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January 26, 2023
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As it happens, just had one of those. Suffice it to say, I don't want to see Gatorade again for some time. But I got a clean bill of health and don't need to think about it again for five years.

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I am now 15% less full of it after a routine colonoscopy in 2016 found something that had to be removed, which made me what the clinic called a "frequent flyer" for 5 years. Get it done.

Pro tip: Schedule it for first thing in the morning Friday - fasting the day before sucks but you'll be done before lunch and you have a weekend between you and the beginning of the next work week. Also, ignore the instructions about sipping the "prep cocktail" slowly - grab a straw and hammer it down - it's going to be unpleasant either way; might as well get the process started (and over with) as soon as possible.

Also, the drugs are amazing (I now understand why Michael Jackson loved propofol) and the slightly stale animal crackers or Cheezits you get when you wake up will taste like the best meal you've had in weeks.

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That weird sensation you get when the propofol kicks in is quite interesting. The only time I have ever felt myself fall asleep. And interestingly, I dream when I am coming out of it, which apparently is uncommon.

We treated ourselves to pizza for dinner. After three days of odd restrictions, I felt like I earned it.

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Have my first one this fall. Not exactly looking forward to it but with my family history the doc said I should probably start getting checked a little early.

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Just had one. The prep isn't that bad, you restrict your diet a bit for a few days, then fast starting at noon the day before except for the laxative/Gatorade combo they give you, poop everything out.

The colonoscopy itself? They stick an IV in, roll you into the room, then a second later you're waking up and in recovery. No pain, no discomfort.

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I have a friend who had no anesthesia because he wanted to watch the monitor. Then again, he stayed awake and watched his finger get amputated after a motorcycle accident, so he certainly ain't squeamish and may have no nerve cells.

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My poor kids were horrified to learn they likely have to start at 40 because of me.

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My doctor tried to get my scheduled and I said nope, no thank you. I have a dog that needs walks so I can't be no more than a few minutes from the toilet for prep, and I don't have anyone to drive me to and from the appointment and stay with me. Plus it's two days off work. That just doesn't work for me.

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Ask your doctor about alternatives like ColoGuard. It's not as good as a scope but it's good enough - and if they spot something then you can make arrangements for the live show.

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Oh, I did that. She said I'd have to do that annually instead of the every 5 years colonoscopy but I honestly like the idea of annual monitoring and then doing something more involved if that looks odd.

And I was negative so good for the next year. No particular family history either so I'm not all that worried.

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I hope they found his Creedence tapes.

Assuming he's got a cassette player installed in the scooter, that is...

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I would've guessed 8-track but OK.

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January 26, 2023
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While I echo your sentiment, I will note that my second shingles shot hit me harder than any of my COVID shots. A small price to pay, of course. And it lasted just a day.

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Amen. And I'm like Simon: the second one knocked me for a loop.

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Like Simon & DMCj, my shingles shots (both) put me out for a day, but you do not want to get shingles (adult chickenpox) - painful skin blistering. Chronic pain, vision problems, brain swelling are possible sequellae ( never get to use that word!).

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Thirding the heavy-duty effects of the Shingrix vaccine. A few hours of honest-to-God flu-like symptoms (shivering under a down comforter) is a small enough price to pay for decreasing the likelhood of ending up with shingles.

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I have an appointment on Monday for shot #1.

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I didn't have a reaction (other than a sore spot on the arm) to either shingles vaccine. Of course, the worst reaction I had to the COVID shots was taking a nap the next day . . . but that might have happened anyway.

Agreed on "get the shots"--the side effects are very short term.

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I got both mine, I was tired and had a sore arm but that was about it. Oddly my last flu shot hit me hardest of all my recent vaccinations.

I've heard some people grumble about getting the flu, some it was no big deal, but without exception everyone I've heard who got shingles said it was HORRIBLE and definitely get the shot. So that's one thing I for sure want to avoid especially since I know I've already had chicken pox.

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Exactly - I'll get the shingles vax when it's time because by far the stories about shingles itself are far worse than the stories of being wiped out from the vax.

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Was going to get it this week... but wife and I are BOTH recovering from COVID rn. We are vax'd and fully boosted. I was off my feet with fever and fatigue for 3 days and she's not smelling nor tasting but doing better after 2 days.

