Mondays...(for want of a better title)
Jun. 13th, 2022 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI forgot to mention that I saw Ms Marvel over the weekend. Or rather the first episode. Disney doesn't drop them all at once like Netflix - you have to wait. I'm tempted to let them all pile up and then watch.
Outside of how her powers manifest, and what they are - the first episode followed the comic book fairly closely. And, to be honest, the most important items from the comic were kept intact - her over-protective and traditional parents, Jersey City, her friends, and the lead character's geeky characteristics. Kamala is a Pakistani second generation immigrant, who is sixteen years of age. She fan worships Captain Marvel and the Avengers (who actually exist in her universe). In the comics - she gets her powers via the terrigen mists which activate her "inhuman" DNA. But, since Marvel has wisely chosen to dump the "inhumans" and the terrigan mist storyline - for a lot of reasons, but mainly because it bombed in a spectacular way. (Marvel Agents of Shield came up with it (yes, we can blame Joss Whedon and Jeff Loeb), and it spread like a virus through the comics - the only good thing that arose from it was Kamala aka Ms. Marvel, but how do you keep Ms. Marvel and dump the Inhuman or keep them out of the MCU television/movie verse?) So what they did was give her - powers via an amulet bracelet that her grandmother had sent her from Pakistan. This works better - since it links her to her heritage and her powers to her heritage, as opposed to wrestling with the "alien" metaphor for being an immigrant, which I found a bit clumsy in the comics any how.
That said - I liked how her powers manifest or are shown better in the comics. The effects looked a bit cheap in the series. So that needs to be tweaked a bit - maybe it will get better as we go? I know she's in the next Captain Marvel flick - The Marvels. (My gut is telling me that Disney/Marvel are intending to pull away from Brie Larson's Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel, and focus more on the other two characters, Ms. Marvel and the pilot - who both have special abilities.)
Her family is strong, but her friends aren't quite registering yet. The comics, if you've not read them, are brilliant - art wise, and writing. Perfect marriage of the two - a rare feat in comic books. I highly recommend them - they aren't your usual brand of super hero comics, since most of the focus is on Kamala's family life and friendships, with her powers as a kind of metaphor for puberty and coming of age and struggling with who she is and wants to become.
Crazy Company
Has decided we need to have training in a few more items. But it's not really training - it's more sit and watch a video with close captioning on your computer for fifteen minutes. Voila. Done. So, I now know how to safely handle mail, what internal controls are, what toxic substances to avoid, and my right to know that they exist. Also how to avoid physically threatening people or being physically threatened in the workplace.
Crazy workplace also felt the need to inform me of all of the feats of wonder that senior and executive management have accomplished - most of whom I barely know, and none that I've met in person (nor particularly want to).
Over the weekend - I saw this speech by a guy whose name I've spaced and can't begin to spell - it was on youtube and aired after one of the promos that a friend had posted in her DW journal. In it - the guy spoke about how toxic our culture has become. Decisions about our lives, work, benefits, sick leave, vacation time, pay, etc are made by people that many of us have never met nor seen. And who don't know our names or that we even exist. And more importantly do not care. The thrust of our society appears to be on materialistic gain, acquisition of awards or trophies, and a view of "achievement" or "accomplishment" - with success having a monetary value or materialistic one. Over 50% of the population has various chronic diseases - such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis, all of which are caused by or increased by stress, and anxiety. And 50% of us have mental ailments - depression or anxiety or both. We are alienated from each other, isolated, and alienated from our natural world. We are meant to be custodians or stewards of it, instead we are destroying it for our own materialistic gain.
This toxicity is killing us. It permeates everything in our culture. But we have choices, we can change things. (And then of course - he gave the information on how to get the materials to do just that.) But the gist is correct. I think. And it haunts me. I feel I have no control.
Today management asked me if I was close to awarding a project. I informed them that I was basically waiting on their management and the funding - and their guess was as good as mine. "It could be next week, tomorrow, the end of the week, next month...we really have no way of knowing."
