Sierpinski Tetrahedron

For your listening enjoyment. Alternate option. Alternate alternate option. When will this gag end?

Side note: that’s the one English cover of Sobakasu (Judy and Mary, 1996) I’ve found which doesn’t try to stick to the awkward official English translation.

The sun shines hot and bright. The air is thick like molasses, not like soup, and the heavy breeze tricks you into thinking that it’s not 100 degrees (38 C) outside. It’s been like that for most of the week; I had the day off yesterday, and I spent the late morning swimming in the courtyard. I’ve been working on acclimating my eyes to seeing underwater and on staying under as long as I can. I need new swim trunks; my current ones are starting to get big in the waist even when I tie the drawstrings tightly. At Spelljammer Thursday night, Brian made an off-hand comment that I was lanky, which is a descriptor I never thought I’d hear about myself. I know I can lose more, though, and at the rate things are going, it won’t be long. My massive frame is more apparent now as I slim down, week after week. I went swimming again, in the early evening, invited outside by one of my friends who lives in Anova. We all drank and chatted, and it was a jolly good time.

Last night we finally finished the gladiator games at Cael’s Lancer table. And what an ending it was. Truthfully, I still have no idea how to play Lancer, but considering the character I took over was a deranged war criminal (his mech was called the Family Annihilator), I could default to attacking the biggest target with all my guns and hoping for the best. My proudest moment was when my character managed to find the entry hatch to the arena champion’s mech and executed him with an armor-piercing explosive round to the back of the neck. In my character’s defense, when the Family Annihilator blew up and he was teleported out of the arena, he started ranting loudly to the interviewer (on broadcast) that the champion was a Sicko™ and demanded to be let back in so he could “kill him in real life”. If they didn’t want my character to commit murder, that’s on them for letting him back in the arena, really.

Anyway, after we “won,” the champion’s mangled corpse was teleported out of the arena, to the horror of the syndicate running the games. We were all teleported, sans armor and weapons, into an interrogation room. My character tried to garrote one of the guards that came in, failed, got shot in the face and survived (but was rendered unconscious), was dismembered with hatchets (and managed to wake up enough to say some jargon from his days as regime personnel, relevant later), and lost so much blood that he was brain dead for about three hours. I say three hours because his saying the jargon caused one of the criminals doing the execution, who was also former regime personnel, to take pity on a fellow war criminal, and so they rebuilt my character- they have the technology… but really couldn’t care about rebuilding him well. He is the Six Dollar Man.

Also, in gaming, I had my 5.5 game yesterday afternoon after being unable to run last week due to scheduling. Our heroes made it to the Homely Troll seeking to rest after their experiences in the crypts, finding the establishment largely empty (likely from the curfew having only just ended). The Troll is a single-story inn, mostly old construction (concrete and plaster) from Imperial times, with a modern thatch-and-wood roof. Truthfully, calling it an inn is being charitable, in that it lacks private facilities for patrons, although unlike the other taverns in town its doors are open 25 hours and they’ll let you stay the night if you pay: their usual rate is 7 denarii a night per person, but as our heroes soon found out they tend to upcharge for people who look flush with cash (e.g. adventurers), and the innkeeps were asking for an argenteus per head. I rolled some reaction rolls behind the scenes to see the disposition of the servers (an extended family of halflings, the number of which is however many are needed to make the joke work), and the servers were somewhat jaded and crabby, not helped by our heroes trying to haggle over the cost of accommodations.

As far as food came, however, it really was quite good. I prepped a basic menu in advance, adjusting the standard prices given based on player interaction:

Drinks: Rice Wine (per jug, 2 argentei), Steelbrew Co. Dwarvish Spirits (per jug, 10 aurei), Tea (per cup, 4 denarii). Individual servings for the former two are determined by vibes; likewise, for a full kettle of the latter.

Tonight’s Specials (2 argentei each):

• Boiled pork sausages with string beans and sweet peppers in a hot mustard sauce, served with sticky bread.
• Roast ginger beef and broccoli, noodles, served over fresh flatbread.
• Sky squid seared in peanut oil with red beans and lentils, with a side of raw tuna. This one is especially popular given the Gherdunnic tendency towards a pescatarian diet among the pious.

Not listed, but I imagine one can get the staple of the typical Gherdunnic diet (a bowl of savory rice porridge drowning in fish sauce, possibly imitation) for a single denarius.

