This Dude Abideth

August 10, 2026 update:

This Dude Still Abideth

Looking at this picture now, I realize it probably says more about me than I intended it to when I posted it. I have spent a considerable portion of my life sitting in rooms like this, watching old television shows and terrible horror movies, listening to records everyone else forgot, reading books about subjects I had no practical reason to know anything about, and following whatever rabbit hole presented itself until another one came along.

I used to think a person was supposed to turn all those interests into something. Become an expert. Build a career. Find a niche. Become the Dungeons and Dragons guy, the horror movie guy, the poetry guy, the record collector, the publisher, the local history guy, the guy who knows why the original Holmes D&D set didn't have a ten-sided die. During the great blogging era especially, everybody seemed to be searching for the subject that would become their thing. I tried that occasionally. It never lasted. I always moved on.

But looking through this archive years later, maybe moving on was the thing. I wasn't trying to become a cryptozoologist when I wrote about the Dover Demon. I wasn't trying to become a film historian when I wondered what happened to Peter Carpenter. I didn't need to become an authority on Japanese progressive rock because Shingetsu occupied one afternoon. Sometimes curiosity only needs an afternoon. Sometimes it lasts forty years.

The things that did last are obvious now. Poetry. Dungeons and Dragons. Horror movies. Music. Old television. Publishing books. Rockford. Objects that somehow carry their previous lives around with them: vinyl records, eight-track players, polyhedral dice, old photographs, obsolete word processors. I've spent an unreasonable amount of time wondering why certain things disappear and why others refuse to.

Maybe that's why this photograph still appeals to me. Nothing is happening. I'm not accomplishing anything. I'm apparently sitting there changing channels. But somewhere between Dark Shadows, Mannix, The Incredible Hulk, an obscure horror movie, an old record and whatever I happened to be reading that night, something would eventually catch. Then I'd write about it.

Most of it didn't lead anywhere.

It didn't have to.

The Dude abideth.

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Child Actor Meeno Peluce Wakes Up To Discover He has Been Elected Governor of Maine... Again

In what must seem like a Twilight Zone nightmare, child actor Meeno Peluce woke up Monday morning to discover he had been elected the governor of Maine. Again. Peluce, famous for his roles in shows such as Love Boat, Kojack, Starsky and Hutch, The Incredible Hulk, and his own science fiction series, Voyagers, where he played precocious history wizard Jeffrey Jones, has now been elected the governor of Maine in four consecutive elections, despite never having set foot in the state in his entire lifetime. 

Trying to get to the bottom of this highly dubious quirk in the American electoral process, public officials conducted an exit poll in which over 97% of those who had just voted for Peluce said they had done so multiple times and exclusively because of the awesome nature of his white boy fro.

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You're a Scapegoat, Charlie Brown MGM Musical LP

Original MGM cast album of You're a Scapegoat, Charlie Brown

Song List

1) Thanks For Fucking Up Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown

2) I'm Confused About the Fact That I'm Probably a Lesbian, So I'm Taking It Out On You, Blockhead

3) Little White Boy Blues

4) You're The Only One Who Can Understand Me, Franklin, Because You're Black

5) You're My Best Friend (Queen cover) P.S. Can You help Me Bury a Body?

6) I Hope That Head Gets Smaller As You Get Closer, Because, Damn

7) Wandering the Desert (Instrumental)

8) A Boy and His Dog

9) Azazel Built My Hot Rod

10) You're To Blame For All Our Shortcomings (cast)

August 10, 2026 update: I should probably explain that I've had an ongoing grievance with Charles Schulz for most of my life over the way he treated Charlie Brown. As a boy, Charlie Brown was the character I identified with. He was awkward, uncertain, usually on the outside looking in, and he kept getting kicked around by people who were supposedly his friends. Lucy pulled the football away. The other kids insulted him. His baseball team lost. The little red-haired girl barely knew he existed. Even when he tried to do the right thing, humiliation usually seemed to be waiting for him.

I don't think I experienced that as particularly funny when I was a kid. I experienced it as depressing. Charlie Brown was the kid I was being asked to identify with, and week after week Charles Schulz seemed determined to demonstrate that nothing was ever going to work out for the poor bastard. I suppose the persistence is supposed to be the inspirational part—Charlie Brown always gets up and tries to kick the football again—but as a boy I mostly wanted someone to let the kid kick the fucking football once. So if I seem unusually hostile toward Charles Schulz in these old posts, that's why. I took what he did to Charlie Brown personally.

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