Categories
Writing again

And then this happened

That could be a title for every blog post, eh?

Sipping tea and sitting in sunshine with the cat on my office couch was a fabulous way to spend a Sunday morning. I spent a lot more time there than I originally intended.

My one brief peek at the internet was a mistake because along with the wildly irresponsible fear-mongering, scientifically-dubious, hand-wringing over the Omicron surge, I learned there are folks claiming that vaccinated people who minimize human contact and wear masks are doing it because we’re scared of getting sick. That we’re pathologically anxious. That we’re frightened out of our wits and suffering from a mass delusion, even.

OH FFS. That’ll teach me to open up my browser on the weekend. I MEAN. Beyond the WTAF aspect, there’s the projection part (accusing someone of having a trait you actually have.) It really torques me off that the assholes who spread disinformation to undermine public confidence in all information sources do so much better a job than the have reached a new record in Awfulness.

Keeping other people’s germs out of my face when infection rates of anything are skyrocketing is a sensible way to avoid getting sick. Always has been. I hope wearing masks during seasonal virus peaks becomes normalized tbh. And with a novel disease the reality is that eventually I will get sick, but the longer I stay uninfected and the more I can train my immune system beforehand, the better.

That isn’t delusional. That’s common sense — unless you also believe the disease itself is essentially harmless. And to believe that, you have to dismiss hundreds of sources in dozens of countries who have nothing invested in lying about its badness.

Liars who spread disinformation to erode public trust in all existing sources of information? REALLY TORQUE ME OFF. HARUMPH.

ANYway. End mini rant. That’s a big grump, but it’s my only one from today, so…yay? And it ties into the books I’m starting the new year with. One’s on reserve at the library and I’ve recommended purchase of the other. Cultish by Amanda Montell, about the language of extremism, and Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention by Johann Hari, an examination of the many ways the modern environment demolishes our ability to concentrate and learn.

In other cheerful moments today, there was snow-shoveling in the sunshine. Spouseman and I even made a tiny little maze in the snow on the patio because, hey, we have a patio! We also took Pippin out for his first walk in snow. I wasn’t sure how he would react to the cold and wet.

He loved it. I shoud’ve known.

That adventure was followed by returning some movies to the library, then coming home for a victorious supper of soup, crusty garlic bread and baked apples.

Tonight’s viewing of Howl’s Moving Castle went very well. I’d seen it before and love it. Spouseman loved it. He also looked at me afterwards and said, “I am proud of myself for being very good about not asking questions.” It isn’t typical Chekov’s gun plotting with every surprise foreshadowed and every character perfectly pigeonholed in a type. It skips merrily along and

Which is a thing I love about Mizaki storytelling.

Then I made more cookies and watched Hawkeye. Good fun. The banter, the complications, THE BROADWAY SONGS AND POSTERS ZOMG. And the scenes with Yelena Belova/Black Widow were extra super fun.

Now I am caught up on the MCU except for the new Spiderman, which I will eventually see. And The Eternals. Is that MCU? I’m not sure. But I have its release noted so I can watch when it hits streaming.

We have one more day of “winter break.” On tap: more Studio Ghibli and a movie called Encanto, which is a Disney thing. And Boba Fett. That should be interesting.

And that is that. Have a sleepy cat photo. Until later.

PS: Pssssst. I almost forgot. Books! I write ’em. You can read em. There are links. I’m not putting one in here because no one ever clicks them anyway.

Categories
Whimsy Writing again

Big Bad Movies

Whatcha watching? I’ve been doing disaster movies. It’s what I do during lulls between other series building up enough episodes that I can binge them. B-movie BAD disaster movies only, to be precise, and only ones I haven’t seen yet.

This limits things more than a reasonable viewer might expect–but many things are possible in this age of streaming.

My current theme is earthquakes, and friends, look at this cornucopia of corniness I had to choose from on Prime Video alone:

  1. San Andreas: MEGA QUAKE, not to be confused with San Andreas w/Dwayne Johnson.
  2. Earthquake (the 2004 one. Yes, it matters.)
  3. MegaFAULT and FaultLINE. Different movies.
  4. 10.5. Not 10.5:Apocalypse, which was a series.
  5. Ice Quake
  6. Magma: Volcanic Disaster. (YEs, volcaoes, but earthquakes feature prominiently in the description.)
  7. Epicenter, which ALSO has assassins & the mob!
  8. Polar Storm, because meteors make earthquakes even scarier!
  9. Geo-Disaster, with a megaquake, a supervolcano AND a massive tornado, all in Los Angeles.
  10. Destruction: Los Angeles
  11. Global Meltdown (kinda says it all, huh?)
  12. Quantum Apocalypse
  13. Nature Unleashed: Earthquake, which adds a Russian nuclear power plant to the party too.

This list doesn’t even get into the large side niche of “movies about earthquakes that accompanied the crucifixion of Jesus.”

