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Please Enlighten Me

My first thought upon seeing this picture was, “How?!? How was this even built?” If you look closely there appears to be a winding staircase leading down from the obviously massive carvings that disappears into the jungle below, giving the photo a sense of scale. Mind boggling.

It was labeled buddha at nguyen cha taktsang monastery bhutan, which led me on an internet search to get more information. All I came up with were a dozen or so pinterest “places I want to go” sites showing the exact same photo and a couple other sites about the monastery itself that make no mention of the carvings or provide any other photos of them.

You would think something of this immensity (at least 30 stories from the look of it) would have at least one other photo online, right?

At this point, I’m going to write this off as Photoshop unless someone can provide me with another explanation.

Followup: Yup, it’s fake (thanks to reader Eric for the link).

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Quote of the Day

What angers me the most about the Republican Party’s attempts to turn the U.S. into a far-right Christian theocracy is how dishonest they are about it. At least be forthright about your desire to subvert and dismantle our democracy into a creepy theological order led by a mad king.” ~ U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Preach, sister.

They’ll never do this, because they know the American public will outright reject it. But if they do it under the equivalent of the cover of darkness, like boiling a frog no one will realize what’s happening until it’s too late.

Fuck the Republicans. Each and every last one of them.

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What a Difference 20 Years Makes

I remember the first time I saw someone using a laptop in a restaurant. I don’t remember the establishment itself, but the image was seared into memory and I was completely aghast that someone had dragged his behemoth of a computer in with him and then had the audacity to be working on it while eating. I thought, “Really? What is so important that you have to work on it while you’re eating out?”

This was obviously long before our current 24/7, always available society we live in now. My, how times have changed.

Now you don’t even bat an eye when you see someone tap, tap, tapping away in pretty much any venue these days. And let’s not even start on cell phones.

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Cautiously Optimistic

Like so many others, I was so completely disappointed with the mess that was 2007’s The Golden Compass, that I really wasn’t all that upset that they weren’t proceeding with filming the other two books in the series. In fact, I was wondering how they’d even film them, considering they’d so throughly removed the spiritual aspects of the story in order to make it “family friendly” and not offend  any Catholics in the audience.

HBO, however, seems to be throwing that philosophy out the window, promising to remain faithful to the source material. The series—unseen—has already been renewed for a second season, so the possibility of actually seeing book 2,  The Subtle Knife, on screen looks good.

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Quote of the Day

No. Don’t give up hope just yet. It’s the last thing to go. When you have lost hope, you have lost everything. And when you think all is lost, when all is dire and bleak, there is always hope.” ~ Pittacus Lore

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Fuck Target

We do our weekly grocery shopping at the local Super Target in the mall formerly known as Christown. We’ve been going there for years, and have generally been happy. Heck, when the store first opened it was amazing. Lately, however, it seems that they’ve either completely discontinued something we love and have purchased for years (Archer Farms brand multi-grain bread, for instance), or products suddenly appear with a marked-down tag, signaling their imminent demise. It doesn’t matter what it is; if we develop a fondness for something it seems to invariably disappear from the shelves.

Today we wanted to pick up some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. The entire fucking freezer case was empty. “Oh we’re rearranging things.”

Another pastime of this store’s managers, it seems.

Kraft cheese? Gone. You can now only buy Market Pantry (Target’s own brand). A dozen eggs? Nope. You can now only purchase packs of 18, unless you want to pay through the nose to buy only 12. Target used to carry a huge assortment of frozen, ready-to-bake pies. Not any more. Two or three varieties available now.

When checking out, we’re usually asked, “Did you find everything you wanted?” but today we weren’t. It’s a blessing, I suppose. The poor checkout girl would’ve gotten a lot more than she bargained for if she’d asked. (And it’s not like they care, anyway. In the past when we’ve responded in the negative, we always get an “I’m sorry to hear that.” Not, “What were you looking for?” or even “What can we do to help?”

Why don’t we shop elsewhere? Well, there is both a Safeway and a Fry’s (Kroger) approximately equally distant—and closer to our house—than Target, but Safeway is a clusterfuck of the first order. The store will be overflowing with customers and they usually have only two or if you’re lucky, three checkout lanes open. They used to have self-checkout but I guess too many things were walking out the door.

Fry’s lot is hell to get in and out of, they don’t always have everything we need (as bad as Target), prices are higher, and the quality of the meat—surprisingly—is not as good. To their credit, both Safeway and Fry’s have a better selection of fresh fruit and vegetables than Target, but that’s not enough to offset all the negatives.

First world problems to be sure, but still annoying as hell.

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Shower Thoughts

Humans get very sad when their pet dies, but pets probably get much sadder when their humans die because they’ve grown up and lived their whole life with that human.

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An Hour Too Long

So I went to see that superhero movie everyone’s talking about the other night.

To be honest, the only reason I did it was to hopefully get answers to the many questions I had after stumbling upon that other superhero movie on HBO several weeks ago. Ben had no desire to see it, and while I’m loathe to go to a cinema these days (it’s not your personal fucking living room; corral your spawn, shut up, sit down, and behave yourself), Ben was attending another event and I figured it was a good a time as any.

Little did I know I was walking into another one of those seemingly never-ending movies where I found myself reaching for a non-existent remote to fast forward to the end about two-thirds of the way into it.

Yes, I got my questions answered, and as I suspected it involved time travel (of course), but JUST END THE THING FOR CHRISSAKE! Did they really need to get Thanos involved once again after finishing him off? Did we really need another planet-shattering battle where it seems every damned Marvel character in existence showed up? Did we really need the tearful [spoilers!] send off of Iron Man with—again—every Marvel character every created attending the funeral? Are there really that many unemployed actors, desperate for a paycheck, in Hollywood right now?

And is Tony Stark really dead? Did Robert Downey Jr. say, “Enough of this bullshit!” or will payments on his mortgage force him back into the red suit at some point?

It wasn’t a bad movie per se, but it was ultimately disposable and way too long. I got in on a movie pass, so I didn’t feel like I’d been cheated (if I’d actually paid the $11 admision fee I might’ve felt different) or that I’d wasted three hours of my life. I just didn’t leave feeling…entertained.

And BTW,  GET OFF MY LAWN!

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