Category: Television
another perfect day
Around noon went for a walk with Paul in Everett Crowley Park. First we drove all over hell’s half acre trying to find a decent parking spot at one of the usual parks. That’s how we ended up on the garbage dump park. It’s a good place to go if YOU NEED TO PET SOME DOGGIES. I got very very tired and couldn’t walk any farther very fast. Then we got home and I nuked up some chicken vegetable rice for Paul, and then he hung around. I did his toenails (they weren’t scandalous, like the last time, but they needed to be done). Then I checked my blood pressure which was 105 over 71.
This is 30 points lower than normal. What in the actual hell is going on. I don’t actually feel good at that blood pressure – I sure don’t feel like DOING anything. Picture shown above is Morty, from the sci-fi animated modern classic Rick & Morty. It’s okay fOlks! you are not expected to watch it or like it; it has machine gun delivery of multiple concepts, not always in the best of taste (that’s one way of putting it, check that face shown above). But I love Morty because he’s grown a spine over the last seasons.
Paul long-term-loaned me John’s resonator guitar. <—- this after he realized at Peggy’s that he can’t even pull a guitar out of a case without fighting it. I have to add a string but it looks like all the bottle slides I bought attracted a guitar I can use them on. They’re the kind of guitar with a big perforated metal plate attached where the soundhole usually is.
Mike called and released himself from self-jail; he brought his unbelievably sweet new parlour guitar and played nothing but songs Paul knew, which was deft of him, because Paul has happy and enthusiastic about singing along. He also gave Paul the long anticipated tour of the Delica. Long about five I kicked Paul out (nicely) but he got to have all that social contact and stay the hell out of his own house for the afternoon, which has a crying baby in it. Ryker has a cold and he freaks out when he can’t breathe and so there is much screaming. STILL NO FUNCTIONING FREEZER AT PAUL’S PLACE!! JFC landscum, you need a blunt punt.
above-noted picture is almost 15 years old. That’s Mike and Paul at a minimalist costume party, back in the day
I had ONE Fat Tug last night ENJOY MY ABSTEMIOUSNESS.
Mike finally got to look at Suzanne’s friend Richard’s bag of photography equipment. JFC IT’S A NIKON FE an absolute classic manual camera with one of the first built in digital light meters. AND THE MANUALS for it and the lenses. Cash on the barrelhead it’s worth no less than $250, but Mike doesn’t want it because he’s not a Nikon user. I am currently considering my options, but I think I’ll advise Suzanne before taking action.
Spoke to Keith on the phone. He appears to be doin’ okay.
Currently running a 12% kudos to hit ratio on Landslide – the number’s actually going up. This never happens so I’m finding it weird.
Found out that the Seagull (the one that isn’t Smokey) was put away in E minor tuning so I noodled away on that for a while and I think I may have the core melody of some soundtrack stuff.
Mike said he used to wear a special watch with a pulse ox monitor but he said he had to stop, since it kept telling him that he was dead every night. (Thought pOp would find this amusing.) It came with his new Samsung phone. His new Samsung phone is incredible, the camera alone is goggleworthy. I don’t care, I’ll probably get a simple-phone if I ever live alone again but I’m never having a cell phone again, otherwise.
Mike says his project – his Sisyphean work project – six times now he’s tried to set up a customer service department off shore and six times an internal shift in priorities has moved it. It was in Spain, it was in the US. It was in Costa Rica. This time he just sent his luckless lead tech into the mouth of a typhoon in the Philippines. Anyway, he hopes he survives all the corporate bullcrap long enough to get laid off, with a package, (word is as a French company they’re used to making big payouts to make employees who are now surplus to requirements GO AWAY) and then he’s going to take the Delica and drive across this country and dip a toe in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. Please let me know if you want him to come visit you after he’s laid off, because he IS AWESOME. HE’S SERIOUSLY THE BEST.
Jeff keeps having interesting dreams. I imagine I dream every night, but I sure don’t remember them. I guess I keep it all for waking life.
Then, a stunning variety of products, after which we watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is a good movie to watch while impaired, and Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and James Hong are absolutely amazing in this. I believe I raved about it on my blog the first time we watched it, but it really is a trip to set a wildly inventive and ecstatic movie amid the drab exigencies of Chinese immigrant life. Mike was impressed as hell and said some variant of (with amusement), “It’s a damned good thing they’re speaking mostly Mandarin, if it was Cantonese it would be triggering.” This with respect to the ghastly way Michelle Yeoh’s character treats Stephanie Hsu’s character in the movie. THEN I FOUND OUT THAT Yeoh, Quan and Hsu are going to be a family again in a Disney action comedy tv show? WHO’S WRITING, ALLEGRA YELLS & chomps popcorn impatient-wise.
