Trainsplotting, episode 10

The shouty went to 11 this week, between the brief family reunion and the over-extended manga parody/exposition. But at least we got Our Snapping Tan Gal to promise sexy violence.

Verdict: the manga parodies did nothing for me.

(“…and that’s the only train I’ll ever pull!”)

Level 2 Cheat Boy, episode 9

Yes, there is an actual plot now. We’ve got war, civil war, heroics, virgin sacrifices, and Our Power Couple openly discussing the possibility of producing children. Pro tip: you’ll find breeding a lot easier if you stop sleeping in beds that are ten feet apart.

Verdict: not sure what they’ve chosen as the stopping point for this, but we’re getting closer.

(needs red under-rim glasses, but otherwise an acceptable substitute for Our Demon Lord’s Jealous Little Brother’s Right-Hand Gal)

Hungry Like The Wolf-Waifu, episode 10

Finally! Although of course Holo pretends she was just teasing. Anyway, she has a plan for escaping from the debt trap, and while I think it is in fact a terrible plan, hey, at least there was some cuddling. Next week, Undercover Blonde!

(Clara isn’t the only one whose apples are the perfect size)

Kaiju-goo-goo: Too Shy, episode 8

Our Slashy Vice-Captain is as tough as he thinks he is, making for a serious one-on-one fight. Fortunately he doesn’t put the clues together in time that would have led him to switch from monster-fighting mode to human-fighting, allowing Our Hysterical Hero to escape and get chewed out by Our Collaborating Tsuntail. Then we learn more about Our Trope-Driven Teammates at the after-party, and Kafka sticks his foot in his mouth again in front of Our Hot Childhood Friend Captain.

Verdict: I still don’t have any interest in the trope gang, but the main trio is developing nicely. And I want to know why glasses-girl is featured in the end credits but has barely had any screen time.

(speaking of nicely-developed…)

Mook Versus World, episode 8

Half of the story this week is Our Angry But Trite God going on a slow, talky killing spree, but the other half is the still-going tournament arc, and I still don’t care what happens to these people.

Verdict: losing interest.

(unrelated losing heroine is unrelated, but cute)

Now Avoiding: Country Farms Fiber Care Gummies

Costco switched brands on their fiber chewables, and the new ones are so sticky they ripped out two of my crowns. Sadly, one got swallowed and the other came out broken, so that’s gonna be about $700 for brand new ones. That’s after insurance; fortunately I have plenty of cash in my HSA account(s).

Dear Max,

Check your calendar:

(the correct date in the associated email is July 5, 2024)

The Courtship Of Foll’s Adoptive Parents, episode 10

As usual, the music is hilariously out of sync with events. This week, Our Dragon Daughter reveals her discovery of her father’s horrific death while a jaunty tune plays in the background. That’s after the one-sided fight between Our Sorcerous Daddy and Our Villain-Not Knight, and Our Crybaby Knight’s revelation of friendship and commitment. And then Something Gets Loose, which inspires the music to get even less appropriate for the scene.

Verdict: there has never been a better candidate for an alternate audio track.

(my image collection is deliberately light on loli, dragon or otherwise)

Nut Salad, episode 9

This week it’s Girl Versus School, and Our Magical Loli Princess Daughter triumphs. As promised, on her first day of sixth grade she acquires four boyfriends and three retainers. Meanwhile, Her First Best Friend, who transferred to a nearby middle school expecting to be in seventh grade with her, is feeling pretty well fucked until she recognizes the signs of bullying and puts her experience to work by playing detective.

Our Girls make up, but there’s still some lingering resentment when Sara admits that she could have just faked her age, but wanted to unlock the “Grade School Detective” achievement.

Verdict: the usual fluffy fun, with the promise of nudity next week. At least some of which will come from Our Loyal Service Knight.

(non-loli princess from whom some nudity would be appreciated…)

Post-War Slime Exposition 3, episode 9

This week, it’s all about the action, as we change to completely different characters for completely different but equally one-sided battles. In other words, last week’s cliffhanger gets to hang on until next week.

Verdict: one could wish that the talking and the action were better integrated and less lopsided. Or that they’d followed up on last week’s surprise nekkid vampire.