Although the Troll was sparse, a trio of musicians- one with a zither, one with a lyra, one with a drum- played their instruments with passion as a group of half a dozen Aasimar adventurers chatted and joked by the hearth. And then a strange blob about 5′ in diameter, like an amoeba of silvery seafoam approximating a crab (as described to someone who’s never seen a crab) descended through the roof, briefly latching onto the zither-player until the drummer, on instinct, smacked their companion in the face, causing the blob to try and flee.

To sum up combat, there ended up being three psychic protoplasms. Our heroes were able to take out one, the Aasimar another, and the third they allowed to flee in the hopes we could track it later. Our heroes also ended up saving an elderly halfling and their very young presumably grandchild, so the party earned free room and board for the next five days (in-game). Lucy the Paladin got himself a bent-up sword (a steel one, at that) from one of the oozes, and Steve the Cleric realized at the very end that the Aasimar are spying on them intently.

From the other side of the DM screen, Spelljammer Thursday night was fun. I’m very glad everyone’s schedules finally lined up. They let us all out of work early, so I went swimming (who could have guessed) after arriving back in Philly, before I ran to Old Nelson for snacks and booze. Specifically, I got a 12-pack of Blue Moon for the table, some Fruit Gushers, a bag of Cheetos Puffs, and something called “Fox Hole Fruit Punch” that, with everything else, no one wanted to try. I also had, purely for myself, a black cherry White Claw, although it did little compared to the remaining Eagles Tequila. Go Birds, it got me drunk. Not enough to affect my ability to strategize, thankfully, but enough that my spirits were sky-high. Before the session, while waiting for one of the players to show, we played a round of Commander, and I did fairly well (third place) given that I had no lands, no prospects, and that this was my first time playing Magic in ages. I was playing a Naya precon that the host lent me, which was very thoughtful of him. Jordan also made Egyptian lemonade for everyone, and I have to give her mad props for that because it was great.

The Spelljammer session was dominated by combat; our ship was boarded by a Xaryxian (Astral Elf, Evil™) collaborator, a colony of jellyfish in humanoid form whom we had to fight. Complicating matters was that the collaborator’s ship (a giant space jellyfish) was attacking ours. My character, Sir Tibere (LG Warforged Life Cleric 4/[Stars] Druid 1), rolled last for initiative, but it was fine actually because it paid off with a moment of aura farming at the end. Other highlights included Jordan’s character, Mal (Drow Monk) rolling like four consecutive Nat 20s while flurrying blows, Robert the Autognome (awakened last session by yours truly, currently being played by Brian’s gf who just joined) going Super Saiyan, our Spelljamming hull being… well, jammed for twelve hours, and our Giff buddy casting Gun! for an impressive amount of damage versus I think the jellyfish ship?

Anyway, we eventually made it to the astrographer we were meaning to see, and Brian’s warlock is gonna have some good RP hooks next session, I tell ya hwhat.

Earlier in the week, work was fairly relaxed, and I much enjoyed the relative calm, the highlight of which was my coworker and me being granted the opportunity to enjoy the 250th celebrations outside. We got shaved ice, which was a welcome reprieve from the midday heat as we waited in line for fries and, in my case, chicken tenders. Unfortunately, they didn’t have ketchup packets, nor did the office kitchen. Remarkably, both seemed to have every condiment except ketchup.

And now for something completely different…

I watched the second season of AMC’s “The Terror,” and I did not care for it. The biggest issue is the horror elements, whose execution is pretty lame, honestly. The performances are all good, and the mundane themes are interesting and well executed, but they don’t gel well with most of the supernatural elements. I had to go to sleep before the season finale, but Liz summed the issues in it up thusly (spoilers):

The whole thing is resolved by using special latina dia de los muertos magic involving dead people and photographs to convince the ghost mother to stop killing people
…
The dia de los meurtres magic sucks ass and is really poorly done
…
It comes off like a deus ex machina that is somehow more racist than the premise
And also doesn’t really make sense
The magic only works with photographs of the dead but is stated to be an Ancient Mayan Secret ® that They™ Don’t Want You To Know About

Which is somehow even lamer than I could have guessed.

