i invented a new game called show and tell
in a couple sentences i am going to start behaving in an annoying way. but with the power of teamwork and positive mindset we will get through this together and have a fun time, ok? it will be obvious when i start saying the annoying stuff because its the next couples sentences.
the only social media apps i have at the moment are letterboxd, goodreads, substack, and hinge. colloquially known (in my brain) as The Psycho’s Stack. since i don’t have instagram, tiktok, or the artist formerly known as twitter, people ask me what i do with my phone. ideally the answer would be i dont use the phone that much but the real answer is that my screen time hasn’t plummeted really at all because ive found other stupid ways to spend time on the damn thing.
for example i invented a new game called show and tell. the rules of the game are that you pick a random month and year and then pick out some choice photos from that month+year combo. obviously any month from march onwards in 2020 is playing on #Insane mode but you may be surprised at how weird 2021 and even 2022 are. another fun option is to pick two or three months ago to remind yourself of cool stuff you already forgot. if youre on a date and can’t really tell if its going well or not, try playing this game with them and within minutes you will have a very clearly defined answer.
things i’ve changed my mind about
since i can’t really think of any good essay style posts to write at the moment and haven’t even really been writing much of anything at all into my notes app, here is a low effort listicle that will hopefully inspire me to write some medium effort non-listicle posts in the near future.
this low effort listicle is about things i’ve changed my mind about recently. if you’ve spoken to me in real life you will know that i develop pretty strong opinions over some stupid ass trivial crap that really doesn’t matter one iota in the grand scheme of things. this is a concept i invented called having fun with your mouth.
digging your heels in the mud and trying to convince your friends about non-essential but fun to talk about stuff like for instance that endless is a better album than channel orange (this has been deemed independently by multiple people i know as a “ryan moloney ass opinion” aka “the truth”) is simply a great way to spend your time while drinking or otherwise hanging out with friends.
one of the benefits to this style of having fun is that at any moment you can change your mind due to any number of reasons, which only amplifies the fun. NOTE: all my opinions and especially my switching of opinions are in good faith! flipping around just to be a devil’s advocate or an edgelord is basically one of the most boring and pointless things someone can do. this is a radical earnesty space.
changing your mind is one of the smartest things you can do. unless you’re a joe rogan kinda guy who will just believe whatever the last person you saw talking into a microphone said out loud. that’s no good.
the window vs aisle seat on planes debate
first and foremost i am, of course, an exit row enthusiast but lately i have not been flying on southwest as much and i am not going to pay extra to select my seat on an airplane AND southwest is getting rid of the first come first serve seating setup which is one of the most Luigi-thought inducing decisions a company has made in my entire lifetime. since its hard to envision a scenario in which i’m in the exit row in the foreseeable future, i have now had to reconsider my long held opinion that the aisle seat is better than the window.
i am actually shocked at how wrong i was. there really is not, in my mind, a coherent argument to take the aisle seat. here’s a list of things that suck about the aisle: you have to get up at least twice a flight to let the people next to you out to use the bathroom which can lead to extremely awkward choreo navigating the flight attendants coming down the aisle with the beverage cart. you can also get your leg whacked by the cart if you’re sitting down and accidentally letting your leg hang into the aisle. or you could get spilled on when they’re passing the drinks to the people next to you. only some of these things have happened to me.
good things about the window: you can just chill there the whole flight. you can sorta lean up on the wall as a headrest. but most importantly: you can look out the window and take in some of the most incredible sights in the entire world!!! people pay stupid amounts of money to go stand on the top of buildings in cities and yet there’s a whole cohort who when given the opportunity to get hours of uninterrupted incredible scenery, opt to sit in a seat where all you can see is people watching 20 minutes of a marvel movie before switching to a different marvel movie for 30 minutes before switching to a tv show that millions of people watch every week but you’ve never heard of.
caring about or really knowing anything at all about the nfl
i don’t need to know who the football guys are anymore. apparently the baltimore ravens are no longer good at football and there is a man named “rico dowdle” who plays in the nfl now. i was briefly interested in the nfl again for about half a minute when i heard my friend say “rico dowdle” out loud but in the end i settled down and remembered that that league is none of my business.
wes anderson
i spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 or 7 years under the impression that i hated wes anderson. i’m pretty sure this stems for a late night viewing of grand budapest hotel with my friends in college where i was quite drunk and didn’t understand why we were watching this too tidy of a movie instead of playing the drinking game hockey. i saw asteroid city in theaters on a whim when it came out and loved it a shocking amount. i’ve since watched a bunch of his other stuff which ranges from fine (bottle rocket, rushmore, french dispatch) to incredible (royal tenenbaums, fantastic mr fox, aforementioned asteroid). i no longer find grand budapest hotel annoying but i still don’t think it’s top tier wes and can’t really make sense of why it seems to be his consensus number 1.
the chicago cubs television broadcast
this one is tough for me. i have long hated the cubs for a myriad of ideological reasons and now will forever hate them on a deeply emotional level for eliminating the padres from the playoffs (permanent playoff enemies list also includes: dodgers, phillies, tigers, yankees, red sox. royals and rays are fine because they were single games even though that 2014 wild card game did maybe fundamentally break me in a way im not sure i’ll ever fully tackle). anyhoo the cubs tv broadcast booth is really incredible; one of the very best in the league. i sought out cubs games during the regular season which i’ve never really done before. the 2025 team was mostly quite fun and the anthony rizzo retirement game was one of the highlights of my neutral baseball watching this season. glad the brewers beat them tho
oasis
this band is awesome! who knew? they’ve always just been the guys who made wonderwall and champagne supernova but the relentless onslaught of people fawning over their reunion pushed me over the edge and i listened to their first two albums to see what the fuss was about. deserved fuss!! those albums are so sick and im very bummed i missed their shows at the rose bowl. i’m staunchly opposed to the concept of a stadium concert and have never been to one but would’ve tried it for these fellas. my consolation prize was buying a cool bootleg oasis shirt. if they extend the tour into 2026 i will be there.
paying $83.99 a year for “Super Duolingo” and/or my 651 day streak and/or the concept of learning a foreign language by playing a game on my phone for a couple minutes a day
fuck duolingo. it’s a stupid way to “learn” a language although it did reacquaint me with a lot of french vocab that i still mix into concerns for a lil je ne sais quoi. deleting the app and giving up on my streak was genuinely cathartic. but if any beautiful french speaking women are reading this i will learn for you.
me when rico dowdle