Earlier this evening, my wife was bored and I suggested she check out The Pitt. We both love The Bear, and I've read that its competence porn like The Bear, and its been impossible for me avoid the fandom regarding Taylor Dearden's performance as autistic physician Dr. Mel King. It's rare for there to be positive representations of autistic individuals that down lean into the Rain Man route, so I knew my wife would appreciate that.

She watched the first episode and loved it. She told me she thought I'd love it and I really want to. There is just something holding me back, and that is my years of experience in hospitals.

I started The Pitt when it first debuted, and I was really excited to watch it, but I turned it off within a few minutes. I mean, it's television, so its obviously not a realistic portrayal, the same way Better Call Saul was not a realistic portrayal of being a lawyer. I'm sure The Pitt strives for a bit more accuracy than say Better Call Saul, but what I saw in those first few minutes were the opposite of what I saw working over a decade in hospitals. Despite working directly with physicians in a couple of roles, I honestly never met a doctor that wasn't a narcissistic asshole.

Sure, maybe it was the hospitals I worked in, but almost all of my interactions with doctors was negative. In my most recent gig in healthcare that ended in 2021, I worked with two major radiology groups here in North Carolina as direct support in what they call the "reading room." I interacted with the ED doctors, the urologists, surgeons, OB, and everyone in between that might order radiology exams and/or procedures. And in the seven years I worked in that last role, I can count one hand, the number of positive interactions I had with doctors.

In those radiology groups (which consisted of somewhere between 30-50 doctors, so say around 70 doctors total) only one was not a nepo-baby. These were all individuals who grew up with maids and servants and when you are waiting for a doctor, they are making plans to fly to England on the weekend to catch a Premiere League game and then fly back home. One doctor I worked with did this almost weekly.

The lack of empathy and concern, not to mention the constant discussion on how to get higher billings and how to code things so they bring more money into their practices were daily conversations. I watched physicians who hadn't performed procedures since med school, do a quick YouTube watch and then go perform one. One particular situation, I saw the guy leave the procedure room multiple times to watch a few minutes of the video on YouTube and then go back and do that part, before running back to the reading room to watch some more. He was practicing medicine the same way I watch YouTube videos and work on my car.

You might think this is some rural hospital, but no, this is a major hospital system in my State with several large hospitals and probably hundreds of affiliated doctor offices.

So, you might be thinking, Brandon's its a fuckin TV show, get over it, and you are right. In fact, thats what prompted me to write this. Why does it piss me off to see good doctors portrayed on TV? Well, I believe the answer is I'm just disappointed. I grew up admiring doctors and thinking the best of them, and I was in for a rude awakening not long after high school when I began working in an emergency department. I had hoped it would be better as the years went by, but it never was. I didn't see the ethical, honorable people who actually cared for your health in real life, and I think that disappointment is what makes it so hard for me to sit there and see it represented on TV.

I loved working in healthcare. I loved helping people and I was good at it, but at the end of the day, I walked away because of the treatment myself and others received from the physicians.

Obviously, my experience is not the be all, end all. I'm sure there are some great doctors out there that do care. I just spend a decade working alongside them and with them, and I never once met one.

Thisness a quick post about Sourcefeed, a new endeavor by Terry Godier of Current RSS Reader fame. I'm not gonna lie, I'm fascinated as hell by this. Sourcefeed allows you to set up an RSS feed. No website, no bullshit, just a single RSS feed for subscribers to follow.

The past couple of years, I've been trying to think of how blogging evolves. I've thought about password protecting blogs and membership circles, and honestly nothing really seemed like a natural evolution until today. I love the idea of bypassing a website and unless I'm wrong, bypass quite a bit of AI scraping, and going straight to the reader's feedreader of choice.

Of course, this comes with the downfall of your feed only growing through word of mouth, because discovery would be difficult. Sourcefeed does have a discovery page, which no doubt would come in handy, but I'm still not 100% sure how useful that becomes if there are hundreds or thousands of feeds. Nonetheless, this is a new tool and a very interesting one. If anyone I know sets up one, please shoot me a Scribble or an email and I'll follow along.

When I started I always described my philosophy as follows: "Satire is like a machine gun on a swivel. You fire at every target you can find, without regard for its popularity, and about one in 20 targets will scream. So you fire at them 20 more times. That's how you identify the sacred cows in our culture, and that's how you destroy the sacred cows in our culture.”