And now for something completely different…

Dr. Uwe Boll is a German auteur. This isn’t to imply that any of his films are good, though some of his more obscure work is apparently middling to passable. But it is a popular and well-known fact that the bulk of his filmography is quite bad, in the same way that a hurricane is somewhat damp. His 2005 adaptation of Infogrames’ “Alone in the Dark” survival horror games is highkenuinely one of the worst films ever made. The original screenwriter described it thusly:

For my part I would just like to apologize to the video gamers of the world for indirectly helping this man unleash another cinematic atomic bomb on audiences. In my defense I can claim at the time I started, I didn’t quite know who Uwe Boll really was… and in the end, we did manage to salvage our script from actually being filmed at the hands of the mad doctor. So I can take small comfort in a quote by one movie critic this weekend: “The other practitioners of cinematic drivel can rest a little easier now; they can walk in the daylight with their heads held high, a smile on their lips and a song in their heart. ‘It’s okay,’ they’ll tell themselves. ‘I didn’t make Alone in the Dark‘.”

Despite his films losing, to my knowledge, $20 million collectively over the course of his career, he made bad video game movies into an industry of his own. As I understand it, under German law, the cost of making the film can be written off by investors for tax purposes if the film bombs. They only have to pay taxes if the movie makes money. Boll’s shtick was to buy the adaptation rights to video games and make low-ish budget movies out of them. If the film made money somehow, great; if it lost money, it’s a write-off… so still great. But this is all secondhand, and I’m not gonna write a formal memo on German tax law regarding Uwe Boll if I’m not being paid.

Uwe Boll’s reputation in both the film and video game spheres was so infamous that when he approached Blizzard with an offer to buy the rights to a Warcraft movie, Blizzard said:

We will not sell the movie rights, not to you…especially not to you.

Note: they ended up selling the rights to Legendary Pictures, and the resulting film (dir. Duncan Jones, 2016) bombed in the US but made a tidy profit in China. I liked it.

Boll’s reputation was so infamous, in fact, that he challenged his critics to put up or shut up, which resulted (among other things) in him beating the crap out of Rich “Lowtax” Kyanka, disgraced founder of Something Awful & pathological liar, abuser, and deadbeat. So, y’know, Boll’s not all bad. On that note, Boll’s heyday as a director was in the Aughts, and by the early 2010s, he retired from filmmaking. Between 2015 and 2020, he pursued a new passion, opening a German restaurant in Vancouver that was actually good and successful until the plague struck. Which, unfortunately for lovers of good movies, means that he’s returned to making his own. Apparently, the loophole his old business model relied on was closed, so he needed to find a new way to make money…

All of which is to set up that Citizen Vigilante (dir. Uwe Boll, 2026) is such a masterpiece of incompetence that it’s inadvertently the most anti-racist film of the century. My friends and I streamed it on Tuesday night to make fun of it.

See, Boll is no stranger to controversy, and everything about it seems tailor-made to provoke it (and get that sweet sweet outrage/”libs owned”-bux). The film’s about an American expat in Europe™ (Where in Europe™? Don’t worry about it, it’s just Europe™, although it was filmed in Zagreb and a Croatian flag is briefly visible in the background of a shot) played by Armie Hannibal Hammer in a performance where he barely had to act. The expat becomes a vigilante targeting migrants, hence the title (although “citizen” is probably wrong considering Hammer’s character is an American), who are all framed as basically orcs but somehow come off as more sympathetic than our grimderp main character.

The film is badly written, acted, and shot, but this is par for the course in Boll’s oeuvre. The worst thing, aside from the messaging, is probably that it’s told nonlinearly. Nonlinear storytelling can work, but here I think Boll just did it so he didn’t have to make a coherent story or worry about pacing. The film’s a standard 90 minutes, but feels like half an hour of actual substance stretched into a two-and-a-half-hour slog. Hammer does a good enough job if you consider that his character is basically Not Important but with anti-woke pandering thrown in for zest. But he’s a fleshed-out character, because he’s not just a Stone Cold Badass™ willing to take a stand for Evropa™ against the Savage Hordes™ trying to Replace Us™… he’s also a landlord.

There is an entire scene where Hammer’s character, who is enjoying the company of a lady of the evening, stops midway to berate said courtesan for code violations in the brothel. I’m not making this up. He’s specifically a slumlord, too, so that combined with how broadly unsympathetic he is leads me to believe Boll broke into Chairman Mao’s mausoleum to have him ghostwrite those scenes.

