Good afternoonish time, everyone! What are we all doing to stay sane these days? Myself, it’s the usual–reading, writing, TV, video games, wishing a plague upon my enemies. I’ve been hitting the Pratchett pretty hard lately, and I started watching Grimm, which is kind of dumb but a fun distraction.
But my number one diversion right now is video games. Specifically Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, which is just a blast if you’re into JRPGs with very deep leveling systems. I also want to put in a plug for The Outer Wilds, one of the finest video games I’ve ever played. Weighing in at ~twenty hours of nonviolent exploration and puzzles, it’s got a great story and is just a joy to experience. Think Subnautica in space, and without the monsters.
I have, lastly, been taking solace in these fine playlists of Japanese 80s music.
What about you all? I’m also accepting recommendations for some horror movies to watch. My favorite lately were Annihilation and Midsommar.
Open thread!
Hoodie
Midsommar really creeped me out, nightmares of Swedes with big wooden hammers. If that was in any way suggestive of Swedish culture, herd immunity is more understandable.
Xavier
Gotta have outdoor activities. Gardening and cycling for me.
debbie
Grimm started out so, so good…
geg6
I don’t do video games or read much sci-fi, but I am recording the Pete Souza film debuting on MSNBC tonight for my John and I to watch tomorrow evening. Tonight, we’ll be watching the 20/20 special on John Lennon on ABC. My favorite Beatle, always. And I’m making the ground pork tacos with slaw I planned to make last night but was too tired to do after a high school financial aid night Zoom went long last night. Thank heaven for the local pub across the street that provided us with delicious BBQ wings to accompany the Uncle Joe town hall.
MisterForkbeard
I literally just re-downloaded this on my Switch. It’s a good game, though I’ve never finished it. The remaster lets you fast-forward a bit, which helps a lot.
I’m going to go ahead and recommend Disco Elysium again as one of my favorite games. Just super good, especially after the first hour or two when you start to acclimatize a bit. This is a game where your thoughts and skills become characters. You’re a cop solving a mystery who’s not entirely in his right mind, and your skills will actually talk to you mid-conversation. Your terrible tie is also a character, and it’s an open question as to whether your character really is nuts or whether he’s managed to tap into some kind of larger awareness.
Last recommendation: Pendragon. Which is a sort of narrative rogue-like where you choose a character and have to reach Arthur before he fights Mordred. Beginning characters include Lancelot and Guinevere, and you unlock quite a bit more by playing. It’s quite good – battles are simplistic but fun, and the conversational system is very tense. This is an excellent review: https://kotaku.com/pendragon-is-a-strategy-game-where-conversations-are-as-1845134706
zzyzx
We took a few days off this week and rented an cabin about 50 miles ENE of Seattle to get a break. Hours before we were supposed to leave, a massive storm rolled through and caused a power outage. They didn’t get it back until checkout time. So instead, we went on a hike one day and did a corn maze on the other.
It was nice to do something that actually counts as “fun.” This weekend though? No idea. Probably back to sitting at home with the cats.
different-church-lady
Hi. I feel bleak. Allow me to screw up your diversion thread with my expressions of how I can’t find any relief in diversions anymore.
nwerner
For video games, I thoroughly enjoyed two titles on the Xbox: Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisp. Beautiful games with kind of esoteric story lines that do a good job of ramping up reflex/response skills. I haven’t been a gamer in years and was able to enjoy these games over the course of 3 or 4 months of intermittent playing with my 9 year old rooting me on in the background. Highly recommended.
UncleEbeneezer
Lovecraft Country is really great and kinda scary at times.
We are finally watching Haunting of Hill House and find it enjoyable though the acting is way over the top at times.
We recently watched Love Witch, which is a pretty fun spoof of trashy, pulp horror movies from the 60’s-70’s.
Omnes Omnibus
I mentioned the You Tube channel “Meanwhile in Finland” in a thread below. It is worth a look.