Sadly, this is no longer the case. A majority of Americans now believe that there are sacred cows and there should be sacred cows.

I used to go on talk radio a lot, and many of the hosts would say, "l may hate what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." That axiom was so common it was almost a cliche. It no longer exists. No one will defend anyone's right to say anything. Everyone adds, "Well, up to a point.

-Joe Bob Briggs, Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In

Earlier today, I was reading Robert's response to Olly regarding physical media and the desire to support independent record stores. I've been working on a blog post of my own tackling this exact subject. I have this desire to support local book stores, yet, rarely do I read a physical book. I like the idea of owning the book, but at the end of the day, I usually read before bed, in the dark, and my tablet is a better choice for me.

The same goes with physical video games and movies. Sure, they look nice on a shelf, but since I purged almost all of my books, comics, and movies late last year, I don't miss them at all. The convenience of digital is just too much, and my apartment is just too small.

Right now, I'm even working on putting together a little emulation machine, just so I can purge my Xbox 360 and discs. I love the idea of playing in the retro world, I just don't want the clutter, chaos, and high prices that comes with it.

Still, I do miss having a place to browse and the small conversations that pop up around similar interests that tend to happen in places like record stores, comic shops, and arcades.

2026 is shaping up to be an interesting year for me. While I still really enjoy watching/playing/listening to things from the past, I’m having a lot of fun exploring new things. While, maybe not as drastic as when I decided to explore sword and sorcery a few years ago, I am trying to watch movies I haven’t seen, play new games, and experience new media. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m trying to keep up with the newest releases, just stuff I haven’t seen or experienced before.

Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War

This game really impressed me. It’s a boomer shooter (like Doom) that looks like a game that would have come out in the late 90s when Starship Troopers was released. Despite the dated graphics, the game has modern controls and it features some fun voice acting and great vignettes between missions. The game is presented as a video game marketed towards people in the world of Starship Troopers to be used as a recruiting tool for the Federation. In a strange way, it’s not too different from the America’s Army game a few years ago, but it’s way more tongue in cheek.

The game is short, but I had an absolute blast playing it and I haven’t even tried the missions where you play as the bugs yet. The world of Starship Troopers works so well for video games, and I’d love to see some more missions as DLC. I also see myself replaying this game on a higher difficulty level, which is not something I often do.

Sonic Racing: Crossworlds

I have a strange relationship with Sega. Growing up, I loved Sega. The Genesis was probably my favorite video game system, and I happily carried around my Game Gear and a ton of batteries in an old camera bag. But after that generation, I didn’t buy another Sega system until I bought a Dreamcast many years after it had been retired. Still, I can’t help but love Sonic, Crazy Taxi, Super Monkey Ball, and many of the Sega properties.

When it comes to kart racing games, I’ve always strictly been a Mario Kart fan. I tried a few Sonic Racing games, but it was usually during free demos or maybe a game was free with PSN or Xbox Live. I never put much effort into it, because in my mind, I just prefer Mario Kart. But with the high price on the Switch 2 and a lack of games that I want to play, I just haven’t had much interest in the new system outside of Mario Kart. After hearing a lot of hype behind Sonic Racing (and being thoroughly impressed with this throw-back commercial) I decided to buy it on sale and I’m very happy that I did. It took an hour of playing to really get the feel of the game, but once I did, I fell in love with the controls and the speed of the game. The online racing is fantastic and I was so impressed with the game I decided to buy the upgrade for all of the extra characters.

Do I prefer it over Mario Kart? Probably not, but it’s a damn solid game and something I’m really enjoying playing.

(Random thought: Since when did Sonic’s world expand to so many characters! Sheesh, there are so many hedgehogs/characters in this game I couldn’t even begin to guess their names.)

NFL 2K5

I still need to finish my homemade emulation/Steambox (I had to return the wrong power supply and I just got my new one yesterday), but until I get that complete I’m still playing games on my Xbox 360 from time to time.

I’m in my second season as the Pittsburgh Steelers in NFL 2K5. The game is still a lot of fun to play and difficult to master. My only complaint is I wish I would have chosen a different team. I like the Steelers in real life, but man, that was not the best team in 2004 when NFL 2K5 was released and the roster isn’t deep enough to make too many trades. I’ve had to bulk my team up in free agency.

