Greetings from The River of Boiling Water where we have single digit temperatures, snow and ice on the ground, and I do my best to stay indoors.

On the Internets:

Henry VIII’s late life tyrannical behavior may have been the result of head trauma. A 12-year old girl in India has ants that seem to spontaneously come out of her ears EVERY FUCKING DAY. A phone hacker is kickstarting a service to fight telemarketers. A Florida man was banned from all Wendy’s restaurants and charged with assault with a deadly weapon when he threw an alligator into the drive-thru window. A 94 year old former Nazi has gone on trial for the murder of 170,000 people. Mothers in richer countries are having more twins. Michelle Obama called White House wi-fi “a little sketchy”. Rom-coms may promote stalking behavior. Gravitational waves may have been found. In the wake of the Flint water crisis, it’s important to note that there used to be a Lead Industries Association that was essentially the equivalent of Big Tobacco, but with lead. A bill in the US House is looking to weaken local bills that try to weaken encryption on personal electronic devices. A video game company is being sued due to unlicensed depictions of NBA players’ tattoos.
And a town in Slovenia is building a public beer fountain.
Locally:
The big news for me this week was that I got called to serve Jury Duty. I would talk about that more, but technically the case is still on going, so maybe next week. Other than that it’s been a pretty quiet week.

I’ve Been Reading:

Finished [amazon text=The Girl With All the Gifts&asin=0316334758]. The hype from my sister and a few other people was very founded.
Warren Ellis has written a story in the [amazon text=Project Superpowers&asin=1606900145] universe called Black Cross. It added a strange supernatural sort of element which I’m not sure it needed, but still a fun read.
Caught up on the new run of [amazon text=Doctor Strange&asin=0785195165] written by Jason Aaron. I’m not exactly sure I like the way he’s writing Strange…There’s no calm cool collectedness to it, but more of a “HEY LOOK GUYS, I KNOW MAGIC AND I’M FUN AT PARTIES.” I’m going to see how this arc wraps up, and then make a decision if I want to drop it or not.
Speaking of Jason Aaron, his book [amazon text=Southern Bastards&asin=1632150166] is an amazingly fun book, especially for someone from the South. The Walking Dead has hit 150 issues, and it’s still plugging away. I’ve never seen the TV show, but I’ve heard there’s enough difference that I’m not sure I would be into it.
And as far as television adaptations go, it appears there’s a version of [amazon text=Lucifer&asin=1401240267] out now (presumably based on the Mike Carey books, which is weird, since Holly Black (who wrote the YA [amazon text=Spiderwick Chronicles&asin=0689859368] series) has taken over on it and it is ridiculously good.
Also, this awesome article on Congolese sapeurs.
In the Earhole:

Rank	Avatar	Artist name	Scrobbles
1		Love	17
2		The Pretty Things	14
3		Iron & Wine	11
4		The Kinks	10
5		Band of Horses	9
6		The Decemberists	9
7		The Shins	8
8		Brandi Carlile	7
9		Neko Case and Her Boyfriends	7
10		The National	7

Eye Pollution:

The week saw more reading, and less television. That said, I’ve been watching [amazon text=Deutschland 83&asin=B00ZYW5N1U] and it’s absolutely fantastic. Highly recommended.

Boring, Boring Arsenal:

Danny Welbeck, fresh back from injury time put away a last ditch free kick from Ozil to beat high flying Leicester City 2-1, keeping their title hopes alive.

Greetings from the River of Boiling Water where the snow, like my hairline, is receding.

On the Internets:

Americans spent more money on legal weed last year than on Cheetos. Tony the Tiger has no comment. In other animal news, the Dutch are training eagles to take down drones. Uber is trying to soothe drunken passengers with toys. In Italy, you can buy stocks that are backed by Parmesan cheese. There’s an excellent article about element scarcity, which seems a weird contrast to Apple bricking customer’s phones and a landfill fire in Mumbai that can be seen FROM. OUTER. FUCKING. SPACE. Twitter has opted to try out an algorithmic timeline, a la Facebook, speaking of wasted resources. Also, the UN released a pretty damning report on the state of African-Americans in the US. An Australian woman crashed her own funeral after her husband had put out a hit on her.
Sounds like it’s a good time to get a drink, which according to this report from CAMRA, is probably a good thing.