MattF
Extremely dorkish, but I’m spending a lot of time playing Spelling Bee. Totally addictive.
piratedan
on the J-Pop 80’s vibe, I would recommend The Sound of Music by the Pizzicato Five, but as always ymmv…
MisterForkbeard
@different-church-lady: If you’re there (and I’ve been there in the past few months), just concentrate on the fact that we’re less than 3 weeks out from throwing the asshole out. And then space out for awhile, after you vote.
Take care of yourself.
Delk
I’ve been hopping around the house with this mashup of 500 hits from the 80’s in chronological order. It’s the soundtrack to my twenties. Let’s Dance (That’s in the mix somewhere. See how many you can get.
chopper
i’ve been constantly working on the house for the last like 3 years. it sucks from a physical standpoint (and i’m getting sick to death of it) but boy is it a nice distraction from the firehose of bullshit that is life these days.
Roger Moore
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Boussinesque
You reminded me that I still need to finish my second run through of The Zodiac Age. I’ve been playing a lot of Genshin Impact, and now that the second expansion has dropped, I’m getting back into Nioh 2. If you’re into JRPGs, I’d put in a plug for Trails of Cold Steel—the fourth game is coming out in a couple weeks, and they’re all available on the PS4. First two games are one arc, and are remasters/QOL upgrades from the original previous-gen/portable versions, while parts 3 and 4 form a second complete arc set a couple years after the first, featuring a number of the same characters. It’s an interesting fantasy-slash-industrial/information revolution setting.
Mo Salad
It looks like Amir gets a reasonable viewing time for the Merseyside Derby tomorrow. Mid-afternoon as opposed to the middle of the night for the mid-week Champions’ League matches. I’m still recovering from an all-nighter to close out tax season yesterday. 7:30 am tomorrow for me will be tough.
YNWA.
ArchTeryx
@Hoodie: Midsommar was creepy as hell but it involved a cult. Cross the Amish with ancient Norse culture and add a really heady dose of human sacrifice in some of the worst ways you can imagine, and you get the Hårga. That they are unfailingly polite doesn’t make them an ounce less creepy. Or the kids any less stupid, in finest horror movie tradition. (The ättestupa [DON’T ASK] should have sent every one of them running for their lives, but noooope…)
But they’re about as representative of Swedish culture as the pig-#$*#ers from Deliverance are representative of the culture of Atlanta. They don’t even wear traditional Swedish costumes – they wear stuff from rural Ukraine.
Phylllis
@geg6: We’re dvr’ing that as well; will probably stream the Alex Gibney Totally Under Control documentary at some point this weekend too. And hoping for a Braves win! tonigh
GregMulka
Dragged my lazy self out of bed this morning to go find fog over water and I did!
Taking the family to Elephant Rocks state park tomorrow. Also I’m playing Star Wars Squadrons because I’ve been waiting for this game for twenty years.
Omnes Omnibus
So you’re saying they nailed it?
schrodingers_cat
@Xavier: Gardening and long walks for me. My reading has suffered though. On the bright side I am writing more and have met several interesting folks on Twitter.
Litlebritdifrnt
Film wise I recommend The Sentinel from 1977. Brilliantly creepy.
Bobby Thomson
The Talos Principle is a good meta-game with puzzles.
ArchTeryx
@Omnes Omnibus: Considering exactly what’s being done about COVID – nothing – in what is supposedly a liberal democracy over there, sometimes I wonder.
I KNOW we’re being run by a death cult. One with none of the class — or grisly creativity – of the Hårga.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Litlebritdifrnt: ETA This weekend DH and I will be installing some solar landscape lights and I will be planting my pansies in the containers out front.
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Al Z.
I got a free trial of Shudder to check out the zoom Horror thriller “Host” which was good – short and savage. Not knowing what else to watch, I ended up watching a recent Nic Cage movie, “Mandy”. Oh. My. God. That movie was clearly made by and designed to be viewed by people in a very altered state.
narya
@different-church-lady: I hear you. Exercise, for me, is absolutely critical; even the days when I haven’t slept well, I drag my sorry butt out for a run, and it seems to burn off some of the negativity. So, it’s not that it’s diverting me, really, but more that it’s helping me get rid of the crud. YMMV, of course!
