before I get mine.

Brian does pan sauces

When he was here in 2024, my buddy Mike made a nice steak pan sauce.

Cry Havoc and Gone Tomorrow: a two-fer review

Former Navy SEAL sniper Jack Carr is the author of the Terminal List series of novels, the first book of which got made into a successful Amazon streaming series starring Chris Pratt. Carr's novels, of which there are now eight, are: The Terminal List (2018), True Believer (2019), Savage Son (2020), The Devil's Hand (2021), In the Blood (2022), Only the Dead (2023), Red Sky Mourning (2024), and his latest, Cry Havoc (2025). Cry Havoc is different because the focus isn't on James Reece the ex-Navy SEAL (you write what you know), but rather on a young Tom Reece, James's Navy SEAL father. Cry Havoc takes place in 1968 and weaves historical fact through its fictional narrative. 1968, the year before I was born, was the year of the Tet Offensive, a massive, coordinated attack against American forces. Tom Reece is part of an inter-service MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—Studies and Observations Group) group doing undercover, illegal operations inside and outside of Vietnam in places like Laos and Cambodia. Reece works with Army Special Forces (Green Beret) operator Frank Quinn, his senior and mentor. The plot zooms in and out between the fighting and operations on the ground and the plotting going on in places like Moscow: Southeast Asia is one of the chessboards on which the USA and the USSR are playing The Great Game, and it's the locals (as well as US and other troops) who pay the price for all of the global, geopolitical maneuvering. I found this novel to be a refreshing change of pace after seven James Reece adventures, which had all begun to run together. Tom Reece is fighting in a different era, but Carr is at pains to include prose reflecting how that far-off era still has relevance for today. While I'm not expert enough to separate all of the fact from all of the fiction, I felt that I had gained a bit of an inside view as to the geopolitics of the time, not to mention a better appreciation for the risks taken and the sacrifices made by all of the fighting men of that era. Tom Reece appears more as a memory in the earlier James Reece novels, so seeing him up close and personal helped to fill in a lot of blanks. It's a great novel if you're into this genre—lots of weapons-tech talk, plenty of blood and guts and friends lost, and lots of spy-level intrigue (James Reece remembers his father best as a covert operator). The novel goes by quickly, even for a slow reader like me. Recommended.

Lee Child's 2009 Gone Tomorrow may be the best of the Jack Reacher novels that I've read thus far. I will say right off the bat, though, that the novel's principal villains don't end up getting the poetic justice they deserved, so that was frustrating. Some background: Lee Child is the pen name of England-born James Dover Grant, originally from Coventry, England before eventually relocating to New York City. His knowledge of NYC plays a huge role in the plot of Gone Tomorrow, which involves his hulking protagonist Jack Reacher in a mystery that begins in New York City when Reacher sees a stressed-out, muttering woman on a late-night subway who looks as if she might be a suicide bomber. This assessment is based on an Israeli twelve-point list of things to look for in suicide bombers, and she ticks off all twelve points. As it turns out, though, the woman has no bomb: she has a gun. When Reacher approaches her, thinking to put her out of commission before she can blow up the train, she pulls the gun out, exchanges cryptic words with Reacher, then blows her own brains out. As is typical of these Reacher stories, we eventually come to realize that the woman's death has international implications for high-level US politicians as well as organizations in the "-stan" countries. The villains in this story are some of the most nightmarishly vicious people ever put to print: there's a slow, cruel disembowelment scene that stuck with me, and that reminded me of a harrowing passage about impalement from an old book called Bridge on the Drina. I was hoping that, by the end, Reacher would deliver poetic justice by disemboweling the villains once he'd found them, but alas, it was not to be. That said, the novel as a whole is a satisfying read, with plenty of Reacher's terse, first-person narration, constant reminders of how huge he is (250 pounds with gorilla-length arms), and a decent sense of closure by the end. It was interesting to see Osama bin Laden figure as a major background player: when the novel was published in 2009, bin Laden was still alive and at large; he was killed in 2011. 

