IMDB has a useful advanced search page. The search was for movies rated over 8.0, in English and with more than 100,000 votes. IMDB started in 1990, so that may explain the lower rankings before 1990.
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Falling Skies is okay. Not great science fiction, but good. The special effects are convincing, but there isn’t much of it. Most of the action takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth. I haven’t watch much of The Walking Dead, but it’s along that line. The good guys are fighting the monsters in addition to a few bad guys. The best thing about it is the series runs to completion, wrapping up the story.
Since I may be two-thirds of the way through a Christmas miracle, I decided to watch Miracle on 34th Street.
Compare and contrast with our current culture.
Shouldn’t that headline be in the present tense? Nancy Pelosi coerced Biden into dropping out of the 2024 presidential election after the debate with Trump showed that Biden was too mentally feeble to continue with the campaign. If Biden is too frail to run for president, he is too frail to be president. We haven’t had a function president since July.
Perhaps the WSJ is suggesting that since the election, Trump has been in charge. Everyone acts as if he is. While Trump was in Paris, meeting global leaders, Biden was sleeping through meetings in Africa.
I don’t want to hear another thing about the January 6th self-guided tour of the Capital building being a threat to democracy. The corporate media and Democrat handlers hid the fact that Biden was running out of juice so they could cling to power.
Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.
Read the WSJ article if you are interested. Spoiler Alert: These three people have effectively been running the country since Biden was elected.
Maybe your brain works better.
When we go for walks, a recurring thought comes to mind. Sparky likes to lead. That’s good, his confidence is admirable. I can’t help thinking how much Sparky, from this angle, resembles the X-ACTO model 1744 electric pencil sharpener I bought for my classroom. 
It’s not like I am ever going to get Sparky stuffed, with an electric pencil sharpener inside. That’s crazy, right? Still though, that would be a great pencil sharpener.
Sparky and I have a nice setup, but he thinks stupid, morbid shit all the time too. When he looks down on the compound, he can’t help thinking about how he’s going to change things when I’m gone.
He wants to put in a creek that goes from the road to the land bridge, with some big rocks and a bunch of drain pipes that go off to the sides.
That’s all to say that Sparky and I are not sentimental, but appreciate the little moments as they come.
If I go first, I hope Sparky gets his creek and doesn’t get his fat ass stuck in a pipe. If Sparky goes first, he said I can make him into a pencil sharpener if it isn’t too loud, but he wants to chew on the tail if I don’t need it for the pencil sharpener.
Again, I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about with that last part, but he seems content.
I’ve been scanning and organizing old photos.
Sparky was getting bored with the project until we got to these photos from when I was an RA during my senior year at Ohio State. I and the other new RA’s in the Barrett Complex where the fun group. Lisa thought it would be a good idea if we got a pet rabbit. Pets weren’t allowed in the dorm, so it seemed a little subversive. Only a little because the dorm director and assistant dorm director were also new and in favor of fun.
It didn’t take much for Lisa to convince us.
We named him Travis, and rotated him around our rooms so housekeeping wouldn’t catch on. He was smart. Since we were RA’s, our residents came by pretty often. We trained Travis to run into the bathroom if someone thumped on the floor. He also did his dirty business in there.
Sparky thinks we should get a bunny. I’m not so sure.
Yesterday, I benched 185 lbs, a personal record. That’s two 45 pounders, two 25’s, two 10’s with a 25 pound bar.
While working out, my brother and I were chatting about goals for 2025. These aren’t New Year’s resolutions that are vague and optimistic, but actionable tasks that are specific, measurable and recorded. It’s the difference between “start working out” and “go to the gym twice per week”
Nature: Best Science Images of 2024
Take a minute to check out those images, they are quite splendid. Well, a couple weren’t great, but the rest are amazing.
Sparky and I are relaxing with coffee, and he wanted me to post this photo of an ermine chimneying up a crack. Sparky told me that if he didn’t have to be my spirit animal, he’d quite like to be a dog weasel.
It was a bit harsh to remind him that I got him a weazel ball, and he is afraid of it. A weazel ball is a little scary looking. He doesn’t like how the weazel ball lurches around when it’s turned on.
Sparky was getting defensive. He shouldn’t start the day in a grumpy mood, so I reassured him. I said that when I met him at the orphanage, I thought he was a dog weasel. That was two years and 5 pounds ago, but he is still pretty weaselly.
That perked him up, and he thought we should try the weazel ball again. This year, Sparky has gained experience with RC cars, so buzzing, lurching motion may not be as unsettling.
This moron is in charge of the Department of Homeland Security. Any senator who voted for Mayorkas, can’t possibly object to Kristi Noem as the head of DHS.
His comments about the drone sightings in New Jersey and other areas are so disrespectful. He thinks we are idiots or that we should shut up and stop worrying.