Earlier in the week the Pfizer mRNA vaccine received full FDA approval... and a stupid as hell new name "Comirnaty." Boy would I have liked to have been a fly on the wall of that marketing discussion. Because I'm sure if there was an actual marketing professional in the room, they would have objected strongly to branding that sucks this hard. The idea is that the name is a mash-up of "COVID-19, mRNA, Community, and Immunity." Well, yeah... it sounds like a mash-up of too many things trying to do too much. Effective branding is simple and memorable... not a random assortment of letters from different words that sounds like something I would say after drinking a bottle of Jägermeister. This drug is helping to SAVE LIVES and they've shit all over it with idiocy that rivals the whole "New Coke" fiasco.

AND SPEAKING OF NEW COKE...

Coca-Cola Company has taken a dump on my favorite sugar-free beverage... Coke Zero. They've gone and "new and improved it" which is to say that they learned nothing from past mistakes and "New Coked" it...

"More delicious?" Are you fucking kidding me? It tastes like shit. It's syrupy, the sweetness is way off, and I'm left with a taste in my mouth that's not at all pleasant. I can't even drink it without food because I don't want to be left with that lingering weirdness on my tongue. But I don't want to drink it with food either. It's an all-around crap product that I hope fails spectacularly. Fuck you Coca-Cola Company, you dumbass pieces of shit. If this is so fucking delicious, then why didn't you change your top-selling "Diet Coke" and leave "Coke Zero" alone?

And the worst part? The can design has changed... but they still have the old 12-pack carton design. Which means I bought 4 cartons of these things without even knowing it. Had they clearly marked the cartons, I would have been more cautious.

Apparently Coca-Cola Company's goal was to create a diet soda that tastes more like regular Coke. Why? If people want the taste of regular Coke, they can just buy regular Coke! Sure it has sugar in it, but it's probably better for you than the chemical sweeteners in diet shit.

Needless to say I am fucking livid, if you couldn't tell.

But back to "Comirnaty"...

I can't help but wonder if the people who didn't get vaccinated because the vaccines were "rushed to release without FDA approval" will now get the vaccine because it's FDA-approved. Probably not. It was just an excuse. They'll find another. It doesn't matter that nothing was actually rushed... that vaccines for coronaviruses have been in research for over eight years... that mRNA vaccine research has been in development for even longer... that all safety protocols were observed and passed in one of the largest human trials ever... and that mRNA vaccines are actually safer that old-style vaccines because all they do is give your body instructions on how to fight COVID by itself, contains no actual viruses, and then fucking disappears... the misinformation campaign has been drummed into people, and that's the end of it. Facts don't matter. Science doesn't matter. Nothing matters except some fucking idiot on YouTube with conspiracy theories that have all been disproven.

We're living in a world where people won't take a safe, FDA-approved vaccine... but will instead wait to get deathly ill from COVID-19 and take horse de-wormer to try and cure themselves. Horse dewormer. Made for horses.

Oh well. According to the dumbasses, everybody who took the vaccine is going to die in three months... in six months... in nine months... any day now... so maybe I'll be lucky and die before drowning in stupid.

And by "drowning in stupid" I mean we get stuck in a perpetual pandemic so the virus just continues to mutate until it kills us all.

And we deserve it.

Well, not me specifically... I got my fuckiing "Comirnaty" vaccinations and wear a mask... but humanity in general deserves it.

God gave us science and discovery so we could understand His miracle of life better... but half of us choose pestilence and death. More often than not in His name. That's an irony that cuts pretty deep.

Washington State may be going back into quarantine, but the blogging will continue... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Hallmark! Just in case you're curious... yes, I am watching all the new 2020 Hallmark Christmas movies (and Hallmark-like imitators) which you can see right here. Looks like I'd save myself a lot of time if I just watched this...

This is so accurate that I feel attacked!

   
• Drink! And while we're talking Hallmark... FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MOVIE DIRECTORS... STOP GIVING ACTORS EMPTY FUCKING CUPS TO "ACT" WITH! IT NEVER WORKS. IT ALWAYS LOOKS STUPID AND FAKE WITHOUT WEIGHT IN IT, AND IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE AN INCOMPETENT DUMBASS FOR NOT KNOWING THIS. And it's ten times WORSE when you then have them actually pretend to drink from the stupid thing. NO ACTOR ON THIS EARTH CAN MAKE PRETEND-DRINKING LOOK AUTHENTIC SO GIVE IT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!!! This should be Directing 101.

