Friday: 13:40

I love triple-stacks, and this one's a pangram too. That's always a nice touch, and the fill doesn't suffer for it at all. Lovely work, and I think even Rex Parker might approve. (EDIT: No, he didn't. Haters gonna hate. Yeah, ENORM is dated, HARKS, IFA, HOTTO are all a little weak, but I actually think all the stack answers are good enough to wince a tiny bit on the crosses. I've seen worse words for less payoff. It's not as if the answers didn't work with their clues.) A touch on the easy side for me at least, as I plunked down 1-Across with no crosses, and 16-Across was a total gimme, the way it was clued "It's 'on a dark desert highway,' in song." An NBA MVP might trip me up at times, but even I know who Steph Curry is. 

 Saturday: 28:46

This doesn't LOOK like a Saturday grid, but my time indicates it played like one. You usually get a little more whitespace in a late week grid. This has more than it might seem, but only 4 clues longer than 9 letters. Nice job shoving Reykjavik in there. Re: 6-Down I've never seem the spelling "durag," I always thought it was do-rag (i.e. a rag that protects your do). Spellcheck also doesn't like it, but we've discussed what a P.O.S. that is. Wikipedia actually says both are acceptable (though the main entry is do-rag), and also offers dew rag and doo rag, with or without hyphen or space. Even among rappers who have sung about the headgear differ on the spelling. Of course, you could have just made the answer be DORAG by making the cross ORAL instead of URAL.

Edit: More about durag. The clue for this, was:

 "Anyone who has ever worn a ___ spells it '___,'" per a 2018 New York Times article.

Rex Parker (sometimes a little high on his "woke" horse) really really liked this clue because apparently, the Times using "do-rag" is somehow an affront, and this clue calls them out. Uh, sure. I mean, it's kinda funny if the Times Style specifies do-rag, yet they also published an article specifically on the spelling, and still don't use it. I wonder if Rex would have been enraged if they used the ORAL cross.

 Friday: 13:08

Chocotaco? Sounds hideous.

It's My Time and I Want It Now!

Call J. G. Wentworth! 877-TIMENOW.

I was asked to join a few Discords today. It's pretty ironic that a social media tool is called Discord, but whatever. I technically have a Discord, but I almost never use it. It starts up automatically when I reboot my PC, but that's like, once a month, and I usually quit right away. Spotify also autoruns on startup, which I almost never use. I know I can fix this in my settings, but I just don't quite have the spoons for that.

I never really paid for cable much. In my first place in the Bay, (2009) we had some Canadian satellite service that was pretty close to American TV, but I watched the Sopranos by downloading seasons on BitTorrent. We had basic cable as part of a bundle at my second place, and I got through Breaking Bad on that, but we decided to cut it, as Netflix and Hulu were becoming prominent. We ditched the CRT for a cheap flatscreen, and watched some movies via HDMI to laptop through that, and I never really looked back. Other than Breaking Bad or the occasional Jeopardy, it was so liberating to live outside of a schedule. The reason streaming services caught on (before that, Tivo did much of the same thing) was because it freed you from a schedule.

The trouble with cable was that it was never à la carte. I could get by on like 7-8 cable stations: ESPN, TNT, USA, FX, Comedy Central, MSNBC, maybe SYFY, maybe Spike or TBS or something. If I could pay for only those channels for maybe $1 each, I would. But the only option is 200 channels forced on me, most of which I have no interest in ever watching, and pay extra for that "privilege," not to mention you still have to abide by their schedule.

Now, with Twitch, we're back to living on someone else's schedule. Some streamers have VODs posted later, or port them to YouTube, but even then, it's not always "complete." Some of LSV's videos start after the draft, before the games. But watching the draft is the best part, and I could have, if I'd been there at the right time. You can turn on notifications, of course, and get your phone pinged whenever your favorite streamer goes live, and Discord can serve a similar purpose, though those seem like they are more like interactive blog/message boards. But I like my schedule. Even if I spend a lot of time at my computer, I don't want to interrupt my movie just because someone I like decided to stream right then. I made a reddit post this week that got 9000+ upvotes, and I got an e-mail every time someone commented on it. I get what they mean when some big thread has the almost meme-like "Wow, this blew up. RIP my inbox." Please, leave my phone alone. My inbox was already dead.

So anyway (hey, that's the name of the blog!), HBOMAX and Hulu and Netflix are great, because I can watch whatever whenever. Disney+ is also great, although they still do weekly releases of new series (makes sense from business standpoint. As a newer service, you want to attract new subscribers), while Netflix tends to drop the whole thing at once (while I don't like waiting a week for a new episode, but watching 6 episodes in a row, you can really lose focus. Pace yourself, if you actually want to watch the show).