It occurs to me that Gone Tomorrow and Cry Havoc have disembowelment in common: in Cry Havoc, one of Tom Reece's best friends ends up being captured and gutted, his intestines covered in gas and burned in front of him while he's still alive. The novels also have international intrigue in common as the camera zooms back to show us the global scope of their respective plots. Child, being British, is sometimes unable—even after thirteen novels—to drop certain Britishisms from his prose in what is supposed to be an American narrative. He uses the UK term hosepipe for example; Americans normally just say hose. But despite his occasional linguistic lapses (I'm sure I'd make the mirror image of his mistakes were I to write a British story), Child has a good grasp of American idiom and speech patterns, so Reacher as a character feels authentic. Since most Reacher novels are a first-person narrative from Jack Reacher's perspective, there's little suspense about whether Reacher will survive his various encounters. With these novels, it's never about whether Reacher will survive but about how he'll do so, and what sort of fate awaits his enemies. Reacher is written as unapologetically ruthless and implacable, especially once he's riled. He's also a drifter, moving from region to region in every novel, which makes the novels more episodic than long-form in their storytelling. Jack Carr's novels, by contrast, have been weaving a complex narrative tapestry, each novel building on the previous one, and given the prolific pace at which Carr writes, one has to wonder when he's going to burn out.

Both novels, Cry Havoc and Gone Tomorrow, make for very good reads. I normally read Reacher novels only when I learn what the newest streaming-video season of "Reacher" is going to be based on. By contrast, I read Jack Carr's novels whenever I learn he's published a new one. So far, there's only one season of "The Terminal List" and one miniseries ("Dark Wolf," more about eventual betrayer Ben Edwards than about James Reece); "Reacher," meanwhile, will be starting Season 4 soon on streaming video.

So go tuck yourself in and have a read if you're into this testosterone-filled genre. It occurs to me that I've been reading this sort of prose since I was a kid: I used to have several Mack Bolan (The Executioner) novels. There's nothing quite like a 9-mm Parabellum round wetly exploding some bad guy's skull. Maybe that's what fuels my consumption of squirrel- and rat-shooting YouTube videos: the grim satisfaction of seeing pests eliminated.

blasting God's little creatures

come on, she's just a typically racist Asian

Max Miller on "Indian pudding"

another question set done

For my upcoming app (Do You Deserve to Vote?), I've done yet another question set, this time for the "Can You Think Logically?" section. I worked with ChatGPT to refine some of my questions. I never used ChatGPT's suggested wording but always went with my own, redrafting and redrafting until ChatGPT accepted that the question was now both properly logical and properly testing logical thinking. So, no—none of my questions is AI-generated—just AI-verified, and most of my questions passed muster on the first try. The few that needed tweaking needed only minor tweaking because the AI got pedantic about literal meanings and implications. I imagine there will still be gripes and complaints by people who dare the quiz no matter how rigorously I craft the questions.

This puts me halfway through question-generation. As with my grammar quizzes (like this one or this one), I've created three similar types of questions from which the program will select one randomly to display. The answers beneath the questions will also appear in randomized order, and the questions themselves, while appearing in sets of ten for each section, will also appear in randomized order, so there are at least three levels of randomization. This way, for people who retake the quiz five or ten or twenty or a hundred times, it should never be the exact same quiz twice.

Sections done so far:

1. Do you have a more-than-basic grasp of English?

2. Do you have a more-than-basic education? (science, math, history, geography, art)

3. Can you think logically?

Still to do:

4. How Much Do You Know About Civics?

5. Can You Pass a Basic, Stripped-Down Citizenship Test?

6. How Much Do You Know About Current Politicians' Stands on Today's Issues?

Section (6) is going to require very frequent updating. I'm tempted to add other sections like "Do You Know Who These Politicians Are?" and so on. For Section (2), I could've included music (basic concepts and principles, and maybe genres from classical to folk to rock to jazz to rap to hip-hop to whatever's current), but I'm a musical illiterate. Maybe I'll include it anyway. Nothing is set in stone at this point.

I expect everyone I personally know to blaze through the beta version of this quiz and get a 100% or, at worst, a 95%. These are meant to be basic, basic questions—not trick questions or "gotcha" questions, just the sort of things that a halfway-educated citizen ought to know if they're planning to vote. And of course, the quiz itself has no meaning beyond being a quiz. You can choose to accept whether it validly rates your worth as a voter or not. I don't care. Take the quiz out of curiosity if you want, not out of any earnest desire to see whether you measure up. And rest assured that, no matter how dumb or uneducated you are and no matter what Thomas Jefferson might think (might have thought) about the need for an educated electorate, your right to vote is guaranteed by modern interpretations of the US Constitution, so this quiz won't take anything away from you if you're a moron. Your rights are secure. And while it's tempting to create a database of test results that collect demographic data, I've elected not to do that because such data can be faked.

