★☆ Happy 250th Birthday

I haven’t been blogging in over a month, and with good reason: Life.

That aside, I think July 4th, 2026 is a good day to do some reflecting and writing about the Goings On around home and around the scenes and all that good stuff. To be honest, other than the stuff we see on the news and internet, there hasn’t been anything brand-new around me, so I’ll just yap whatever I feel like yapping in writing.

🇺🇸 What I dislike about the Fourth of July

A brief list of a few things I dislike about the Fourth of July in general:

• 🧨 Firecrackers: These are not the same as those fireworks that we see up the sky that form into fire flowers. Firecrackers are these little blasters that people buy from fireworks boosts and pop them on the streets. I actually had a childhood trauma involving fireworks back in the 🇵🇭, when my parents and I were walking home from a neighbor’s New Year’s party when some idiot threw a booming firecracker right in front of us and exploded that cost me a minor bruise on my left leg, bled so much, and it hurt. Luckily, it wasn’t a huge explosion or I would have lost a leg today. Every time I hear loud booms on the ground being played by people, it triggers me to recall that scary night. Lastly, those firecrackers always set off car alarms too when thrown at the wrong direction.
• 🗽 Being corrected that it’s simply “The Fourth of July” instead of “Independence Day”: Originally, the real 🇵🇭 Independence Day was in the Fourth of July from the U.S. right after World War II. But I guess because it coincides with the American Independence Day from Britain, the 🇵🇭 government decided to declare June 12th as its Independence Day from 🇪🇸 instead. I call it Independence Day mostly because that’s what the Fourth of July is celebrating, is it not? I remembered watching a segment from one of the late shows where they interviewed average Americans of the question: We have the Fourth of July in America. Is there a Fourth of July around the world? To my surprise, a lot of them said “No.” Obviously, it was a trick question. The same question was asked over and over again until someone finally answered “Yes.”

That’s it, really.

But from another perspective, I am a patriotic American, a naturalized citizen as a minor through my parents. It was in 1993 that my parents obtained American Citizenship and I was only fifteen back then, while my siblings were under thirteen. Good times, bad times, I felt that freedom that the Americans fought hard for. The Constitution gave its citizens the rights to be free, the rights to live in this great country, equal rights as everyone. It even gives us rights to criticize the wrongs and mistakes in the country we live in and towards the leaders serving the country.

There is a difference between being a patriot and being a nationalist. They may be interchangeable in a way, but these two terms have a lot of differences. Being patriot doesn’t mean you agree to the things the current government ¹ have done so far. I’m sure many of my fellow Americans feel the same.

Happy Independence Day. Happy Fourth. Happy 250th Birthday 🇺🇸~

⚽️ 2026 World Cup 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇲🇽

If we’re talking about the “local,” it would be the 2026 World Cup. Santa Clara, where the (temporarily named) San Francisco Bay Area Stadium ² is located, is one of the hosts. Because I don’t live that far from the stadium, there were soccer ³ fans everywhere. The local pubs and parks and malls were packed. Even the breakrooms at work all got the TVs airing the games.

We hosted the World Cup before, and that was when I graduated high school (1994). The Bay Area, more specifically, in a small college town called Stanford (Stanford Stadium), was one of the hosts. Soccer was a bit of a niche back in those days in comparison to the hype today, and non-soccer fans like me ⁴ can feel the hype and spirit. Somehow, soccer brought the entire country together, cheering for our favorite teams (🇺🇸! 🇺🇸! 🇺🇸!), and being respectable hosts to fans flying into the country.

World Cup started on one of my work’s busiest times, so I never really had a chance to keep up with the tournament. But, I was finally caught up, saw the headlines, and just enjoying the moment.

I have high hopes but at the same time, I have to be realistic. However, I would love to see the winner of this year’s World Cup to be a team that’s NOT from Europe or South America, or simply a team from a country that has never won a World Cup title before. Or even an awesome matchup– one of the host countries ⁵ against a team that has never won a World Cup title ever. I would definitely watch that one, as long as it doesn’t land on a work day.

We’re not exactly the greatest country in the world right now. But I do hope the fans who flew in any (or all) of the three host countries enjoyed their experiences there. I saw on YouTube that many die-hard soccer fans from Europe have been praising our ⁶ stadiums for being well-maintained. I don’t know how soccer stadiums look like in Europe in general, but it’s really awesome to learn and get inspired to improve things back home just like the countries we visited, you know?