I VOTED TODAY. Yes, I added myself to the thread. But I want to add here, too, that I found myself with a little tear in my eye after I left the voting place.
Then I went to two different stores, so, even though I was wearing an N95 mask from the time I left the house, and brought hand sanitizer with me, and have washed my hands several times already, I am stressed. Having a zoom call w two old college friends today, and then fish for dinner.
different-church-lady
@MisterForkbeard: The closer we get to the date the more spooked I get. Like, somehow reality is going to get denied again.
I desperately want this motherfucker’s psychological hold over the country to be broken. But it feels very binary: either that’s going to broken, or I’m going to be broken. There’s no middle ground anymore.
Amir Khalid
Science videos on YouTube, written and presented by actual scientists, are educational (duh) and really entertaining. Right now I’m watching a PBS Space Time video, hosted by Aussie astrophysicist Matt O’Dowd.
The Thin Black Duke
I strongly recommend Enola Holmes. Billie Bobby Brown is delightful and Henry Cavill is a better Sherlock Holmes than Robert Downey, Jr. And it’s comforting to see people of color in London.
Kristine
I liked the film Annihilation. More on the nose than the novel, but some really good monsters. That bear….
I’m looking forward to WandaVision in iirc December–Scarlet Witch and Vision were my fave of all the Avenger relationships
Daily walks for sanity and movement. Fall weather is settling and Gaby girl is so happy that it’s cooling off. Writing again. Planning to give NaNoWriMo a try–I’ve never completed it, but I have a deadline this time so that may spur me on. Also cooking, baking, rewatching the same movies over and over because the news is All New All The Time enough. I need a little stability.
Robert Sneddon
Audio books — Horrorbabble on Youtube has a lot of old (and out of copyright, honest) horror stories, well-made spoken-word productions of the works of H. P. Lovecraft and many Mythos authors from the 1920s and 1930s as well as stories by William Hope Hodgson, Robert Bloch, Robert W. Chambers etc.
Kristine
@The Thin Black Duke: I need to check that out. I love Millie Bobby Brown–she was amazing in The Intruders–and have heard many good things.
Major Major Major Major
@ArchTeryx:
In the kids’ defense they spend the whole movie just off their faces on shrooms.
Phylllis
@The Thin Black Duke: I started that last weekend. Will definitely finish watching it Sunday afternoon.
Delk
@The Thin Black Duke: I watched it over two days last week. It’s fun,cute, and light hearted. A nice and needed break.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady:
I know what you mean.
Word puzzles are my drug, followed by Inspector Morse, Perry Mason (classic), Inspector Lewis, the Vicar of Dibley, etc. I used to play the piano a lot but find I can’t now.
But the palliative effect wears off much faster now.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady:
Again, I know what you mean. We just voted. Usually I feel euphoric. Now I just feel dread and futility.
R-Jud
@nwerner: The Child LOVES the Ori games. We listen to the soundtrack in the morning as we get ready for school.
@MMMM, up top: I have been playing FFVIII on the switch. The Child looked over my shoulder and said, “Oh, it’s like a game from the museum of games!”
ArchTeryx
@Major Major Major Major: They only did the shrooms early on, and the utterly bad trip that resulted should have been a warning right then and right there, though not the sort of SCREAMING SIREN that the ättestupa was.
Brachiator
I have been caught up in work related projects with tight deadlines and trying to read up on California ballot propositions and local measures. I thought I had more time, but somehow everything is creeping up on me. There’s your horror story.
I have been watching some episodes of the British police procedural Midsomer Murders when I have some down time. A little clunky but somehow diverting.
During breakfast and lunch breaks I read “The Rise and Fall of the Second Largest Empire in History,” by Thomas Craughwell. A not very deep but well written overview of the rise and decline of Genghis Khan.
