Year 2- Day 142...Doing nothing..

Kind of laid about and did little. Talked to mother for awhile - she's feeling lonely and bored, and my heart goes out to her.

The pandemic is weird. There's folks who are deeply affected and others who aren't at all. They just go about their lives the way they always have as if nothing has happened, no one is dying, and life is the same. I've picked up on that watching the Olympics.

Summer for myself? Uneventful. Pretty much the same as last year - except for the brief three day trip to upstate New York. A lot of folks from my church have moved upstate or north of the city these past two years. Fleeing the city for the suburbs or rural towns. New York is such a transitory town. People come and go from it constantly.

Irritable lately. Perhaps mildly stir-crazy. I would like to see a movie, but with cases on the rise, am uncertain if it is safe. The world feels falsely safe at the moment.

So may watch one on television instead. Trying to write...but not quite committed to it.

Not even all that sure what to say here.

I'm angry at the people who refuse to get vaccinated when millions can't get a dose, and are dying. The anti-vaxxers enrage me. I read an article today about how we should feel compassion and empathy for them. I feel disdain.

Anyhow, on this gloomy hot day - it's in the upper 80s but feels like 90 and is muggy, I am grateful for air conditioning, a lap top, electricity, enjoying my own company, and comfortable clothing. Perhaps I'll send myself flowers next week. I wish I could do something for my mother - but she's requested I not send her anything.

Me standing on the Greenwhich Time Line in England, circa 1987. I'm 20 year of age and into black and white photos. I loved that sweater - wore it to death.

(no subject)

1. Was trying to write tonight, but decided to watch Christopher Nolan's Tenet on HBO Max instead. Eh, I found it disappointing. And difficult to follow. Nolan is getting sloppy. Also the premise was kind of annoying and has been done better elsewhere (*Cough*12Monkeys*Cough*). Also Looper. And Terminator.

I don't like time travel gimmick - it's a gimmick that most writers don't understand all that well. The other one they don't understand all that well is memory less - or extraction, but I can handwave it better than time travel for some reason.

It is physically impossible to change the past, or change time. All you will do is set up a parallel time stream or split it off. You change what already happened. You can't end time. We aren't gods. Even if we could travel backwards in time, we'd only be setting up a parallel time stream, our present or the time from which we came would remain the same.

The action and characters got kind of lost in the convoluted time travel plot twists in this film. To the extent that I didn't care that much about them or the outcome.

There are some interesting special effects, but nothing spectacular. Inception was a better film.

My difficulty with Nolan is his films often rely heavily on gimmicks and effects not character to work - they are films that feature cinematic design over story or substance, which may explain why my brother likes them better than I do.

2. Got distracted by this as well.. Romance Writers Association hasn't gotten any better and still is as racist as ever, to the surprise of no one

This is via SmartBitchs, who inform us that the racism fire continues to burn. What happened? Oh they gave an award, which they renamed the Vivenne as opposed to the RITA, to be more politically correct because apparently there's issues with the name RITA, to a writer who wrote a romance that featured a hero who participated in the genocide of the Lakota Indian Tribe at Wounded Knee. It won in the "Religious/Spiritual" category. I kid you not - it was "redemptive story about a guy who participated in genocide" and hence won as a result of that.

The rationale was the spiritual/religious category "requires a redemptive arc as a genre convention. Essentially, the character can’t be redeemed by human means; only through their spiritual/religious awakening can they find redemption for their moral failings and or crimes against humanity. According to its subgenre conventions, the book in question finaled and won for this category. "

I wonder if they'd have given the award to a book about a hero in ancient roman times who killed Christians and redeemed himself? They might. There were a lot of Hollywood movies back in the 1950s about that sort of thing. Or a hero who was into burning white protestant churches, killed millions of Christians, and eventually redeemed themselves? I have feeling that wouldn't be a book they'd award anything to let alone publish. Humans are notoriously hypocritical when it comes to these types of things. "Oh, no, don't attack my religion, or my culture, but hey, I should have the right to rip apart yours freely."

3. Hmmm...“Black Widow” is dropping surprisingly early. Marvel Studios’ latest feature film is launching on all major digital platforms come August 10 and then on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD on September 14.

That's good news for the folks who rely on DVDs, I guess.