Should I, however, create a demographic-info section in which people are encouraged to assess their intelligence level as a rating from 1 to 10 the way KeroNgb does in his videos (he usually starts off by asking interviewees how smart they think they are, and most are ego-filled enough to say numbers like 8 or 9, which is hilarious; I would rate myself a solid 2)? Maybe I should, but I already know the data will simply confirm that pride goeth before the fall. America: mostly a nation of idiots and illiterates with some brilliant exceptions.

another "best-ever fried chicken" recipe

With so many bests out there, it's hard to know where to turn.

Matt Walsh demystifies the reason for movies' failure

The problem isn't wokeness, Walsh says.

back and forth

I'm currently going back and forth with System Pro, the print shop near Seoul National University. The lady keeps texting about how this or that needs to be adjusted on my back-cover graphic (it was all originally formatted for B5 paper, including bleed-to-the-edge considerations, so no adjustments should be necessary), and how the front-cover graphic will look strange if we do a bleed-to-the-edge for the image. She asked me to send pics of the previous version of the book from 2022, so I sent some photos over since I no longer have the original files (died with my laptop). She seemed to have no trouble, last time, with making her own tweaks before printing. I don't know what the problem is this time. Oh, yeah: her projected cost to print one copy of the book is W11,800, so it'll be almost W240,000 for twenty copies. I had set the ISBN and cover price at $11.99, which comes out to almost exactly W17,000 as of today, so I'd be making barely W5,000 per copy—about $3.50. Yay, me.

People had better buy the print-on-demand paperback version, which costs me nothing to print. One person has already purchased a copy. That's nice. A cool $4.32 in my pocketses. If I could convince 500,000 parents to buy the book, that'd be $2,160,000 before taxes, and I imagine the taxes would come close to 50% for that amount of money.

Once System Pro prints my books, the next thing I'll do is contact that publishing house in Daegu—the one whose ad I'd seen on my walk. If they're a real publishing house and not just a vanity publisher/printer, they could help with marketing, with getting my book into stores, etc. (assuming anyone outside of old-school academics buys dead-tree books anymore!).

Meanwhile, I'm still generating questions for my Do You Deserve to Vote? app. The logic problem I'd put up earlier is part of the section called "Can You Think Logically?" Once I've got everything vibe-coded and up on my quiz/test website, I'll invite some curmudgeons to use the app and suggest improvements, then eventually put the app up for sale at the Apple App store and the Google Play Store. There are also other, slightly more niche places where apps can be sold, like Flippa. I'm still learning the ropes about all of this, so bear with my clumsiness (or Pardon Our Dust, as they say).

the bots are taking a day off

With my overinflated stats, I'm normally at about 4,000 visits by this point in the day, but I currently have a little over 800 visits. Even bots need sleep.

this shouldn't be hard, right?

Simple logic problem:

5C. For breakfast, Jack hates all cereal and muffins but likes all toast and doughnuts. Lorna hates all toast, doughnuts, and cereal but likes only blueberry muffins. Steve hates all muffins, doughnuts, and cereal but likes avocado toast. Which meal will make exactly one person happy?

a. avocado toast

b. cranberry muffins

c. chocolate doughnuts**

d. any kind of cereal

__________

Here is ChatGPT's confusing assessment:

No — (c) chocolate doughnuts is not correct, and there’s a clear logical hole.

Let’s check each person:

Jack: hates all cereal and muffins, but likes all toast and doughnuts.
Lorna: hates all toast, doughnuts, and cereal, but likes only blueberry muffins.
Steve: hates all muffins, doughnuts, and cereal, but likes avocado toast (a kind of toast).

Now evaluate each option for “definitely makes exactly one person happy”:

a) avocado toast

Jack likes all toast → happy
Lorna hates all toast → unhappy
Steve likes avocado toast → happy

✅ Makes two people happy (Jack + Steve). Not correct.

b) cranberry muffins

Jack hates all muffins → unhappy
Lorna likes only blueberry muffins → cranberry muffin = unhappy
Steve hates all muffins → unhappy

✅ Makes zero people happy. Not correct.

c) chocolate doughnuts (starred)

Jack likes all doughnuts → happy
Lorna hates all doughnuts → unhappy
Steve hates all doughnuts → unhappy

✅ Makes exactly one person happy (Jack). This one actually is correct.

