Total Media Hellscape

MARCH 23, 2026

It’s podcast recording day, and you know what that means! Time to hastily bang out a few choice letters while waiting for Eric to show up so we can watch 2017’s “I, Tonya.” If you don’t subscribe to the 4F Film Review Podcast, you should do that. As of this posting, the most recent episode we’ve posted is “Varsity Blues,” and “I, Tonya” is at least five or six episodes away, so…you’re welcome for the early preview.

The first time I made a “What I Did Today” post, I did it in real time, complete with helpful timestamps to ground the reader. I didn’t really plan to write one today, however, so we will have to make due without the timestamps because I can’t remember at what times I did anything. Currently, it is 2:39 PM, if that helps you.

My day began as it usually does: With a cat rudely waking me up between 4 and 5 AM to give it and its friends their morning food. (The cats live together but they are not all related, and I believe words have power, so they are “friends,” not “family.”) Just now, actually, my wife requested that I stop feeding them so early in the morning so they don’t get hungry before dinner time. Going forward, I suppose I will just let them wake me up, go downstairs and let them ponder why I have gone through the trouble of getting out of bed only to sit in the living room reading video game magazines from the 1990s instead of fulfilling my life’s purpose of feeding them.

Speaking of cats, after doing a couple of hours admin work from my home PC, I decided that it was time to get out and go run errands instead of relaxing (relaxing is for suckers). To put a bow on that otherwise-confusing transition, one of those errands was to go get my haircut by Cat, my hairstylist. Cat was previously mentioned in What I Did Today #1, but may never be mentioned again! (Of course, now that I’ve said that, she will inevitably be mentioned in every single one going forward.)

Before all of that, I went to the post office to send my Virtual Boy out to be repaired by some dude in Columbus, Ohio, proving that even one of the worst states in America has at least one redeeming factor. The issue with my Virtual Boy is one that plagues literally all Virtual Boys eventually: It was clearly designed with the expectation that the consumer would buy it, immediately discover that it’s worth less than the cardboard it was packaged in, and set fire to it to attempt to derive some amount of satisfaction from the entire experience/ordeal. (Read: The ribbon cables are glued on to the board, not soldered, so they will inevitably come detached in a miracle of modern intentional obsoletion. See, the Virtual Boy really was ahead of its time!)

Anyway, the Virtual Boy sucks, but my hair stylist, Cat, does not! Unfortunately, upon arriving at the SportClips, I was informed that Cat is “no longer with us!” I didn’t clarify whether that meant she had passed away or had merely finally done what she had threatened to do the last time she and I were doing the haircutting thing and “quit this stupid place for good,” but it didn’t seem necessary. She might as well be dead for all the good it does my hair.

Actually, the new lady, Nicole (who is not really “new” at all, she informed me she had been cutting hair for fourteen years), was really good and gave me the best cut I’ve maybe ever had! Our conversational rapport was a bit stiff, but nobody could ever beat Cat in that department. My last haircut with Cat was in December, and I distinctly remember chatting about nihilism for a good percentage of it after the perfunctory discussion about Christmas plans.

My hair was finally cut and I was feeling good, so I decided to go do some more work! Stopping by my shop, conveniently located just feet away from the SportClips, I put in a solid two hours tidying things up from an absolutely insane Sunday instead of just leaving the mess for my business partners to discover tomorrow morning when we’re open again. I’m a super nice guy.

I went and got a sandwich from the Milio’s near my house after that, but now that we’re getting into what I ate for lunch, it’s becoming clearer to me that I don’t really have anything else remotely interesting to say in paragraph format at this stage. So, to close this post, here are some disparate bullet points of other thoughts I had today that were too insubstantial to bother writing about:

• Thee Michelle Gun Elephant might be my new favorite garage-rock band
• The post office is an incredibly bleak place these days
• I’m sad I didn’t realize Milio’s was doing a March-only punch card where you buy four sandwiches and get one free, because it’s almost the end of the month and I don’t think I’m going to be able to fit three more sandwiches into my routine
• The WWE’s inability to turn its longtime stars heel (see: John Cena and most recently Randy Orton) sure is a funny thing
• I’m afraid I’m going to be dreadfully bored by “I, Tonya.” I really couldn’t care less about the Olympics, so hopefully that’s not the barrier to entry with this film
• The Nintendo Switch 2 version of Starbites was recently cancelled because of scumbag internet crusaders being ENORMOUS pricks online, and I’m really tired of people who go online only to performatively complain about things that don’t matter just so people pay attention to them. You won’t find that here, baby! NOTHING IS PERFORMATIVE ABOUT THIS BLOG WHATSOEVER!