NIN because of Pandemics and Insurrections. The Downward Spiral is in my heavy youtube rotation now because of course but here's one that I missed until just now. NIN and Tori Amos got me through a LOT in the early nineties, and NIN works again now:

When I grade exams or write projects or work on my Pathfinder campaigns I listen to synthwave compilations. It's usually pretty background-music but every now and again I have to dance in my chair:

Dorian Electra is my boo. They did a video all dressed up and femmy and it was weird. That is not this one. Adam and Steve is maybe better, but - did you know the Village People were still around and doing stuff? Weird!

And I'm just going to put this right here:

I see your KMFDM and raise you one Royal Blood.

I asked my stepdaughter if she'd heard of Doja Cat, because I try to pull into work blaring "Bitch I'm too smooooo ooth, I'm not in the mooo oood" and she said "Yes! She's awesome - they play Mooo before Rocky Horror every time I go!"

It was the most intergenerational moment I think ever and I know that I'm still a PC and not yet an NPC.

And Three is a magic number so here is some Beethoven. This is my favorite thing that people have done, ever.

Laibach covering a Sound Of Music tune? Yes. The world makes sense. All of the yes. "Life is Life" got me through more LSD bad times than I can count so - Yes.

I am into Marshmello right now. I taught a couple of math classes today but really, inside my head, I only had this song. He's a dumb little masked EDM dude. But. One of his videos has over a BILLION-with-a-B hits.

This song reminds me of Bach-with-a-B.

Feist is going to be at the Oregon Zoo and I could pay $150 to see her, but I probably won't. If I go to anything there it'll be the Indigo Girls because I'm not sure I can sell my wife on the B-52s, OMD, and Berlin.

And Lizzo just dropped - like, two hours ago - a bunch of stuff onto Youtube. That's where I get all of my music from - Youtube, I mean. Getting all my music from Lizzo will be a viable choice in 20 years once she's got that kind of cred. I haven't listened to any of it enough yet to know what's good but I don't miss Prince anymore. I mean, damn.

I suppose I'll vote for Sanders when he gets the nomination but I'd rather vote for Warren because she's the closest candidate to Lizzo.

It's like I'm getting married up in here!

Something Old: My favorite version of my favorite song:

Something New: It's probably NSFW for cartoon female-presenting breasts. Among other things.

Something borrowed - I like covers that are reinventions:

And something blue. I'm a child of the 80s and I gotta have my dark synth:

These four songs are most of my commute home from work.

Currently on my phone's repeat:

This one reminds me of my current D&D character. Jaxom's a 5th level Inquisitor - we're playing Pathfinder, and just finished the first book of Wrath of the Righteous:

The video to this one makes me cry because I have a dog and a daughter who could totally do this. I'll miss them when they go to Mars:

This one is for driving at MAXIMUM VOLUME:

I just turned my 5-year-old onto Lightning Man.

"Daddy - can we hear the song about daddies and babies again?"

I've been listening to a TON of synthwave lately. Mostly mixes and shit but there's several songs that I just want to swim in and listen to on repeat. Here are two examples (and two good youtube channels):

And then Lizzo rocks my socks. When I'm feeling low energy or down I just do my hair toss, check my nails - baby, how you feel?

Good As Hell.

Hello!

I'm Dave, I'm from Detroit, and I like Donuts.

Now I live in Portland. I teach math to adults. I live with my wife kids mom and dad-in-law in what the FBI would describe as a 'compound'.

I play D&D and etc. I think that I am both smarter and dumber than I used to be, but now that I'm 50 it doesn't matter as much.

Here are three - warning, some of these videos might be NSFW. They are all good to drive to for different reasons.

Here is on the way to the caper (think like a shadowrun run, not a pickled flower bud):

Warning: Scarlett Johansson might be triggering for some folks. (Bassnectar - The Future)

Here is during the caper:

Warning: there is a naked lady, and then some nipples. That might be triggering for some folks (Gesaffelstein - Pursuit)

And this is what to drive to on the way back from the caper when you want calm focus:

Warning: there are several white people playing stringed instruments. That might be triggering for some folks. (JS Bach - Brandenburg Concerto #3)

Hey! Do you like mashups?

Well maybe not. Most of them are crap. But let me ask another question - do you like Daft Punk, or Bill Withers, or Steven Universe?

I mean if you're still on the fence I just don't even. Anyway. Here is 'Just the two of us are harder better faster stronger than you'. It is best for the singing along with I think.

I've been listening too everything I can find by Larkin Poe. I thought I was okay when I heard that Aretha Franklin died until I heard their cover of Natural Woman; their original stuff is tight, too.

The song I've been obsessing about is 'Just a Cloud' by Lusine. It sounds a bit like the singer's track is skipping like a dirty CD. But in a good way, if that makes sense? I'm trying to describe it so that it's either intriguing or off-putting, if you see what I mean - it's - it's not for everyone.

'I like me better' by Lauv reminds me of my wife, and it's her birthday Wednesday of this week. She'll be 27 again!

Soon I hope to have enough posts to actually pop links in these.

Dave's been on here a bit more regularly lately! Hey Chris - thanks for posting this.

I mean, I'm Dave. Hello - how are you? I wrote a blog about the World Cup.

Soccer is quite fun but we Must respect its Power.