We prefer these versions of the illness to the unvax'd versions so we will get our shingles vax in a couple of weeks, prior to U.K. trip in March.

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January 26, 2023
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Agreed. My own personal standard for HOF advocacy has fallen (largely because I feel weird being a stickler given that a majority of voters are going to admit McGriff/Helton/Wagner/etc anyway), but I still don't think Kent meets that standard.

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My HOF boycott continues until Sweet Lou is enshrined.

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Kent, like McGriff, Morris, and Rizzuto, is getting in the second the era committee has a chance. He’s exactly the kind of guy they pick.

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Okay, so I sorted by BR JAWS, which is a good quick and dirty way to balance career and peak WAR, and then took out obvious HOFers who aren't getting in because of roids or gambling, plus guys like Miggy and Beltre who are 100% getting in. I ended up with exactly 50 position players not in the Hall but are better than or equal to Kent. Notable to me on the list are Lance Berkman, Evan Longoria, Jason Giambi, Dustin Pedroia, and Ian Kinsler. By this metric, Kent is better than McGriff, but still well behind Helton (and Cano for that matter). Of course if Kent ever does get in, it will be the way of McGriff. Unfortunately, you have to actually have friends to get elected by them.

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January 26, 2023
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But does he actually have friends? McGriff was at least likable.

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JoePos did a really solid analysis of why Kent isn't a Hall of Famer today that backs up our discussion.

There is also something of the eye test, which as unscientific as using a divining rod, but in his days as a Met, which are not his peak but were pretty good, there was just never anything about him that seems like a Hall of Famer. He was compared with Darryl Strawberry (who is also not a Hall of Famer) and found wanting.

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He definitely doesn't get an eye test boost, which for sure helped players like Vlad Guerrero. And not enough voters are wowed by ribbies these days. He seems meh to the "traditional" and SABR voters alike.

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Ribbies are a coefficient of your team. Aaron Judge had as many RsBI as Pete Alonso last year. It's not Judge's fault he was either hitting leadoff or with no one on. So conversely, Kent benefited from being on a good team (including how often Bonds was on ahead of him).

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Of course, and voters nowadays get that (same with pitcher wins). But this was a minority point of view up though the 90's.

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It's really the disingenuousness of the folks arguing for him that irks me, like people saying Jim Rice was the most feared hitter of generation, even though nearly 100 players whose careers roughly coincided with his got intentionally walked as much or more than the 77 times he did. Heck, Warren Cromartie's career overlaps Rice's almost exactly and he got 85 IBBs in almost 1000 fewer games! A fair comp? Probably not, but clearly Rice could not have been THAT feared.

Anyway, it's also ironic that this story comes out the day after Rolen gets in. Offensively they were almost exactly the same, with an average of 4.2 offensive WAR per 162 games, but Kent had 160 more games played, which helps push his oWAR total to 60.1, compared to Rolen's 52.8. But even that overstates his case, because it includes the same positional adjustment that appears in Baseball Reference's dWAR stat. In terms of pure offense, on a per-season basis, they were nearly twins:

Rolen: 96R, 41 2B, 25 HR, 102 RBI, 9 SB, 71 BB, 112 K .281/.364/.490 122 OPS+

Kent: 93R, 39 2B, 27 HR, 107 RBI, 7 SB, 56 BB, 107 K, .290/.356/.500 123 OPS+

I mean, that's about as evenly as you could hope to match a couple of players, don't you think?

But of course defensively Rolen was one of the ~20 or 30 best players in history, amassing over 20 dWAR at a position that is already considered difficult to play, albeit not as difficult as short or catcher.

Kent, meanwhile, at a comparable or slightly tougher position, was defensively below average in 7 of his 17 seasons, so while he was clearly a good hitter - and especially so for a second baseman - he probably should have been playing first or the outfield. And at one of those positions, his offensive stats would not be among the top ~50, maybe the top 100 in history, and we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

With that said, he'll probably get in with the first veterans' committee ballot he's on, and this will become a moot point.

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Kent was probably more valuable to the team as a below average second baseman (because as you note, he might not crack top 50 there had he played first).

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January 26, 2023
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Huh? They think people will be confused between mummies and mommies?

