The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

This is my favorite meme using the Millennials’ favorite retort.

Also worth reading: IF YOU CALL ME A “BOOMER” YOU ARE COMMITTING A HATE CRIME on McSweeny’s.

“I’ve always thought minorities in this country exaggerated the harrowing effect of pejorative slurs. But, now that I’ve been relentlessly called a ‘boomer’ on the internet, I can finally relate to America’s many marginalized communities and their traumas. We are now one and the same: victims of structural inequality. Luckily, we have solved racism and sexism as a society and have no more work to do on those two fronts, but we still have quite a ways to go when it comes to vitriolic bigotry against people born between 1946 and 1964.”

My birthday is tomorrow (November 5th), and I’ve decided that this (see above) is what I’m going to say for the coming year in lieu of “Goodbye,” “See you later,” or the like.

Found via Brett Savory.

Jonathan Lee Burgsteiner just wanted to participate in the “fun” activity of “owning the libs” and maybe get some online high-fives from terrible people with this Halloween tweet:

I’m sure there are better ways to spend your time than turning your kids into props by making them dress up as people they don’t know or care about, and putting them in blackface is worse.

Enter the hero of this story, @Chinchillazllla, who replied with this astonishing bit of information:

The tweet linked to a news story in the Hickory Record dated July 9, 2016: Granite Falls man charged in fatal hit-and-run in Hildebran. Burgsteiner was charged with felony hit-and-run after striking and killing Dalinette Trinidad Del Valle as she walked along a roadway in Catawba County, North Carolina. Del Valle had been hit by a vehicle with enough force to knock her off the road, where she rolled into a near-by ravine. Her belongings — a purse, shoes, and glasses, were found on the road. She died on impact. She had two children.

It turns out that Burgsteiner borrowed the car of his mother-in-law, Sharon Worley, and returned it with a broken headlight. When asked why he returned the vehicle with a broken headlight, he told his father-in-law that he’d hit a deer. The father-in-law investigated the spot where the Burgsteiner said the accident had taken place, and couldn’t find any evidence of a dead deer. Between this and the news story about a hit-and-run where the vehicle described sounded like theirs, Burgsteiner’s in-laws went to the police.

From the Hickory Record:

When his story didn’t add up, Worley came forward and told troopers she was concerned. The family asked investigators to look at their vehicle to see if it could’ve been involved in the deadly hit-and-run, according to [North Carolina State Highway Patrol Trooper] Gouge.

“The piece that was found at the scene matched up perfectly,” he said.

Burgsteiner continued to maintain that he thought he’d hit a deer and said he’d stopped, but Gouge said Del Valle’s shoes, purse and glasses were still in the roadway when a witness drove by the scene just after she was killed.

Upon being outed as someone who killed a woman, fled the scene, lied about it — and all in a borrowed car, to boot — Burgsteiner decided that discretion was the better part of valor and closed his Twitter account:

Burgsteiner’s trial started this summer, and apparently it’s being moved to Superior Court.

This parody Royal Mail door-knocker is the best.

Need context or a refresher on what Brexit is?

• BBC: Brexit: All you need to know about the UK leaving the EU
• New York Times: What Is Brexit? A Simple Guide to Why It Matters and What Happens Next
• CNN: Brexit wrecked Britain and it hasn’t even happened yet
• EuroNews: From deal to delay: what happened with Brexit in October?
• Global News (Canada): Confused? A guide to understanding Brexit

…and of course, there are John Oliver’s takes on Brexit on Last Week Tonight…

This map of Middle Earth, overlaid with a map of the U.S., shows how far Bilbo had to travel in The Hobbit and how far Frodo and Sam had to travel in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

It just struck me that back in my 1980s high school days, only hardcore nerds would have gotten this joke because only they would’ve recognized the references. A lot has changed — even 15 years ago, you had to know who the Fellowship of the Ring were if you wanted to be cool. Today, mainstream audiences know not just what orcs are; they’ve even heard of once-obscure characters like Ant-Man, Hawkeye, Rocket Raccoon, and Thanos are.

Anitra and me on the Tampa-to-Toronto part of the trip.

It’s 8:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 9, 2019 as I write this, and we’re about to make our way to the airport to catch Philippine Airlines’ direct Toronto-to-Manila flight. It’s a 16-hour marathon, which puts us shy of the top ten longest flights for 2019. but it’s preferable to the 24-hour version of the trip, which includes a stop, typically in Korea or Japan.

We’re flying on a plane that’s new to us — the Airbus A350, or more precisely, the A350-900HGW.  It’s also new to Philippine Airlines, which has had them only since last year.

We’re in Economy Plus class on this trip, and lucked out with the seating:

Premium Economy is eight seats across, instead of regular economy’s nine:

…and even that is better than the Boeing 777, where they cram ten seats into each row:

Travel vlogger Josh Cahill flew on Philippine Airlines’ A350 from London Heathrow to Manila and had great things to say about it:

Here’s Jeb Brooks’ review of business class on Philippine Airlines’ A350:

And here’s Flight Report’s  video review of the Toronto-to-Manila flight:

I’ll post more pics as the trip continues!