We are also having a mini California heat wave. No fun at all.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Thin Black Duke: @Delk: Co-sign. Millie Bobbie Brown is great in it. Watching her in it also convinced me to take my niece’s advice and watch Stranger Things. Now I can point out that the nerd kids in it would have been about the age her dad (my younger brother) was that time.
The Thin Black Duke
Alita: Battle Angel is a smart dumb fun movie, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Robert Rodriguez directs, and James Cameron (who thankfully forgets to be a pretentious gasbag for once) delivers a fine screenplay.
GregMulka
@Amir Khalid:
All the PBS Digital Studios videos are excellent. Spacetime is my favorite. Check out Monstrum to go with the season.
JoyceH
I’m working on getting back into shape. Walking and doing “chair exercise for seniors” videos. And trying to get my house back into tolerable shape – I still have a whole room crammed with boxes from my sister’s estate to sort through. Haven’t been writing and not much reading.
Streaming a lot of television. I watched all of Grimm. Now almost finished with The Expanse. And I’m knitting again so that feels like a return to normality.
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: @zhena gogolia: Less than three weeks. Just hold on.
Then the work starts.
Major Major Major Major
@ArchTeryx:
Plants were breathing for like half the movie. Whatever they’d been feeding them, it wasn’t exactly pot. Lead couple was tripping balls for the whole climax.
Mo Salad
Finished THE BOYS last weekend. Now getting caught up on my Schitt.
Watched the penultimate episode fresh two weeks ago late night Thursday before bed and was then greeted with the news that the Trumps had COVID right after the episode.
That was not a good sleeping night.
Mo Salad
@Al Z.: Be careful. The Google Play reviews say that it is almost impossible to cancel your credit card subscription after your free trial.
WereBear
I have never had so many books abandoned half-read, or less, as my brain ping-pongs between inadequate sleep, constant outrages, and not being able to sit at a picnic table for a treat as the temperature plunges.
However, I’m pulling it together lately as I can at least finish some thrillers and mountaineering works. Nothing too complicated.
ALso rewatching Perry Mason. So much going on we enjoy it just as much the second time.
Baud
@GregMulka:
Agreed. I also like Eons, which covers natural history.
ArchTeryx
@Major Major Major Major: You’re right, and the fact that they were tripping balls was about the only thing that made the climax watchable. That was bar none one of the nastiest things I’ve seen on film and I’m a big fan of John Carpenter’s The Thing!
narya
@Bobby Thomson: I have a MacBook, and it appears there are Mac versions. Do I need anything other than the actual laptop? I’m not a gamer, but do like puzzle-solving, i.e., I don’t have any of the game consoles or anything. I’m probably not even calling the Stuff by its correct names.
narya
@zhena gogolia: And the dishy Lieutenant Hathaway . . .
LuciaMia
Keeping an eye out for my favorite (suitable for October) movies.:
The Haunting
Curse of the Demon
Lost Boys
The Devil Rides Out.
***********************
Just finished this weeks installment of Great British Baking Show and am seriously thinking of making chocolate babka.
thruppence
A pair of fun and not too horrific horror movies from 1997 have been showing up on some of the streaming services: The Relic and Mimic (one of Guillermo del Toro’s early movies) . Good atmospherics, monster effects and dialogue. I like a good monster movie, but movies of people being monstrous to each other, not so much. Get too much of that in real life.
JoyceH
Oh, and my Instant Pot arrived. Haven’t tried it yet and finding it kind of intimidating. I think this is a carry-over from my childhood – Mom had a pressure cooker and we were sternly advised to stay away from it, it’s DANGEROUS. And I can’t really remember any particular dishes she did in the pressure cooker. If I only had some favorite memory, I could press on motivated by ‘I must learn this and be able to recreate Mom’s delicious Whatever’, but no. I’ll get some small roasts and chicken and what-not on my next grocery run and try to overcome my fears.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@The Thin Black Duke: I’ll second that. And then when I found out she was Eleven from Stranger Things and was a co-producer on Holmes, it just sealed the deal making me a fan. Remarkable young lady, still only 16.