Still, a lot of thongs are fractured. I'm not going to pay for Peacock, or Paramount+, or whatever media giant is trying to do their own thing. Disney, with its acquisition of Fox, has a MASSIVE library to draw on, but so far, they're capping their content at PG-13, and the only Fox stuff is Marvel-aligned (X-Men/F4 movies, but not Logan or Deadpool, or the 2 X-Men movies in which Wolverine says "go fuck yourself" (this is literally the only reason I can think they don't offer First Class and The Wolverine, but everything else is no worse than any other X-Men movie (On my old PC, I downloaded the MCU so I could have access whenever (but I had the R-rated stuff too, and I'd like it if they had the "Rogue Cut" of Days of Future Past))). Oh, and the Simpsons too. But you can't even get Family Guy. HBO at least has South Park. But there are always workarounds if you can't find what you want from a legit site, especially when it comes to movies.

Sheesh, this got long and winding, and ended up being more about TV and time than Discord/social networks. That's the way writing is sometimes, but usually it's bad writing. I honestly hate hate hate the whole thesis statement, hourglass model essay. I initially titled this "Being Social." It started out about Discord but went pretty far afield, and never really got back. The new title doesn't really work either, especially since I don't really get there until the third paragraph, but it tickled me, so I kept it. It's the same sort of problem I've had with the Black Hole essay, which still sits unfinished in a draft form (it's so outdated, I started it shortly after the whole thing with Aziz Ansari (remember that?)), because it keeps drifting, or leading into something else entirely, and I had a point in there somewhere but it gets lost in the weeds.

But as any writing teacher will tell you, it's important to just do the writing, even if it's bad. Because some parts are good. Even individually, the paragraphs aren't bad, they just don't flow that well together. Do I not have the time to get it all down and piece it together? Because I did have a point, but I didn't actually think about what it was before I started writing. I don't know. I waste a lot of time, but it's my time, and I want it now!

 Wednesday: 6:50

This is an online record for Wednesday and even beats my online Tuesday best. It was made super-easy by making all the theme answers Saturday Night Live references, right in my Gen-X wheelhouse. Even some non-Xers will get some of these easily because they've become memes in their own right. Props to the Times for letting Schweddy Balls in there.

 Thursday: 9:19

9:19 isn't a record, but it's pretty darn fast (PB is 8:59), and the best I've done since the crossword moved to exclusively online. The Times records my averages and best times. I hope I can get some actual records on there so I don't have to keep refinding that one post where I list my best times, but I'm not too hopeful on getting a sub-10:02 Saturday any time soon), On the other hand, the averages can get skewed if I'm multitasking, or early on, my Mom would try and solve a little (c'mon, Mom, you get the paper version!) and balloon my time (and a lot of her answers were wrong and misleading).

We do team up on the Spelling Bee puzzle, though, and we make a pretty good pair, although I jump in right at midnight and sometimes solve the whole thing by myself in one go. But it usually takes another look, and a second pair of eyes can really help. Even though most of the words are somewhat common, you can't always see the obvious.

Perhaps a bigger post in the near future. My life, personal shit, Grateful Dead, I don't know.

 Friday: 11:03

New Friday record! (Since last updated, the Times has stopped letting you download the puzzle to play offline. The online app is almost as good. One nice feature is that it will save my stats. It will also record a streak, but games only count if you get all the right answers and never check for errors (Only if you specifically check which. The game will tell you once all the boxes are filled if you're correct, but not what's wrong, so that doesn't count against you. (I might have been ~10 seconds faster if I had checked. I had some messiness in the northeast that I didn't notice because I was going so fast.) My current streak is 21 days)). I got 1-Across right off the bat, even though I initially guessed ASKEW for 1-Down. Gettin' all hip with KEGSTANDS and SEXTOY. Lots of alcohol-related things: MARTINI, TANKARD, WINE SNOB, DOS (clued as ___ Equis), and the opposition, MADD.

Wednesday: 12:05
Thursday: 13:04
Friday: 13:17

Gotta give it up for 40-Across "Cheap cab, perhaps." I saw "House Red," but couldn't square it with the clue. Is there some word "housered" that I don't know? Ah, cabernet. I'm more a white wine guy.

So I found something more fun than Zelda Randomizer: Final Fantasy 3(6) Randomizer! You star with 2 random characters and the airship with access to the World of Ruin, as well as 3 Moogle Charms modified to equip to anyone. All enemies and bosses (except final Kefka) are randomized, as is every item in every chest. Also random are the spells that epsers teach (and at what rate). Innate skills, such as Steal, are assigned randomly, as is the gear each character can use. In one seed, I got Terra with General Leo's Shock Ability! Enemies give jacked up Exp and AP. Basically each battle nets a minimum of 3-5 AP regardless of difficulty, but a Legendary Dragon gives you 50!

You really can find almost ANYTHING in a chest, and obtain items they only expect you get rarely or not at all, like Economizer or the Ilumina (Lightbringer) Sword (normally only obtained by betting the unique Ragnorak Sword at the Colisseum, which you almost never do because you generally take the Ragnorak esper instead of the sword). The combo of Fixed Dice and Offering are well known, but if you get TWO Fixed Dice? The current seed I'm on has this nonsense, but I never found an esper that teaches Ultima, Flare, or Life 2. I also never got a Ribbon so I can't easily uncurse my shield (though the Cursed Shield is faster to uncurse in this hack, the Paladin Shield doesn't necessarily teach Ultima). I expect I can still win, but I do feel a little naked without Ultima.