It’s been a bad couple of days. Tim Curry is dead.

He was 80, just like Dolly. Also like our president. They say death comes in threes — we need this pattern to continue until it hits someone who deserves it.

I have received a long-winded, weasely, vague threat from someone demanding that I confirm receipt of his fuzzy undefined accusation. This is that confirmation.

Hi, id: 2026-08-26-02:05:21:987t
I’m reaching out directly in connection with content posted on your channel. I’ve found content that appears to originate from work I created, and I wanted to get in touch with you first before making any decision to raise the matter through the platform’s formal process.
I haven’t submitted a report at the moment. Before moving forward, I’d like to hear what you have to say and better understand your position about the use of this material.
When I hear back from you, I can give you the specific information regarding the material and explain what concerns me regarding the content I’ve noticed. If there’s additional context or an explanation from your side, I’ll take any relevant context into account.
My first preference is to address the situation directly and see if we can resolve it without using the platform’s formal process. From my perspective offers both of us enough opportunity to consider the matter before taking additional action.
If we can’t find a reasonable way forward, I may then consider raising the matter formally and including the appropriate information for consideration through the platform’s review process.
Before anything further, please confirm that you’ve seen my communication and are prepared to discuss the matter. When I hear from you, I’ll provide the information I’ve identified so we can determine how best to proceed.
Thank you for reading this. Hopefully we can work this out directly.
All the best.

I dread the moment he explains what the fuck he wants to complain about, because if this is an example of his circuitous writing style, it’s going to be painful to read. I think he thinks he’s a lawyer, a bad lawyer, who can’t be forthright.

I’ll let you know when he manages to shake the soggy cornmeal out of his head and tells me what he thinks I’ve plagiarized, since that’s what he’s actually accusing me of.

She was a genuinely good person, a real humanitarian, and now she’s dead.

She was 80.

You know who else is 80? Can we arrange a trade?

I woke up a 2am last night, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I also didn’t feel like getting up. I know the reason: today is the first day of classes, and I always feel some low-level anxiety before getting up in front of 30 strangers and talking for an hour. The one thing I’ve learned in 45+ years of this business is how to hide it.

I’m really good at concealing the fact that my guts are writhing and my brain is whirling and I’m sure I’ll forget what I’m supposed to say as soon as I step up to the lectern. I just refuse to let it show.

Also, don’t you dare tell me to imagine my audience naked — these are 19-20 year old students, the thought of that would send my anxiety through the roof and also would be morally wrong.

J. Jonah Jameson got his way and Minneapolis Spider-Man was unjustly arrested, alongside arch-criminal and career racist Jake Lang. Fortunately, there is a friendly neighborhood GoFundMe to support him!

I am raising funds for SPIDER-MAN, a Minneapolis antifascist superhero! On August 22, 2026, Nazi provocateur Jake Lang came to our city to rally fellow racists to his cause. Community members showed up to protest, and SPIDER-MAN was among them. Bravely defying a phalanx of MPD officers, he taught the Nazi a lesson he will not soon forget. But then! After letting the Nazi get away, the MPD officers tackled SPIDER-MAN to the ground and arrested him!

Minneapolis, let’s stand up for SPIDER-MAN the way he stood up for us. This money will go directly to him to defray the costs of bail, legal fees, or whatever else he decides to use it for.

I bet they’ll take your donations even if you aren’t from Minneapolis.

I found an old photo.

That’s my late brother Jim, me, and my brother Mike, just hanging out at my mother’s house several years ago.

Classes haven’t started just yet, but I’m meeting my new advisees today. They’re all pre-nursing students! The world needs more nurses so I’m happy to welcome them and inform them of the horrors OPPORTUNITIES that await them. We actually do provide a good structure for preparing students for nursing programs, and we also have an early admission plan to the Twin Cities med school/nursing program, so I get to share good news with them. I spent a good chunk of yesterday reviewing the requirements.

The bad news might be that we expect them to complete a bachelor’s degree in biology, so it’s a bit rigorous and demanding. But we all want well-trained nurses, right?

First lesson: don’t cross your arms and stare at your patients. It’s unsettling.

One of the drawbacks to volunteering at the local theater is that you have to sit through way too many showings of movies you don’t like. I’ve suffered through four showings of Spider-Man: Spiderless New Day so far. I don’t actually sit through the movie, but instead wait in the concessions area, listening to the absurdly loud booming noises.

This may be advantageous as the school year starts — I’ll be able to bring my laptop and gets some work done while simultaneously supporting the theater.

Anyway, now I get to dwell on why I don’t like a Spider-Man movie, and Tom the Dancing Bug captures my feelings.

Where Marvel took a wrong turn was the success of those colossal match-ups where they scrape up every superhero from their long and storied history to fight the big bad guy. So you’ve got the guy who was bit by a radioactive spider, and the guy who turned green (originally gray, I know this because I’m old) from gamma ray exposure, a guy who built a suit of armor, a woman trained as an assassin, a literal god from a pagan pantheon, a sorceror supreme, a guy who can get really big or really small, a guy with a bow and arrow, etc. Individually, I could suspend disbelief to get through a story, but together…total indigestible chaos, that requires an excessive amount of exposition to get us to the point where the central plot even makes any progress. Apparently, the lesson Marvel has learned is that all their movies will be mash-ups of disparate superheroes with unrelated superpowers, and I hate it.

You don’t need that to make a long elaborate science-fiction story. A great counter-example: The Expanse, a multi-episode space opera. There is one key postulate, the contrivance of the unfortunately named Epstein Drive, which allowed a technological society to expand cheaply and rapidly enough to set the stage on which the human drama plays out (I think the bits where they introduce aliens and magical interstellar travel weakens the overall story, because it’s throwing in way too many gimmicks).

The better movie would be one where a relatable human story is told, with one magical being, no more, introduced to complicate events in interesting and novel ways. They aren’t ever going to do that any more. Stories aren’t as important as CGI slam-bam with lots of noise.