Major Major Major Major
@ArchTeryx: I absolutely adored the breathing plants and stuff—accurate visuals, and brilliant as a subtle clue that something was a little hinky upstairs.
Sloane Ranger
Making a dash into town tomorrow to go to the hairdresser. Masks and temperature check mandatory. That’s the most exciting thing I’ll have done all week.
Otherwise, I’m doing a Future Learn course Peterloo to the Pankhurst’s about political reform in Britain, doing my duties as Secretary to my U3A group and writing a fan fiction story based on the Father Brown series.
Watching GBBO and Who Do You Think You Are and playing quiz and word games online.
thruppence
Also Skeleton Key. Great Halloween movie.
RobertB
@Mo Salad:
Playing a little bit of everything.
Wingspan online – Great online version of the good-to-great board game. AI kind of sucks, but if you have the internet you can find other players quickly.
Star Wars: Squadrons – Team or solo dogfights IN SPACE! My reflexes ain’t what they used to be, and I haven’t gotten good enough solo yet to mess up other real human beings’ games.
Civ VI – I think I like it better than Civ V.
Watching more TV than I should. My wife doesn’t want to think about the TV too hard these days, so she’s watching Game of Thrones again. I’m going along for the ride.
burnspbesq
Merseyside Derby (Everton v. Liverpool) tomorrow morning, followed by recording my assignments for my Berklee online courses. Taking Blues Guitar and Basic Improvisation this semester, and trying to resist the temptation to buy more guitars.
‘Watching the Texas early voting totals climb is a fun exercise.
JoyceH
Also (feeling chatty today) this weekend I’m going to color my hair. For the past several years my look has been hot pink and teal streaks, but I haven’t had my hair streaked since the pandemic began, so I’m back to a white baseline. I’ll run into the salon for a quick haircut, takes 15 minutes and masked and plastic sheeting between stations, but I’m not going to stay in there long enough to get my streaks done. I think streaks require a certain level of expertise, so I’m going to go for an overall pale pink, semi-permanent.
RSA
@narya:
Same! Since June my goal has been to do a short run on weekday mornings before work. (That’s gotten a little harder with the later sunrise and the colder weather; I may have to switch to evenings.) I usually feel less stressed after a run, and even if I don’t, I know that skipping it would be worse.
MomSense
Sane is a stretch. I’ve been doing a lot of knitting and watching really stupid movies. Think Netflix equivalent of hallmark. That’s about all I can handle.
Major Major Major Major
@JoyceH: oh fun!
burnspbesq
@Delk:
My 80s soundtrack would be mostly LA punk and roots rock (X, the Blasters, the Plimsouls, and Los Lobos), with a little Rodney Crowell, John Hiatt, Richard Thompson and Branford Marsalis thrown in for a change of pace.
zhena gogolia
@narya:
Too bad he’s a wingnut!
nwerner
@R-Jud: There’s a soundtrack? I am on the far side of 45 and struck by the emotional investment I’ve had in the game–I wanted to get a little Ori figure for my desk and that’s just absurd (more absurd is that they apparently don’t exist). I wasn’t expecting to meet the final boss in Will of the Wisp with only ~80% of the world explored…and at that point, you gotta go through with it but I’ve been nursing post-peak sads ever since.
burnspbesq
@Amir Khalid:
ready for tomorrow?
narya
@zhena gogolia: Oh noooooo! I really liked the Lewis series more than Morse, in many ways.
JoyceH
We played the Worlds of Warcraft soundtrack at my sister’s funeral.
@nwerner:
Delk
@burnspbesq: oh i have a huge list too. The mashup I posted is more of my gay bar hopping, lol. Still is a great listen though. New Order mixed with Bonnie Taylor and Yes sounds pretty cool.
eta fixed first sentence
narya
@RSA: I started running in 2017, I think; I signed up for beer-related 5Ks, and then kept signing up in 2018, 19, and this year. Since March, I’ve been only doing them virtually (I’d already paid for the year, but am happy to support the group), but I have also increased my daily mileage, which has likely been one of the things that has helped me get rid of 18 pounds (and counting)–or, as I like to tell people, nearly four sacks of flour. I, too, am struggling a little with the late sunrise, though WFH makes it do-able. I’m not sure what I’ll do if the winter turns icy; I don’t mind cold, but will not risk ice. (I’m over 60, so . . .) Might finally use that rowing machine after all . . .