(and they haven’t even mentioned Milim recently)

Prime Grubhub

Amazon Prime now covers Grubhub delivery fees, and is integrated for account and payment as well. The app doesn’t work if you set up the account through Amazon, because it doesn’t support using their authentication. You can either go in through Amazon’s app, or visit Grubhub’s site in a browser and request a password-reset link, converting to standard authentication.

The interesting thing is that Amazon promised this two years ago when they bought a stake in Grubhub, but only delivered it yesterday.

🎶 Yes, we have gone bananas 🎶

Unicorn Chaser

A pleasant juxtaposition found in the sidebar of a site that should only be viewed outside of a work environment, with Javascript disabled:

(that’s Aika Sawaguchi & Yuzuha Hongo above, with Miss I-Still-Got-It Ai Shinozaki below)

Apropos of nothing

Catching up on errands, and now I have this song running through my head (with apologies to Indigo Girls):

🎶 🎶 🎶
I went to the Kroger,
   I went to the Costco,
I did all my laundry,
   I ran the dishwasher.
There’s more than one task left uncompleted,
   keeping me from the barbecue.
And the less I search my porch for late deliveries,
   the sooner that I can dine.
🎶 🎶 🎶

Train, Train, Go Away!, episode 9

This week, Our Royal MacGuffin Gal finally gets some screen time, and we learn that all is not well in Ikebukuro, and while she’s not evil, she is easily influenced. Meanwhile, Our Tiny Hot Doctor manages to get more information out of Our Wibbly-Wobbly Conductor, and it seems everyone’s living on borrowed time. As for Our Map-Making Swan Boat Expositeer, who knows what’s up with him.

Verdict: Reimi’s confident self-description reinforces her resemblance to Astra’s Quitterie. In a good way. Just a few more years…

(right there with you, dog…)

Level 2 Cheat Boy, episode 8

I wish to compliment Our Knight Gal for her taste in nightmare wedding dresses. The other highlights were the return of Our Demonic Catgirl, and the introduction of Our Masochistic Succubus And Her Impatient Master. Bonus points for giving her red under-rim glasses. Oh, and Our Idiot Former Hero And His Fan-Service Object escape with a magic item that will shape their future.

And Our Spunky Princess finally made the rare-gold-coin connection and realized exactly who Our Infinite Hero is and how badly her kingdom treated him. Not to worry, though; they’ll patch things up to the point that eventually she ends up banging Flio and Rys’ son. (wolf-kin mature quickly)

Verdict: believe it or not, there’s major plot-work on the way.

(not quite a demonic catgirl, but second-stage Leoparde will do in a pinch)

Wolf At The Door, episode 9

Sometimes investments don’t work out, something Our Clever Merchant just learned the hard way. Now there are two disappointed girls running around, and he has two days to fix everything.

(“Dear Lawrence, never snap at a woman who bites”)

Everything wrong with America’s Test Kitchen in one sentence

“To rework taco salad to be more nutritious but still hearty, we replaced the beef with quinoa.”

Once upon a time, Cook’s Illustrated was focused on perfecting recipes. Now they’re just fucking with you. And selling dozens of mildly-varying copy-pasta cookbooks. Many of the product reviews are still useful, but even those show clear signs of “marketing interference”.

Also, their app (which is easier to use than their cookbooks) is shoddy as hell, frequently failing to connect to their back-end auth server, and requiring a force-close to refresh content. Come on, it’s not like it’s much more than a wrapper around a webview.

In unrelated news, xTwitter has quietly fixed the broken-browser issues they created with the switch to the new URL; or else the browsers stealth-updated their site-compatibility fixes; or both. But it still defaulted to the unreadable “dark mode” on the same browser where I’d already fixed it once, sigh.

Hot Kaiju-On-Kaiju Action, episode 7

Our Loyal Sidekick and His Shark-Toothed Frenemy learn that Naughty Kaiju Number 9 can kick their asses with one hideous mutated hand behind his back, while casually blocking their comms. Fortunately HQ eventually notices that their vitals went offline, which clues in Our Fully-Tamed Tsuntail and Our Transforming Hero, leading to a one-on-one battle where the good guys win… until the moment that the other good guys butt in. Next week, Our Slashy Vice-Captain wants a turn. With the wrong humanoid kaiju, of course. Oops.

