The other day, I asked what this thing was in this Dr. Slump (Akira Toriyama) cover art. The consensus: probably a cool, made-up design borrowing mainly from WW2 warbirds. I guessed maybe Pe-2? Turns out my guess was pretty good: it appears to be a Yak-4 with US nose art and wrong landing gear.

W H Y

I saw this SD plane in a Dr. Slump episode. What the heck is it? Pretty certain it's not an OV-10 Bronco. Is it maybe a Petlyakov Pe-2? Or just a cool made-up design? I can't tell if it's a twin tail like Me-110 or a twin boom like P38. Paging Dr. Nyri A. Bakkalian(@riversidewings.bsky.social)!

Meanwhile, this idiot does nothing. Not even really curious abut the bears. Just chillin' by my side leashed.

More examples.

The ongoing Iran War oil crisis forced JP potato chip/snack maker Calbee to abandon full-color printing on their packages. Social media illustrators rejoiced the emergence of a new canvas. (Search for "白黒パッケージ" for more examples.)

Today would've been my 38th anniversary.

Debated whether I should let y'all see this. I'm getting really scrawny.

The girls have been running the portraits through Chappie to do gender reversals, etc. They refused to let me have theirs, but they let me do mine and the dog's (who's now on meds for a heart condition that will eventually demise him hopefully in more years than not).

It took me several months, though I wasn't going hard at it or anything. I don't like that the parts are all very similarly shaped. While this painting has enough details and colors to help with the placement of pieces, the same-shaped pieces will make Miro's "Dancer" a nightmare.

Finished 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of Tom Thomson's study for "Northern River." The quality's acceptable, but the print colors on the box and puzzle don't match well. The pieces are all shaped like the letter "H" with the horizontal bar extending out both sides, making it needlessly challenging.

I mean, what about this looks sick?

My boy has heart arrythmia. Worried sick, but he seems to be in good spirits and health.

I just hit 500 hours of actual workout time on Nintendo Switch Ring Fit Adventure. That works out to about 1005 hours of play time. I got it on the eve of COVID. It motivated me to keep at this, so that's huge. It won't make you huge, but it will tone you and enable you to pop squats and the like.

I just hit LV90 in Pikmin Bloom (Android/iPhone). It's basically a step-counter with some basic game elements. It's like Pokemon Walk, but it's much less demanding. It took me two years and a quarter to reach 6.5 million steps. I have to do ten million to hit LV100. Join! It's good exercise!

Translation: "No matter what it is, any content will go extinct if newbies don't join. We gotta treat them like they're precious and sink them in the swamp with us."

Out on a hike, I found what I thought was just moldy dog poop. Then GF identified it as owl pellets: undigested food stuffs like bones, fur, etc., and regurgitated as solid, dry, and light chunks.

Watching SW2 Starfox footage. JP players are getting creeped out by Slippy for looking realistically froglike...but with human eyes.

Some more.

Out walking the dog, came across a bunch of tiny ceremonial offerings presumably made by primary students or younger from the nearby school. ...But of course I was tweaking on "Children of the Corn" story, "Blair Witch," and that ultra-pretentious and unintentionally hilarious "Midsommar" vibes.

Kei, my youngest daughter married Toshie, her BF of six years on Friday 4/10. My job's just about done. I'm proud and relieved of what my late wife Takako and I achieved. That's the way it should be.

Dog and blue chalk

I went out to my third paint-at-a-pub event with the same instructor lady. It was fun, with around two dozen seniors (four men even) shelling out C35 each for about two hours with all the paint, canvas, etc., supplied. This is my fourth ever painting.

Just so weird my birthday coincides with Pokemon. I only started playing that crappy-looking throwback on a then-very-near-dead GB because of that, too. And now FR/LG's about to overshadow me again!

Why is "Made with REAL POTATOES" a selling point. I don't want to know of a dystopian world in which chips are not made with "REAL POTATOES".

Re: Olympics opening parade. Daughter Lynn: "I wanna know who this dj is lmao. He’s pretty banger I actually need to know who this dj is lmao" Help us out, people of the Internet.

K, merry Christmas, hanukkah, new years, etc., etc. Hope y'all are spending it peacefully without bickering.

Went for a walk in a downpour to Rocky Point and found an ancient Japanese village under construction.