At some point Mike went home. IT WAS SO GOOD TO SEE HIM.
Worked hard on Totally Boned yesterday; couldn’t stay hydrated. Didn’t practice enough. That will change lol. I need to drink 16 oz of water RIGHT NAOW
I had another perfect day, y’all. I’ll be checking my blood pressure again for sure though. Whatever is wrong with me, it can’t kill my good mood.
Suzanne has been here
- The Enshinening has occurred, the kitchen rugs are clean again.
- Finished the Sandman. After one horrible episode in the middle it got WAY better again and I loved the last two eps for this season.
- YAY we get to watch more Shetland, because there is more.
- Having lots of insomnia.
- Steve Bannon says that ‘the Deep State may try to assassinate President Trump’
- LOL
- The documents the FBI was looking for at Mar-a-Lago had to do with American nuclear secrets.
- The internet is ablaze with the notion that it was Melania who turned him in.
- Sadly, the picture of Melania standing over Ivana’s grave is photoshopped. I almost fell for it.
- 1594 words. Suzanne got her copy of the first 6 chapters of ‘Totally Boned’. She’s four chapters in and loving it so far.
- Spoke to Mike yesterday. His 36 year old boss dropped dead while on vacation and his only remaining report’s niece just died in a brutal car crash that orphaned her 10 year old son, so abruptly Mike’s answering the phones again which he swore he would not do. Christ knows when he’ll catch a break.
- Enjoy the following anecdote.
- “Health is the finest thing for mortals the second finest is to bear noble children, third to win riches without fraud, and fourth to be young among one’s friends.” Not 100 percent sure but I think that’s Plutarch.
- I feel sad and have no reason to.
Robot Chicken and Alex Jones
- after years of saying we would, Jeff and I are finally rewatching Robot Chicken to make a goodies reel. Jeff, we need to include the danceoff, I changed my mind.
- Picture if you will a man who lies for a living. After 9/11, he fused the internet as we mostly now know it to lies about how 9/11 was a ‘false flag’ operation. Many people mostly on the right decided that there was no way 9/11 could have happened UNLESS high government officials and the standard issue global cabal had CAUSED it to happen; this man made money selling dietary supplements (which are also bunkum) to the people who took comfort in this worldview. Many millions of dollars of income later, he said that the shooting deaths of a bunch of children in a school shooting (Sandy Hook) was a false flag operation. That those kids didn’t die. Now, those kids did die, and even though the man who lies for a living knew they didn’t die, and said they didn’t die because people who are against the right to carry guns wanted to change the laws, his attitude toward the truth was not all that great, so the parents sued him for defamation.
- he lost. Total amounts owing along the lines of $50 million. Two more lawsuits in a similar vein are coming. His total net worth is in the vicinity of $150 Mil.
- perhaps he lost but he’s still very popular, as per “What does the Internet Think” website.
- and in case you think this is bullshit, I give you Lee Pace’s results from the same website, BECAUSE NO ONE IS INDIFFERENT TO LEE PACE (ALSO I DO NOT APPEAR ON THIS WEBSITE LOL I CHECKED):
- while he was losing his lawyer’s employee accidentally (OR DID SHE LOL) sent two years’ worth of text and email messages from his phone to the plaintiffs’ lawyers. The lawyers promptly asked the January 6 committee if they wanted the messages, which was truly inconvenient for the man who lies for a living.
- and his ex wife Kelly probably will be getting them too. She is – quite rightly – in a custody battle, and now his utter unfitness to have access to his children will soon be a matter of public record. She calls him “truly mentally ill” and a danger to society but what the hell else can you expect from an ex wife hunh?
- to recap, Alex Jones is a foam-flecked liar, and now he will be paying for it. It won’t stop him, and he’ll fundraise on it, but at least someone slowed him down for two seconds and between his wife, his involvement with the January 6 traitors and the Sandy Hook parents his wealth will get a shellacking.