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Hell, even in good old Blighty, they can probably tell the difference between mummies (dessicated preserved corpses) and mummies (parents), even if they do use the "same" word for both.

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This is the Law of Unintended Consequences working its magic after years of repression under the Peppa Pig Regime.

(Peppa Pig is fine actually, just fun to make it sound like a brutal regime.)

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I always hesitate to bring it up for fear of sounding like a right-winger who’s mad that they can’t call people racial slurs anymore, but some of these proposed changes to language really do go too far (or in this case, totally miss the point). I am of course in favor of retiring terms that are truly offensive to groups of people, but what exactly about the word “mummies” is offensive or minimizes their humanity?

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January 26, 2023
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Was that a Tema Okun gem? I saw that too.

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This was the essence of George Carlin's entire act - how dehumanizing modern semantics can be. Exhibit A: His summary of how "shell shock" was eventually turned into "PTSD."

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In reading about this, I learned that the word "mummy" actually was intended to dehumanize the corpse. In early Christendom it was vital to get people to see our human-ness (soul) as separate from the body, and apparently that was true in other cultures as well.

So the effort seems kind of weird. I think it is really due to wanting to distance from the horror genre that colors much of our view of mummies.

Ironically, the Museum is apparently still using "mummy" on the placards next to exhibits.

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January 26, 2023
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It's so sad because his telomeres are shortening with each cell division and he'll eventually die anyway like the rest of us. So instead of living a life of leisure and fun with all that money he's subjecting himself to being poked and prodded and imaged and monitored like an abused laboratory rat.

If I had that kind of money, I'd probably have a personal chef to cook me healthy food and might have a personal trainer to figure out what the heck to do activity wise to be more active, but other than that I wouldn't worry about obsessing with having the body of an 18 year old.

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January 26, 2023
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I hope he doesn't have the hygiene habits of an 18 year old. Imagine being a grown adult and smelling like a combination of Axe body spray and unshowered teenage boy who works out a lot.

Barf-o-rama. 🤮

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January 26, 2023
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Lol my oldest nephew is 17 and plays baseball and hockey. My brother in law said when driving him and some of his teammates (before he got his own license) it was so bad if they hadn't showered properly that he opened the car window so he wouldn't gag.

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I almost did a spit take right here in my home office. Holy crap, that was funny.

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Yes! Personal chef would be one of my first hires if I hit the lotto. I do love cooking, but after reading some "eat healthy" books written by pro athletes who are in top tier shape, I realized that eating like them would take far too much food prep and shopping time each day, which I just don't have time for. And you know that a pro athlete isn't doing that - his personal chef is! If you want to be healthy and have endless resources, personal chef is the way to go.

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Also, some of those body functionalities that are being described, I don't know that reverting to the teenage version of that is necessarily ideal anyway

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Reading through all of it, the time and money he spends on this. It's exhausting. It does not read aspirational AT ALL to me.

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What the police are not saying about Tito's scooter: he loved that scooter and was determined to get it back. So he jackhammered his way into his basement floor and dug up the old bats he promised he would never use again, along with the old baseball cards used as currency by other retired ballplayers, and searched obsessively till he found the scooter in the possession of some young punk international mobster financiers. Legend has it that Tito once struck out three men on one pitch. The legend served him well.

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Opening Day, Tito had better be riding that thing out to the mound for a pitching change.

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That scooter is the star of Cleveland’s #TruckDay content. CPD was on the clock - this should be an episode of “The First 48.”

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Some early morning trivia: Nighttime Boners was the original title of Undercover Angel.

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Thunder is your nightlight, magic is your dream, dude.

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The 'congratulations' confetti embed is a nice touch.

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Amen, bruddah. Amen.

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Nighttime Boners also opened for Industrial Shithouse at Wembley.

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January 26, 2023
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They rocked hard, but the set rarely lasted more than 5 minutes

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I heard that most people enjoyed it but couldn't really remember much.

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More from David Simon on not talking to the police:

https://youtu.be/DgrO_rAaiq0

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I like these guys: https://youtu.be/sgWHrkDX35o

Though it’d be a bit more appropriate for me to link them tomorrow instead of today

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Pot Brothers at Law, ftw!

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How I love that show.

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That advice about "not talking to the police"...I hope that none of us will never need Craig's advice on this, people. But if we ever do then it's the most important thing we will learn (or at least be reminded of) today.

