Charity Froggenhall

Sun, 01 Nov 2026 21:41:54 -0400

Oy, just seen my first Christmas TV ad. Which is not as big a PITA as election ads, but still.

Fri, 30 Oct 2026 13:54:43 -0400

My little punkin, just back from the groomers, and smelling soooo good! 🎃

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 16:40:43 -0400

There are no words. Star Trek actor Sir Patrick Stewart dies aged 86

Actor Sir Patrick Stewart has died aged 86 following a “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia”, a post on his Instagram has said. The post said he died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles and that he was in the loving care of his wife Sunny.

So deeply unfair coming the same week as Walter “Chekov” Koenig’s passing.

He was a man. Take him for all in all. We shall not look upon his like again.

Must be the monay

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 08:06:05 -0400

After working to build out a system in Claude where I track literally every dollar and figured out how to give myself an allowance for fun stuff without going overboard, I just transferred $974 into my “emergency savings account,” the biggest deposit I’ve been able to make so far this year.

That’s after my paycheck dropped yesterday and my automated savings sweeps went into my Annual bills account, my trip account for Scotland in 2028, my gifts account, and the property taxes account.

Please clap.

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:50:14 -0400

CNN reports:

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the embattled US ambassador to Greece, has been forced out of her job by the White House following a string of reports about alleged misconduct, marking a sudden and spectacular downfall for a high-profile figure in the MAGA movement with close ties to President Donald Trump’s family.

Two things can be true at the same time:

Kimberly Guilfoyle is an awful human being.
Of all the corrupt and dreadful people in this administration, it’s interesting how it’s only the women who get drummed out so publicly.

The House Was Not Hungry Then, and Other Houses That Are Not Sane

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 16:49:54 -0400

Finished watching: The House Was Not Hungry Then 🍿

Here there be spoilers.

Shirley Jackson opens The Haunting of Hill House by calmly informing you that Hill House is not sane. It’s right up there with “The man in black fled into the desert, and the gunslinger followed” as a perfect opening line for a story. And it repeated itself inside my head while I was watching Harry Aspinwall’s The House Was Not Hungry Then, because this felt like what Hill House: The Early Years must have been like. Before the evil hardened into the foundation and worked its way into the cracks in the walls.

The setup is simple. A young woman goes looking for her estranged father and breaks into an empty house in the Scottish countryside. People who visit that house tend to disappear. A man posing as a realtor keeps bringing them there.

The camera angles slowly command your attention. We cut to different rooms in the house, but each room has a fixed camera view. Action sometimes happens around the edges of the frame. Some online reviewers hate this. I slowly came to realize that this is by design. The house itself is choosing what you see. You’re firmly within its world and its rules.

Other houses that are not sane

Somewhere in the first half hour I started building a list, because why not whip up a new taxonomy before breakfast. These are places that feel like they exist in the same universe, hotspots where reality goes a little wrong:

Hill House
The Overlook from The Shining, book and movie both
The house in Burnt Offerings
The tunnel in Mike Flanagan’s Absentia
The Backrooms
And now this house

Kinship, not theft

Earlier the same day I watched Insidious: Out of the Further, which has a pillow fort scene that suddenly expands into something vast. Hey dawg, we heard you liked Backrooms, so we put some Backrooms in your Backrooms. ☑️ On to the next trope.

The House Was Not Hungry Then has that same liminal feeling, and so do Skinamarink and Absentia, but none of it feels borrowed. Not a ripoff or homage. More like this is a thing that happens in the world, in many places, and this movie happened to point a camera at one of them.

Quibbles

Those title cards, which seem to be the house’s voice, flirt uncomfortably close with both pretentiousness and cuteness. The ending edges into manic pixie dream girl territory. She shares an earbud with the house so it can listen to music too, and the credits roll while “they” listen together. A little twee. Also, I did begin to wonder how the police never noticed that every missing person went to the same house with the same realtor. Not a great sign when reality starts to intrude on the film’s world.

Small things I liked anyway: a phone call with her dad (never on camera, but instantly recognizable as Scottish actor Bill Paterson) that captured the awkwardness and repetition of calls with my own dad in college, and a quaintly Scottish atmosphere that makes the whole thing feel older than it is. There’s an assuredness to the choices here that makes it feel like a legacy film.

Verdict

3 stars. It’s a tone poem, not a plot movie. I didn’t follow every crossing storyline and enjoyed the world-building. In the interest of full disclosure, I watched it with some 🌿 onboard, and I’m pretty sure that helped my patience. But if you want something creative that commits to its choices, here it is.

It’s a big head. Lot of reverb in there.

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 09:21:39 -0400

Like my grandpa is back with us.