I could go on, but truthfully, I think y’all get the point. This movie is so poorly made that its intended messages and themes are dead (skeletal, even) on arrival. It does such a bad job that the film loops back around into being unbelievably woke™, and if you can find a way to watch it without giving Dr. Boll a dime, you’ll have a great time hate-watching it. Best to do it with friends, though, something Hammer’s character (or Hammer himself, for that matter) doesn’t have.

And now for an overused joke…

Instead of WUTC, we ran a one-shot of “Frontier Scum”, Karl Druid’s Western hack of Mörk Borg (Nilsson & Nohr, 2020). I was waiting for Liz to post a session write-up; if she does, I’ll probably link it, but it’s a very fun system that captures its intended vibe extremely well. Through random generation, I ended up with “Rev” (self-proclaimed) Theosophy Z.N. “Wisecrack” Gummy Jr. (among other identities), wanted dead or alive ($120 reward) for the crime of spectacular fraud, a charlatan with delicate sensibilities, a pale green glass eye, and 54 business cards under different names and professions. Our posse was hired as officers for a whaling expedition in the frozen seas- Wisecrack found himself quartermaster- and he used his talents as a showman (of talking fancy to bamboozle scum like the crew) to keep morale up even as the rations dwindled/expired and the crew turned to rum and… each other for comfort. His best moment was when he staged a Pentecostal-esque religious revival complete with pyrotechnics (from the phoenix feathers I said were in his bowler at chargen) to rally the surviving crew into going along with our harebrained scheme to convert the steamer wheels into ones that could allow our draft animals to drag the ship over the ice back to the nearest friendly port. I went all out with RPing; it was fantastic. Of course, we couldn’t go through with it because the ship got attacked by a monstrous walrus, and one of the crew decided to blow the steamer to kingdom come. The whale oil burned bright and hot for several days; most of the survivors starved to death.

In case we ever run it again, we determined that after the untimely wreck of the C.S.S. Farthest, Wisecrack fell in with some tribesmen of the ice flows, using his knack for showmanship and collection of trinkets to sell himself as a shaman until he was rescued by a passing ship (just in time, because the tribe realized he was a con artist). The “Good” “Reverend” obviously wouldn’t reveal to his rescuers that he’s the wanted serial fraudster Theo Gummy, Jr., so he assumed the identity “Reverend G. Weslee Smokes” (he has three business cards under that name, all different professions). Knowing his -3 luck, though, they’d definitely find out eventually, but by that point, he can ride off on his donkey (Dogecoin Kalshi) into the sunset and further schemes.

My sleep’s been considerably more restful recently. My shrink raised the dose of one of my meds, and that solved most of the issues I was facing (likely as a result of going off my previous one). I caught up on much-needed sleep last weekend, finding myself lulled by the sound of the rain. The morning of the 27th, though, I dreamt the Worst Conceivable Thing. I admit that seems improbable; I admit that sounds like hyperbole.

It isn’t. I am being totally sincere.

What I dreamt that Saturday morning was so horrific that everything else that’s bad in the world seems like sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows by comparison. Thankfully, the finer details have since purged themselves from my brain, replaced by a fuzzy wall of white like the air in a heavy blizzard, but I refuse to disclose exactly what I dreamt, on the grounds that this is a public blog and I’m pretty sure it’s an actual honest-to-god cognitohazard. It has to do with spiders, though, in such a way that even a die-hard arachnophobe would feel overwhelming sympathy for the poor thing(s).

For the most part, I stayed in that weekend given the storms. Truthfully, I don’t mind the rain. On Saturday, I ran an errand, then went for lunch. It was storming heavily, but my umbrella covered most of me, and the city was beautiful, the grass lush and green, lights piercing the fog, the air cool and clean. I also went to Five Guys for the first time in a long while, and the cheeseburger I had was perfect, like the kind you see in advertisements. It really was a good day.

My hair’s been good too. I’ve found a way to side-part it at its current length so that, as it dries, it curls correctly (reducing or eliminating the need to fiddle with it during the day). Admittedly, I looked very LDS-coded (the dirty sodas don’t help) earlier in the week. One day, I decided to wear a black tie with a white shirt and black trousers, and only after catching a glimpse of my reflection in a window while walking to the 34th Street station did I realize I looked as square as my jawline. I gave off the vibe of a goody-two-shoes love interest in a schlocky romantasy book.