   
• Wallet! I like the idea of the MagSafe connector on the back of my new iPhone 12 Pro Max because it seems a smart way to stick stuff to your phone and stick your phone to stuff. Handy. Apple's first product was the MagSafe charging puck which aligns a wireless charger to your phone precisely for optimal charging. I ordered one even though it feels overprices because the Max is so large I can't see my Qi charger under it very well. The second product is a leather card wallet. The reviews were fairly savage... fueled by the usual anti-Apple bias that seeps into even Apple fan sites. The main complaints are A) It only holds 3 or 4 cards, and B) It falls off too easily. I thought this was silly because A) If you want to hold more than 3 or 4 cards, get a wallet, and B) If you want something that glues to your phone, get some velcro. Personally my two complaints are A) It's seriously expensive at $60, and B) I'd rather it not be made from leather. And now this...

Exactly. Nailed it. Now I kinda want one. And would consider it if it were $40 instead of $60. Oh well.

   
• Plan! Oh wow! They did a quarantine episode of Plan Coeur (AKA The Hook Up Plan)! And it's good! No worries, they have subtitles in English available on Netflix. You will definitely want to watch both the first and second seasons in order to know what's happening, however. Fortunately Netflix has those as well...

This show would have been so much better without Elsa's stupid-as-hell overreaction with becoming "natural." It went way, way overboard and I cannot fathom how they thought it was a good storyline for her. So idiotic. But everybody else was great. And that ending was worth it. Can't wait for the third season.

   
• Coke! Looks like the Coca-Cola Company were smart enough to hire Taika Waititi to direct this bit of Christmas magic...

No polar bears in this one, but still pretty darn good.

   
• TAKE MY MONEY! Anybody who reads my blog might know that my character of "Bad Monkey" is an unholy mashup of Curious George and Max the bunny from Sam & Max. Now Nintendo Switch is getting a remaster of one of their classic video game adaptation...

I played the game ages ago. I can't wait to revisit it again.

   
• Symptomatic. "People have been worried that COVID-19 survivors will be at greater risk of mental health problems, and our findings ... show this to be likely," said Paul Harrison, a professor of psychiatry at Oxford. — So... yeah... all the more reason to do your best to not contract COVID-19, as if there weren't enough reasons already. Pity the deniers keep dragging this out and making it worse for all of us.

   
And that's the end of bullets as I return to more even isolation than I was already isolating.

Time to bend the knee... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Thrones! The much-anticipated premiere of the final season of Game of Thrones has finally come. Since it was just an hour of set-up for the five episodes that follow, it was a bit boring... but did have some interesting moments...

One would hope that they managed to find an ending that doesn't suck... but I've seen finales fail more often than win, so I'm not counting on it. So long as it's a fun ride, I suppose I'll be happy enough. But I really want them to knock it out of the park.

   
• The Hawk! And so Disney has announced that Jeremy Renner has been signed to a new series for their forthcoming streaming network. I have been begging for a Hawkeye series based on the Matt Fraction and David Aja comic book series for years. It's hands-down one of the best series I've ever read...

No idea if the Disney+ series would go in that directions, but... hot damn. Looks like Disney+ is going to be absolutely killing it with amazing content.

   
• Only in America! A politician from Texas is so pro-life that he wants the death penalty for anybody involved with getting an abortion. You cannot make this shit up. This is after his tireless crusade to "protect the sanctity of marriage" by opposing marriage equality. He's been married five times. You cannot make this shit up. At some point you'd think that people would get tired of this kind of hypocritical bullshit... but here we are.

   
• Aurebesh Coke! Apparently Coca-Cola is creating special packaging for Disneyland and Walt Disney World's upcoming "Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge" lands...

Cool. Except... no Coke Zero? I cannot fathom why people continue to drink shitty Diet Coke when Coke Zero exists.

   
• Evil! There are few things I'm more passionate about than Net Neutrality. As expected, The Trump Administration killed it. As expected, the Democrats created a bill to restore it. I fully expect that it will be vetoed by the president. This is reprehensible and evil. The reasons given for killing Net Neutrality are all fucking bullshit. And the reasons for restoring it are legion. Which is why it's not surprising that President Trump hates it. Anything which levels the playing field for everybody works against dumbasses who have to rely on their daddy's money to get ahead in life.

   
• Kerning Fail! Few things freak me out like bad typography...

You'd think that the people in charge of using type would know how. Doesn't happen as often as you'd hope though.

   
And... that's enough bullets on your Sunday.

Stop worrying your pretty little head over whether Spring is here or not here... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Free! As I've mentioned more than a few times on this blog, I'm a huge fan of Alex Honnold. He's a world-famous free solo rock climber who recently rocketed into the limelight because of the Oscar-winning documentary film Free Solo (sadly, I didn't get to see it in IMAX like I wanted to, and ended up renting it). I first heard of the guy in 2007 or 2008 after he free soloed Yosemite. At first I thought he was a lunatic with a death-wish, but after reading numerous interviews over the years, I found him to be one of the most philosophical, funny, genuine people on the face of the planet. And the most talented athlete on earth...