Kent
Watched it with my anime fan kids and liked it. I’m really hoping there is some kind of a sequel. It’s set up perfectly for one.
zhena gogolia
@narya:
Hate to break it to you. I happened across some of his tweets.
In January 2020, Fox attracted media attention for stating that the depiction of a Sikh soldier in the film 1917 was “forced diversity”.[23] Appearing as a panellist on the BBC’s political debate programme Question Time, he said that Meghan Markle was not a victim of racism and described as racist an individual in the audience who had called him a “white privileged male”.[24][25] He also stated that he would not date “woke” women or women below the age of 35 because their views were too politically correct.[26] In March 2020, the actors’ union, Equity, which had criticised Fox for his views, withdrew the criticism and apologised for it.[25]
In September 2020, Fox said that he had been “cancelled” by fellow actor Rebecca Front, because she had blocked him on Twitter over his use of the All Lives Matter counter-slogan in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Fox later apologised for revealing this through tweeting a private text conversation between the pair, in which Front had explained her reasons for blocking him.[27][28]
In September 2020 Fox was reported to have attracted funding for a new political party, provisionally called Reclaim.[29][30]
In October 2020, Fox announced he would be boycotting Sainsbury‘s for supporting Black History Month and asking others to boycott their shops.[31] Feeling “falsely smeared as a racist”, he replied to a number of tweets reacting to that announcement by calling their authors “paedophiles.” Two of those people, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK contestant Crystal and Simon Blake, deputy chair of the LGBT rights charity Stonewall, both gay men, later announced they would be suing Fox for defamation. Fox has deleted the tweets and explained in further tweets that he wanted to teach people a lesson in calling people something which they are not.[32]
Block quote fail, sorry, can’t fix it.
Splitting Image
Playing some City of Heroes the past few months. I recreated all of my characters from the original game and have been pushing one of them through all of the hero-side story arcs. I’m finishing up the level 50 content and am nearly ready to move on to the Incarnate stories, a lot of which I didn’t get to touch back when the game was live.
I want to do some more reading this winter. I have two Discworld books left on the shelf that I haven’t read yet, and a bunch of other stuff that I want to get through.
Delk
@burnspbesq: Just Another Band from East LA is a great compilation. Their version of What’s Going On is awesome.
narya
@zhena gogolia: Lordy, that’s heinous. Well, I’ve watched the full series, so I don’t have to see him any more. I finally started watching Schitt’s Creek and it makes me laugh out loud, and I”m rewatching the first three seasons of The Good Place in preparation for watching the final season for the first time; they both make me feel a lot better, I have to say
ETA: I’ve also re-read the Dresden files, and just started the most recent one; I’m trying to read slowly to make it last.
Emma from FL
I started a project I have been thinking about for a while. I have read a number of books written by black women, but as part of achieving a cultural context. But I don’t really read that way. I love science fiction, fantasy, detective stories, and non-fiction essays. I have read Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin, but surely there were others. So I went looking, specifically in those areas. What I found was an embarrassment of riches. Not only African American but hyphenated British of all kinds, and not hyphenated at all. Africa produces amazing women writers and I was ignorant of it all, unless it was a rare prize winner. The project is to read a book a month and write an essay of what I find and how it touches my life.
On my birthday (October 7th) I began the first one. Alice Walker’s essay collection In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. My mind is full of…. bees. I hope they translate into actual readable thoughts.
zhena gogolia
@narya: Well, I still enjoy his acting. I have a feeling most actors aren’t really people you want to hang out with anyway.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I’m trying to catch up on the backlog of stuff I’ve bought over the years, fiction and non-fiction, that I never read. I just don’t seem to have much attention span for reading for some reason and I’m trying to work on that.
