To achieve the status of measles elimination, a country must have no ongoing local transmission of the disease for at least one year. It will lose that status if it has a chain of cases that spread from person to person for more than one year.

We’ve been heading in that direction, but we won’t have officially lost our measles-free status until the current outbreak has continued for a full year.

Ordering a lot for yourself doesn’t necessarily mean eating it all at once. Leftovers are good too.

That said, there was a time when I worked in a pizza place that sold by the slice. I had to predict what we’d sell 10 minutes in advance without creating too much waste or leaving customers waiting. Sometimes fat people would come in, order way too much, complain about needing to wait for more, and generally making my day worse. I realized I was starting to resent fat people and it was adding to my already miserable mental state working that shitty job. So whenever it came up I started playing baby elephant walk in my head, and I wasn’t so resentful anymore.

For deliveries, the only customers I judged were the ones who treated us like shit, lied to get free stuff, or who were terrible tippers despite clearly having the money.

Surely this will get Donny his Nobel Peace Prize.

Not enough to keep them out of the Whitehouse.

And that’s how all my friends got introduced to Babylon 5.

“I’m so sorry Sir Bearington”

“ROAR” [Shrug]

So if your character is from Alabama it could still work then.

Things that have helped me include:

• an alarm across the room that I have to get up to turn off.
• a light that turns on before that alarm
• an alarm app on my phone that can only be turned off by solving puzzles.
• having an engaging activity that I want to do ready for me and fit into my schedule
• getting up a little earlier so I have time to make a decent breakfast instead of grabbing some trash or just not eating.
• a TV set to turn itself on and set to a channel that shows stuff you can’t easily get used to (the history channel used to show random documentaries in the morning, no idea what it’s like now)
• strict discipline about never sleeping in even when I can.
• avoiding spending time in my bedroom when I’m not trying to sleep.
• setting a reminder to start getting ready for bed
• popping melatonin when that reminder goes off if I’m not already tired.
• drink water before drinking caffeine.
• stop caffeine at least 6 hours before bedtime.
• prescription medication in the morning. Not enough to replace all the other stuff, but definitely something that makes a huge difference with my sleeping disorder.

Breturn

They aren’t bad movies, just not great. Better than Lost World, but not so good that I would be lamenting the terrible sequels if it weren’t for the far superior installments.

All I’m saying is that there isn’t a hell of a lot of difference between being disappointed in the terrible sequels that came after the first movie vs the terrible sequels that came after the second movie, especially when you aren’t all that attached to the first movie.

It’s all a matter of perspective anyway. Yes, Jurassic Park never got a good sequel but then it never really needed one. It was a complete story that did not call for any kind of follow up. To me, that makes the sequels less disappointing, because I don’t expect anything more.

Aliens ends with unanswered questions and lots of obvious potential for follow up stories. Star Wars gave us an entire universe full of potential stories to tell, whether it followed directly from the original trilogy or did something new in the same world. That the potential is wasted by making terrible movies makes them so much worse to me.

Personally, I’d argue that Alien and Terminator weren’t amazing either, and it’s only Aliens and Terminator 2 that were actually great movies. They’re still franchises with one really awesome installment followed by utter trash. And honestly, I think I’d take Jurassic Park 3 and Jurassic World over anything else the Aliens franchise has produced since.

I’m not saying they are definitely worse than the JP franchise, just that they’re close enough that reasonable people could disagree.

Alien and Terminator have both had nothing but shit since their second installments.

If you look at only the movies, Star Wars is at least as bad after the original trilogy. Rise of Skywalker is bad enough to make me wonder if there was intentional sabotage going on.

But for my money, the best example of a franchise that starts strong and then turns to absolute garbage in the sequels is Highlander. The original is a classic that was never meant to have a sequel. Then it got a bunch of sequels, the majority of which have been frequently cited as among the worst movies ever made.

• Highlander 2 is a ridiculous betrayal of the original that wanted to be cyberpunk and retconned the immortals to being aliens, which just gets dumber the longer you think about it,
• Highlander 3 is an apology that erases 2, but also negates the original’s ending for no reason other than to do the exact same plot over again… poorly.
• Highlander 4 erases all the movies and instead follows the TV show, killing the hero of the first movie as a poorly realized attempt to pass the torch, butchering the lore of both the movie and the show, and just being so awful that they chose to spend their time and money making deceptive ads with stuff that was never going to be in the movie instead of finishing the movie. Seriously, they released it with unfinished effects shots and missing scenes that were vital to understanding the plot.
• And then there’s Highlander 5, which was a straight to Syfy channel movie that actually makes all the previous ones look good by comparison, Listing everything wrong with it would just be describing the entire movie.

Hell, the anime is the most faithful movie follow up, and it doesn’t have any of the characters, takes place in a post apocalyptic wasteland, and introduces God, destiny, reincarnation, ghosts, druid magic, cyborgs, giant robot spiders, etc.

Shot in the dark, they’re doing keto in the saddest way possible.

Sam Raimi Spider-man spent most of his time saving people from imminent harm and stopping armed robberies. He fought the CEO of a company that developed military technology who was killing people to hang onto his position of power and wealth. He then fought a mad scientist that spent the entire movie putting innocent people in danger, attacking Spider-man and ultimately risking the deaths of millions out of an obsession and the influence his technology had over him. In the third one… he turns into a bit of a dick for a while because he’s being partially controlled by an alien, and the theme for all three villains is revenge. At no point in the trilogy does he target anyone who is trying to make a political or social change, just people that are attacking him personally and/or putting innocent bystanders in harm’s way.