Locally:

Just got back from Chicago, where I saw my first opera. Like ever. Unless you count “What’s Opera, Doc?” which I don’t think you can.
I’ve been drinking a lot of a cocktail called “The Thug” lately. Here’s the recipe:
1.5 oz bourbon (I’ve been using Buffalo Trace, but recently have realized something spicier would be better)
1 oz honey syrup (Honey and water 1:1)
.25 oz lemon juice
[amazon text=Scrappy’s Firewater Tincture&asin=B00GXCD61Y]
Mix the bourbon, honey, and lemon juice together, and strain over ice. Add firewater tincture to taste…I usually go about 5 drops/1 dash. The base cocktail is nice, but with the firewater you’re adding this really nice heat/spice element to the drink that mostly comes just in the finish.

I’ve Been Reading:

Finally wrapped up [amazon text=The Devil You Know&asin=0446618705] and ready to start jumping into [amazon text=The Girl With All the Gifts&asin=0316334758], though I also need to clean up my comics inbox. I’ve also got The Tomorrow Girl collection that I recently found and realized I hadn’t read.

In the Earhole:

1		Shirlette Ammons	10
2		Mick Jenkins	8
3		Earl Sweatshirt	7
4		Isaiah Rashad	6
5		Modest Mouse	6
6		The Holy Modal Rounders	6
7		Action Bronson	5
8		Black Grape	5

Eye Pollution:

Finished up The London Spy last week and sweet jeebus was the ending just as awful as the rest of it. It looks like the snow is going to hit us hard again this week, so I suspect I will be watching more television. I’ve got a lot left of season 3 of The Bridge so maybe I can work on that.

Boring, Boring Arsenal:

Arsenal had a terrible midweek, with a nil-nil draw to Southampton doing a decent amount of damage to Arsenal’s title chances, if we’re all being honest. That said, the goals in this morning’s 2-0 win against Bournemouth might be enough to get things back on track, even though Leicester City seems damn near unstoppable.

Greetings from a dreary and dismal River of Boiling Water, where we’ve been given a reprieve, it would appear, from the snow, but instead we just get a huge wall of grey. I’m older than my young glasses would make me appear, so let’s just get the hell on with it.

On the Internets:

 
Very few of your friends on Facebook are people you would turn to in times of emotional crisis. Italians covered up nude artworks in anticipation of a visit from the Iranian president. A filmmaker protested against UK film censorship by forcing them to watch over 10 hours of paint drying. A Swiss email provider is fighting a new surveillance law. A photo of a potato sold for over a million dollars. A Republican strategist said that most of most of Donald Trump’s supporters were “childless single men who masturbate to anime”. Google announced that they have developed a computer Go-playing program that can defeat humans. Winter Storm Jonas caused a spike in Tinder matches. Supernatural dolls can now get seats on a Thai airline.

Locally:

I had a birthday, and there was a lot of things going on with that, culminating in a very lovely dinner at Principle where I had a mushroom broth that I’m pretty sure was made from unicorn tears.

I’ve Been Reading:

Sandman is still on hold, as I’ve been busy at work and pretty much when I’m done with that I want something more passive than even a graphic novel, so there’s been a lot more television. I did get a few chapters of [amazon text=The Devil You Know&asin=0446618705] in and it is so good even the second time round. Of special internet note were the newest T-Nehisi Coates article on considering reparations (which if you haven’t read the original one, do that first.) as well as this very interesting article about a neurologist who had brain surgery performed on himself to be able to record neurological pulses.

In the Earhole:

Eye Pollution:

Finished Jessica Jones, finally saw [amazon text=Gone Girl&asin=B00Q5996EQ] and since I had a boatload of laundry to catch up on I even watched the schlocky [amazon text=Dungeons and Dragons&asin=B0091WT4QE], which was pretty unimpressive UNTIL TOM BAKER SHOWED UP. When he left it was unimpressive again. Also wrapped up season four of The Great British Bake Off.  I have been told that there is also a great Irish bakeoff, which I am interested in. I also started watching London Spy; it’s been really slow so far, but it’s only 5 episodes total, so I will probably still finish it.

Boring, Boring Arsenal:

A heavily rotated Arsenal beat Burnley in the FA cup 2-1. Of note in the match were the return of Alexis Sanchez and Tomas Rosicky, as well as the debut of Mohamed Elneny, and the interesting deployment of Alex Iwobi as a central attacking midfielder. It wasn’t a very pretty match, but it got the job done.