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Y2/259 ....I'll just ramble incoherently for a bit, how's that?
I don't know what to write about tonight. I'm spent. I went from being bored at work to being overwhelmed in the space of two weeks time, thanks to cubical mate leaving crazy org. I'm kind of drowning. It's been non-stop, and I'm not sure sometimes what to do next.
Also worried about the Omicron variant interfering with my trip to Hilton Head. My brother is worrying about his daughter making it home on Friday and not getting stuck in England with COVID. She's fully vaccinated with booster (Pfizer just like me). But they've had outbreaks at her school. She gets test bi-weekly, they all do. She's at the London School of Economics, they are sending the International Students home a week earlier than scheduled. Currently under a teacher's strike - so it's not like there's school at the moment. Also, my brother isn't certain she'll get to go back next year - UK and Europe are getting dicey, apparently.
I told mother that I was worried about the Omicron variant.
She told me not to be. That there is very little information out about it.
And South Africa only has 6% of its population vaccinated. (This is a problem. My SIL (sister-in-law) was ranting about this in July. We have nitwits who refuse to get vaccinated because..."their rights" and half the world can't get vaccinated because their countries can't afford enough doses.) The other problem is that the information out there is confusing, I can see why folks are reluctant and want to wait, every few weeks the damn media tells us certain vaccines are more reliable than other vaccines. And there are so frigging many vaccines.
My family and friends (on and offline) are in a three way split between Moderna, Pfizer, and Astrezenca (if they live outside the US, Astrezenca (sp?)).
In other news... Chris Cuomo is suspended indefinitely from CNN for using his contacts, and position at CNN to strategize against the sexual abuse allegations lodged against his brother Andrew Cuomo
It's weirdly ironic. In March through roughly July of 2020, the Cuomo Brothers were America's darlings. People loved watching them spar during the Governor's live briefings. People around the world were tuning in. It was the Cuomo COVID show...
Now...almost two years later...they are brought down by a sex scandal. (I don't understand why Trump hasn't been - I know he's sexually assaulted women, maybe he has better lawyers? Or a hit squad, we don't know about?)
Oh well, Cuomo is why I'm in hell at work - so there's that. But him being taken down hasn't exactly lessened that hell any. We keep waiting at crazy workplace, but alas na da.
**
Apparently Nicolas Cage is playing Dracula opposite Nicolas Holt's Reinfeld in the film Reinfeld.
This good news is some good goddamn news, and even though you’ve probably already read the headline on this article, here it is again: Nicolas Cage is going to play Dracula. Not just some vampire, not a creep who thinks he’s becoming a vampire, but the famous vampire. Freakin’ Dracula.
Everything beyond that is superfluous, but here are the details: This news comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which says Cage will be playing Dracula in Renfield, the Universal monster movie directed by The Tomorrow War’s Chris McKay and starring Nicholas Hoult as the Count’s eponymous bug-eating lackey (as seen in Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel).
Renfield is supposed to be some kind of modern-day reimagining of the relationship between Dracula and Renfield, and it was written by Rick And Morty vet Ryan Ridley from a pitch by Robert Kirkman (the guy behind the Walking Dead comic).
AM agreed with myself and movie buddy about The Eternals. She stated that it wasn't as good as Shang-Chi, making me kind of wish I'd seen Shang-Chi in the movie theaters.
***
I don't know what I want for Xmas, or what to get anyone else. I'm at a complete and utter loss. There's stuff I need to buy myself - but I'm not asking others to buy them for me. Too expensive. I may buy some pre-wrapped things for myself and leave them here - to unwrap after Xmas. That's an idea.
I need pictures to hang on my walls - but I'm too cheap to buy any. I'm very cheap. I don't like spending money on furniture or decor.
**
Anyhow..
*
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said that the agency was “actively looking” for the new coronavirus variant but had not found a case so far. Officials said that they were expanding a surveillance program at four international airports — in New York, Atlanta, Newark and San Francisco — in an effort to identify and contain what could be the first cases of the variant in the country.
Omicron has caused widespread fears. But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, reiterated that it was still too soon to understand how dangerous the variant might be.
New test results in the Netherlands show that Omicron was in that country more than a week ago, suggesting that the variant was present there at least a week before the arrival of two flights from South Africa, and before the W.H.O. labeled Omicron a “variant of concern.”
*
Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff for Donald Trump, agreed to cooperate with the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 riot.
