Full on sobbing? About a month ago, maybe a little less. choking up and tearing up and being unable to speak, just now as I type this.

At the end of February, I had to unexpectedly say goodbye to my girl Ripley (Mastiff/Lab cross). I think a lot of people have a soul dog, and for me, Ripley was that. She very literally saved my life by simply being there during my darkest depressions, and whenever I would have a panic attack, I would bury my face in her fur and breath in, and her scent would somehow pull me out of it. I live now absolutely terrified of what’s going to happen the next time I have an anxiety attack and she’s not around.

About three weeks before, she started limping. Vet said basically that it’s either a sprained muscle or bone cancer. I said, well, let’s start optimistic, get her some painkillers and muscle relaxants to give her leg time to heal if it’s a sprain and then go from there. And for about three weeks, it worked. Went off the meds 10 days later and was seemingly back to normal. So I figure I dodged a bullet.

At the end of February, it starts up again; worse this time. So I make another vet appointment for x-rays, but it wouldn’t be until the end of the week, and because she’s in pain, the vet asks if I can drop her off and she can hang around there so that they can squeeze her in, in between actual appointments that same day. I said yes, not even thinking for a moment that this would be the last time I would see her awake and alert.

I knew that it was possibly bone cancer. I was expecting that. That isn’t what haunts me and makes me cry when I think about it. It’s two things primarily.

1. The absolute sudden nature of it. I get a phone call saying that they’re asking my permission to sedate her for the x-ray because it’s too uncomfortable and painful for her to sit in the machine in the proper position to xray her leg otherwise. And then a second phone call an hour later, not only confirming that it was bone cancer, but that it had already started into her lungs. I had to make a choice. I could either take her home for a day or two to say goodbye in private, but in order to not be in pain she would essentially be so drugged up that she wouldn’t really have an quality of life anyway. Or I could race to the vet and say my goodbye’s right then and there. That unexpectedness hit me like a tonne of bricks, but what really hurt was…

2. I called a friend to drive me to the vet and be there with me while I said goodbye. When we arrived, Ripley was still only just starting to come out of the first sedation that she had been given in order to take the x-ray. I spent almost an hour, just laying on the floor next to her, talking to her and stroking her fur. But I don’t know…and I’ll never truly know for sure; if she knew that I was there for her in her final moments. Did she wake up enough from the first sedative enough to register my presence with her before they gave her the next one in order to start the euthenasia process?

Or did my Ripley go to her rest thinking that she was alone, and her last memory of me was dropping her off at the vet?

My friend insists that she felt Ripley’s breathing speed up when she heard my voice, but she could just be trying to make me feel better. And it’s that unknown that still makes me cry whenever I think of it, even two months later.

The last ugly sobbing cry was a month after she passed, the crematorium sent me her ashes back, and, unbeknownst to me, they took a nose print of her nose for me. Seeing that nose print broke me all over again. It’ll soon be a tattoo.

Anyway, I’m going to stop now. I’ve run on long enough and I’m on the verge of crying again. Pretty manly for a 50-year old dude, I know… But she was my everything and I miss her terribly every day.

Might be different up here in Canada. But up here you can either ask for a random ticket, or you can fill in a card with the numbers that you want (lucky numbers, etc…)

What are next weeks lottery numbers?

Too many. I collect special interests.

The one that’s lasted the longest are:

Filmmaking (specifically no/low budget filmmaking) with the premise being that regardless of tools, there are things that anyone can do to improve their product without a large budget. (ie. remembering to record tone for later editing. Planning your shoot for the proper time of day. Using reflectors even if you can’t afford lights. Blocking and Business, Shooting enough coverage for later editing, etc…) A large amount of quality in low budget films comes from taking the time to actually plan things out rather than just showing up with a camera and pointing it at volunteer actors.

Things like proper blocking, shot planning, etc… are free. With digital cameras, film isn’t a commodity and there’s nothing stopping you from filming enough angles to give the video editor something to work with rather than just constant two-shots. Editing software itself is free.

Point being, there is no excuse for lazy filmmaking, even if you don’t have access to expensive equipment. Planning trumps equipment 90% of the time.

Okay…rant over.

The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman

Not going to lie, I got excited for the first half of that sentance.

If the guy in the header photo didn’t at some point say “Suck it, Trebek”, I’ll be very disappointed.

I feel like this really is a mini-test for America right now. Orban has been trying his best to rig the election in his favour despite is very obvious unpopularity. He’s behind in polling; and would be even further behind without his fuckery in the background.

So one of two things will happen on April 12th, either the result will be so overwhelming that if he tries to claim it was rigged, it would be an obviously bullshit claim. Or he’ll somehow sneak in with the victory despite being behind the entire time (sound familiar).

Can Hungary overcome his fuckery is a direct mirror to the American midterms. Will Trump accept the results, or refuse to leave. And if it’s the second, will Hungarian people rise up?

Everyone with a functioning brain-cell knows that Trump is going to throw kegsbreath under the bus to save himself, and I for one can’t wait to see his smug slick backed face hung for war crimes.

Because their penises don’t work anymore and no one ever actually loved them enough to want to touch it without being paid up-front in the first place.

Trump is an idiot. The rest of his people vary from incompetent to simply evil.

I’d bet my life that the nuclear briefcase that Trump masturbates to every night is a fake. Someone in his circle has long since clipped the red wire to prevent him doing just that during a midnight Truth Social post.

Don’t let the doorknob hit their ass on the way out.

Worst case scenario is Russia tries to take advantage of the situation and gets curb stomped by a NATO that is roughly 30% weaker but still more than powerful enough to handle the paper tiger that Russia has proven itself to be.

Trump is dead within a year, guaranteed. The GOP will fall to infighting after the cult of personality ends, and when the next president wants to clean up his mess and rejoin NATO, they can be allowed back in without the bullshit VETO that they for some reason have. They can return as an equal, not as a boss.

Its the entire reason they did a full orbit before firing the lunar injection burn, so that if something was wrong they could jettison the service module and perform a deorbit burn for an early splashdown in the pacific.

Please don’t let it be cancelled and returned early because of a toilet That would just be too much. This is the first thing that has made me legitimately excited since having to unexpectedly say goodbye to my soul-dog last month. I need this, dammit.

They look like they missed their chance at carrying out a school shooting and now they’re hoping to make up for lost time.

I started using Manjaro long before all this crap started going down, and I’ve been holding on hoping this all gets sorted because I hate distto hopping.

But sadly I don’t think its going to happen. I’ve got a new PSU coming to fix a burnt out one that has left my desktop turned off and unupdated for two months. Might be time for an install of something new rather than updating afterwards.

Bitwarden.

Paid. Not because I need the added paid features, but because I value it and want to show my appreciation for the developers.

Humans are not inherently good. Quite the opposite. Civilization is just a convenient lie we tell ourselves and its far more fragile than people like to admit.

By that same logic, the Italians have a right to the entire middle east because the Roman Empire engulfed it. Then the Ottoman’s came and took it from them, so hey…I guess Turkey has a right to the entire middle east as well now.

Fuck Zionism.

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

This quote from LBJ centres me. Its been the conservative tactic for literally decades, from African Americans, to lgbtq+, to immigrants; it’s always been the same grift:

• Choose your marginalised group-du-jour.
• Convince a whole lot of stupid people that that group is the cause of all their problems.
• Profit.

Its honestly astonishing how blatant it really is.