The Hogbae Holler 12: Skeptic's Sceptre

The meatless reindeer is in the oven honey! :)

Well. Wow! Here we are, at Almost Christmas. Can you believe that? I don’t know. It’s also almost 2025. I feel so much responsibility to write to you, my dear friends, on this momentous precipice. As usual, I have a lot of nothing to say, but I will keep it relatively cohesive for your sake. I am kinda in A Mood right now though so keep that in mind 🥴

2025 Predictions

Here are some things that will happen in 2025 according to The Hogbae Holler:

• Interest piqued

• Everything broken

• Even more ads

• Pain bearable

• Cassava (Manihot esculenta), tuberous edible plant of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae), comes into style

• Mousepads come back into style

• Spending increase

• Unbounded love

• Underwear impossible

• Tactics unleashed

• Juice goes out of style

• Three-ply denim

• Headlights brighter

• Trucks girthier

• Rice

• Mercury poisoning across the board

• Fish walks onto water, dumbfounding onlookers

• A last hello

• A first hello

• Sounds get weirder

As you can tell, there will be a lot of good things and also some bad things, and some things like Rice that could go either way. Just know I’ll be here for you through it all.

I Hate Adobe Acrobat

Have you ever opened a PDF and thought to yourself “Wow, I really love Adobe Acrobat — I would love to give them money for unclear benefits so that I can continue to open pdf’s for free, which I’ve been able to do for decades”?

I can’t say I ever have. But every time I open a pdf in Acrobat, I get this popup on top of what I was trying to do:

Apparently I had “Acrobat DC” at some point, which no one truly knows what it even is, and now I am cursed for eternity. I can’t put into words how little I want to pay for the ability to do basic things with pdfs, especially within Acrobat.

One way around this is to open a pdf in Chrome instead. I just tried that and got this popup:

I clicked “Go to settings” and nothing happened, but that message doesn’t pop up anymore. Anyway, just open pdfs in a web browser and it might be fine. Now onto some more interesting content.

The Penguin (2024 series)

The Penguin is one of the top, if not THE top, show on HBO right now, but it is impossible to understand what’s going on and I’m upset just thinking about it. My housemate doesn’t let me watch it when she’s around because it’s so bad, so I watch it when she’s gone (on her HBO account😈). I’ve only watched the first 4 episodes so far but here is a rundown of the things I’ve seen. I guess these count as spoilers, so don’t read this section if you don’t want to spoil yourself 😏

The main character is an only-hateable cretin who is clearly based on Tony Soprano, but walks like a penguin due to some sort of leg injury. He is a villain in the Batman universe and no one in the show likes him except a forlorn teenager (who apparently has a nice family but chooses to follow this disgusting man around). The show has many allusions to Batman lore, which I have no knowledge of or interest in, but I guess some people are so intrigued. I don’t understand if I’m supposed to have read every Batman comic to understand this show, has everyone done that?

In the first episode, the teenager meets and tries to rob The Penguin. The Penguin then almost kills him, then takes him under his wing, then teaches him how to smoke a cigar, and kills a guy in front of him and then makes the kid help dispose of the body. A few episodes later, the kid develops a stutter that I didn’t notice in the first few episodes, but it seems to become a core trait later.

In another episode, some bombs go off in the city and the city gets flooded. The Penguin doesn’t react to this, and the teenager casually mentions that his entire family got killed by the flooding, and then I think he is bound to The Penguin or something. I had to look up what happened and the internet told me that The Joker set off the bombs, which obviously was not explained in the show.

I could go on but I think you should just watch the trailer and/or the first episode. Am I gonna watch more? Probably! :)

A Song I Just Finished

I’m recording some stuff for my solo project again and just finished up this unfinished track from a year ago — I don’t think it’s interesting enough to release as a single, and it woulda been good on my first release as opposed to my next one, which will hopefully explore more stuff musically. Check it out if you liked my first EP!

The Playlist

Time for your medicine honey! Heeere comes the aiiirrplaaaannnnee✈️

Cleo’s Corner

Cleo has gotten some early holiday gifts this year and she is so excited, she is gumming them and making them so moist. She is really an expert in that particular field and I will always support her.

That’s all for this time! Also, the holidays can easily feel weird for many people, but I really hope yours feel great and that you have a good time! Truly 😚