Caught in a Mosh

• This is weird, but it happened, so I’ll just own it and move on.
• The Wife is out of town for work.
• The Teenager spent last night holed up in her room doing homework.
• I found myself alone on the couch with the remote.
• This never happens.
• For whatever reason, I queued up OSU’s bowl game from last year, and then watched most of it.
• What. The. H-E-Double hockey sticks.
• As an OSU (Oklahoma State) fan, despite the fact the team won the game, it did not lift my spirits.
• All summer long the talk has been about all the “talent” we’re returning.
• But that team in the bowl, which is basically the same team that’s taking the field this weekend, almost let a team missing 32 regular season players come back and beat it.
• Which means … I can now settle into the typical OSU fan headspace where we expect to stink.
• When I was there for undergrad, the football team stunk.
• I literally enrolled the semester after the team went 0-10-1.
• I don’t think they went to a bowl game the whole time I was in undergrad.
• The year after, sure.
• Of course.
• Of course.
• Anyway, my apprehension for this weekend’s game is properly calibrated.
• And do not get me started about NIL.
• This football talk does not really mesh with my nerddom.
• I’m not sure how to explain it.
• I played soccer and ran track in high school, but I also was in all the honors classes, skateboarded, worked on my muscle car, listened to nothing but thrash metal, and played an abundance of D&D.
• Do not fit the mold, man.
• Like what you like.
• Apologize to no one.
• I did not want to open today’s list with a cat story, so I pushed it down toward the middle/end.
• I’ve told you about Liho, right?
• She’s our first rescue cat, named after Black Widow’s cat in the comics.
• Somewhere in the last two years, she has claimed me as her primary person.
• I assume because I fed her most in the beginning, but who knows.
• Cat.
• The Wife is annoyed by this situation, because she’s always been a cat person.
• I dunno what to tell her.
• I did not seek this out.
• Anyway, it’s not that I have a cat.
• The cat has me.
• Has claimed ownership, and she has certain expectations.
• I have to pick her up and hold her for a length of time, for instance.
• This length of time is chosen by her.
• If I do not comply for the expected time, I get growled at, swatted, and sometimes bitten.
• To initiate said cat cuddling, she walks in front of me, frequently trying to trip me, and makes a demanding cat sound.
• And like the Terminator, she will not stop until I pick her up.
• Once I have, she usually expects me to walk her around her house, surveying her domain.
• This was my morning.
• “Cat, I have to get ready. I have to prep lunch. I have to make my coffee. I do not have time for your shenanigans.”
• (Words I actually said to the Cat.)
• Which got me growled, swatted, and fake bitten.
• So.
• I’ve got that going for me.
• Which is nice.
• (Yes, I picked her up again, and then had to listen to her self-satisfied purring.)
• Grammar Interruption: Word tried really hard to make me change those “have tos” up there to “must.”
• No, Word.
• I do not really use must.
• “I AM SORRY! I MUST GO!”
• No.
• It’s one of those words that carries some amount of melodrama.
• Again, why I think reports of AI’s takeover of copy writing is a bit premature.
• Yes, it can output copy.
• But the quality of that copy is dependent upon the person doing the prompt.
• You can still tell.
• I had this boss who insisted labeling writing as good or bad was subjective.
• I didn’t argue with him, because he was the boss, but … that’s malarkey.
• If you are telling me “good writing” is subjective, it means you’re not really qualified to tell the difference.
• Which is scary, really.
• It’s why they can use AI to output a lot of garbage.
• And I can’t really get into that any further, because then we’d be arguing about our country’s education system, and that’s beyond the purview of accepted List content.
• List is kinda spicy today.
• Or weird.
• Not weird like its currently being used.
• Traditionally weird.
• Right now, I’m jamming at my desk listening to Anthrax’s “Caught in a Mosh.”
• It makes my inner 14-year-old self happy.
• I won’t link it.
• You don’t want to hear it.
• I imagine the pool of metalheads at TCC is less than … 10 people.
• I’m not sure how I’d even find that out.
• Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be headbanging at my desk writing copy all afternoon.
• High five.

Yeah, I realize this list is a little self-absorbed. I dunno. It took the coffee a long time to get the brain primed this morning. If, in fact, it actually did.