However, there are a couple of challenges. The police have had a vast amount of practice, and we have had none at all. When the police approach us, they know what is coming but it's a complete shock to us, and we may have no idea if they are investigating a crime or how serious it is. So somehow we need to get the "say nothing" mentality into our heads before it happens.

Otherwise..."Did you see X at the mall? Yes. Was X walking in front of you? Yes. Did you at any point hear X speaking? Yes."

And in court, that becomes "the accused admitted that he had been following X while watching her and eavesdropping on her, the day before she died..."

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Fun fact: Maria Ressa and Jeff Bezos were in the same graduating class at Princeton.

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I have no idea what “Own Their R” is supposed to mean. But then again, I'm about as far removed from the target audience for the message as could be. Maybe the meaning is clearly obvious to a high school teenager.

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January 26, 2023
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To be fair, it could be one of several people.

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I would’ve thought they’d quietly let it fade into the deep, dark night months ago. Their insistence to keep using it, with such seriousness and in completely mundane administrative communications, only adds to the hilarity.

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Gym Jordan?

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It seems to me the fallacy there is one has no control over the events. Some you don't. But if the event is losing your job, maybe it was because of your work habits that you were the one to hit the street. If the event was crashing your car, maybe you shouldn't have been driving so fast in the snowstorm. If you got hit by lightning, maybe you should have found shelter at the first rumbles of thunder.

Trying to control the events isn't necessarily a losing strategy.

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When i started my new job about 18 month ago they gave me that book to read. I pointed out that maybe he wasn't the role model they wanted to promote, and the company founder agreed to a point. So we still are encouraged to Own Our Results, but any mention of the source of several company acronyms has been edited out of all the onboarding materials, and they no longer send the book to new employees. Glad to have accomplished something in my time here. Well, that and the largest contract in company history.

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I'm pretty sure Craig has mentioned it before, and I meant to look it up, but got distracted, and didn't. This morning I was annoyed enough to do it, and I clicked the first result Google gave me...which was Craig's blog. So Craig, a hearty congrats on owning the organic SEO for a bullshit term invented by a bullshit artist!

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I had never heard this story before - "LSD" printed on a 1960s Astros game program...https://www.snopes.com/articles/346444/1966-astros-program-lsd/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1674682803-1

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Had to laugh about the part when Cubs manager Leo Durocher complained that the Astrodome scoreboard touched off noisy displays for home runs hit by the Astros but not their opponents.

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Saw this on a collector's thread. Waited it out on ebay and I now own one! It's real and it's spectacular. If anyone tells me ho, I'll post my copy.

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ah, no need. it's exactly what your link brings one to. crazy!

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Office cafeteria's aren't all bad. If you're someone whose workday is defined by when you complete your 8 hours of work, it can get you heading home earlier because it might allow you to get a decent lunch in a 30 minute lunch break while going out might take you an hour.

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They’re also generally subsidized (saving you money vs. going out) while not being considered a taxable benefit, which is a double win.

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Mine were never subsidized, but I worked in the public sector. Sounds like they often were in the private sector.

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They're also useful if your office is out in the suburbs in some corporate office park, and there's not a deli around for miles.

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Bingo. When I used to regularly work in my office, the cafeteria downstairs was a last resort, because it was NOT great, but it was the only thing you could get to without investing 45 minutes in the whole shebang.

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Only knowing what I see and read in the press, Sir Alec most likely thinks he’s always the smartest person in the room - and with that train of thought most likely put himself into the situation he’s now in.

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Ahh, “Homicide: Life on the Streets” - what great characters...Ned Beatty as “the Big Man” and Andre Braugher as hard driving Frank Pembleton - who never wants a partner; Richard Belzer as Munch, Clark Kellog as Meldrick (“No bout a doubt it”), Yaphet Kotto as “G” or Al Giardello the man who led this group with his proud Italian background, and of course, Melissa Leo - as Kay Howard the beautiful but troubled red head. Wow do I miss those characters...that was some good stuff. Thanks for the video and the counsel.

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Love the “Homicide” embed, particularly that scene. The show’s firmly in my top ten, and the BBC had a great little piece on its website recently about it and its impact. Boggles the mind that it’s not available for streaming anywhere.

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