So the starred answer is correct as written.

d) any kind of cereal

Jack hates all cereal → unhappy
Lorna hates all cereal → unhappy
Steve hates all cereal → unhappy

✅ Makes zero people happy. Not correct.

Any holes?

Only a potential ambiguity: is “avocado toast” considered “toast”? In normal English it is, and you explicitly say Steve “likes avocado toast,” so that’s fine. If someone tried to argue “toast” means plain toast, the question would become ambiguous — but your wording strongly implies avocado toast is a type of toast.

Conclusion: The logic is solid, and (c) chocolate doughnuts is the only option that definitely makes exactly one person happy.

__________

I countered the above with:

In my defense, I did use the phrase "all toast" to mean "all types of toast," so avocado toast ought to fall under that umbrella, no? 

Also: I'm confused that, at the beginning, you said, "No — (c) chocolate doughnuts is not correct, and there’s a clear logical hole."—but for chocolate doughnuts, you said, "So the starred answer is correct as written."

__________

ChatGPT's reply:

You’re 100% right on both points.

1) “All toast” absolutely includes avocado toast

Yes — if Jack likes all toast, then any type of toast (including avocado toast) is included. So:

• avocado toast makes Jack happy (toast)

• and also makes Steve happy (specifically avocado toast)

So (a) cannot be the answer, because it makes two people happy.

2) I contradicted myself — my first sentence was wrong

That was my mistake. I initially wrote “No — (c) … is not correct,” but when I actually checked the logic, (c) is correct. The correct verdict is:

✅ (c) chocolate doughnuts will definitely make exactly one person happy (Jack), because:

• Jack likes all doughnuts → happy

• Lorna hates all doughnuts → unhappy

• Steve hates all doughnuts → unhappy

Final answer

• Starred answer (c) is correct

• No real holes in the logic, assuming “toast” includes “avocado toast” (which it does in normal usage, and you reinforce it with “all toast”).

And that's where things stand. Maybe I should just delete avocado so as not to confuse computers and the computer-minded.

allez, Amaury!

The man is a miracle-worker.

failing America's kids and the death of US public education

Headline:

Education’s Great Betrayal: How We Failed America’s Children and Wasted Billions on Empty Promises

Test scores are plummeting, learning gaps are widening, and billions spent on federal education reforms have delivered nothing but failure. It’s time to DOGE.

Education is a deeply complex subject, rife with countless studies and intertwined variables. Claiming to have all the answers would be both naïve and irresponsible. Still, one undeniable trend emerges from the data: educational quality in America is declining—and this drop persists across all demographic groups.

[ ... ]

The most reliable domestic measure of student performance is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report card, which tracks reading and mathematics proficiency for 4th and 8th graders. Across all demographic groups, scores reached their highest levels between 2009 and 2012.

Does this suggest that the quality of American schools peaked in 2012? Perhaps, but there’s a compelling environmental factor to consider. NAEP testing began in 1978, a time when the average blood lead level in children was 15.2 μg/dL. By 2011, that figure had fallen to 0.83 μg/dL. The significance of this drop cannot be overstated—lead exposure is a known cause of cognitive impairment, with a 15 μg/dL difference equating to an approximate loss of 9 IQ points.

A 9-point increase in IQ corresponds to a full 0.6 standard deviation improvement in cognitive ability. This means children became significantly more capable during this period purely due to reduced lead exposure. As a result, even without changes in teaching methods, we would expect educational performance to improve noticeably between 1978 and 2011—and the data confirms this trend.

Between 2010 and 2014, American education underwent a seismic shift with the introduction of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, widely known as Common Core. Backed by Bill Gates, this initiative sought to revolutionize the teaching of reading, writing, and mathematics. The Washington Post described it as “one of the swiftest and most remarkable shifts in education policy in U.S. history,” and for good reason. It was a comprehensive overhaul of the curriculum, changing not just what students learned, but how they were taught.

[ ... ]

In theory, this approach helps children understand the "why" behind calculations rather than memorizing steps. Bill Gates envisioned this as the dawn of a new educational era. He promised it would provide "a foundation for students to actually become those innovators that we know they could be in the future." Yet, in practice, I have yet to meet a parent who feels their child benefited from this approach. Both of my children ended up relying on traditional methods. If there was innovation in the marketplace, it was in creating tools that taught the old methods under a new guise.

Despite these sweeping changes, test scores tell a different story. After an eight-year hiatus in NAEP testing, the results in 2020 revealed troubling trends: scores plateaued or declined across all demographics.