Meadows turned over documents and agreed to sit for a deposition, a stunning reversal for a crucial witness in the inquiry. Meadows had previously refused to cooperate with the committee, acting on a directive from Trump.
The select committee issued a subpoena for Meadows’s records and testimony in September, citing his involvement in the plans to subvert the results of the 2020 election. [And so far, according to twitter, he keeps refusing to talk about certain things...so we'll see how this goes.]
* Separately, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician, is running as a Republican for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania. [Ugh. I hate him. He's full of shit, and a charlatan. Is it possible to be a Republican and not be an asshole?]
*The Supreme Court will hear the most important abortion case in decades tomorrow: one that could undermine or overturn Roe v. Wade.
The case concerns a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, long before fetal viability. The court could overrule Roe entirely, allowing states to ban abortions at any point. But some justices may want to sustain the Mississippi law without overturning Roe outright. This would require them to discard Roe’s viability standard and replace it with another that would allow a cutoff at 15 weeks. [Sigh.]
*When Shamma Goodrich moved to New York from New Delhi in 2015, she was struck by the homelessness in Manhattan. She is now volunteering with Brooklyn Community Services’ shower bus, which helps those without reliable access to bathroom facilities. The organization is one of nine supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. [Finally, somebody worth saving, yay!]
*United Arab Emirates are one of the few ways Bedouins can sustain their traditions. And at the heart of the festival are camel beauty contests.
The ideal camel has long straight legs, a long neck, a shapely hump, pert ears, expressive eyes framed by upward-curled eyelashes, a sleek coat and elegant posture. A little jewelry also goes a long way. When Kiki Streitberger, a photographer, visited Al Dhafra in 2019, more than 24,000 camels from all over the Middle East competed for the equivalent of more than $16 million in prize money
* Tony Kushner discusses writing West Side Story Screenplay for the new film
That morning, Spielberg switched tracks, in part because “he likes to scare himself,” Kushner says — and the playwright was, to say the least, a bit startled: “I went home and I said to Mark, ‘You’re not going to believe this. He’s lost his mind. He wants to do ‘West Side Story.’”
The challenge was not only recapturing some of the power of the original Broadway show and of the 1961 movie musical — which Kushner says has “the greatest cultural impact in various ways, except for maybe ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” in cinematic history — but also to right some of their wrongs, notably with respect to casting. The film, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, earned an Oscar for Rita Moreno in the supporting role of Anita, but she was the only Puerto Rican member of the main cast: María, the lead, was played by the white actress Natalie Wood. In the decades since, even as the film has remained popular and the stage show a fixture of high school auditoriums, “West Side Story” has come to seem dated, even offensive. Last year, the Puerto Rican writer Carina del Valle Schorske published an op-ed in The New York Times with the headline, “Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die,” in which she argued that “the show’s creators didn’t know, or didn’t seem to care to know, much about their own material.”
I was aware that there was a degree of criticism among Puerto Rican thinkers and artists about the representation of Puerto Ricans in West Side Story. [But] I didn’t really feel, and I don’t feel, that the musical is racist at all,” Kushner continues. “I would never have done it if I did.” Still, he knows there’s room for improvement: He cited, in particular, the way the lyrics of the anthem “America” express a view of Puerto Rico as a place of unmitigated hardship — “you ugly island, island of tropic diseases” — one that’s based in Jewish immigrants’ (and, potentially, its creators’) own feelings about Eastern Europe, which were shaped by recent memories of poverty and pogroms.
The cast, which features the newcomers Rachel Zegler as María and David Alvarez as Bernardo, is more culturally diverse and younger than before — appropriately, since they portray teenagers who aren’t old enough, as Kushner explains, “to know what death is.” Tony and María, the Romeo and Juliet equivalents, fall in love across boundaries of communal hatred. When Tony takes the life of María’s brother Bernardo (Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet), the young couple’s fate is sealed. Kushner’s book emphasizes that tragedy partly by restoring the original Broadway order of the songs, which the 1961 film had changed. “Tony felt that ‘West Side Story’ had very valuable things to contribute to our understanding of the consequences of racism, xenophobia and poverty,” Spielberg says. “He kept saying that this is going to be more relevant now than it was in 1957. And that turned out to be the case.” And Kushner signed on, in part, because he wanted to explore not only the persistence of intergroup hatred but also the way the story is framed by gentrification and economic striving. In the late 1950s, a working-class Puerto Rican neighborhood is about to be uprooted by the cranes and bulldozers of the ruthless city planner Robert Moses, disrupting the life of the community to make way for, among other developments, the gleaming Lincoln Center arts complex.
