Since eggnog is not really available in Tokyo, at least not for any reasonable price, I’ve been making my own.

The fact that this recipe can be made in a completely vegan way is actually just kind of incidental. The main reason this beat other recipes is that it’s super simple to make, but still tastes like the eggnog I remember drinking as a kid.

I’m calling it Vegg Nogg, because it’s vegan, and, just for kicks, the extra G’s make it seem like a brand name.

Ingredients

5 cups of a non-dairy milk of your choice ½ cup vanilla pudding…

On a Sunday morning at a Lululemon store, I found myself among a bunch of dudes, yelling out, “I am a great man!”

It was weird.

I have oppositional defiance disorder, so, obscured by everyone else’s voices, I would say my own thing, like, “I think I’m pretty good,” or, “I’m fine, thanks.” Nothing clever, just something to save myself from feeling like I was being obligated into a social ritual, which I instinctively rebel against. And also to protect myself from a sense of embarrassment, even though it seemed everyone else in the room found it motivating.

My friend…

(No meaningful spoilers. This review was written after episode four or five. If you’ve seen The Walking Dead or Fear the Walking Dead, you already know everything that’s going to happen on this show.)

For people who don’t like zombie stories, they probably all look the same. You have zombies, and people running away from them, and lots of gore. How is any of that interesting again after you’ve seen it done once?

For me, the appeal of zombie fiction, and apocalyptic fiction in general, is speculating on what people might do when civilization as we know it is wiped…

(Spoilers a’plenty. I especially talk about the big dumb reveal at the end of the season. This isn’t a review for deciding if you want to watch the show, this is for dissecting the disappointment you felt as each episode took you farther from where you wanted to go.)

When I first reviewed Raised by Wolves, halfway through the first season, I made what I thought was an obviously unflattering comparison to the show Lost, because we all know that Lost is the poster child for failed promises, don’t we?

By coincidence, a few days before writing this, I came…

On the night of September 24th, neighbors in Tampa Bay, Florida, heard a man in his apartment repeatedly yelling “Shoot! Shoot!”

Fearing that there might be a gun involved and someone might be in danger, neighbors understandably called the police.

“It was pretty tense at first,” said Officer Roberts, white, who was first on the scene with his partner, Officer Redmond, also white.

Roberts explained, “you never know what can happen in these situations. You have to be ready for anything. But, when I got close enough to hear inside the apartment, I could hear the game on, and that’s…

(Very mild, unspecific, possible spoilers up the the end of episode five. This isn’t so much a review to decide if you want to watch the show, but more for people who have watched a few episodes and are wondering why something feels off in spite of how great it all looks.)

(Part two of this review is available here.)

Visually, Raised by Wolves is near impeccable.

Everything is futuristic, yet drab, in a way that makes magical technologies feel settled into reality. Things that glow do so in just the right amount, in exactly the right shade of color…

I come by Facebook maybe once a day, and I click “Like” on various things friends have posted, because I just want them to feel heard.

I don’t really dive into friend’s profiles, so usually I only see what the Facebook algorithm decides to present to me. Are there friends doing and saying things that I’d “like”, except that Facebook has decided I shouldn’t see it?

Maybe, though I kind of doubt it. Not because I think Facebook’s algorithms are effective in any way. …

(Mild spoilers. There’s nothing written here that should detract from your enjoyment of the show. The show itself takes care of that.)

One of the first things that happens in the first episode of Picard, is that a young woman is attacked in her apartment by some space spies who want to kidnap her. Unfortunately for them, their attack triggers something inside her that unleashes latent super powered fighting skills, and she kills them all.

Which makes for a cool action scene, and I’m always up for a female action hero. But, it leaves you wondering, why didn’t they just…