- Watched ‘Prey’ which is a new film in the Predator franchise GODDAMN I LOVED IT. It’s set in Comanche territory in 1719. The French are the bad guys, just like life’s supposed to be (this is a family joke, not reality.)
- That dog was not trained. They had to use that dog because it’s very close to what an Indigenous dog would have looked like at the time, so holy shit the director had to put up with a lot from that dog.
- A version completely in Comanche is available.
- Watched the new Minions movie. It had a few good laughs and was about standard for the franchise.
- I’m feeling quite a bit better, but the weather’s gone hot again so the next couple of days will probably be uncomfortable.
- There’s a cat rescue outfit in Vancouver which would rather EUTHANIZE a cat that adopt it out to a transgender person. Infuriating, like it’s a REASON.
- 1207 words on new section, still going very slow also worked on fanfic ‘landslide’
- Watched the Frontline about the people living in Kharkiv for the first three months after the Russian invasion. Very scary, moving and the people there seem admirable in their resolve. The impact of the war on the elderly and disabled is just gross.
- For settler saturday consider a donation to Indigenous language revitalization.
Year of the Rabbit
It’s loathsome and very funny. I recognized Susan Wokoma as being part of the cast for Enola Holmes, which makes me happy because normally Jeff beats me to stuff like that. Alun Armstrong plays the police chief and he’s quite funny.
I’d never seen Matt Berry before, I do love his chewed off eyebrow in the show. He voices Prince Merkimer in Disenchantment. He also did the music for Year of the Rabbit and he has at least half a dozen albums.
I get Alex for a sleepover on Saturday. Which is also a housefilk.
Got hold of Mike, we’re going to host a birthday party for him. It will be the three of us drinking beer and watching movies.
challenges
Off to Paul’s this morning (later… after a negative RAT), sometime, to help him with various things; 26861 words, burritos for supper last night but they were really terrible so we don’t know whether we’re ordering from there again, and this morning hopefully we have a Dark Winds and a Westworld.
Received word from Jan that Jim’s in hospital in Victoria. He’s doing better that he was when they choppered him down there, that’s for sure, but no further details were authorized and we are ALL of course quite concerned for him. Jan’s with him. All skill to the hands of his doctors, all love and patience to him and his family.
Absolutely fucking hideous breakdown of what’s known about BA.5, the latest variant of concern.
And more.
And more. But I can’t find the link. You’re safe for now.
My mood right now is pretty dark. I’m trying to keep myself right side up with a reminder that I’m not responsible for the happiness of other people, and only responsible for controlling my own reaction to people and events.
I’m going to start treating July 4 as the International Day of Mourning for failing Democratic States, and Canada’s looking like one.
Camping trip!
Mike and I are going to go car camping next weekend, if all lines up (we’ll be self-testing before we go). So looking forward to it!!!
No progress on the writing. Very much enjoying the Burn Notice rewatch; Gabrielle Anwar is quite something as the volcanic Fiona Glenanne. And of course Bruce Campbell is just wonderful. I am now pronouncing the character of Michael Westen asexual – if one does, many of the things he does make a lot more sense.
a tiny bit of slack
Jeff has accomplished much in his consulting work recently and he’s slacking off a wee bit, just enough for us to binge the most recently available season of ‘Shetland’ (with a seventh season coming in the fall of 2022.)
Us, heard calling at the screen at Season 6 so far: (more or less)
“Jesus, Sandy, don’t you ever do a vehicle check?”
“Sandy, fChrissakes.”
“Jesus, Sandy, try to be a little more subtle about committing career suicide.”
“Sandy, do you ever call for frikkin backup??”
“Aw Tosh you’re adorable when you make that face.”
“Go, Donny!”
“What an excruciating way to die, bleugh, shudder!”
“She’s lying her ass off!”
“Textbook way to deal with someone with dementia.”
“His first emotional reaction to things is often wrong.”
“What a cow, what a total cow, she’s pure fucking evil.” <— yes I do still use gendered slurs, this one came out when I wasn’t looking.
“Duncan, you idiot, she’s winding you up.” <— yes idiot is a ableist slur. I am trying very hard to cut that one out but idiot, moron and cretin are still in rotation.
“Will you look at that view.” (every episode)
New drawings for great grandparents
Alex drew some quite interesting and scary pictures for GGma and GGpa including an absolute bloody masterpiece called ‘Remain Indoors’ which I don’t even want to sent to the great grandparents because I love it so much. He also drew this in red, black and white, his first time using a paint program on a computer:
It’s gruesome, even with the blood being in the inverted colour of teal! There’s blood in everything he draws. (Not actually, just close.)
