Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog

Recent updates

  • Tire repair again

    This is the second time I’ve had a nail in my back right tire in almost the same spot. Makes you wonder. Either the dealership didn’t replace the tire last time like they said and somehow patched over the nail to be cheap, someone is spiking my tire, or I just had really bad luck. Hopefully, it’s the third possibility. Driving in New York City is already expensive enough.

    I have tire insurance but it would require me to go to the dealership in Jersey, meaning I’d have to miss work, so I went to a place near where I work in Brooklyn to see if it could be patched first. The flat repair wound up being $20, so I went with it.

    I guess 3 flats in 6 years isn’t bad at all though. I talked to an Uber driver once that told me he got two flats in one day. That sucks a lot more.

  • “the Kurosagi corpse delivery service”

    I borrowed volume one of this from the library. I was hoping it would be a more complex manga with more mature (not pornographic) themes, but I was disappointed. The story just isn’t very complex or interesting and I have no interest in the characters after 200 pages. It just felt flat.

    I’m going to try No.6 next. Hopefully that will be more entertaining. I’m also going to give One Piece a try, considering how entertaining the Netflix live adaptation was. It’s a long one, though!

  • lying

    We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.

    Source unknown, but attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Wherever this quote originated, it’s definitely relevant to the United States today. They lie. We see the lies. They know we see them lying. They keep moving on as if the lie is reality and they haven’t been caught. Why? Because there’s nothing we can do.

    We can’t even be sure the elections are fair anymore. Diane Feinstein was in office until she died, but she’ll probably get reelected anyway.

    It’s incredibly discouraging to have no faith in one’s own government and realize that the founding ideals of your country have been completely shattered by the institutions designed to protect them. We’re going somewhere other than intended now, and it’s not going to be pretty.

  • Well staged photo of Putin and Kim Jong Un

    A headline from 13 September 2023.

    I just really appreciate the work that went into this photo. It looks almost like something that should be on a museum wall. It’s a little odd, though, how each of the three main subjects seems to be looking in different directions. I wonder what was going on around them.

  • the beginning of happiness

    Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively. After a short time, a very short time, there would be little that one really enjoyed. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.

    […]

    It is easy to slip into self-absorption and it is equally fatal. When one becomes absorbed in himself, in his health, in his personal problems, or in the small details of daily living, he is, at the same time losing interest in other people; worse, he is losing his ties to life. From that it is an easy step to losing interest in the world and in life itself. That is the beginning of death.

    I have always liked Don Quixote’s comment, ‘Until death it is all life.’

    Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: ‘A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others.’

    But there is another basic requirement, and I can’t understand now how I forgot it at the time: that is the feeling that you are, in some way, useful. Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive. And it is its own reward, as well, for it is the beginning of happiness, just as self-pity and withdrawal from the battle are the beginning of misery.

    Eleanor Roosevelt, “You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life“

  • Just thinking about Mama Cat

    Three years isn’t as long as it sounds. I’m glad we had a little time with her. I’m glad she trusted us and that we could give her a comfortable life. I wish I’d picked her up more.

  • Goodbye, Mama Cat

    We had to say goodbye to one of our cats yesterday. She was a sweetheart with a big heart and she will be missed. Thank you for being a part of our lives, Mama Cat.

  • dawn among the flowers

    A quote: "I yearn to see it: dawn among the flowers - the face of God" attributed to Matsuo Basho

  • Superman Meshi: a superhero cooking manga

    A cooking manga with Superman. There really is a manga about everything.

    I spotted this on the shelf at Kinokuniya in Edgewater, NJ yesterday.

  • Photos: I-287 accident last Tuesday

    Last Tuesday I got stuck in traffic while trying to get to work because of an accident. I was late to work the previous week for the exact same thing, so I had to take photos this time to make sure my boss knew I wasn’t bullshitting her.

    I figured they’re worth sharing. The weirdest thing about the accident to me is that the person in the smaller vehicle looks like some old lady that just rolled out of her living room to yell at some kids for being noisy in the street.

    This section of 287 is rough. People get into car accidents there all the time because of cars veering from the left lane into the middle lane to cut the hard left exit onto 27 East, Prospect Expressway, followed immediately by people merging into the highway from 3rd Ave and then everyone opening it up on the straightaway if possible to make up time before the Belt Parkway split.

    287 is called the Gowanus (‘Go anus’) Expressway, which adds some comic relief to getting screwed by bad traffic backups there regularly, but during the school year traffic is so bad that I’m thinking about taking the train to work instead, even though the trip would be 1.5 hours each way.