Powerwash Simulator

When this game first came out, I played the hell out of it. I reached a level featuring a huge building that took me a very long time to make progress on. Then I cancelled my PSN and in the midst of all that, I lost my save. So I never finished the game. Well, now that I have PSN again, I’ve been able to access my save from the cloud and occasionally when I need something to screw around with, I do a little virtual power washing.

Don’t judge me, it’s soothing.

Honorable Mentions

I did play a little Battlefield last night for the first time in months and I had a good time. I also picked up The Mummy Demastered, which has been on my wishlist for years, since it was five bucks. But I haven’t tried it yet, nor TMNT Splintered Fate, which I picked up for $3 the other day. I really wanted to finish up Starship Troopers first. After reading the new Darkness comic, I decided I wanted to replay the video game from 2007. The game looks and feels pretty great, until you get to the point of controlling The Darkness. Sheesh, it took me just one level of using the Darkness to infiltrate an air vent to make me remember the frustration that was those controls. This is a game that deserves a remastering and updated controls.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I owe Vincent big time! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

He put together a Wordpress import to help me get the rests of my posts over to Scribbles without having to do everything by hand. Despite being still in a "test phase" everything worked perfectly, and he even set up re-directs and added a way to customize the redirects which is very cool!

Now all I need to do is add a few missing images (my fault by not having them uploaded on my Wordpress) and maybe adjust a few categories.

Earlier this evening, I ran across HorrorLex which I found to be an intriguing site. From the about page:

Horror Lex launched in November 2021 as the first and only academic research site dedicated to serious writing about horror and horror-adjacent films. If it’s about ghosts, demons, zombies, vampires, black-gloved killers, exploding heads, deadly viruses, psycho grandmas, creepy kids, giant squids, or even killer nuns, it’s on Horror Lex.

The Horror Lex database currently indexes over 13,000 writings – published books, articles, and online writings, many from university publishers and peer-reviewed journals – from over a thousand different sources. A significant number of these works is available for free online, but finding them can be frustrating and time-consuming.

Last night, the Sunday blues were especially hard. I'm not sure why, I'm not dreading anything at work this week, but I just felt my mood shift. I went to bed early and slept through the night, but when I woke up this morning I felt like I hadn't slept a wink. I brushed my teeth and stood staring at the mirror when finally I said, "Fuck it. I'm going back to bed." So, I fired off a quick email to my boss and back to sleep I went.

I'd be lying if I said I felt better after my extra sleep, but I'm glad I've taken the day to relax and hopefully get my head in a better space.

A few random thoughts on this Monday:

• The new American Gladiators is bad. I mean, I didn't feel great after they delayed it a year and barely marketed it, but its so much worse than I could have ever imagined, which is a shame because the UK version is great.
• I fell down a rabbit hole of sleazy independent horror films on Tubi this weekend, which led me to discovering some filmmakers who make micro budget pictures but put effort into their scripts, sound mixing, and lighting. I honestly didn't know that existed.
• I started watching From and wow is it good. I was hesitant to give it a shot considering it was airing on Epix/MGM+ and I figured it might be cancelled before giving any resolution to the mystery, but after they announced a fifth and final season I decided to give it a try and I'm so glad I did.
• My hosting account expires on May 19th. That means I need to get to work on porting over my old posts to Scribbles sooner rather than later. I've also decided to let all my other domains expire with exception to brandons-journal.com.
• I replaced my cheap Filtrete air purifiers with a couple of Lenovit LV-H133 that Woot had on sale for $77. Despite being about three feet tall, Amazon shipped them in boxes that were the size of a coffin which startled the hell out of me when I opened the door. But these have been an amazing purchase. They are quieter and work so much better. They also have a sensor that detects when your air quality is bad. The other night my cat took a dump in the litter box and I laughed till I cried when I saw the sensor ring turn from blue to red and the fans kicked on high to clean the air and remove the smell.

Well, I'm off to try and find something to watch or play for the rest of the day. I hope everyone has a nice Monday.

Say what you want about spring football, and the disaster that has been the last few seasons but Mike Repole getting involved this year has been a breath of fresh air. We have smaller arenas, new uniforms, new rules, and better action on the field. Repole can be a bit abrasive but it’s obvious he cares and is trying to make the product better which is not something The Rock did once the past few years.