Verdict: drop a few quarters in the “I must get stronger” trope jar…

(Kaiju #44DD was captured and held for “research”)

Mook Versus World, episode 7

In which Teamwork Is The Key, but not that teamwork, the other one. Meanwhile, the fundamental premise of the show is undermined by Our Closeted Mook; not Our Undercover Protagonist, the other one. And then Our Hidden Boss gets to work purifying the place, reminding us that whatever their flaws, Our Color-Coded Anti-Heroes are probably the lesser evil.

Verdict: well, I did ask them to explain Closet Girl and interrupt the tournament arc…

(credit where it’s due: I really like the OP and ED)

(teamwork FTW!)

Diablo 4, Season 4

Much more Diablo-y than season 3. The loot cleanup makes things a lot easier to work with. I haven’t seen the “endgame” (level 88 autoboom necromancer has gotten the farthest), but being able to jump into Helltides at level 1 gives instant shoot-and-loot satisfaction. All solo, of course; none of my friends are playing.

Number one cause of death is “standing in ground effects that you can’t see because there’s so much going on”. So, y’know, the usual for Blizzard.

Autoboom = Ring of the Sacrilegious Soul, which automatically respawns and heals your minions and automatically blows up corpses; combine this with bonuses on number of minions, explosion damage and radius, etc, and you basically just run around in circles while things die; pushing buttons is for boss fights only.

I tried to make a second necromancer using just blood skills, but struggled with damage until a pair of gloves dropped with Blood Boiling Aspect on them. It didn’t sound like much from the description, since Overpower damage is poorly explained and hard to see happening, but combined with skills and items that produce guaranteed Overpower damage, it’s just as ’splodey as the ring, and more predictable.

Also quieter, since Corpse Explosion is mixed way too loud, to the point that a series of screen-clearing explosions is like standing next to someone shooting a magnum pistol.

Second necro just finished the story, which I had gotten about halfway through as a rogue before the season changed. TL/DR: approximately 1/3 of the playtime is spent listening to unskippable cutscenes, dialogues, and walk-and-talks; another 1/3 is spent listening to skippable ones. There appears to be no logic as to which ones can be skipped by holding Escape or clicking through.

The Sorcerer, The Elf, And Their Wardrobe, episode 9

Remember how at first Our Hero couldn’t speak without sounding like an over-the-top psychopath? Yeah, they reused that bit for Our Fierce Knight. Meanwhile, Our Dragon Daughter pranks Our Crybaby Knight-Maid while the musical director goes on another stylistic rampage.

Verdict: seriously, WTF is with the music?

Nut Salad, episode 8

Our Paternal Hero really should have thought about the difficulty of bullshitting another detective, especially one who’s known him his entire life, but honestly prevails, and Our Magical Loli Princess is adopted. Our Slutty Detective struggles to cope with the implications of this, and then it’s on to an age-inappropriate conversation between Loli and Friend, which is of course the writers trolling us.

And then there was a plague of locusts grasshoppers. Deep-fried. Lost in a haze of lust/worship, Our Holy Scammer eats the bugs, but Our Runaway Vocalist is too clever to fall into that trap.

Verdict: fluffy as usual, with lots of short bits that mostly tie together. No idea why they didn’t just fudge Sara’s age, though, since her birth certificate is completely fictional; school’s more fun with a friend.

(or a hundred friends…)

A Good Slime Goes To War 3, episode 8

You’d better sit down for this: the big fight actually happened. To the finish. And the side fights are over, too, with several of them not even getting screen time. Not that there wasn’t plenty of talking and thinking going on, but they made it all the way through the action to the inevitable betrayal and sacrifice, and they even threw in a steamed-up nekkid vampire rubbing herself against a cryo chamber. That should be important next week.

Verdict: yeesh, what a slog it’s been to get through all the catch-up and rehashing.

Everybody Loves Kaiju, episode 6

This week, Team Newbie gets some action, and to keep from being stuck playing catch-up, Our Comic-Relief Hero does the one thing he can do well without transforming: analyze monster guts. And a good thing, too. Meanwhile, Our Other Humanoid Kaiju sucks at undercover, and gets caught while he’s analyzing his side of the situation. Next week, confrontation!

Verdict: I could do without the high-school tropes disguised as teammates, but at least Our Mighty Tsuntail has shaped up.

(random Frieren to honor the twintails)

Tournamook Ark, episode 6

“The exam will be 30 minutes a day for three days.”

