(possibly) five kobolds in a coat

Ostrich sketch, in ballpoint and brush pen

There are no ordinary passengers on this expedition — all those who boarded in Peru became part of the "voyage crew".

The official Bark Europa Tracker:

There's no denying that he is a masculine person. The ultimate ideal of what a man is. He's played by Richard Dean Anderson, the man semi-responsible for the term "MacGuyver" being part of our everyday lexicon.

But as a man, he doesn't fit the modern ideal of masculinity. He doesn't have a six pack. He's of average height. He's in his 40s, with greying hair and wrinkles. You don't get to be a Colonel in the Air Force and stay a fresh faced 20-something. Overall, he just looks like some guy you'd see down the pub. Not making a podcast on how men need to be dominant.

On the surface O'Neill appears to be emotionally unavailable who uses his humour as a defence mechanism. This is partly true, but it's not the whole story. His humour is a defence mechanism to stop himself from being overwhelmed by everything that has happened to him as a career soldier.

When it comes to those under his command, he's compassionate. He asks for advice and ideas from his team before offering anything of his own. He LISTENS and pays attention!! He's willing to offer hugs when needed. He's good with kids, giving an adorable shiba Inu to a girl in mourning to provide her with emotional support and joy. His advice is often to try to be friendly and smile. He never tells anyone to suck it up and get over it, and if he does tell someone to put their feelings aside it's so they can focus on saving lives.

He sends Daniel a tissue box as a message that he needs contact, rather than an intrusive probe.

Episode SIX we also see him (well, a crystal that had taken over his form) sitting in a ball, clutching the pillow of his dead son, crying his eyes out. You would NEVER see that in a modern day drama that early on.

This was made in 1997, and yet I am left with the intense feeling that we need to have more characters like Jack O'Neill around today. We need more men who want to emulate his version of masculinity. The kind who attends his doctors appointments, listens to what she has to say, and will follow her orders as a medical professional.

We need more men whose character is partly defined by his complete lack of knowledge. He regularly says "I don't know about this so I'm going to ask Captain Samantha Carter about it."

Also, I want to point out that MacGyver is also not a stereotypically masculine character! Yes, he's sexy and his mullet was apparently a feature not a flaw, but he was also very specifically NOT a shoot-em-up alpha male. He hates guns! He solves problems with his wits, not with his fists! When he does get into a fistfight he looks borderline ridiculous!

context: i am well aware of the lifetime you can expect from a phone and the slow slide of deterioration, but specifically in the last 6 months, spotify has become almost unusable (it takes 10 to 15 seconds to load a playlist that I have locally saved) but android overall is beginning to hang as well with dramatic battery drain that's reduced the time-to-charge from a day and a half to needing a top-up to even reach the end of the day. it's the worst with spotify but is happening system-wide, so I suspect an android update did something.

I was driving through Vermont with a friend, and we pulled over at a tiny shop offering Maple Items. We were on the state highway, not the interstate, so "pulling over" meant "squeezing my tiny car into a parking bay the size of a broad highway shoulder."

As we got out of the car, an older woman emerged from behind the building where she had been pruning her roses. She introduced herself as Tammy.

Her shop offered the promised variety of Maple, but also a number of small antiques and a plethora of dog figurines, plaques, and clearly-hand-stitched garden flags.

A huge purple ribbon hung on the wall behind the register, along with many pictures of small dogs. This was no county fair ribbon. It was the size of my torso. The material had the soft sheen of actual silk.

As I placed my purchases on the counter, I asked, "Do you... Breed dogs?"

Yes. She does. She has bred Yorkies for the last 40 years. Her mother bred Yorkies before her. The purple ribbon was from her national championship winning Yorkie.

You may be expecting that the infodump was going to be about Yorkies.

It was not.

It was about 40 years of drama in the Yorkie breeding community. Where – you must understand – the judging at shows is often about who you're in with, not about the dogs. This is especially true when Tammy's opponents win anything.

And Tammy's mother! Well. Phyllis has been on the Yorkie scene since Yorkies were invented. Because of this, many women of equally venerable age hold deep grudges against Phyllis. The sort of grudges that result in episodes of Midsommar Murders.

This led to deep injustices against Phyllis on the part of judges and prevented her dogs from winning so often she retired from the scene. Judging is all about who you're friends with, after all.

After 20 years in hiding, Phyllis – the One True Queen of Yorkie Breeding – hatched a plot. She may have been out of the show circuit, but she was still breeding dogs. She entered an absolutely perfect bitch in the national competition, but sent her with a handler rather than go in person.

None of the usurpers knew who this dog belonged to, and in dog-breeding circles this Does Not Happen. This could have resulted in further injustices, but Phyllis was crafty. She knew this tournament was being judged by a man from the UK, who knew naught of the drama in the US Yorkie Empire.

With these advantages – and being the best dog there – Phyllis's bitch won the highest honor at the show.

Incensed by this insult to their ill-gotten supremacy, the other owners descended on the handler after the show, demanding to know for whom he was working.

"Phyllis," said he.

The name of the overthrown queen evoked horror in the usurpers.

"PHYLLIS!? She's still ALIVE!???"

Yes, Phyllis yet lived, and this bitch – the dog, not the woman – went on to mother Tammy's current dogs. One of whom, Lucy-Fur, is the reincarnation of Tammy's sister (also Lucy). This is certain for two reasons.

Firstly, Sister Lucy absolutely went straight to Hell upon her death, and Lucy-Fur the dog is positively as evil as Sister Lucy was.