The most significant drop occurred among Black students—a stark irony given that one of Common Core's implicit goals was to promote equity in education through uniform standards.

The same pattern emerged in international assessments. In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), mathematics scores for all demographics peaked in either 2009 or 2012, underscoring that Common Core failed to result in educational progress.

When we step back and look at the big picture, the score declines may be slight, but they’re undeniably consistent—raising serious questions about the payoff for the estimated $16 billion invested in developing and implementing Common Core. The results are far from the transformative improvement many had hoped for.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought another shock to education: distance learning. Schools across the country closed, some for as long as two years. States like California, Illinois, and Maryland had some of the longest closures, leaving students reliant on virtual learning well into 2021 and beyond.

NAES test scores took their biggest drop in 2023, particularly among Black and Hispanic students.

[ ... ]

Taken together, this paints a grim picture: America’s children are in the midst of an educational crisis. Federal standards have locked us into a rigid system that fails to accommodate diverse learning needs. I believe this rigidity may even be contributing to the rise in autism diagnoses, as Common Core’s one-size-fits-all approach often labels children with unique learning styles as "disordered."

What has all this achieved? Despite billions spent on federal education initiatives, the returns have been counterproductive. It’s time to address the root of the problem. Eliminate the Department of Education, redirect resources to parents, and empower schools to innovate. Let schools hire the best teachers for their unique needs, and let parents choose the best schools for their children.

The above article is from Data Republican's Substack (I'm subscribed to her). Note how her approach isn't the usual rightie froth about sexually explicit books in elementary libraries (which do exist), rampant bullying (which is a problem), school shootings (which do frequently make the news), and woke agendas (which are real despite the leftie gaslighting). Her main focuses are on lead consumption, distance learning due to COVID, and signal failures of the Common Core curriculum. Her solution is a classically conservative one: less centralized control and more local control to improve outcomes.

Well, you can't get much more local than homeschooling. What's ironic is when you meet a public-school teacher who tells you that homeschooling leads to kids living in reality-shielding bubbles while, ironically, the teacher seems blissfully unaware that her cherished system is crumbling all around her, swirling down the toilet. The richer irony is that the teacher's obliviousness comes from being in a bubble that prevents awareness of the deterioration. So if reality-shielding bubbles are bad, public-school teachers might need to step out of theirs or be ground under by current trends.

more pressure-washing ASMR

massacre dans le corridor

Hallway scenes in Star Wars films and shows have apparently become a thing now. Vader got such a scene. So did Luke. And I think Ben Kenobi got one, too.

this is from last November, sure, but...

From just before last (US, not Canadian) Thanksgiving:

Cry Havoc and Gone Tomorrow

I recently finished Jack Carr's novel Cry Havoc, which takes place in 1968 in the era of the Tet Offensive.  The novel focuses on Tom Reece, the Navy SEAL father of James Reece from The Terminal List. I'm also currently reading Lee Child's Gone Tomorrow since that's the novel on which Season 4 of Amazon's "Reacher" is to be based. So far, so good. Not much action, but an interesting mystery as Reacher puts everything together with no help from a loyal crew. The Amazon show will doubtless add a lot of action, plot elements, and some of Reacher's former associates. I'll probably do a two-fer review of these books soon, so stay tuned.

"what is 18 divided by 3?"

You watch enough of these depressing videos, and you become convinced it really is stupidity you're seeing. (Ignore the AI girl in the thumbnail, by the way.)

"woman makes man pay for her [kid's/kids'] food on first date"

One comment below the picture said:

Never play another man's saved game.

I cracked up. And yeah, as other commenters noted, it's tasteless to bring the kids along on a first date unless you're going somewhere kid-friendly, and you know the guy's okay with kids.

ADDENDUM: and another bad-English image for Substack.

the Drinker's hopes re: "Project Hail Mary"

I have high hopes, too. It's a great story. My review of the book is here.

squirrelhammering

shrew-jitsu

The most awesome thing you will see today. She won in the first five seconds (and no, she's not really a shrew). Of course, once she got him in the choke, he never bothered to try an escape. So it was an easy victory for her because the guy didn't know how to fight. Still, I absolutely give her credit for getting him in a choke within the first second or two. Had she faced an opponent with her level of training, though...

The comments suggest the guy tapped but she continued to choke. I couldn't tell on my screen; the lighting and angle were both bad. If so, she was ruthless. But he did walk into it.

"Starfleet Academy" reactions, Part 2