A Hongdian M2 fountain pen. It’s just under $20 and is perfectly pocket-sized. Nice and heavy and the cap screws on for when you get fidgety. I just decided to get into sketching, so I got the bent tip and it’s glorious. You’ll need to get them some ink too. I went simple with the Hongdian black for around $10. If you know their favorite color, you can do that instead. So about $30 for two stocking stuffers that will set them on a journey. Even though I got it to sketch with, I use it all the time for writing too. And now I want ALL THE FOUNTAIN PENS.

“All I want for Christmas is You,” but only from March to August.

Edit: Except for the 4th of July, which is a twelve minute version of the National Anthem.

Brawndo. It mutilates my thirst and, as a bonus, it’s got what plants crave.

I’d call that boomer-adjacent. You think you should be able to, but boomers believe you actually can.

1. There’s a lot for people to read out there, people keep writing. There’s a lot for people to listen to out there, people keep making music. There’s a lot for people to see out there, people keep making music, television, and art. Somehow artists keep getting read, listened to, and seen.

2. A lot of people are saying just write. Narrow that down ‘cause that can be overwhelming in its own right. First stop trying to write whatever you’re trying to write and write something totally different. Trying to write the next great science fiction novel? Write an essay about a factual historical subject. Trying to write a definitive work of scientific theory? Write a few haikus about romance. Trying to write your manifesto to show the world the truth? Okay, maybe stick with the writer’s block there.

Basically the writer’s block will or already has turned into a spiraling rut that’s going to get worse until you break it. You don’t get out of the path by following the path. Turn around and go the other way for a bit until you find some level ground.

And now that I’ve written this comment, I’ve broken my own writer’s block and can get back to writing hardcore erotic poetry in iambic pentameter. Pardon me while I try to make facial rhyme with glacial.

To pass butter.

If I’m getting into a new hobby or something and am suspicious about the listings I’m seeing on Amazon or Etsy or wherever, I check Temu. If the same thing I’m seeing on one of those sites is on Temu, it confirms that it’s just cheap Chinese stuff with an high markup and I move on to a different seller/maker of the product.

I like to hit Amazon before I look anywhere else since there will be a lot of the knockoff products and I can get in my head what they look like before looking elsewhere for the real deal. If I go to a different site and they have one of the Amazon/Temu products I’ve seen, I leave that site and find another.

Grandpa?

I brought him a Camel, but apparently they were a Marlboro family.

That’s because conservative and liberal are meaningless tags in a plutocracy.

I mean, Poseidon wouldn’t have had his job if his daddy wasn’t a titan.

Rich people keep poor people poor. Poor people keep rich people rich.

Interesting? 30 cans of chopped pineapple. Bring it in a little red wagon.

It’s not so much the internet as it is advertising. A lot of what we’re dealing with now came from the advent of 24 hour news networks. Prior to that, there was a half hour of local news and a half hour of national news twice per night and then a morning news show on each of three networks. Then 24 hour news networks came around and they had to fill that 24 hours with whatever would keep people glued to the channel so the network could pull in more ad revenue. That lead to more sensational stories and to other networks specifically catering to people’s baser emotions. Then the internet comes about and it all starts happening on a grander scale, working for clicks instead of ratings. There’s always people willing to encourage the worst of us as long as they can make a buck off of it.

The robot in that thumbnail has already seen some horrors

“And if the answer is ‘in her thirties,’ would it be okay for her to date a 21-23 year old virgin?”

And that reason is a bunch of governments wanting an easy way to arrest hippies back in the sixties.

After I posted this comment, that post was the very next one in my feed. When I saw the age bit, I thought “No way.” Yes way.

It’s not researching anything, it’s regurgitating what others have fed it.

So there’s this one user who had posted about a story idea they had wanting to know how old the protagonist is. Someone replied that looking at his post history, they would guess 21-23. So I clicked the dude’s name and man, what a crazy ride. Like 80% of his posts were either about what people thought about someone in their 30s dating someone who was 21-23 (and stated in one that of course if the older person were in their 40s-50s dating a 21-23 they should be killed) or how it was impossible for a 21-23 year old to ever have sex because women didn’t want someone with no experience. I always forget his name and his posts have branched out more, but I’ll be reading something that feels slightly unhinged and then someone in the comments will make a 21-23 year old reference and I realize who I’m reading. It’s like Where’s Waldo, the text-based version.