My Grandmother had a cookbook like this from a Lutheran Ladies' League in Minnesota (their name was something like that, anyway). There was a Goulash recipe I remember that called for 'One can of diced tomatoes - not the biggest can but the next one'. An exercise in qualitative, not quantitative, cooking!

Here are my three top 'sing in the car' songs last week:

Journey - Don't Stop Believing. I change some of the lyrics (Since there is no 'South Detroit' I sing '...born and raised North of Detroit". Makes my wife cringe, too.)

Spinerette - Ghetto Love. I have no idea what she's really saying for most of it, but I like the angry shouty moan parts.

Angie - Smoke Weed Eat Pussy. When the little kids are in the car replace this with Parry Gripp - I like Vegetables.

The car I'm driving now doesn't have AC (it's a Volvo from 91 so 'AC' just means 'heat but not quite as much') so I sing around Portland with my windows down. There is an inverse relationship between my age and my number of fucks given, I suspect.

I was inspired by the World Cup.

I've always liked soccer - showing my 'murica right there - and this year I vowed to watch more of the games than just half of one in passing. But FIFA is a corrupt nightmare - Sepp Blatter is just the most public of that. Most of the FIFA decision makers from the last 20 years are either in jail, awaiting trial, or can't come to the US for fear of being arrested for corruption.

So I wrote some friends - most of whom are on here! - an email about each day of the cup, adding some weird dark elements and a gradually more horrifying narrative. It was fun! I mean, with a certain specific definition of fun.

I've also discovered a whole shared narrative of the SCP foundation and a modern way of talking about monsters and ghost stories - I've stayed up until dawn a couple of times this week falling through a rabbit hole there.

World Cup and Internet Monsters will forever be entwined in my heart, now.

Vegan pumpkin pie.

I don't know the quantities because I'm bad at measurement; as a mathematician, it's all a matter of scale, innit? I mean 1tsp and 1T are the same thing, using Fermi Estimation techniques.

Anyway. Get some pumpkin. The canned kind is fine, and easier. If you get an actual pumpkin and gut it and bake it and all, that works too and you have bigger bragging rights. Don't use 'pumpkin pie filling' but the straight-up pumpkin if you go the canned route.

Mix the pumpkin with an equal amount of silk tofu. Or maybe use a little more pumpkin? That's up to how you feel about pumpkin - and about tofu, I suppose, but if you're making a vegan pumpkin pie to begin with you probably are feeling pretty good about them both.

Add some sweetener. Your hardcore vegan will have some issues with white sugar (could be filtered with bone) and brown sugar (could be white sugar with coloring added). Maybe stick to agave or guaranteed vegan sweetener. Maple syrup is nice, but pricey, and adds a distinct maple flavor.

Put in some molasses too to deepen the flavor. I certainly hope molasses is vegan because otherwise I've compromised some diets.

And then spices: cinnamon and ginger are required (and fresh grated ginger is much better). Nutmeg, allspice, cardamom, and cloves are also good. If you get the 'pumpkin pie spice' thing from McCormicks I suppose that will work too.

Now add a dash of vinegar, a pinch of salt, and a spoon of coffee. Yes, for reals. When you cook the way I do it's more about alchemy, and so we add some of each of the five main flavors - sweet, salty, bitter (coffee) and sour. Umami comes from roasting the pumpkin and from balsamic vinegar. You can add a dash of turmeric too to deepen some of the mid notes.

Now if you're still with me I've tried other recipes - I generally do search for a recipe when I cook, I just don't follow them so well. The thing about pumpkin pie, traditionally, is it's a baked custard, which involves eggs and milk. Tofu is just one of the substitutions I've tried (and the one I've liked the best). Here are some others:

Coconut milk and corn starch (a bit of the coconut flavor bled through, which my wife likes, but I found competed with the flavors)

Tapioca flour and Almond milk (the texture just felt a bit off - like too slippery. I don't know how to describe it better than that.)

Almond flour - tapioca flour - flax seeds - coconut oil - coconut milk - almond butter - tapioca starch. WAY too complicated and not that great.

Cashews (soaked and pureed) and vegan cream cheese. This was gross.

Cashews, pumpkin, maple syrup, and spice. This was okay, not as good as tofu. Maybe better for a paleo diet pie?

I've seen people add an apple with the cashews too. That seems like gilding the lily. If you want to enhance the sweetness add molasses and vinegar.

Anyway. The internet is full of recipes for the various pies - I would stick with eggs-and-milk, or tofu for vegans, or MAYBE cashews if you had to. Yum!

I love unreliable witnesses - I like how it plays with narrative and adds another sort of level to a straightforward linear narrative. I've been playing around with this in a story where the unreliability reveal comes at the end, and so the story can be read in two ways; what is told, and then what is inferred by hints from the environment and other character's dialog.

I'm not sure it's possible to pull off and I'm certain I don't have the writing chops for it, but it's a fun exercise.

Well but that's the thing, right? Who gets to decide what the artist's intentions are?

Pornography is what THEY like. Erotica is what WE like.

It's difficult to decontextualize the artist out of the art, I think, and until the artist's generation of critics is dead their product seems more about the context than the actual product.

We were Norsemen!

Allow me to paraphrase Dr. Mark:

Truly the haiku

The Most Beautiful Poem

You should write one now

My heart was broken years ago by e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0, Steve. So beautiful!

The derivative of the Zeta function is tough for me to wrap my head around!