Language study has always been a hobby so I’m doing some of that.
Way too much time on YouTube.
There’s a bunch of movies I’ve meant to watch but I’m not spending a huge amount of time on that. Two Netflix series on my to-do list: Stranger Things (watched 1 season + 1 episode so far) and Dark (German series, recommended by folks in a German class I’m taking). There was a Spanish one I always meant to watch, El Ministerio del Tiempo, but for some reason it seems to have been pulled from Netflix and everywhere else.
MJS
Horror movie recommendation – Hereditary. Absolutely terrifying, and will stick with you for days, if not weeks.
narya
I’ve also been fibrillating about whether to do an online class at a local arts center. They’re doing an advanced embroidery class–I actually already am quite advanced, but haven’t done a project in a very very very long time, and was thinking that it might spur me to Create. I don’t want Stuff, so I thought I could auction off anything worthwhile for a charity or something. But I keep fibrillating.
debbie
@LuciaMia:
The original b&w version?
debbie
@Emma from FL:
Jessmyn Ward?
RobertB
@MJS: My daughter talked me into watching Hereditary, and we started way late. I was about 15-20 minutes into it, and I told her I had to call it a night. She said, “Just watch a few more minutes.” You know what happened next in the movie. I was damn sure awake then. One of the best horror movies I’ve seen in a long time.
piratedan
@Delk: agreed, I adore how they blend norteno music and rock and roll. Still believe Let’s Say Goodnight and Go Home is their best.. Burnsie’s calling out of The Blasters and the Plimsouls was one of those “placeholders in time” thing for me as I was moving from the Mid-Atlantic scene (dB’s, Pylon, B-52’s, 4 out of 5 doctors) to Az and we’d get a chance to see the LA bands trying to make and expand their audiences…
Still have a hard time trying to figure out which is my fave Plimsouls tune, Zero Hour or Everyday Things… but there are so many solid tunes from them and the raw energy of The Blasters, it was a great time for people who were finding a new vibe..
david
“Fresca” is trending on twitter, and Cole may be the happiest man on the planet RN.
raven
GO DAWGS!
James E Powell
Tom Petty’s Wildflowers & All the Rest, released today, will be playing all weekend. I will probably also re-listen to Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast with Rick Rubin discussing the making of Wildflowers.
My summer project was putting a pedalboard together. Playing around with the array is a constant source of joy & amusement. Thing is, for most of my guitar life, I never had more than three effects pedals. Now I have 10 and the number of possible combinations is staggering.
Basketball is over, the Dodgers are going down, and I just don’t care about football like I used to, so sports is kind of over for now.
I saw the trailer for the new Dune movie, so I started re-reading the book. I only read it once in the late 70s and I remembered the basic story line but forgot quite a bit. I saw this week that the movie’s been delayed till October 2021. I never read any but the first book in the series and wonder if I should read more.
LuciaMia
Black History Month has suddenly come as a surprise to him? It started here in 1970. In Great Britain, 1987.
Kristine
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: If you’re a Millie BB fan, I strongly suggest The Intruders, assuming you can find it. It ran for a single season on BBC America back in 2014, and was Millie Bobby Brown’s debut. Only 10 yo, and amazing.
Overall, I thought it was a decent series, but it didn’t catch on. Based on the novel by Michael Marshall Smith. One line synopsis: “A secret society is devoted to chasing immortality by seeking refuge in the bodies of others.”
JustRuss
Outer Wilds looks pretty awesome, will give it a go.
thruppence
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: There’s a Spanish language trilogy of psychological mystery movies that you’d probably like. The Baztan Trilogy: The Invisible Guardian, The Legacy of the Bones, and Offering to the Storm. Set in the Basque region of Spain with a strong since of place,
debbie
@James E Powell:
They got less better, book by book.
LuciaMia
@debbie:
Absolutely. Run as fast as you can from that Liam Neesom remake.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
As a couple we have been watching those damned baking shows. “Damned” because they’re addictive. We never got hooked on any kind of reality show before. We were watching an episode nearly every day. Went through all the British ones, then I found a repository of spinoffs and we went through Irish, Australian, and Canadian.