[The trailers look amazing, and it's getting good reviews, even if Soap Twitter doesn't like the guy cast as Tony. I don't know, I'm reserving judgement. Also Soap Twitter is well, Soap Twitter. Actually Soap Twitter makes me miss the Buffy fandom. I miss arguing over whether vamps should show their breath or reflections over say whether a bridge should be dedicated to one couple - on a soap opera that religiously reuses its set pieces.]
Also worried about the Omicron variant interfering with my trip to Hilton Head. My brother is worrying about his daughter making it home on Friday and not getting stuck in England with COVID. She's fully vaccinated with booster (Pfizer just like me). But they've had outbreaks at her school. She gets test bi-weekly, they all do. She's at the London School of Economics, they are sending the International Students home a week earlier than scheduled. Currently under a teacher's strike - so it's not like there's school at the moment. Also, my brother isn't certain she'll get to go back next year - UK and Europe are getting dicey, apparently.
I told mother that I was worried about the Omicron variant.
She told me not to be. That there is very little information out about it.
And South Africa only has 6% of its population vaccinated. (This is a problem. My SIL (sister-in-law) was ranting about this in July. We have nitwits who refuse to get vaccinated because..."their rights" and half the world can't get vaccinated because their countries can't afford enough doses.) The other problem is that the information out there is confusing, I can see why folks are reluctant and want to wait, every few weeks the damn media tells us certain vaccines are more reliable than other vaccines. And there are so frigging many vaccines.
My family and friends (on and offline) are in a three way split between Moderna, Pfizer, and Astrezenca (if they live outside the US, Astrezenca (sp?)).
In other news... Chris Cuomo is suspended indefinitely from CNN for using his contacts, and position at CNN to strategize against the sexual abuse allegations lodged against his brother Andrew Cuomo
It's weirdly ironic. In March through roughly July of 2020, the Cuomo Brothers were America's darlings. People loved watching them spar during the Governor's live briefings. People around the world were tuning in. It was the Cuomo COVID show...
Now...almost two years later...they are brought down by a sex scandal. (I don't understand why Trump hasn't been - I know he's sexually assaulted women, maybe he has better lawyers? Or a hit squad, we don't know about?)
Oh well, Cuomo is why I'm in hell at work - so there's that. But him being taken down hasn't exactly lessened that hell any. We keep waiting at crazy workplace, but alas na da.
**
Apparently Nicolas Cage is playing Dracula opposite Nicolas Holt's Reinfeld in the film Reinfeld.
This good news is some good goddamn news, and even though you’ve probably already read the headline on this article, here it is again: Nicolas Cage is going to play Dracula. Not just some vampire, not a creep who thinks he’s becoming a vampire, but the famous vampire. Freakin’ Dracula.
Everything beyond that is superfluous, but here are the details: This news comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which says Cage will be playing Dracula in Renfield, the Universal monster movie directed by The Tomorrow War’s Chris McKay and starring Nicholas Hoult as the Count’s eponymous bug-eating lackey (as seen in Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel).
Renfield is supposed to be some kind of modern-day reimagining of the relationship between Dracula and Renfield, and it was written by Rick And Morty vet Ryan Ridley from a pitch by Robert Kirkman (the guy behind the Walking Dead comic).
AM agreed with myself and movie buddy about The Eternals. She stated that it wasn't as good as Shang-Chi, making me kind of wish I'd seen Shang-Chi in the movie theaters.
***
I don't know what I want for Xmas, or what to get anyone else. I'm at a complete and utter loss. There's stuff I need to buy myself - but I'm not asking others to buy them for me. Too expensive. I may buy some pre-wrapped things for myself and leave them here - to unwrap after Xmas. That's an idea.
I need pictures to hang on my walls - but I'm too cheap to buy any. I'm very cheap. I don't like spending money on furniture or decor.
**
Anyhow..
*
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said that the agency was “actively looking” for the new coronavirus variant but had not found a case so far. Officials said that they were expanding a surveillance program at four international airports — in New York, Atlanta, Newark and San Francisco — in an effort to identify and contain what could be the first cases of the variant in the country.
