Camping out in front of a doghouse, waiting to snap photos of a dog who just wants to sleep in and maybe spend the afternoon chasing his tail without having another fucking car full of obsessed photographers watching his every move.

It’s 2020. I’m sure you needed a McFlurry as much as anyone. You’re forgiven.

Whoops, didn’t mean to imply that today’s my actual birthday, thought that’s a reasonable interpretation. My birthday was like 5 weeks ago.

As this is also my 37-year anniversary, I would like to announce that I am rolling out Spicy Implied Kappa later this month. I will be made available with a number of dipping sauces, including “Long Non Sequitur Only Tangentially Related to Article,” “Overly Intricate Setup for Bad Pun,” “Dated Reference to 90s…

Triscuits had an experimental phase a few years ago where they tried out all kinds of flavor powders, different types of grain, and for some reason made all of the limited run stuff triangles instead of swears. The absolute winner was wasabi and soy. I don’t think they actually decided to promote any of the flavors to…

... and now my brain is automatically continuing into, “I’m the pious guy the little Amlettes wanna be like, on my knees day and night, scoring points for the afterlife!”

I hope this surprise reappearance is a sign that they’re considering making it a permanent flavor. It’d be yet another speed bump on the way to losing weight, but I need all the simple pleasures I can get in 2020.

I usually don’t eat a whole lot of potato chips, but when I was at Winco this past weekend, I saw Lay’s Flamin’ Hot Dill Pickle chips, so now I have two full bags that I’m probably going to eat over the next...

I first played it with four people at a public board game night, and after just one game I bought it for myself. I played a couple two-player games against my then-roommate, but it felt less chaotic and exciting with fewer opponents. I think what I like most about the larger games is that I like being guaranteed that…

I’m so envious you get to play Everdell right now. I invested in all the expansions, and they arrived less than a week after my state went on lockdown, so I haven’t played a game since. I’m considering learning the single-player rules over the weekend.

I get you. I played the first Dark Souls game, died a ton, got frustrated, started learning better strategies, found ways through boss fights, conquered the game, helped other players fight bosses as a ghost my second time through and got some *very* enthusiastic appreciative messages for my help, went back through…

Board Games

Army E-sports exists, but have you watched the VOD from last week, when they tried to make a triumphant return? Thing lasted 3 hours and 90+% of chat is telling them they’re awful for trying to use Twitch to recruit impressionable teens - either directly, by finding ways to shoehorn the phrase “war crimes” into the…

My favorite spin on that was, “Thanks, Koch gaming!”

It’s a philosophical quandary for the ages. Do I feel bad for the terrible human beings, or the terrible human beings who grifted the terrible human beings by exploiting what makes them terrible human beings?

I like to find dark corners of the Twitch community where the light of drama and mainstream attention doesn’t dare reach. We have speed runs for games nobody’s heard of, long periods of time where only two people are chatting, Pathfinder campaigns, and trolls can’t thrive because not enough people are paying attention…

I had a bout with Popov that made me quit vodka for a decade, problems with high-octane mixed drinks that made me largely switch to beer and neat whisky, and issues with Steel Reserve that forced me to start incorporating low (but existent) standards for the types of cheap drinks I would buy.

I’ll vouch for the boneless wings. If I get off work and just don’t want to cook, I could do worse than plain boneless wings with hot buffalo sauce to dip.

It was particularly difficult with my old roommate because he didn’t quite connect with the idea that I might enjoy choosing my own meals and cooking for myself more than I would enjoy being fed for free.

Bobby’s fantastic. I got to meet him in person at AGDQ last year after only knowing the name as some friends’ competition in Guacamelee, and I was immediately impressed with him. He is so genuinely friendly and effortlessly charismatic.