Murphy, Padme, & Suffer

Issue #60: Everybody Knows What's Best For You

How’s it going readers?!?

Another week has come and gone and here we are again.

I would like to take a few moments to talk about cats. Specifically, 2 of the cats that have been in our family.

A little over 2 years ago (it was in August 2021) we had to put down our cat Murphy. Murphy had been our only cat for a really long time. We adopted him at the shelter shortly after my wife had a miscarriage. Murphy was, without a doubt, one of the family. We were all really close to him. I still really miss him. He was such a good cat. He slept with my wife and I practically every night. He hung out with while we were watching TV. He was a very affectionate cat. Having to put him down was a very difficult thing to do. I know that he was really sick and was miserable for those last few months and putting him down was the right thing to do for him but, like I said, I still miss him.

Shortly before he started getting really sick and we knew it was going to close to the time he would have to leave us, my wife adopted 2 more cats from the shelter. She did not ask me. I did not want anymore cats because Murphy did not like other animals. He was very used to be a single child. Anyway, she brings them home and because she did it without my approval, I was allowed to name them. They were a mother and daughter set so, being a huge Star Wars geek, I naturally named them Padme and Leia. You’ve seen Leia. She shows up in the photos on this newsletter fairly often. Sadly, about 3 months after we got them, Padme started getting very sick. We are not 100% sure what caused her illness but we have our suspicions. She wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t come out of her hiding hole. We took her to the vet and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her other than some of her organs were failing. She tested negative for all of the normal viruses and what not. So, less than 3 months after we lost Murphy, we lost another baby. That happened on October 1, 2021.

Today, September 8, 2023, marked the 35th anniversary of the release of the album Suffer by Bad Religion. Bad Religion, of course, being one of my favorites, if not my absolute favorite band. When I list my favorite bands, they are usually tied for 1st with Descendents. Anyway, I thought it would be suitable to give the album a shout out. Suffer is actually not my favorite Bad Religion album. That spot goes to No Control, the 1989 follow up to Suffer. That being said, Suffer is an incredible album and is certainly high on my list of favorites. Suffer followed up the release of the 1985 self-titled EP. Here’s the track listing of this iconic punk album:

1. You Are (The Government)

2. 1000 More Fools

3. How Much is Enough?

4. When?

5. Give You Nothing

6. Land of Competition

7. Forbidden Beat

8. Best For You

9. Suffer

10. Delirium of Disorder

11. Part II (The Numbers Game)

12. What Can You Do?

13. Do What You Want (one of my favorite BR songs)

14. Part IV (The Index Fossil)

15. Pessimistic Lines

This past Sunday, when the band met up for rehearsal, we played around with recording some stuff at practice. Drake (bass player) set up a bunch of microphones all over the room and we ran through recording one of the songs that we seem to have down really well. We didn’t record anything else but Drake took the tracks we did record from the one song and will be mixing them at some point in time to determine whether or not the sound will be sufficient to try and record some more stuff for a future release. Other than that, I think we are probably going to try and book a show for a couple of months out. We are thinking that if we give ourselves a deadline, it might motivate us to work harder on getting the set tightened up.

Here is this week’s most listened to artists (according to Last.fm):

Friday - Friday’s session of Dungeons and Dragons was pretty fun. I am starting to get, for the most part, a core group of people that sit at my table to play on Friday nights. Since I am getting mostly the same people, I have been able to continue some adventures from the previous week so the game is feeling more like a campaign and less like a series of quasi-connected one shots. I’m hoping that it continues at this pace so that I can plan the Friday evening games a little better.

Saturday - Saturday I ran another session of Dungeons and Dragons. Had a few return players and a couple of news one. I think it went pretty well. Ran them through an adventure where they wound up in a cave facing off against a bunch of kobolds. Another fun night of D&D.

Monday - Monday is one of my favorite gaming nights of the week. It was, however, kind of slow this week as far as game participation goes. It might have been because of Labor Day. In any case, I didn’t have many people at my table for Mork Borg. I only killed two characters in this week’s session. Very disturbing. To be fair, there were only two people at my table. I ran an adventure called Bloat. Fun adventure. Had a Mork Borg newbie at the table so that was cool. Hopefully next week will be more full.

Wednesday - Wednesday is RIFTS night so naturally it is one of my favorite game running nights of the week. We lost a player from last week due to a family situation but we we gained a new player. The new guy has played RIFTS before so we didn’t have to spend any time helping him out with character creation. It was another fun night. The characters wound up in prison but by the end of the session they were able to break out and that is where we ended the evening. I’m looking forward to next week’s session. I have some fun stuff planned for the group.

Blue Beetle - I wasn’t originally planning to watch this. I had seen the trailers and wasn’t interested. Blue Beetle has never really interested me as far as the comics go and even the ones that I was slightly interested in reading, it was the Ted Kord Blue Beetle so the Jaime Reyes BB, quite frankly, I just didn’t care about. But anyway, I went to see it with my son. I felt like going to see a movie (as I often do) and decided to just go ahead and check it out. It wasn’t bad. I did enjoy it. Probably not going to end up on my best movies of 2023 list but it was good.

Not much in the way of reading other than getting caught up on my Star Wars comic book reading. Speaking of comic books, I stopped my subscriptions to all of my non-Star Wars comic books so those are those are the only ones I’ll be reading for now. I am trying to keep from spreading myself too thin with everything I’m doing so something had to go.

I did, however, re-read the book Solo: A Star Wars Story - The Official Guide by Pablo Hidalgo. I read that as part of my prep for this week’s episode of Rebel Rock Radio. Another book I re-read to prep for it was the trade paperback of Han Solo - Imperial Cadet. I originally read the single issues of this series when they first came out.

Short pull list for comic books this week:

• Star Wars #38

• Dark Droids #2

This week’s track comes from the aforementioned Bad Religion album Suffer.

That’s it for this week kids. Enjoy your weekend and remember to BE MORE KIND!