Family
Mother keeps regaling me with stories about her mean girlfriend. She also called me at 9, so as a result I'm up later. (There's only so many hours in the day - today, I... commuted (3 hours round trip), worked (8 hours), went grocery shopping (1 hour), took a shower (15-20 minutes), called mother - who'd called me when I was getting out of the shower (45 minutes), cooked dinner and made lunch (20 minutes), eat and watched soap (2 hour includes cleaning up), started writing post and got interrupted by mother (45 minutes), finish post (30 minutes). Sigh.
Mother: She's not mean.
Me: I beg to differ - yes she is.
Mother: She's just disturbed and messed up.
ME: And lashing out at you...
Mother: Well I do have traits that turn people off -
ME: We all have traits that turn people off. We're humane not robots. (And even robots would have these traits - because they are created by idiotic humans.) What we don't do is nitpick at our friends traits. It's tactless and rude. I'm still angry at your mean friend.
I am. I had a fantasy of telling her off at my mother's funeral. (Which, depressing, and morbid, and I'm seriously ashamed of myself for having it.)
As I get older, I find I have less tolerance for this sort of crap. We should be grateful that folks are willing to put up with us, as opposed to being nit-picky about what we're putting up with.
**
Here's a picture of an impromptu concert yesterday in front of the pharmacy and fruit & veggie store (which I learned never to buy chicken from - I did and well, never buy chicken from it again).
Outside of how her powers manifest, and what they are - the first episode followed the comic book fairly closely. And, to be honest, the most important items from the comic were kept intact - her over-protective and traditional parents, Jersey City, her friends, and the lead character's geeky characteristics. Kamala is a Pakistani second generation immigrant, who is sixteen years of age. She fan worships Captain Marvel and the Avengers (who actually exist in her universe). In the comics - she gets her powers via the terrigen mists which activate her "inhuman" DNA. But, since Marvel has wisely chosen to dump the "inhumans" and the terrigan mist storyline - for a lot of reasons, but mainly because it bombed in a spectacular way. (Marvel Agents of Shield came up with it (yes, we can blame Joss Whedon and Jeff Loeb), and it spread like a virus through the comics - the only good thing that arose from it was Kamala aka Ms. Marvel, but how do you keep Ms. Marvel and dump the Inhuman or keep them out of the MCU television/movie verse?) So what they did was give her - powers via an amulet bracelet that her grandmother had sent her from Pakistan. This works better - since it links her to her heritage and her powers to her heritage, as opposed to wrestling with the "alien" metaphor for being an immigrant, which I found a bit clumsy in the comics any how.
That said - I liked how her powers manifest or are shown better in the comics. The effects looked a bit cheap in the series. So that needs to be tweaked a bit - maybe it will get better as we go? I know she's in the next Captain Marvel flick - The Marvels. (My gut is telling me that Disney/Marvel are intending to pull away from Brie Larson's Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel, and focus more on the other two characters, Ms. Marvel and the pilot - who both have special abilities.)
Her family is strong, but her friends aren't quite registering yet. The comics, if you've not read them, are brilliant - art wise, and writing. Perfect marriage of the two - a rare feat in comic books. I highly recommend them - they aren't your usual brand of super hero comics, since most of the focus is on Kamala's family life and friendships, with her powers as a kind of metaphor for puberty and coming of age and struggling with who she is and wants to become.
Crazy Company
Has decided we need to have training in a few more items. But it's not really training - it's more sit and watch a video with close captioning on your computer for fifteen minutes. Voila. Done. So, I now know how to safely handle mail, what internal controls are, what toxic substances to avoid, and my right to know that they exist. Also how to avoid physically threatening people or being physically threatened in the workplace.
Crazy workplace also felt the need to inform me of all of the feats of wonder that senior and executive management have accomplished - most of whom I barely know, and none that I've met in person (nor particularly want to).