Case in point is a rule change that occurred today. This past weekend there was a fantastic game that went into overtime. The way overtime works in the UFL is each team gets the ball with the five yard line and tries to score in a sudden death situation. They get one play and then the opposing team gets a play.

Well, there was a rule in place to limit the number of snaps and potential injuries. If two defensive penalties were called then the opposing team automatically was awarded a touchdown and won the game.

Needless to say, this was a terrible outcome for a fantastic game Saturday night. And unlike most professional sports leagues, who might review it after the season is over, the UFL went to work immediately with Repole promising a change.

Today, a mere five days later, that change happened. A new rule was established that instead of an automatic touchdown, the ball would be moved closer and closer to the goal line each penalty. This would ensure the game would end because of a play and not a penalty.

👏👏

Hats off the UFL. Some other sport leagues could learn from this.

The title track to the new James Bond game, First Light, was released today. Lana Del Ray provides the vocals while David Arnold arranged the music.

I wouldn’t say it’s overly memorable but it’s a very solid Bond song and I could easily see this being used in a movie.

I’ve always had a love for the James Bond video game songs. I previously shared some of my favorites on this post: James Bond Video Game Songs.

My father was in the Navy and spent a good portion of his career as a recruiter. This meant he was always traveling, setting up booths, giving out free merch, and trying to generate excitement for the Navy. He saw me and my brother as young marketing tools and we were often wearing or using Navy giveaways in school. I had t-shirts, carpenter pencils, bags, notebooks, and even posters on my wall. These random cheap items are not something I think about often, nor do I have any nostalgia for. What I do think about at times is the pens my dad would write with and occasionally I'd get ahold of: the Skilcraft Government pen.

These pens were nothing special. In fact, they were probably the most basic pen you could find. They lacked all of the comforts of pens in the 90s like textured grips or gel ink. But they were reliable and little did I know, they were used throughout the government outside of the Navy.

For me, I just assumed they were some random pen the Navy ordered because I never saw them anywhere else. But a few years ago, I ran across an article discussing these pens and how for over fifty years they have been manufactured the National Indusries for the Blind.

I was reading a post by The Retro Dad about his hunt for a Bic Clic and it reminded me of the Skilcraft pens and how I yearned to try one once more. Unfortunately, finding a single pen was impossible, so I bought a box of twelve on Amazon for $18. It was a bit steep, but the nostalgia pushed me over the edge.

The pens were exactly as I remember. They are sturdy and let off a satisfying click, but they are also a bit thin. Honestly, a little too thin for my liking.

I decided to use one as my daily driver at work the last few days and other than the thinness of the pen, I have no complaints. It’s actually really satisfying to write with. You have to apply more pressure than usual and I think it actually helps my messy handwriting.

Even my wife, who uses all kinds of fancy pens was impressed with how well it works. She even went as far as to ask if she could have one. 😂

I got a new office at work but people keep giving me hell for not decorating. This is a start. 😂😂😂

I'm not sure how I feel about Bubbles. Bubbles is an attempt to take a Hacker News approach to new blog posts. I could see how this could be great exposure for blogs, but I also see how this could be just another popularity contest for bloggers who write clickbait/rants that they know will get views (i.e most blog specific discovery feeds that rely on upvotes).

I'll be watching this site with curiosity and hoping for the best. We can always use new ways to discover more human created content.

4.15.2026 Update:

Ben from Bubbles reached out and shed a little light on his methods to keep Bubbles a fair discovery site that I could have learned myself had I took the time to properly read his About page and FAQ. 😂 That’s totally on me.

From his email, I feel more confident that Bubbles could really work and hearing his enthusiasm for the project was reassuring. I’m rooting for Bubbles.

I finally finished season three of Shrinking. What an amazing, powerful episode. It truly felt like a series finale, but I'm so glad we'll get at least one more season with the cast. I don't think there is a better show on television.

I usually feel like Disney+ is a waste of money but between Daredevil and Maul Shadow Lord, Im not complaining. Season two of Daredevil Born Again has already topped season one and continues to wow me each week.

Maul was something I had a passing interest in but not much Star Wars has impressed me lately. But so far Maul is fantastic. It’s dark ans brutal is a good way. The live acting is really wonderful and man have they mastered that Clone Wars look. The show feels like a theatrical release which is so impressive considering this is a streaming cartoon.