…which means we’ve got at least two more weeks of this bullshit fighting tournament. Our Fragile Mook at least has some tactical sense and leadership ability, but Team Underdog is mostly composed of annoying stereotypes I don’t care about. And the heavy CG in the garage setting is lowering the quality of the character art and animation.

Verdict: get past this and explain the girl he’s keeping in his closet.

Trainsanity!, episode 8

Two stations were passed without stopping; I won’t say uneventfully, but at least quickly. This left time for a batshit-crazy homage to… something-something-magical-girl-pig-chess-fight, and the revelation that Our Busty MacGuffin Gal just might be one of the bad guys. Or something like that.

Verdict: thank you for your Service, girls.

Level 2 Cheat Boy, episode 7

…and the witch-fight was like taking candy from a baby. And swallowing it. With that wrapped up and Our Straightforward Princess delivering a formal apology, we can move on to the meat of the episode: Our Freeloading Adventure Gals find their place. Well, Archer Gal’s raising monster horses, Muscle Gal’s raising crops, and Little Witch Gal is raising students; Knight Gal’s kinda left holding the bag, but we already know that Our Surprisingly Friendly Demon Lord is sweet on her. Oh, and Our Infinite Hero makes an honest wolf out of Our Loving Waifu.

Verdict: it’s easy on the eyes, at least, and Blondie And His Gal are the only real shouters. And as over-the-top silly as the OP is, I find myself watching it every time.

(speaking of little witches…)

Shepherd And Wolf, episode 8

This week, Our Armorous Merchant flirts with disaster. Also with Holo.

The Internetworked Insurance Of Things

A while back, my homeowner’s insurance company sent me a Thing to monitor the quality of my power line and report it wirelessly. I put it on an isolated network, of course.

Today I recieved another Thing, this one to report on possible leaks in my water line.

I expect at some point there will be a natural-gas Thing, a radon Thing (which I don’t need, because I already installed three air-quality Things), a smoke Thing, etc, etc.

All of them made by different companies with variable quality and security. At some point, I may have to upgrade the isolation of my Wifi-Of-Things to be more than just a guest network, and set up a completely isolated path on the router to run dedicated Thing Access Points.

And install a Big Red Switch on the router to cut them off.

(or maybe a Little Pink Switch…)

There are two types of gyoza that are simply better than anything you can get in the US. The first are the meatball-sized plump ones served at the Tiger Gyoza chain in Japan, which are stuffed with deliciousness that leaves you deliciously stuffed. Honestly, it took about three trips before we tried anything else on the menu.

The second are the tiny, flat Osaka-style hitokuchi (lit: one-bite) gyoza, which I’ve mentioned before, with Tenpei being the best place to go since Tenka closed down. I’ve never seen them outside Osaka, but out of nowhere, my mother discovered a reasonable approximation on, of all places, QVC: The Perfect Gourmet Mini Potstickers. Properly steamed and pan-fried, they have decent flavor and capture the “just one more little bite” experience.

After earning my sister’s seal of approval last weekend, I went to Kroger and discovered something in the same form factor, with a slightly different flavor profile: Bibigo Mini Wontons. Don’t ask me why they’re labeled wontons when the same company also sells potstickers, mandu, and crispy dumpling bites, and they’re all pretty much the same thing in two sizes.

Both brands go well dipped in either Dumpling Daughter Spicy Sweet Soy Secret Sauce or Trader Joe’s Gyoza Sauce (not on their web site for whatever reason). Or roll your own with two parts vinegar, one part soy, and a dash of chili oil.

But what they have in common with other domestic gyoza is instructions that will not produce an acceptable balance of crispy and soft. For that, we turn to Hey There, Dumpling, an excellent cookbook that offers the following simple method:

• put 1 tablespoon of oil and 3 tablespoons of water into a large non-stick skillet.
• pack it as full as you can with a single layer of dumplings (fresh or frozen), and cover tightly.
• set it on medium heat, and listen for the moment when the water is gone and they switch from steaming to frying.
• give it a minute or so, then remove the lid and check to see how they’re crisping up.

When they’re nice and browned, you have two choices:

• (HTD) put a large plate over the skillet and flip them all out.
• (J/Nellie) flip them all over and crisp the other side for a minute or two, then flip them onto a plate.

If you want service with your service, you’re on your own…