Over the weekend - I saw this speech by a guy whose name I've spaced and can't begin to spell - it was on youtube and aired after one of the promos that a friend had posted in her DW journal. In it - the guy spoke about how toxic our culture has become. Decisions about our lives, work, benefits, sick leave, vacation time, pay, etc are made by people that many of us have never met nor seen. And who don't know our names or that we even exist. And more importantly do not care. The thrust of our society appears to be on materialistic gain, acquisition of awards or trophies, and a view of "achievement" or "accomplishment" - with success having a monetary value or materialistic one. Over 50% of the population has various chronic diseases - such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis, all of which are caused by or increased by stress, and anxiety. And 50% of us have mental ailments - depression or anxiety or both. We are alienated from each other, isolated, and alienated from our natural world. We are meant to be custodians or stewards of it, instead we are destroying it for our own materialistic gain.
This toxicity is killing us. It permeates everything in our culture. But we have choices, we can change things. (And then of course - he gave the information on how to get the materials to do just that.) But the gist is correct. I think. And it haunts me. I feel I have no control.
Today management asked me if I was close to awarding a project. I informed them that I was basically waiting on their management and the funding - and their guess was as good as mine. "It could be next week, tomorrow, the end of the week, next month...we really have no way of knowing."
Family
Mother keeps regaling me with stories about her mean girlfriend. She also called me at 9, so as a result I'm up later. (There's only so many hours in the day - today, I... commuted (3 hours round trip), worked (8 hours), went grocery shopping (1 hour), took a shower (15-20 minutes), called mother - who'd called me when I was getting out of the shower (45 minutes), cooked dinner and made lunch (20 minutes), eat and watched soap (2 hour includes cleaning up), started writing post and got interrupted by mother (45 minutes), finish post (30 minutes). Sigh.
Mother: She's not mean.
Me: I beg to differ - yes she is.
Mother: She's just disturbed and messed up.
ME: And lashing out at you...
Mother: Well I do have traits that turn people off -
ME: We all have traits that turn people off. We're humane not robots. (And even robots would have these traits - because they are created by idiotic humans.) What we don't do is nitpick at our friends traits. It's tactless and rude. I'm still angry at your mean friend.
I am. I had a fantasy of telling her off at my mother's funeral. (Which, depressing, and morbid, and I'm seriously ashamed of myself for having it.)
As I get older, I find I have less tolerance for this sort of crap. We should be grateful that folks are willing to put up with us, as opposed to being nit-picky about what we're putting up with.
**
Here's a picture of an impromptu concert yesterday in front of the pharmacy and fruit & veggie store (which I learned never to buy chicken from - I did and well, never buy chicken from it again).
no subject
Date: 2022-06-14 06:18 am (UTC)*******
Decisions about our lives, work, benefits, sick leave, vacation time, pay, etc are made by people that many of us have never met nor seen. And who don't know our names or that we even exist. And more importantly do not care. The thrust of our society appears to be on materialistic gain, acquisition of awards or trophies, and a view of "achievement" or "accomplishment" - with success having a monetary value or materialistic one.
When I look back at when I graduated from high school, adamant about not going on to college, the above was the main reason why, since my years in junior high and senior high had pretty much told me exactly that. That and the fact it would have been a serious financial burden on my parents, even if I would have worked part time while going to school. But I was perfectly content to enter the working world and repair things.
This toxicity is killing us. It permeates everything in our culture.
And it produces seemingly more human cancers with each passing decade, Trump being the most recent and most toxic one.
Do you have a link to the speaker? I'd like to check it out if you do.
*******
Could you specify which Ms. Marvel comics you were speaking of? Are these recent or older? Pretty sure my local comic shop would have or could get them, they have a pretty massive inventory both old and new. Thanks!
no subject
Date: 2022-06-14 01:07 pm (UTC)2. Ms. Marvel is relatively new - I think released around 2016 or 2017, or thereabouts. Again it's Ms. Marvel not Captain Marvel - the Kamala version not the Carol Danvers version.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-14 02:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-14 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-15 01:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-14 11:13 pm (UTC)Decisions about our lives, work, benefits, sick leave, vacation time, pay, etc are made by people that many of us have never met nor seen.
True, just like how insurance companies constantly cut corners to avoid people getting proper healthcare.