The 25th was an uneventful day at work. My coworker was working from home, so I had our office space to myself all day. I greatly enjoyed being able to pace around every now and then without bothering anyone. The Immigrant Heritage Month Block Party was held around noon, so lunch was pizza margherita from one of the food trucks. It was fairly good, like a 7/10.

Wednesday night, I sang myself to sleep.

I sang two songs; one of them was “Don’t Turn Around” (specifically Ace of Base’s 1993 cover, which I only learned was a cover last weekend). The other one purged itself from my conscious memory as I write this, likely because of what I saw in my dreams Saturday morning, but that likely means it’s a song so fundamental to my heart that it’ll come to mind when needed. I’ve been working on finding joy in music again. I find myself tapping out rhythms or humming melodies when I’m on my own. It’s not the same as it was, but it’ll be better soon.

I have faith in that; the night ends, the dawn breaks, the sun rises in splendor, unconquered.

Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will.

– Luke 2:14

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Ted the Raver

Once upon a three weeks ago…

Thursday afternoon, when I was on the Market-Frankford back home, I saw a sign for FanDuel which had been vandalized with “The House Always Wins.” I have immense respect for that little act of defiance, for that assertion of truth. D&D Thursday night was more of a true Session 0 than a Session 0.5, on account of us ending on a cliffhanger with the party discovering Nefiel’s Uncle Koru, having turned into a ghoul down in the crypts. Because Nefiel’s player could not make it, I hand-waved them out of the dungeon more or less; it didn’t seem sporting otherwise. I answered some lore questions and worked on a map of the Duskmarch.

I worked from home on Friday. As is typical, the hearings were held over Zoom, and I lived, laughed, listened, learned, and loved my way through them. Brie happened to be in the city doing inspections at UPenn, so they popped over to Anova around lunch to say hi, which was nice. After work, I drove up to Orefield. I haven’t been driving much recently, not with gas being what it is, but my experience surviving Philly driving has trickled down to being better at driving elsewhere. The issue was that I was cooked alive. My car’s AC definitely needs more coolant. Traffic was pretty bad too, what with World Cup preparations compounding upon Philly rush hour. I ended up in Orefield around half an hour behind schedule. The drive back to Philly was better; I had Giara to talk to and had figured out the optimal timing for putting the windows down.

Dinner Friday was at a place in Rittenhouse called Aleksandar. I’ve been living frugally these past few months, so it was nice to indulge for the first time in a long while. The ambiance was excellent, as was the service and the food. Giara and I shared tenderloin tartare, and we both got the mushroom soup. For entrees, I had chicken schnitzel, and Giara had spring garden gnocchi. I had carrot cake and a cup of Earl Grey for dessert, Giara had a green tea, which slips my mind. We both had cocktails; mine was mezcal and maraschino liqueur (I had two), Giara’s was plum brandy and the concept of pink (not the same as the pink at Melt, but still stupendously pink). Afterward, we went back to Anova to let dinner settle before heading to the main reason she came down this weekend.

We went to a rave. It was goth-adjacent, though Giara was mildly disappointed that the music wasn’t goth enough. I had fun dancing. I had a Vodka Red Bull and a Moscow Mule; Giara just had the Vodka Red Bull. She thought she wasn’t drunk, but this was fake news and a falsehood, actually. My favorite guy at the rave looked like Ryan Gosling playing Leon S. Kennedy, truly a unique face which ought to be studied in a lab.

Jumping forward in time from when I was originally writing this account to now (Independence Day, U-S-A! U-S-A!), Giara’s been going through the wringer recently (still is), which is part of why I invited her to stay over in Philly. I knew she wanted to go to the event, and I figured that she shouldn’t go alone. Even with my weight loss, I’m still a giant of a man, and my being around serves as a deterrent.