In the Amazing Spider-Man movies he pretty much just fights a guy who is trying to turn everyone into lizards, his own stalker who just happens to get electricity powers, and the rich brat that blames him for not giving him blood samples which he thinks will cure his disease (they won’t, but the reason for the refusal is still poorly defined).

MCU Spider-man gets recruited to fight half the avengers, which might play into this if the civil war was about a larger societal issue, but it wasn’t. As far as the movie presents it, the entire issue is about the rules governing the avengers themselves and the fate of Bucky. Arguably the Captain America side is presented more favorably, but that too would go against the point the comic is making because they are the ones resisting the status quo and sticking it to the man.

And in his actual movies, MCU spider-man fights a guy who is flooding the streets with high tech weapons just for the money, a con man that’s willing to kill innocent people to make himself look like a superhero, and all those villains from the previous continuities who is actually just trying to send home.

Maybe spider-man was a bad example. Surely the rest of the MCU must be pro-government propaganda, right?

Iron Man 1: Rich selfish asshole has a wake up call, realizes that harm he’s done by filling the world with weapons, immediately exits the arms industry and dedicates his company to developing peaceful technologies to help the world. Uses the technology he developed to intervene in conflicts where civilians are getting massacred and no one is willing to do anything about it. Defies the US military to do it. The villain is a greedy executive that tries to kill Tony to seize control of the company and continue building weapons.

Iron Man 2: Tony is continuing his policy of protecting people in war zones, in defiance of an angry US government. The government tries to steal his suit for the military, and works with a rival company to develop drone versions which Tony destroys.

Iron Man 3: Wouldn’t you know it, another company developing military tech is run by an evil guy and is killing innocent people.

Captain America: Literally fighting Nazis.

Captain America 2: Fighting the Nazis that have infiltrated the US government.

Captain America 3: Fighting to save his friend in defiance of a government that would rather kill him than bring him in peacefully.

Thor: Shakespeare in space, plus Thor learns humility.

Thor 2: Blowing up the universe is bad.

Thor 3: Thor literally helps start a revolution to overthrow a dictator.

Thor 4: The gods are assholes who should care more about people.

The Incredible Hulk: Science man good, military guy bad. Smashy smashy.

Ant Man: An ex con who went to jail for hacking a corrupt corporation gets recruited by a scientist who helps him take and an evil CEO of a corrupt corporation.

Alright, I’m not listing any more, there’s a million of these things, you get the idea.

Not like they were going to get any help from this administration anyway.

Plus the plans only got to the rebellion after Vader personally failed to stop a piece of physical media from escaping the airlock where he was slaughtering rebels. This happened despite him having telekinetic powers, because he chose to use them on rebel soldiers and not the obviously valuable item they were clearly trying to smuggle out at the cost of their own lives.

And it just so happens that the ship those plans got onto was his daughter’s ship. And when he “captured” her, she just happened to choose his old astromech droid and the protocol droid that he built as a kid to carry the plans off. And those droids got out in an escape pod that just slipped past a fully armed star destroyer because obviously there couldn’t be anything valuable slipping past that might warrant firing up one of their many lasers or tractor beams.

And the planet they were over? Tatooine, the ass end of nowhere, a wasteland ruled by the Hutts which has no rebel presence whatsoever, but which just happens to be Vader’s home planet. And those droids, who could have landed anywhere on that entire planet, by sheer coincidence, land right by the farm where Vader’s step brother is looking after his son. And those droids take the son and the plans to Vader’s best friend and teacher, who has not been part of the rebel alliance, and couldn’t possibly know of a secure place to pass them along.

From there, a disgraced former imperial officer with a lot of debts to pay agrees to take the group to the planet that happens to be where the death star is waiting. This happens only after the former imperial carries out the murder of a childhood associate of Vader. And they only manage to escape because the troopers who have them outnumbered and outgunned yell a warning and fire wildly, completely negating the element of surprise.

And don’t even get me started on the death star escape or the battle of Yavin. There’s just too much. How does a moon-sized planet-killing space station not have enough fighters to overwhelm a dozen x-wings and y-wings? How does a transport get the drop on an ace fighter pilot with functioning sensors, wing men, an entire goddamn space station backing him up, and oh yeah, FREAKING PSYCHIC POWERS?!

By the way, that transport? Previously registered to the man who handed control of Bespin to Vader. But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. I mean, it’s not like he blew up a death star or anything… oh wait!

While the ship is near the house, the crew reports finding an endless number of letters, tickets and citations from a homeowner’s association, all stashed in drawers, lockers and folders around the ship. The captain’s report on the incident contained three separate documents alleging violations of HOA rules regarding lawn maintenance and garbage can placement, which he claims had not been in the report when he logged it.

And yet, they are even more incompetent than that. Because even if we go along with the idea that all trade deficits are bad, that still wouldn’t explain why they would put tariffs on the countries where we already have a trade surplus.

The year after that Star Wars will be half a century old.

I would assume they’re getting the Intel already. The entire administration is comprised of Russian assets and useful idiots. Even if the info isn’t being handed to them directly, all the existing security is being ripped to shreds and the teams that would counter any threats have officially been told to ignore Russia completely.

That said, I wouldn’t put it past Trump to publicly give Intel to Russia, but only because he’s an idiot and assuming there is a low he won’t sink to his always a losing bet.