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.