I haven't watched any of the Olympics. Not due to any sort of stupid protest, as if my individual actions matter to anyone other than me. Rather because I find them boring.

Similarly with national politics. I haven't watched any debates, nor will I waste any segment of my remaining lifetime on future ones. I don't watch Biden, Harris, or Trump news conferences. I think both parties and their candidates are horribly flawed and wish this election cycle was already over. If I bother to vote at all it will be a write in vote. Possibly for Homer Simpson. In dead blue Connecticut, my vote is meaningless.

I wouldn't watch House of the Dragon with a gun to my head. Fuck GRRM. The fat bastard chose to write another series rather than finishing the first one.

When it comes to television, I find I gravitate towards dark procedural dramas that are morally gray. I finished season 3 of Mayor of Kingstown this past week. Great show. It depicts life as it is. We are all complex creatures harboring inside both the good wolf and the bad wolf.

I am paying a ridiculous amount of money for my TV-internet package relative to the value received. At some point I will probably change this dynamic and go to internet only, purchasing my TV choices a la carte. What has prevented me from doing so? The amount of interaction it takes to buy a streaming service for a time and then unsubscribe. It's so much easier to simply overpay.

Huxley and Lenin, social media would like a word.

Superhero movies have become tedious, requiring far too much expenditure of effort to understand the respective multiverses. The return is no longer worth it. Or as they say in incredibly irritating corporate jargon, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Seriously, who talks like that?

When I was a younger man, head filled with so many different possibilities and concerns, I couldn't get it when older ones said all that is unimportant. Family and friends are all that matters. I get it now.

Life's a bitch, then you die. But the love of family and the pleasure of good friends brings a measure of light into what remains a dark journey.
Good food, good wine, occasional glimpses of extraordinary beauty, the realization that others care about you. These are what matters.

Fuck politics.

People ask, what does a 71 year old retired widower do every day? My answer: whatever the fuck I want. I don't miss work for a second.

Now get the hell off my lawn.