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 20:27:16 -0400

Finished watching: V/H/S/Mixtape 🍿

This is one of the most tightly produced V/H/S movies, maybe since the early, early ones that really stuck to the cheap VHS look. It’s unusually creative for this series, and hanging everything on a theme of sound and music really benefits it. I enjoyed most of the segments, where in the past I’ve had one or two favorites and the rest were just okay.

“The Music of Mr. Sze” is tremendous. The final segment, with Lydia assembling a last mix in honor of her late dad — written and directed by rapper RZA! — is excellent. Always great to see Barbara Crampton, especially when she’s being awful. The filmmakers ran with this theme in an exciting way. I was really impressed, and I didn’t expect to be.

I can’t quite give it four stars, though, because the visual style, while intensely cohesive across most of the segments, sometimes gets to be a little overindulgent.

Three Times the TV Show Luther Was A Straight-Up Horror Movie

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 13:58:43 -0400

Spoilers abound for a 11- to 16-year-old show, innit.

S1E2: A gunman walks up to a uniformed police officer in broad daylight and in full view of a CCTV camera, and shoots the officer in the abdomen. A team comes out to investigate. Luther can’t figure out what the purpose of this was. He slowly looks around, realizes there are now multiple officers standing, in the open, unprotected. He says, “…Oh no,” and before he can finish shouting “Take cover!”, gunfire rings out.
S3E1: A nervous woman goes home, putters around her flat, makes some tea, but all the while keeps acting like she hears something we can’t. She goes to bed and curls up under the covers… As a man quietly slides out from under her bed. 😱
S4E1: Fella gets in his car to head home. Texts his wife to let her know he’s on the way. She’s alone, puttering around what looks like a newly acquired fixer-upper home. He texts again, bantering about dinner. The woman is spooked by noises, which turn out to be a bird trapped inside. Husband comes home with the groceries. Wife natters to husband while he sits beside the door. She turns around. “Who are you?”

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 10:00:44 -0400

Today, self-care looks like informing my manager’s manager that no, I would not be able to finish the day while the roof construction went on directly over my head, and I would like a Work-From-Home/Excused day please. She’s English, she got it, and now am home. ☺️

Sun, 04 Oct 2026 14:49:02 -0400

AI hallucinations are making entitled customers even worse

Sat, 03 Oct 2026 21:22:45 -0400

Gaby Del Valle, reporting for The Verge (News+ link):

“Beyond ignoring her warnings about allergens, Madison has noticed an increased reliance on generative AI among patrons at the Michelin-recommended Italian restaurant where she worked until recently. “The amount of times I’ve suggested, ‘Let me grab the sommelier for you,’ and they say, ‘No, I’ll just ask ChatGPT,’ or somms have been dismissed from the table because the guest has a preference for ChatGPT, that has been increasing quite a bit,” she says. She’s had customers request bottles that the restaurant doesn’t carry — or, in some cases, that don’t exist at all. ”

In the work world, I think most folks realize AI works best along with the guidance of a subject matter expert (SME). A better way to use AI in this example would be asking it how best to speak to a sommelier to ask for what you want.

I would be interested to know though what a chatbot properly trained on wine culture would recommend if I screenshot a wine list and asked specifically what’s the best value for money.

Everyone back into the pool

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 16:47:14 -0400

Goddamn finally:

A judge in the nation’s capital agreed on Thursday to permanently dismiss a criminal case charging a former Olympian with vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a move that could prevent federal prosecutors from reviving the case under political pressure from President Donald Trump.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman ordered the dismissal of David Hearn’s case with “prejudice,” which would block U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office from refiling the felony charge against him. The judge ruled nearly a month after hearing attorneys’ arguments.

The fact that this got this far is absolutely insane. A sitting President encouraged the prosecution of a completely innocent man because he’s embarrassed that he can’t even manage the renovation of a pool.

And if Mr. Hearn had been a Black man, he might not be here to tell the tale.

Thoughts on finally having watched both 28 Years Later films back to back

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:01:05 -0400

Here there be spoilers, so approach with care. I’m going to try to keep these in chronological order, but this is me, so I may jump around too. I should start off by saying that I love the first film and liked the second.