Here’s to a successful 2026 World Cup. May the best team win! ⚽️

📇 General Interest Readings with Harper’s and The New Yorker

One of my favorite pasttimes other than reading fiction and mysteries is longform reading. Short stories, essays printed in magazines, speeches, journalism, criticism, commentary, podcasts, just good writing pieces in general. I have been wanting to subscribe to these magazines for ages now and I’ve never gotten around them. One of the reasons was obviously the cost of these subscriptions and I have been busy with work, working on projects, and (gasp) doomscrolling.

Lately, doomscrolling had been getting in my way of my focus on the most important things that I need to do. I needed something to distract me away from social media. I’m reaching the middle ages very soon and I still haven’t accomplished something significant. I ended up doing the following more often outside of self-studying and creative projects:

• 📚 Searching around our home mini-library for any books I haven’t read and had been sitting there for ages
• 🛒 Searching for new books at Amazon and Bookshop… bought really good ones I’ve read and ones I couldn’t start reading

During my Amazon and Bookshop search, I stumbled upon more short story anthology books. That triggered my memory about two of the magazines I’ve always wanted to subscribed: Harper’s Magazine and The New Yorker.

Back in March, I first subscribed to Harper’s because of their attractive subscription prices ⁷ and the Harper’s Index. When I got my first print issue, I got excited and couldn’t wait to do my bedtime reading. I got a whole database of back issues to read in their website that span 175 years, but sometimes, reading from the phone screen makes it a bit harder to make me fall asleep.

Around June, I started to get these promo emails from general interest magazines such as Harper’s. I received one promo mail for The New York Review of Books around early June. But I decided not to subscribe to it. I guess I needed a lower price for an intro subscription, plus I wondered if there were any similar book review magazines from a West Coast ⁸ perspective, so I decided to skip on this one. Around that time, I actually thought if The New Yorker or The Atlantic would also send me promo mails for a good introductory subscription price.

Two weeks later, I got that promo mail from The New Yorker that gave me a sweet intro deal. I waited until my next pay day to subscribe to it. As of today, July 4th, I am now a happy subscriber of The New Yorker, with plenty of unlimited reads including their treasure trove of an archive since their founding back in 1925. The New Yorker provided monthly print versions, digital versions, its own reader app, a variety of specialized newsletters, and a free stylish tote bag. All of that for a sweet intro price of $52 for one year. Sadly, that’s just the intro price. If I renew, it goes back to its original subscription price.

I’m already looking into general interest magazines based on the West Coast. I saerched and so far, I found Alta Magazine, Mother Jones Magazine, and ZYZZYVA that are closest to Harper’s and The New Yorker. I admit that I’m a bit biased towards SF Bay Area-based since I live in that region, but I’d like to read general interest articles that are wide-ranged and not just specifically to one city. ⁹

I think I’ve mentioned this before in my past posts, but I do plan on rebuilding my old domain, ninpojineous.ninja, into a stories reviews based on numerous forms of media, like novels, short story anthologies, general interest articles from magazines such as Harper’s and The New Yorker, movies, anime/manga, and even video games. I’d love to dedicate to this project, but reality doesn’t give us enough time to work on them.

One day, for sure. Definitely one day.

💭 Other Random Thoughts

✝️ The Vatican Excommunicated the bishops, clergy, and laypeople of the SSPX: I’ll probably expand on this at another post, but in general, I don’t really understand religious politics. I’m generally aware of the Second Vatican Council and its changes in comparison to the traditional Latin Masses before that event. My mom said at one point that when she was a child (1950s), all of their masses were in Latin, which made her and her siblings feel ignorant, detached, and deprived of their beliefs and closeness to the Lord. Why? Because none of them were fluent, let alone studied, in a languge that is no longer used in daily conversations. ¹⁰

Another thing about this “nationalist” group SSPX ¹¹— how is holding traditional masses in Latin considered “traditional” when historically, Jesus and the disiples did not speak Latin, but Aramaic and (probably) Greek? Wanting to bring back, or celebrate masses the pre-Vatican II way wasn’t the reason why they were being excommunicated. They were excommunicated because the SSPX heads consecreated four new bishops within their group without the consent of Pope Leo XIV. Without the permission of the Pope meant they were disrespecting (never mind disobeying) the Head of the RCC and pretty much the RCC ¹² in general, which is against Vatican Law. I don’t really know how church politics work within the RCC, so I’ll have to do some studying with this one.

It’s almost fifteen minutes till midnight, so I’m going to end the post here. My family and I aren’t really celebrating today. We were so busy with our own jobs that we didn’t even have the time to plan on how we’re going to celebrate anyway. Today was Resting Day for us.

Tomorrow would have been my parents’ Golden Wedding Anniversary. We still miss Dad every single day.

Till next time!