I came up with this one at 3 am when I couldn't sleep. I'm glad something good came out of that night.

I'm also glad it was still funny the next day.

Also, I know the Easter egg on the side panel is nigh-illegible, but I just couldn't bring myself to omit it once I'd thought of it. Consider it an extra for those who bother to zoom in.

 What, you think Pokémon work for free?

 

At the last Fossil Friday of 2025 a few weeks ago, we had a great presentation on dinosaurs of Canada, and Ashley and MaggieJo were talking about Albertavenator, a troodontid from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation that's only known from fragmentary fossils. They showed a very nice piece of paleoart that reconstructed it colored like a blue jay, which made me picture Albertavenator perching on a head like grey jays (sometimes called Canada jays here in the US) are notorious for doing. When I told them that, they said they wanted to see it. I wanted to see it too, so here we are.

This Albertavenator is perching on Edmontosaurus regalis, one of the largest animals at Horseshoe Canyon. Hadrosaurs probably made good perches, in all honesty.

 That's kind of weird if you think about it. Except that this is the Pokémon universe and aquatic Pokémon float in the air with no in-universe explanation, just so it's more convenient for battles and general storytelling. Oh, suspension of disbelief.

I'm really proud of that porthole, though.

 The chef NPC's dialogue here is supposed to tip you off to check the trash bins because there are some items hidden there.

But in the Pokémon universe, you have to exercise caution when dealing with Poké Ball-shaped things. They're not always Poké Balls. As the Power Plant makes abundantly clear later in the game. (Which makes me wonder if Voltorb and Electrode were created specifically so they could be used as traps in the Power Plant.)

On an almost completely unrelated note, I'm still playing through Legends: Z-A and still have mixed feelings about it. Unless the climax pulls off something completely amazing in terms of story, expect an unnecessarily long writeup featuring my thoughts on the game's story presentation and character development. I know, I know. Some game reviews put a lot of emphasis on stuff like technical specs or the multiplayer experience. When a writer plays an RPG, this is what happens. The gameplay is still great though. Also I caught a shiny Magikarp yesterday, so that was pretty amazing.

 I just keep getting ideas for these. Props to ISRO (the Indian space agency) for being the first ever national space agency to successfully reach Mars on its first attempt using its own technology! (ESA was technically the first agency to reach Mars on its first attempt, but it got Mars Express there using a Russian rocket.)

I love the idea of Indian food, but both spicy food and onions don't agree with me, which makes Indian cuisine a bit of a challenge. I usually end up just cooking my own at home. I figured out a delicious recipe for shortcut chicken tikka masala that is not at all spicy, and uses storebought rotisserie chicken because I hate working with raw meat.

But that has nothing at all to do with space.

 No offense, Youngster, but if that's your only basis for wanting to be friends with me, that's a pretty superficial friendship. 

I pretty much gave Youngster the characterization of every elementary-school-age boy I knew back when Pokémon first came out. Including my cousin

On the other hand, now that I've got an awesome niece who plays Pokémon, I just give away my rare Pokémon to her like I'm passing out candy on Halloween. But that's a privilege reserved for nieces.