Oh look, you can write a post-apocalyptic film that isn’t focused on the SA of random women passing by!
Opens with the slaughter of a room full of children! Wow, they went there. Not that I’m in favor of it, but I am in favor of being bold.
Jodie Comer, again, brilliant. What a light in the acting world. Counting the days till she decides it’s time to explore Lady Macbeth.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is one of those actors whom I can never recognize between films. The Movie Database tells me this is the same guy who played the young husband and father in the amazing Nosferatu, but he did not look like the same guy. Tom Hardy was like this for me for years.
The first film has a much more fever-dream quality, maybe intended to align with Isla’s state of mind. Definitely unusual, not sure it totally worked for me. 28 Days Later had a dreamlike look to it sometimes too, but was still rooted in what was actually happening.
The whole story element of Spike deciding to take his extremely ill mother into the heart of the mainland — when he and his experienced hunter father were nearly killed the day before — on the hope that this mythical doctor is still alive and wants to help them, didn’t work for me. I get that you have to get them out of the village and into the action, but… It did pleasantly remind me a little of the quest quality of the novel The Talisman
The giving birth scene. Women helping women even across all this. Very good.
Also add the amazing Jack O’Connell to that list of actors I have trouble recognizing from film to film. I cannot believe he was also Remmick in Sinners!
Ralph Fiennes, half-naked, dragging corpses to his ossuary, and singing “Girls on Film,” wow.
- Tried to think: if this is 2030 and he was a Duran Duran fan, I guess that makes Kelson my age-ish?
The interplay between Samson and Kelson (was the name similarity accidental or meant to show their alignment?), very good. Chi Lewis-Parry gives the impression he’s extremely grateful for the opportunity to stretch his acting chops (and put on some trousers), and he meets the moment.
- “I… I haven’t got a ticket” is an amazing line reading.
Kelson is also a lonely man but committed to it, and hasn’t gone full mad scientist yet. I like that.
The summit between Sir Jimmy and Kelson, so great. Two actually quite intelligent men having a palaver.
Iron Maiden apparently never gives permission for their music to be used in films, but they took a chance here, and we should all appreciate them for it.
The logical conclusion that if Sir Jimmy is Satan’s son, he should be willing to crucify himself is genius, and O’Connell’s whole “oh hey waaaaait a minute” was excellent.
JIM. ❤️
You can learn a lot about the characters by what they have been spending their time doing. Jim and his daughter (where are Hannah and Selena?!) have been collecting books, and learning, and Jim has gone from a young bike messenger to a self-taught history professor. I hate that their happy little world will be shattered in the next film, but I also want to see more of them.
“In the House - In a Heartbeat.” Had no idea how much I needed to hear that.

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:52:43 -0400

I actually remembered to send my PCP a refill request for my Adderall before running out completely, and remembered to stop at the pharmacy on the way home this afternoon to pick it up! Please clap.

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 08:29:31 -0400

I call this mani “We Have Red Nail Polish at Home.” Yes, these are all ones I already owned. Seeing them all together like this made it easier to choose ones to destash.

A combination of Olive & June, Blank Beauty, and Abomination Cosmetics. Hit me up for specifics if you’re interested.

How…how did he DO that?

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 19:16:41 -0400

Apologies for this becoming the “How the hell did my dog do that?” blog, but this evening I let him out into the backyard. There’s a hole in the backyard fence. I know this because back in February he used it to get all the way out of the yard and to the street behind our house, twice in one day.

I have his harness attached to a 30-foot-long line so that he can still roam the backyard, and I don’t have to worry. In theory.

I let him out in the yard, and then I’m sitting here inside. He’s starting to yelp, and I’m thinking, Oh, he’s barking at some dog in a neighboring yard or something. The yelping gets kind of piercing, and I start to think, Oh no, maybe he’s gotten into some tussle with some rodent or something.

I go out, and he’s all the way at the other end of the yard. He sees me, wags his tail, and I come over. He comes over to me. His 30-foot-long line is wrapped around the bushes in the very back of the yard, and I pull because he’s gotten stuck in the bushes. He’s gotten it wound around the bushes…and the line is not attached to the hook anymore. There’s a big metal ring dangling from the end of it.

So somehow he pulled that off of the hook that is screwed into the dirt with a 6-inch spike, basically, that has a corkscrew shape. Either he pulled it, or it fell apart or something? He got all the way to the other side of the yard, and the only reason that I am not roaming the neighborhood looking for him again is because he got tangled up in the shrubs.

I don’t even know how he did that.

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:30:07 -0400

It’s fall, y’all! Happy Official First Day of Autumn!

In the Sept 22 edition of “My dog is lucky he’s cute"

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 20:05:53 -0400

My dog sleeps in a crate in “his room,” which he has generously allowed me to use part of for my home office. When I went to get him out of the room on Sunday morning, below was the sight that greeted me.

Also known as, I had a pillow. But I eated it.

I don’t know what the pillow did. Maybe he discovered it was one of the old MyPillows I bought off the teevee about 11 or 12 years back, before I knew who the hell Mike Lindell was.

But the entire contents of said pillow were shredded alllllll over the room. And yeah, that is not an altered pic at all. Those pillows are just full of shredded foam rubber.

Well, the rest of Sunday rolls along, I forget about it, until it’s time to put the dog in the crate that night, and…. Ahhhhhhhhh shit.

And then the dog is like oh well, guess I’m just gonna sleep on this—

No, you’re not going to sleep on a bed of shredded foam rubber. All I need is for you to inhale this shit, you vomit it all up later, I end up having to take you to the vet, and spend $300 for some condescending doctor to tell me, maybe try not to feed the dog shredded foam rubber. Gosh, thank you, doctor, that never would’ve occurred to me! So I pull out his extra bed — the dog has more beds than I do — and put that in the crate, leaving the other one in the corner.