We (Jeff and I and Alex) walked to Timmy Ho’s at 7 am and then like idiots left the donuts in front of Alex, who was both tempted and satisfied by the box. We all ate too many donuts; let’s just drop a curtain over that.
He played the 2006 game Burnout: Revenge which involves among other things crashing your car as hard as possible into people minding their own business on the expressway. He slept reasonably well although he rolls over and kicks quite a bit and woke me up a lot. He tried playing the pinball Star Trek but the display was wonky, and he definitely got a couple of tube shots on Xenon. He also played some Tetris on my laptop, his current favourite game Stick To It on his tablet, and some Plants vs Zombies on the xBox. As well as drawing and singing into a kazoo for half an hour, an endeavour which, truth be told, fucking near killed me of boredom and self-control.
We forced him to watch a Cuphead on Netflix; no comment, and to speak to his great grandma, but he was exceedingly polite about it.
At noon Katie whisked us away to Edmonds community centre, (which has zero entry access to two of the pools and the hot tub! Google what zero entry access means) where I got to hold Ryker for most of an hour (have you ever held seventeen pounds of kick, flail and squirm at arms’ length for an hour?) AND soak in the hot tub AND chase Alex around the lazy river. After my two k walk yesterday morning (it was pleasantly warm and not windy, although overcast) the additional springing, leaping, hopping, and flinging babby around during which he regarded me thoughtfully while pinching me and squirmflailed while smiling at me – all that turned my hip regions into a mess of angry meat strings and twingeing bones. Suzanne came too but I scarcely spoke to her after she arrived because Alex wanted to do something in the coldest pool AT the pool and Katie and I were most unwilling. He was once again very sweet with his little brother and Ryker makes anybody baby-positive sag to the ground with sentiment. Truly remarkable to witness. He’s a nice looking kid but he has this way of squirming and smiling that completely turns your own sensorium against you WITH BABBYINESSSSS.
Jeff found some more ‘Shetland’ that we hadn’t seen and gosh but I love that show and also Douglas Henshall is a very attractive middle aged man. Once again when you affix the number of people who die in each episode to the actual population of Shetland (just over 22k on several islands) it’s like the murder rate in ‘Hudson and Rex’; just about as bad as possible compared to the reality.
Paul’s in the US. He’s apparently gone for a week. I could go on about this but those who need to know already know and those who don’t can do nothing, so I am just going to leave it out there.
6076 words total so far; two kudos night before last. Three more this morning.
This daguerreotype of a young woman was recovered from the SS Central America, a ship that sank in 1857 with 21 tonnes of gold. Isn’t she purty? love the dress and hair.
5324
Small schlep this morning with Jeff, grabbed some coffee after. Today I’m going to cook up a big dish of chicken and rice. Story continues apace. We watched the first two eps of Only Murders in the Building and it was charming.
new story
2700 words (3192) (3516) (3945) of a new story so far. I just cannot stop writing stories about men being loving and supportive to each other; it’s not like it’s happening that much in real life so this is very powerfully fictional and massively therapeutic.
Other people’s fanfic complaint. ELICIT IS NOT ILLICIT. GAWDAM, PEOPLE.
It’s possible that graphomania is a migraine symptom. Given how weirdly distant from reality I’m feeling at the moment (sort of cotton woolley) it seems possible.
I printed off the Advanced Care Directive document / worksheet for Paul yesterday after our walk in the school park, and Katie called me last night and we had a chat and among other things she said Paul seems to be studying it. I marked my copy up quite a bit but I’m nowhere near done; I’ll talk to Jeff and the kids when I am done. Alex was burbling continuously in the background while we were talking.
Beautiful weather yesterday, perfect clear sunny almost fall day.
In the middle ages the places that maintained civil society better than others in Europe during the Great Pestilence were places where the notaries were allowed to do their jobs, and transfers of wealth happened in an orderly fashion. No comparison of course to what’s going on now.
Bunk/Wendell talks about Omar / Michael
Michael K. Williams, Omar in The Wire, dead at 54
My heart hurts. I was hoping for another couple of decades of work from this remarkable talent, and apparently the scourge of opioids has laid him in his grave. He has left a remarkable body of work.