If you haven't seen free Solo yet, it's absolutely worth your time. It's an amazing film that changed my perception of Honnold yet again. But if you want to see Alex being the Alex that I became obsessed over the past decade, here he is (watch to the end, because it gets better as it goes on)...

It used to be that every year on Christmas as a part of my "End-of-Year Checklist" I would Google Alex to see if he was still alive. Now that he's so incredibly famous, I don't have to. If something were to happen to him I'm sure the entire world would know.

   
• Zero Stars! When I had to start eliminating carbs, the transition from "regular" to "sugar-free" sodas was a tough leap to make. What made it easier was Coke Zero, which is far and away my favorite carb-free pop (followed by Diet Dr. Pepper, Diet A&W Root Beer, and Sunkist Orange). One of my favorite sodas, Stewart's Orange Cream, has no diet equivalent... which is why I was thrilled to see "Coke Zero Orange Vanilla" at my local Safeway...

Holy shit what a horrendous load of toxic sludge! It tastes nothing like an orange cream soda, but instead tastes like an extremely artificial vanilla cola with a weird orange aftertaste. Really gross, which is why I am mad I bought an entire 12-pack. Looks like I need to investigate adding a hint of vanilla to Sunkist Diet Orange Soda to see if I can get what I'm looking for.

   
• Life! Ricky Gervais is one of the most brilliant minds in entertainment, and I'm always looking forward to what he's doing next. Turns out it's the Netflix series After Life, and it's one of my favorite things he's done thus far...

The show has a rocky start because his character is pretty awful. But the 6-episode series is a journey that ends in a very different place, and it's a worthwhile trip to take. With all the horrors I've been facing these past couple years, it's nice to run across something that is saying exactly what I need to hear. Highly recommended.

   
• Stick! One of my favorite kitchen brands is OXO Good Grips. I ended up replacing almost all my bakeware with their stuff and was happy with that... at first. Then I found out that my "non-stick pizza pan" can't even cook biscuits without them sticking like cement...

Even worse? The bread pans and jelly roll pan are rusting under the folded edges. And so... I guess OXO Good Grips is no longer my favorite kitchen brand. Really sad that I wasted my money on this garbage.

   
• Billions and Billions! Wealth inequality is something that I don't really think about because there's nothing I can do about it. Obscenely wealthy people own this country and get to decide how things are going to be. The fact that what they decide inevitably benefits only them (and their pocketbook) regardless of how it screws the rest of us... or the environment... or whatever else is in their way, is just our sad reality. Which is why shit like this is so unsurprising...

Thinking that these horrible people will ever have to pay for the lives they've destroyed is laughable.

   
And, on that note, I guess we're out of bullets...

So I could save money, I took a wacky flight through Atlanta which had one of those dreaded layovers that's too long to just hang around the airport, but too short to do much of anything. Pretty much a day-waster... which sucks when you're on vacation, but good for traveling on a budget.

Even though I'd only have an hour once I got to downtown Atlanta, I decided to go anyway. I wanted to pick up something at World of Coke without Lime, and sitting around a boring airport drives me nuts. This ended up being a good move because Dragon Con is in town, which provided endless people-watching opportunities. The costumes people come up with for these things are pretty impressive and, since I was downtown at lunchtime, they were all out wandering the streets of Atlanta.

Playing around with my new wide-wide-angle lens was fun too. I can get a lot of picture in a photo now...

I'll need to figure out how to take care of the freaky lens distortion when I have time to experiment a bit, but I am pretty happy with everything so far.

But the best part of my day was when I found out I had been upgraded for my flight. The extra legroom and ability to lay your seat flat for sleeping is a big plus over being shoved into a cramped coach seat for 9 hours...

A far cry from my early days of travel.

I remember 20 years ago where traveling like this wasn't even a remote possibility for me. Of course, back then I had no money left after buying my plane ticket, and ended up staying in cheap hotels and hostels with nothing more than a backpack and a bike lock to keep me company. I'd need a bike lock, because if I couldn't afford a cheap hotel or hostel, I'd take an overnight train to my next destination so I'd have a safe place to sleep. And falling asleep on a train meant the possibility of waking up to find your stuff stolen unless you bolted it to the luggage rack. Ah yes, there's no better friend for the cheap traveler than a bike lock!

And now I have to put my laptop away before the flight attendant yells at me.

Except they don't really "yell" at you in the front of the plane... but they do have a way of shaming you into doing what they want in the nicest possible way.