Omicron has caused widespread fears. But Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, reiterated that it was still too soon to understand how dangerous the variant might be.
New test results in the Netherlands show that Omicron was in that country more than a week ago, suggesting that the variant was present there at least a week before the arrival of two flights from South Africa, and before the W.H.O. labeled Omicron a “variant of concern.”
*
Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff for Donald Trump, agreed to cooperate with the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 riot.
Meadows turned over documents and agreed to sit for a deposition, a stunning reversal for a crucial witness in the inquiry. Meadows had previously refused to cooperate with the committee, acting on a directive from Trump.
The select committee issued a subpoena for Meadows’s records and testimony in September, citing his involvement in the plans to subvert the results of the 2020 election. [And so far, according to twitter, he keeps refusing to talk about certain things...so we'll see how this goes.]
* Separately, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician, is running as a Republican for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania. [Ugh. I hate him. He's full of shit, and a charlatan. Is it possible to be a Republican and not be an asshole?]
*The Supreme Court will hear the most important abortion case in decades tomorrow: one that could undermine or overturn Roe v. Wade.
The case concerns a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, long before fetal viability. The court could overrule Roe entirely, allowing states to ban abortions at any point. But some justices may want to sustain the Mississippi law without overturning Roe outright. This would require them to discard Roe’s viability standard and replace it with another that would allow a cutoff at 15 weeks. [Sigh.]
*When Shamma Goodrich moved to New York from New Delhi in 2015, she was struck by the homelessness in Manhattan. She is now volunteering with Brooklyn Community Services’ shower bus, which helps those without reliable access to bathroom facilities. The organization is one of nine supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. [Finally, somebody worth saving, yay!]
*United Arab Emirates are one of the few ways Bedouins can sustain their traditions. And at the heart of the festival are camel beauty contests.
The ideal camel has long straight legs, a long neck, a shapely hump, pert ears, expressive eyes framed by upward-curled eyelashes, a sleek coat and elegant posture. A little jewelry also goes a long way. When Kiki Streitberger, a photographer, visited Al Dhafra in 2019, more than 24,000 camels from all over the Middle East competed for the equivalent of more than $16 million in prize money
* Tony Kushner discusses writing West Side Story Screenplay for the new film
That morning, Spielberg switched tracks, in part because “he likes to scare himself,” Kushner says — and the playwright was, to say the least, a bit startled: “I went home and I said to Mark, ‘You’re not going to believe this. He’s lost his mind. He wants to do ‘West Side Story.’”
The challenge was not only recapturing some of the power of the original Broadway show and of the 1961 movie musical — which Kushner says has “the greatest cultural impact in various ways, except for maybe ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” in cinematic history — but also to right some of their wrongs, notably with respect to casting. The film, directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, earned an Oscar for Rita Moreno in the supporting role of Anita, but she was the only Puerto Rican member of the main cast: María, the lead, was played by the white actress Natalie Wood. In the decades since, even as the film has remained popular and the stage show a fixture of high school auditoriums, “West Side Story” has come to seem dated, even offensive. Last year, the Puerto Rican writer Carina del Valle Schorske published an op-ed in The New York Times with the headline, “Let ‘West Side Story’ and Its Stereotypes Die,” in which she argued that “the show’s creators didn’t know, or didn’t seem to care to know, much about their own material.”
I was aware that there was a degree of criticism among Puerto Rican thinkers and artists about the representation of Puerto Ricans in West Side Story. [But] I didn’t really feel, and I don’t feel, that the musical is racist at all,” Kushner continues. “I would never have done it if I did.” Still, he knows there’s room for improvement: He cited, in particular, the way the lyrics of the anthem “America” express a view of Puerto Rico as a place of unmitigated hardship — “you ugly island, island of tropic diseases” — one that’s based in Jewish immigrants’ (and, potentially, its creators’) own feelings about Eastern Europe, which were shaped by recent memories of poverty and pogroms.
