Too sarcastic for this world

since it is november several food places have turkey dishes they hope will tempt people to buy them.

a couple of convenience stores have a "thanksgiving leftovers" sandwich, some more popular than others, me and my brother decided to try it from the local chain.
first of all; it was only 6 inches & very expensive (about $8) it includes Cheddar, Turkey, Turkey Gravy, Stuffing, Cranberry Relish on White Sub Roll. they didn't put the relish on ours, which is just as well. someone we know said it overpowered the one they had.
it was OK, the turkey kind of tasted like stouffer's turkey dinner. i had read on-line that the stuffing was very dry, which was not the case with the one we had.

arby's has 2 turkey subs; a "thanksgiving leftovers" sandwich & a "turkey club" sandwich, we had the first one. it is a more reasonably price of around $7 for a closer to 7 inch sub. it is Deep Fried Turkey, with crispy onions, Swiss cheese, stuffing, cranberry spread & mayo on a toasted sub bun​. my brother hates onions, so we got it without.
it was fairly good, the cranberry spread alternated between sweet (the gel) and tart (the berries).

in late december of last year someone* gifted me 6 months paid DW account and that (plus the 6 month i had because of some points) means it expires in early december this year. and other than using my semi-fabulous icons, i have not done anything with it. so, in the spirit of doing "something" i present a random poll.





*hope that person had a very nice year.

i'm pretty sure we gave up on the katrina documentary after one episode. too depressing.

music by john williams--very good. he is so brilliant.

jaws @ 50--so many people said the shark looked so real. i though the common complaint was how fake it looked. unless that was in the sequels, i didn't really watch any of those.

light & magic (season 2) about ILM and the work they did on the star wars prequels & digital stuff in general. goes into the hate that jar jar binks got & george lucas being convinced that he'd be everyone's favorite character in 10-20 years*.
he said the director/interviewer** "everyone hated c-3po when star wars first came out."
interviewer; "i don't remember everyone hating c-3po."
lucas: "well, try this. you thought the ewoks were weird when we were doing return of the jedi."

i was like; that is not the same thing. one guy thinking some characters are "weird" verses the hate that jar jar got, & still gets.


*i still don't like him. although i've only see Ep1 a few time and 2 & 3 once.
**Joe Johnston, who used to work for ILM and directed honey, i shrunk the kids and captain america: the first avenger, among other movies.

we've been watching disney+ stuff for a couple of days now. my brother is watching the MCU TV shows (none interest me this time) & we are watching star wars; skeleton crew.

i think they were going for a 1980s live-action kids move vibe. i can see the makers being inspired by the last starfighter and flight of the navigator, with a bit of the goonies and E.T. thrown in. they ride on some kind of mini-speeder bikes (wim's has a basket), they live in a suburban area, wim & neel look like they live in/on a cul-de-sac.

we are 4 episodes in and both me & my brother feel they were going for a han solo vibe with fern. her jacket, the way she was sitting outside of the principal's (they had a different term) office & her whole attitude during that scene. as a woman who wanted to be a girl version of han solo, i love it.
wim is an idiot, i don't know if that will change. his friend neel is the the fat (nerdy?) friend that is often in these kid's things. KB has 2 moms & i guess that was in the background enough that i didn't hear complaints about it when this first came out.
i would watch a series about fern & KB having adventures. maybe solving mysteries like nancy drew. but the rabid fan boys don't like female-lead SW stuff.

plutoTV is....interesting. buzzer has some game shows that we never heard of. like Body Language where people play charades & then just the words to fill in a mad libs type puzzle? they also have channels with supermarket sweep, family feud (dawson & combs ears, as well as the newer ones) '70s match game, the price is right (barker & carey eras) & a few others.
there's a columbo channel (they're supposed to have kojak & quincy M.E. too, but don't) & we watched that for a bit. there's a murder she wrote channel (which has the show logo in the corner all of the time, very annoying) & the nice thing about episodic TV is that you can jump in anytime and not be lost. also, the show is an interesting mix of old movie actors & future stars. george clooney was in an episode, and linda hamiliton was in another.

so, once again i'm getting low on deodorant & had to start that quest once again. i liked the suave powder & fresh scented ones, but my brother said no. and since he's the one smelling me most of the time, he gets a big say.

and so many of them are expensive now (that rant over here) so that makes it harder to find one. but we both agreed that we could put up with the suave coca butter & shea one, so fingers crossed that works out.

while we were there (at wal-mart) we saw there is a old spice superman (described as bright citrus and cosmos) and a batman (black cherry and nightfall). we were like WTF? & checked theme out. the superman is a light citrus scent & the batman is a dusty cherry.

we liked the superman one better and my brother asked if it was cheaper (it's $7.97!) would i have objected if he got it. i said it was a nice scent, but any citrus thing ends up smelling like cheap vitamin c tablets every time.

previous ranking. this post was inspired by trying the frosted (full frosting, not drizzled) cinnamon roll pop tarts.

*not every variety listed is currently available. some are seasonal, others were for a limited time.