Anyway, we left just before 1 AM the morning of the 13th, and sat in the Dunkin(?) parking lot across from the Met. Someone who looked like Sarah’s doppelganger walked in as we were leaving the rave; for all I know, it was Sarah, but I couldn’t be bothered to linger to confirm/deny it. In the parking lot, Giara and I chatted for what felt like hours, but it was really only fifteen to twenty minutes. Afterward, we started making our way back to Anova and made it to city hall before deciding that walking was for chumps. Because the trains were done for the night, we took an Uber across the Schuylkill. Once situated back at Anova, we watched the Among Us animated series, which was surprisingly entertaining despite dropping well after Among Us’s place in the limelight and some serious “HOW DO YOU DO, FELLOW KIDS” moments. The show was paced so well that it was very compelling and short enough not to wear out its welcome. We watched it on my laptop, as I was between televisions for a while. I now have a large TV in my living room, and I’ve converted my old one into a monitor for my gaming rig (to get some more life out of it before I buy a new Elder Scrolls Machine™ to play TES VI: Daggerfall II™). I also found a way to mount my mic, not necessarily the best way, but good enough for now. I ought to record a demo reel.

That Saturday was pretty chill. I forgot if I mentioned it, but I started playing TES I: Arena as a Breton Healer named Roland. Despite his class, he’s still a murderhobo. I gave him two custom spells intended to cheese Arena’s mechanics: one is an anti-everything shield, and the other is an incredibly overpowered explosion that can one-shot most everything within its blast radius. Both are dirt cheap to cast. Unfortunately, it’s so powerful that it’s the one thing that Roland’s anti-everything shield can’t block, and accordingly, he has to fight in melee from time to time, relying on his shield to keep him alive. So far, he hasn’t reached Fang Lair yet, but that’s because I’ve been kept busy by work. Giara and I ended up getting Taco Bell and going to one of the parks on the city’s outskirts. It was really nice, honestly.

Afterward, I had Incunabuli, and Giara and I went to get coffee and sweets. I had a slice of red velvet cake to celebrate my weight loss. While we were at the coffeehouse, fifteen cop cars swarmed up Lancaster Ave, sirens blaring. They blocked off part of Powelton Ave by Penn Presbyterian, starting at the intersection of 38th Street, with four cars. Gossip among the crowd that gathered across the street from the barricade was that someone got attacked. If you search “Wynnefield Police Shooting,” you’ll find the details of what happened, who was injured, and who was killed.

We had another long conversation before bed. Among other things, her boyfriend, Guy, came up. That charming nickname is because he’s like a C- as far as guys go; from how she describes him, he’s the most aggressively mid man alive. I didn’t say much that night; I’d already shared my thoughts on him with her piecemeal. To sum up: I cautioned her against him early, but she said she wouldn’t fall in love with him, that it would be strictly physical between them, and that they understood each other. In fact, she explicitly told me to tell her not to fall in love if she felt herself falling for him. I told her, but she fell for him anyway.

I can’t control her; she’s free to make her own choices. But, speaking candidly as friends should, I don’t think she’s made the best choice for herself. My gut told me the two of them didn’t share the same fundamental values, goals, or long-term wants and needs, and that still seems true. I don’t think he’s a bad man, but I don’t think he’s the best man for her.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. He might not be the worst of the men she’s dated, but he gave me bad vibes, vaguely manipulative in a subtle way. He knows how to play her like a fiddle, and it’s working.

But love’s a funny thing; the need to love and be loved is a funny thing. No one’s an island, and learning to be comfortable with loneliness takes time, even for introverts. She chose not to be alone, to throw herself into a new man, to throw herself into his life. This isn’t bad in itself; goodness and badness are irrelevant here. It’s natural to run from pain, and Giara’s life has had plenty of it: pain from her body, pain from her past, pain from the cruelty of others. It’s not bad that she sought respite, but eventually she’ll have to face the music.

No one can run from pain forever; no one can run from the past forever. Sometimes I wonder if she’s putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. Being lonely sucks, but it sucks in a fundamentally honest way. Her trying to distract herself only keeps the wheel of heartbreak running over her, if not now, then eventually.

Last week, she considered breaking up with him, and I think she should have. I asked her why she didn’t. They were having issues, arguments; it seemed like they just didn’t gel well, like the cycle was repeating. She couldn’t give a good answer. She knew that her lack of an answer wasn’t good, but she chose to stay, to keep falling deeper and deeper. He’ll break her heart eventually; on some level, I knew that from the minute she told me about him. I hope when that happens, for her sake, she can learn to be alone, actually alone, with all the pain that comes with it, no distractions, no band-aids, no running into the arms of another chopped dipshit (pardon my language). Medice, cura te ipsum, to recall the Gospel of Luke again.

I drove Giara back to Orefield on Sunday morning and made it back to Philly by quarter to 2. It was a good weekend.