We must love each other while we can.
Small shop & collapse
Well my brief burst of energy has imploded. I’m feeling small and tangled-up and misanthropic, but many things, including Buster’s training schedule, are exactly as they should be. But…. blueberry turnovers, for the first time, so that was tasty.
Slept from 9:30 pm to 6 am this morning! I am well rested but not energetic, what gives, body.
Heading to Victoria next week with some descendants, unless something hinders. Fingers crossed for a good visit.
This is for me mam.
Still LOVING “Wanted”, coming up on the end of the show, 3rd season.
And from the JOSUS FUKING CHRIS IT’S A PANDEMIC PEOPLE department…
OTTAWA — The Public Service Alliance of Canada president says he “will not stand for the termination” of federal public servants who refuse to get vaccinated, after Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau warned of “consequences” for those civil servants.
In an interview with CTV News, Chris Aylward said “it’s very concerning to us when national party leaders are making statements around discipline around terminations when it comes to these vaccinations. That is totally unacceptable to us.”
Aylward, who represents more than 160,000 federal public servants, stated that he supports the government’s stance that all federal public servants should be vaccinated. But he said unvaccinated employees will require accommodations to keep their jobs.
- CTV News, from website 10;08 am PST 18 Aug 2021
An Alabama doctor is tired of helping people who refuse to protect themselves and others – so he’s no longer taking appointments with anti-vaxxers.
Mobile, Ala., physician Dr. Jason Valentine posted a photo on Facebook in which he’s seen standing in front of a sign that reads “Effective Oct. 1, 2021, Dr. Valentine will no longer see patients that are not vaccinated against COVID-19.”
from
Today is the 40th anniversary of the day Paul and I went to housekeeping. I emailed him asking him if he wants to get takeout for lunch. His response was that he has appointments so we’ll do it tomorrow.
I am not going to spend a lot of time yoinking your chain about Afghanistan. The politics of exploitation and colonization stretch into pre-history and I’m not a pro. Therefore I will stick with the present.
- If you have the money or donations in kind, please give generously to Afghan refugee and aid organizations in Canada or your jurisdiction. They are more clued in to what is going on and what is needed than I am and I’d rather give money to an Afghani woman in Canada, who will most intelligently disburse what she can to current refugees, than try to give a dime to international aid organizations, given the difficulties with freight at the moment. If your hope is lively donate directly to Afghan Red Crescent
- Please, if you have the stomach for it, read this: Stonekettle’s comments about Afghanistan.
- Please consider sponsoring or assisting in sponsoring a refugee, or asking your house of worship to sponsor someone. The one time I signed sponsorship papers for an individual it was the brother in law of a co-worker. I signed up for being financially responsible for him (as did another co-worker, who awesome as they are will remain nameless here) but never had to expend cash because he was working and self supporting two months after landing here (despite his considerable health problems, a consequence of the privations he endured as a refugee).
bingeing ‘Wanted’
It’s an Australian crime thriller. It’s not perfect, but what it is is compulsively watchable.
We got a really good lot of rain today, maybe 35 mm
Expanse rewatch
I really wish I could get mOm and pOp to watch the Expanse. It has so many superior moments in sci-fi -stuff where the physics and inertia of situations are really dealt with in visually amazing and reasonably accurate ways – and politically it’s as astute and observant as any adult TV can expect to be.
I just rewatched season four for the first time. There are so many things about it I didn’t get the first time (and I read the books…) and many of the things that annoyed me about it the first time really spun me up on rewatch. Now I’m seeing the desolation of the Martian Republic after the Ring gate opens against the collapse of the American Empire, which we are now watching in real time. Can you not see senior American army logistics people selling off American tech to the highest bidder as soon as a civil war breaks out or there’s a disaster which destroys the chain of command, however briefly? I know I can. This is the pointy, gritty, dying end of the collapse. it’s horrifying. And it’s completely normal and predictable. The Russians and the Chinese do not even have to plot it! all they have to do is prepare for it. To have the suitcase of cash ready when the materials become available.
The Marco Inaros terrorist/ belter leader /character is annoying af but people like that always are. The speechifying. The visions ‘of our people’, the psychopathic willingness to sacrifice anything in its path.
450 words on ‘best roommate’.
I’m trying to keep my mood good but it’s literally minute by minute. No shrimp curry last night, they only had beef instead, but damn it was good. Really good.