• frosted brown sugar cinnamon
• s'mores
• pumpkin pie (one of the few seasonal flavors i've tried, because who wants to commit to a box of 12 if you don't like them?)
• cookies n' cream
• chocolate fudge
• chocolate chip
• chocolate peanut butter
• frosted banana bread. ok. could be more banana-y.
• frosted (full frosting, not drizzled) cinnamon roll. not as good as brown sugar cinnamon
• lemon crème pie. lemon things are either; not very lemony, lemony, or LEMON! these are the second.
• peanut butter
• fruit ones
• pretzel pop tarts. dry & come apart at the end seams.
• sugar cookie. would've been better, but smells like some kind of chemical. probably what they use to print the winter scenes on them.
• frosted chocolate chip pancake. vague syrup flavor, no chocolate flavor. looks odd because of the chocolate chips on it.
• apple jacks. barely tastes like anything, much less apple jacks
• snickerdoodle. possibly tied with unfrosted, since they are too.
• unfrosted ones
• boston cream pie. boston cream filling is not meant to be eaten warm.

on friday the old/former neighbor mentioned in this post needed some help with stuff, and afterward he offered to buy us dinner. we let him decide the restaurant, it was 8pm by that time & i thought be might end up at a burger place. but he chose to go to red lobster.

first, of all it was so dimly lit. like, i've had better lighting with a couple of candles during a power outage. my brother & i went a couple of times with our parents before long ago, but that was during the afternoon & we could see better. i had a hard time reading the menu because of how the dim the over the table light was.

got root beer to drink. it's supposed to be mug brand, but didn't taste the same as the mug from taco bell. my brother figures it was watered down.
had a couple of the cheddar bay biscuits. which were flavorful, but dry & i could never favor them in the red lobster vs. olive garden bread sticks debate. although, i don't think i've been to olive garden to try the bread sticks.
i went to the bathroom afterwards to wash my hands because of the butter topping from the biscuits. i only use public bathroom soap sparingly on my fingers, because it make the backs of my hands break out in weird, itchy bumps. the label on the dispensers said safeguard & whatever it was smelled a bit like a perm.

my brother got the grilled lobster, shrimp and salmon with a baked potato and orzo rice. he could not get any meat from the lobster tail, it was basically flatted in the grilling process. everything was on a large bed of the orzo rice. which was kind of nice, in terms of the amount of food overall. he didn't finish it & brought the leftovers back and had them for lunch. where he was more successful with eating the lobster tail.

i got the admiral's feast with seasoned broccoli and mashed potatoes. they bring it out on a huge tin tray of some sort & it didn't look like much of a "feast". the former neighbor asked if i had gotten an appetizer & i said it sure looked like it. i got 4 shrimp, a handful of fried clam strips, another of fried bay scallops & a piece of fried, breaded flounder cut in half. the sides of seasoned broccoli and mashed potatoes were on a a separate plate, literally to the side.
the picture online (i know they're all BS) shows a full tray with all of that, but 5 pieces of shrimp & 2 pieces of flounder plus optional fries. they'd be better off having it on one of the oval plates/patters, that way it would looked like you got more. and save the tin tray for the 1 pound of snow crab legs and stuff like that.

overall, it was not horrible. just a bit disappointing.

the company that mows the grass here started their weekly cutting today. while it's technically spring, it has been mostly on the cooler side lately. but, i suppose the bouts of rain and those days with 70-ish degree temperatures lately were enough for it to grow some. but you could not prove it by me, because other than some tufts of grass by the buildings it didn't look like it grew at all.
especially since at the end of the cutting season last year there was a 3-4 week period with little to no rain & a 1/3 to 1/2 of the grass looked dead.

what they really need to do here is to cut back some bushes they have near the road in a few places. the last time they were trimmed was about 5 years ago & they desperately need it.
they're hard to see around, which makes things dangerous for anyone crossing the road near them. they're starting to encroach a bit on the sidewalks that they're next too. and i'm pretty sure if they get much bigger they might qualify as trees.

the rest of the title is; The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone

from amazon;

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum every year, and yet most people don’t really know what it is. Discovered in a pile of rubble in 1799, this slab of stone proved to be the key to unlocking a lost language that baffled scholars for centuries.

Carved in ancient Egypt, the Rosetta Stone carried the same message in different languages—in Greek using Greek letters, and in Egyptian using picture-writing called hieroglyphs. Until its discovery, no one in the world knew how to read the hieroglyphs that covered every temple and text and statue in Egypt.

Dominating the world for thirty centuries, ancient Egypt was the mightiest empire the world had ever known, yet everything about it—the pyramids, mummies, the Sphinx—was shrouded in mystery. Whoever was able to decipher the Rosetta Stone would solve that mystery and fling open a door that had been locked for two thousand years.

Two brilliant rivals set out to win that prize. One was English, the other French, at a time when England and France were enemies and the world’s two great superpowers.

this is the first book i read in 2025.
it was pretty interesting, going into how the rosetta stone was found, plus some history of ancient egypt that lead to it's creation.
it also goes a bit into written language in general & how hard it is to figure out if you have no frame of reference for it. are the signs/symbols words? sounds? letters? and is it read from left to right? right to left? top to bottom?
there are still some written languages no one knows how to read in this day & age. probably the most well known is Linear A. but there's also the written language of the Etruscans (a.k.a the nearby civilization that early ancient rome stole nearly every concept & idea from). as well as the written language of the Rapa Nui, the people of easter island.

my brother wondered who decided on the "correct" written words for things?
like; one man said this collection of lines means "rock". but another man said no; his collection of lines means "rock". then they started fighting, throwing rocks at each other, & killing each other. a third guy comes along & says this collection of lines means "rock" & everyone went along with it.

so my paid time expires on the 15^th & i was doing the usual thing of wondering what icons i'd get when i'm limited to 15 (did you hear livejournal is up to 30 icons for free accounts now?) like i always do when faced with my paid account expiring. but because of some generous donations (thanks!) i can get another 6 months.

i was going to wait until after the first of the year or closer to 3-sentence fic time (it has it's own community now threesentenceficathon ) but then realized annual the end-of-year points bonus deal will be in december, so i should do it then. that would provide icons for whatever i do for the fic-a-thon & if i buy it late enough in the month the account expire after my birthday in early june. if i mathed that right, i don't know.

if you're not subscribed to dw_news (you should be, to get the latest DW info), read more about the end-of-year points bonus in last year's announcement post.