No, I am not making that up. “Crucifixion Quake” is a real movie. So is “Risen.” There are many others I won’t bother to list because I will not be watching any of them ever. Not if I have a choice in the matter.

I watched 6 of the ones on my Earthquakes list between last Friday & Sunday. Okay, “watched” might be a stretch. To be strictly accurate, they were running on the television while I did other things, like writing, peeling fruit, and doing research on firepit accessories and sundry other topics of interest.

Which ones? MegaQuake, 10.5, Polar Storm, Magma, Ice Quake, and Nature Unleashed. Two of them were so bad they actively drove Spouseman from the room instead of accidentally sucking him into passive watching. I don’t remember which two. They were all pretty awful, and they were all awfully fun.

I’ll cruise through the rest eventually assuming they all stay free. (some movies seem to be free a while, then go pay, then go back to free? Prime is weird.) ANYway. None of them are long–evidently the filmmakers realize that even fans of cheesy corn can’t sit through more than about 88 minutes of it uncut.

This week I have a Roku from library, so I’ll be catching up on the fall releases from Hulu, HBO, & Disney/Marvel. That should be fun.

That’s all for now. Until later!

Categories
Writing again

Random Monday musings, mostly TV-related

1. Schitt’s Creek. I succumbed to curiosity at last, after I dunno how long since it seemed like all my friends were recommending it. Just in time for the series to end its regular run. It even sucked in Spouseman, which is a high compliment for any TV show, but especially one with no action and WITH lots of awkward situational humor. Now we just have a wait for the last season to post to Netflix.

2. I haven’t had much energy or focus after supper lately, so I’ve been re-watching NCIS episodes. And it has occurred to me that it isn’t a police procedural at all. Hasn’t been one for at least 5 seasons, maybe as many as 10. It’s an hour-long family sitcom dressed up in a worn-out, comfy old police procedural bathrobe.

3. Landscaping barrier cloth is horrible stuff. Maybe it’s good in high-erosion zones where there’s no soil, but laying it down over heavy clay soil is just…what a WASTE. It doesn’t stop weeds, weeds grow right on top of any mulch atop of the landscape cloth. All the cloth does is block helpful worms n other critters from traveling up into the mulch to loosen & improve the topsoil by mixing things up, and traps the poor plant roots down in solid clay away from all those nice nutirients.

I mention this mainly because I’ve spent the last three days ripping out multiple layers of landscape cloth hiding under the mulch & weeds in most of the planting beds. No wonder the soil in those beds was dead, and no wonder the few salvageable perennials were struggling so much. I’m still mostly going to be growing dirt in this yard for the next couple of years, but the horticultural foundation is,not nearly as bad as I first feared. So. Happy times in the garden.

That’s it for now. Until later!

Categories
Writing again

Inside my head right now

Recent random doings:

Read:

Ardulum Book 1. Juicy space opera goodness. I saw a recommendation by Seanan McGuire online,  and I second the recommendation and third it and give it many thumbs up.

Other than that, I’ve been reading seed catalogs, longform online articles about sunscreen & vitamin D. Also re-reading my own writing a lot in the process of revisions.

View:

Venom. Much more fun than I expected. Tom Hardy was entirely believable as a loser coping with an alien parasite. Slight letdown at the end with the alien.

 Smallfoot. Um. It could’ve been worse? I don’t feel the 90 min of my life were wasted.

First two seasons of The Good Place, and caught up with the current season.

Kitchening:

It’s “eat all the summer’s saved fruit!” season. I am perfectly willing to eat frozen blueberries as-is, raw & rinsed off, but Spouseman much prefers me to bake them into things. So. Faux cobbler gets made a lot (what’s that? I take a baking dish, pour in some rinsed frozen fruit w/a little sugar & lemon stirred in, dig out a couple of frozen apple doughnuts, enough to cover the fruit when chopped up and sprinkled on top, and bake until bubbly, browned on top, and delicious.)  I make it with sliced, peeled apples too, but mostly berries.

Gardening:

Garden things in January? In Chicagoland? WEIRD, right?  I helped with a seed bank seed-sorting project at Chicago Botanic. It was lovely. I got to play with screens, and pans, and an air column . Bergamot, penstemon, and prairie dock. My hands smelled like summer all day long, both times. Hoping I get to do that again.

 

Flashback cat pic:

Atop the chair, Bruce the Magnificent. Beneath it, Scootercat in Lurking Evil mode.

No Context WIP snippet. I post these because I like them but am uncertain whether they work, by the way.  Yes, I would like to know if they’re totally meh, or if you like them too.

Jack saw the rising column of smoke in the distance as soon as the teleport haze cleared around him. The tree-lined neighborhood street was empty, but shouts and wailing sirens were audible at a significant distance.

He bit back a snarl. The smoke meant they were going be late to the incident site no matter what they did, when every second counted.

And that’s a wrap.