Weekend Coffee Share: Fear the Walking Dead Edition

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I’m thrilled to have Luther starting up another run of blogging here. Fear the Walking Dead starts tomorrow. We’ll have something special tomorrow for that, and Luther will be back here next Saturday with a post about the premiere. Have a trailer and a link to our Walking Dead archive.

Luther recently passed a huge blogging milestone, so when you have a second, bop on over to Infinite Free Time and congratulate him for passing 8,500 WordPress followers.

And I’d tell you I had a passable, but hectic week. Classes started this week an I’m gearing up to open my office to the public on Wednesday. I have a ton of public speaking to do over the next couple of weeks, and just in general, I am going to be busy, busy, busy from now until the last week of September or so.

This is one of the times of year when I have the most difficulty maintaining the blogging, so I’ve been working frantically in my free time since Thursday trying to get far enough ahead to just keep the blog going until things settle down. I’ve learned to just do what I need to do to keep my hand in through August and September, then start the re-design work and planning for spring in October.

So if you see me around a little less over the next few weeks, rest assured: I ain’t going anywhere. Just doing the jobby thing. I’ll be back up to my usual mayhem before you know it.

And I’d tell you, if we were having coffee, that Serins has been running a blogger party across social media this week, and it’s still on through Monday. Then I’d have to finish my coffee and run, because I have stats to geek out on. I’ll discuss a recent Reddit spike here on Monday.

Don’t forget to add your coffee share post to the linkup at Part Time Monster and share it with #WeekendCoffeeShare on Twitter.

PRECAP: The Walking Dead, Season 5.5

We are eight– repeat, eight— days away from the premiere of Season 5.5 of THE WALKING DEAD.  That is not very many days!  I thought that since I haven’t actually posted here since “Coda” aired in like 1932 or something that I might put up a prediction post in advance of the big episode.

But first, can we talk about this picture a little bit?  Because it’s kind of awesome.
Reasons I like this picture:

• It took me forever to realize who everyone was, on account of they’re clean.  Order in which I recognized them: Emily Kinney (Beth, in the middle), Melissa McBride (Carol), Danai Gurira (Michonne), Lauren Cohan (Maggie), Sonequa Martin (Sasha) and Alanna Masterson (Tara). I actually spent more than a couple of seconds thinking that Alanna Masterson was Christian Serratos, who plays Rosita, and whose name is actually Christian.  That’s not a typo.
• Melissa McBride looks like she’s in the picture against her will.   I find myself really wondering what she’s doing with her right arm.
• Similarly, Alanna Masterson’s dress makes me wonder if she’s as awkward in real life as Tara is on the show.  She looks like she’s at a different event than the rest of them.
• Emily Kinney has had crazy eyes in every picture of her out of costume that I’ve ever seen.  Weirdly, Beth didn’t have crazy eyes.  I feel like that’s something that should be hard to suppress.
• Also, Emily Kinney at first glimpse looks like she’s wearing a teddy and not a formal dress.  I blinked so many times at this picture, guys.

But anyway.  There were gonna be predictions.  Now, I want to make something clear: I have watched no early promos for the back half of this season.  Nothing, or at least nothing since “Coda” aired.  That said, as you’re all aware if you’ve been reading, I read the comic books, so I sort of have advance knowledge of what’s coming through that, but we also know that the TV show changes stuff from the comics whenever they feel like it.

The point: these aren’t spoilers.  But some of these things are gonna happen.  Just maybe not in the next eight episodes or however many we have left.  Or they might happen, but not the way I’m expecting them to.  We’ll see.

So.  On to the predictions:

• The Dead List: Noah.  With Beth dead, he’s got no real connection to anyone in the group, and with two other black males in the cast and Morgan out there somewhere, Noah’s not got long to live.  Also worried about: Carol, who has been dead in the comics for a long time.

Okay, that was one prediction.  I need another picture now.
Speaking of crazy eyes.  Anyway:

• I think we can expect the group to finally head for Alexandria.  I don’t expect them to actually get there this season, but they’ll be moving that way.
• Something’s going to happen to Carl.  They won’t kill him, but various Bad Things have happened to him in the comics and I predict at least one of them will befall him before the season’s over.
• Someone will lose a hand.  I predict Daryl.  Again for the non-comics readers, Rick lost a hand to the Governor quite some time ago.  Robert Kirkman has said before that he actually really regrets making that decision, and it didn’t happen in the TV show, but I bet they use it for somebody soon anyway.
• Maggie is pregnant.  I actually hope this isn’t true, but both Maggie and Glenn have been acting funny. I don’t know that the show could possibly benefit from carting two babies around, though, and they’re not gonna do anything to Judith, so of my various predictions this is the most likely to be wrong.  Unless they knock her up and then kill her.
• Someone is going to attempt suicide.  
• Tara is going to get on my nerves.

• These two are gonna do it.  There have been rumors flying lately that Daryl is gay, rumors that Robert Kirkman directly shot down in an interview.  While I kinda hope he was lying (he also said, I believe in the same interview, that we’d be seeing other gay characters soon) if he wasn’t, I can’t see them holding off on getting Daryl and Carol together for too much longer.

One thing that I genuinely don’t know: the show burned through Terminus quickly, and also took care of the “Hunters” arc in the same three episodes.  There are major Big Bads coming, don’t get me wrong, but they all require more setup than this season has left.  I am making no prediction as to who or what the major antagonist of the second half of this season is gonna be.  I frankly don’t have a clue, even with the comics backing me up.  I suspect, much like the hospital arc and the influenza epidemic of S4, that they’ll be coming up with something on their own– and I’m all good with that.

Is it next Sunday yet?

In which the kids are fine, shut up

If you took a break for the holidays, this post was one of the highlights of the last week of December. You’ll want to read it if you missed it the first time around. And it has been Freshly Pressed! I can’t wait for the statwanking from this one. Congrats, Luther!

Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

A note, before I start: I had to do research and learn what the hell the difference is between Holland, the Netherlands and Denmark before writing this post.  So obviously I am supposed to be writing right now.

Anyway.  This picture’s making the rounds:

Here’s what you’re supposed to do: you’re supposed to look at this picture and go arr wharglebargle kids these days yarr, and be all mad.  In case you don’t recognize it, that painting on the wall back there is Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, which isn’t actually called that officially but whatever.  The idea is that these kids– who look, to my eyes, to be maybe eighth- or ninth-graders, are in the presence of Priceless! Artwork! and instead of reverently gazing upon it they are daring to look at their phones.  Horror!  Terror! Decline of society!  Wharrgarbl!  Facebook is so angry about this, guys.

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In which I give #WordPress advice

Since Sunday is my preferred day for blogwanking, I’ll just share this today. Let me add. We publish stuff here and use the stats to measure the effect. Then we figure out ways to give our readers more of what they like. Reducing my ability to measure the effect makes WordPress less valuable. I agree with Luther here.

Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

(Note: I typed this in the old editor, too.)

Dear WordPress:

Let’s talk about your new stats screen for a bit.  I put up a one-sentence post a few hours ago to confirm that other people feel the same way I do, and it’s amassed eighteen comments and twenty likes in that time, so I’m pretty sure I’m not on my own here.  I’ve been actively blogging on your site for about a year and a half, although I’ve had the account for several years longer than that, and I spend a lot of time obsessing about my stats.  An unhealthy amount of time, in fact.

You recently changed your stats page, and by a number of indications you seem to be interested in user feedback on it.  However, using your feedback form really didn’t give me a chance to explain what I actually dislike about it.  It could be…

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