The cast, which features the newcomers Rachel Zegler as María and David Alvarez as Bernardo, is more culturally diverse and younger than before — appropriately, since they portray teenagers who aren’t old enough, as Kushner explains, “to know what death is.” Tony and María, the Romeo and Juliet equivalents, fall in love across boundaries of communal hatred. When Tony takes the life of María’s brother Bernardo (Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet), the young couple’s fate is sealed. Kushner’s book emphasizes that tragedy partly by restoring the original Broadway order of the songs, which the 1961 film had changed. “Tony felt that ‘West Side Story’ had very valuable things to contribute to our understanding of the consequences of racism, xenophobia and poverty,” Spielberg says. “He kept saying that this is going to be more relevant now than it was in 1957. And that turned out to be the case.” And Kushner signed on, in part, because he wanted to explore not only the persistence of intergroup hatred but also the way the story is framed by gentrification and economic striving. In the late 1950s, a working-class Puerto Rican neighborhood is about to be uprooted by the cranes and bulldozers of the ruthless city planner Robert Moses, disrupting the life of the community to make way for, among other developments, the gleaming Lincoln Center arts complex.
[The trailers look amazing, and it's getting good reviews, even if Soap Twitter doesn't like the guy cast as Tony. I don't know, I'm reserving judgement. Also Soap Twitter is well, Soap Twitter. Actually Soap Twitter makes me miss the Buffy fandom. I miss arguing over whether vamps should show their breath or reflections over say whether a bridge should be dedicated to one couple - on a soap opera that religiously reuses its set pieces.]
no subject
*******
I need pictures to hang on my walls - but I'm too cheap to buy any.
I'd offered in the past to send you framed copies of any pictures of mine that you especially liked, and the offer still stands. Just ask and tell me which pix. (Scroll back through my blog as needed).
Free! (As cheap as it gets, right? Get two or three, save even more!!)
:-) :-) :-)
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I was trying to get up the gumption to print off my own and frame them - but the printer started acting up again.
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Inkjet printers (I'm assuming that's what you have, it's different for lasers) need to be "exercised" at reasonably regular intervals, or they tend to develop problems. I print off something-- even just some color images on plain paper on "fast" or "normal" modes (to save ink) at least once a week. This tends to flush out the jets and the ports on the cartridges.
If they printer sets too long, these things tend to dry up, causing erratic printing quality, and then you have to run cleaning cycles via the software interface, which uses up a boatload of ink.
If you do decide to print some of your pix? Check out these frames*, which are a favorite of mine. They're very minimalist, and also very inexpensive. No matting is required, and in fact matting won't even fit. I just make sure to print the photo with a proper amount of white space around the image to give the effect of matting.
*I like these guys, buy from them regularly now. Good prices, great service.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/
Then-- do a search for "mcs format frames"
There's a large number of different sizes available.
You've posted a number of great shots here over the last year, I think many of them would look super on your walls. If you have limited wall space, consider just rotating the pictures our occasionally.
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Now I know better, and no longer suck at yam-storage!
Thus, if you would like to elaborate about your situation re: hanging things on walls, I will be happy to be similarly helpful.
(FWIW-- the frames I mentioned are super-easy to hang. They are very light and have only a single hole on the back top or side to be hung from, so a single nail or screw will do the job.)
no subject
In recent years, the Republicans seem to be excommunicating the non-assholes, anybody with some semblance of sanity and principle. The Kool Aid has become a litmus test. It's a shame: there would be value in opposition if they were more interested in governance than obstruction and fantasy but, no.
Yeah, I got hard to buy for too. At least this year, there wasn't much to tell my family. They seem good at guessing food consumables, at least.
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I don't understand the 21st Century Republican Party at all, I barely understood the 20th, but they at least seemed sane or had some semblance of sense. The current Party is batshit crazy, and I keep wishing they'd all just leave this mortal coil.
I'm insanely hard to buy for. As are the rest of my family. We aren't living close enough, and there's e-books, audio books, and MP3 players plus none of us really use DVD players, my brother and I don't really own them. So buying DVDs, books, records, CDS - makes no sense, we have it all electronically now - and we're happy with that.
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I think Universe enjoys knocking sanctimonious hypocritical folks off their pedestals?
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If your niece is leaving this week, she should be OK. I am totally in support of the UCU strike - the employers are trying to slash pension rights and using more and more exploitative precarious contracts instead of appointing academics properly. It's a buggeration for her, however.
The UK is no dicier than it has been all along - that is, with a government I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw them.
no subject
I agree with the UCU strike - 35% cut in pension? Really? I'd go on strike. Plus all the rest.
The UK isn't much different than US actually in regards to how folks are handling the pandemic.
We're equally stupid. Although at least the NY State Government and US Federal Government are taking it seriously, but other states, not so much.