Monday, too busy. Tuesday night is garbage night, so I have to finish cleaning this up.

On Sunday morning before giving up, I had tried to sweep it up with a broom, which of course works for the bigger chunks but not the expertly finely shredded pieces my dog has crafted. And it sticks to everything, so I’m pulling it off the broom as much as I’m sweeping. OK, broom is not going to work for all of this.

I go get the schmancy Miele vacuum. I would never have bought a $1200 vacuum on my own, but my ex-husband had a thing about Miele vacuums, but apparently not enough to take it with him when he moved out in 2013. I figure the Miele will make short work of it.

After a whole five minutes, the Miele is gagging Gott und Himmel! and spitting out chunks of foam rubber. This crap apparently expands after passing through the wand thing, and fills up one and a half of the equally schmancy specialized vacuum bags that I’m sure they probably stopped making sometime before the Biden administration.

The only other vacuum-like object I own is an ash vacuum, which I bought a while back after the pros who came to clean my chimney tsk-tsked me about keeping it cleaner. I unbox it, eventually, after much jiggling of the box and swearing. I put it together, after more swearing. There’s a huge warning label about running it without the filter, but I still have roughly a pillow’s worth of shredded foam rubber, and there’s no way it’s going to fit in there unless I use the filter.

It then occurs to me that there’s no way Mike Lindell put fire-retardant anything inside his pillows, but I’m committed at this point and I just want the crap gone, so here I go.

I finally get about 99% of the foam rubber vacuumed up. I then of course have to open the lid and dump the foam rubber into the waiting garbage can. Is all of it out? Nope. Will I have to clean it really well before I use it on fireplace ashes, so I don’t set fire to anything? Most certainly. Does the vacuum now smell funny because shredded foam rubber got up inside the motor? Naturally.

The only thing left is the bed, with the tiniest most minuscule particles of shredded foam rubber now woven into the material. Technically the bed is washable, but only in a big industrial washing machine. I can’t put it in the dryer, because the crap will probably catch fire or something. I decide to accept minimal casualties. The bed smells like Fritos anyway, so out it goes, along with the bag of foam rubber. Yes, he still has the big pillow to use as a bed.

I’m finally chilling on the couch post-gummy, writing this to you, and of course the dog is sleeping the sleep of those who didn’t have to spend half an hour vacuuming up Mike Lindell’s expensive crappy shredded foam rubber pillows.

Thus I exhort you, do not give a MyPillow to your dog. Not even if you think it’d be funny if they peed on it. It’s not worth it.

I think he's telling me it's fall

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 19:35:34 -0400

Ah autumn. Even though the equinox is still almost 24 hours from now, the mornings are getting cooler, the heat is mellowing…

And the dogs are reinstalling themselves on their people for naps.

On this Yom Kippur

Sun, 20 Sep 2026 10:17:48 -0400

I was raised Catholic, but I’m more None of the Above now. However, once at work, someone asked who sat at an empty desk near us, and I piped up, “Elijah!” My then-colleague Linda laughed hard at that one, and said I was an honorary Jew. So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

May you all have an easy and meaningful fast.

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 20:43:22 -0400

I volunteered today at SAVE Animal Shelter, and “socialized” with a whole bunch of adorable puppers.

When I got home tonight, Johnny sniffed me up and down like he was my dad and I just came back from following the Grateful Dead for a week.

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:47:59 -0400

Trump seems to think the best way to spend the RNC’s money going into the most contentious midterms in history is checks notes the first ever “midterm convention?”

The same week as the opening night of the NFL and the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

Who’s going to watch this?

Oh really

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 14:45:08 -0400

In another text exchange, Fetterman was dismissive of officials with Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania (CHOP) who wanted to discuss their concerns about Medicaid cuts, the Journal reported. Fetterman asks why he has to “keep” meeting with CHOP.
A staff member responds: “Because they are worried about vaccines and Medicaid cuts.”
Fetterman writes: “Well I’m not.
“I’m convinced they just want free trips to DC.”

You mean the CHOP where friends of mine had their extremely premature first child and actually got to bring him home?

You mean the CHOP where another friend of mine’s oldest child went through months of physical therapy, and that oldest child is starting their sophomore year of college this week, pain free?

That CHOP?

Fuck allllllll the way off.

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:47:34 -0400

Gloria Steinem, a potent voice of US feminism and co-founder of Ms. Magazine, dies at 92

Oh goddamn these last couple weeks.

I was about to say, who’s going to be the leaders now? It’s not like we don’t need less drive for feminism even in 2026.

And as I look around looking for the adults in the room, I hate to tell ya.

I think it’s supposed to be us.