The original GBBO is back, but only one episode a week. So to feed our addiction we just started watching the French version, Le Meilleur Patissier (The Best Baker), which you can find on YouTube. Neither one of us is fluent, but we have enough French to not get too lost. Between the language barrier and the slower pace (each episode is 2 hours long) it takes us a few days to consume one episode.
Amir Khalid
@burnspbesq:
As ready as I’ll ever be. It looks like we’ll have Mané and Thiago back from their Covid-19 break so I’m optimistic.
zhena gogolia
Don’t know if this is a respite thread, but this is a very powerful ad:
JustRuss
@JoyceH: Instant pots are pretty great, mine has yet to explode. Tons of great, easy recipes online. DO IT!
Brachiator
@The Thin Black Duke:
I have a hard time imagining Cavill as Holmes. Did he lose weight or something?
I know that Cavill would like to be considered to be the next Bond. But he is too big, too overpowering.
Downey Jr was OK as Holmes, but not in the Top 10. I listened to a dumb movies and pop culture podcast that mentioned that Downey and his wife are interested in developing a Holmes Cinematic universe with movies or streaming video focusing on other characters in the Holmes canon.
What made this segment stupid was that the person talking about the story thought this was a dumb idea, but then admitted that he was not familiar with the Sherlock Holmes stories and had no idea what other characters might be interesting. These people can rattle off every minor character in every Star Wars property that has ever been made, but are clueless about anything that is not Star Wars or comic books.
I would watch the hell out of some Irene Adler stories.
Omnes Omnibus
Who wouldn’t?
debbie
@LuciaMia:
I saw it when I was 12 and have rewatched it maybe every 10–15 years since. I don’t know why. It still gives me nightmares. One of my brothers (who was 9 at the time) refuses to ever watch it again.
Raoul Paste
Oddly enough two weeks ago I rented the movie Won’t you be my Neighbor, about Fred Rogers
What’s so funny about peace love and understanding?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Brachiator: I’d like to see the Enola Holmes universe explored. It felt like a pilot and I hope it does develop into a series. As The Thin Black Duke observed, this London actually has people of color in it (especially one very important character), and it’s a refreshing change. And the Helena Bonham Carter character (the mother of Enola and the Holmes brothers, a literal bomb-throwing radical feminist) is also fascinating and could have much more to say.
Mycroft they’ve made a bit of a dolt, not at all the character from the stories. But as Enola is supposed to be the smartest person in the room here, I suppose that’s forgivable.
Emma from FL
@debbie: She falls into “literary” for me. But she goes on the other list.
MomSense
@Brachiator:
Sherlock is a minor character in Enola.
Did you ever see Young Sherlock? I think it’s about 30 years old at this point, but I really liked it when I saw it. In those days I actually saw movies at the theater!
I like Cavill’s portrayal of Superman, but I don’t see him as Bond or Sherlock. He was a pretty good villain in Mission Impossible. He was sort of jaunty in TheTudors but that was before he got so buff.
My heart is set on Idris Elba for Bond, but I would pay to watch Idris just sit in a chair for two hours.
In knitting news, it was revealed that Ronnie Wood is a knitter! He used to help his mom when he was a kid and just never stopped.
Quiltingfool
I’ve not been as quilt-productive as I usually am, not sure why. However, incomplete projects need to be done, customer from Etsy would like her black and white bow tie kitty placemats, so on and so forth. So today I bit the bullet and am embroidering cat faces on a big quilt (18 done, 24 to go, thumb arthritis kicking in) so it can be quilted, bound and posted on Etsy! All while watching In Plain Sight.
I watch, well, listen, to tv shows while sewing. I started watching the “Claws,” a show about nail salon, money laundering, Russian mobs, etc., set in Florida. (um, there is nudity, sex stuff, violence, so keep in mind before buying an episode on Amazon Prime!) Niecy Nash stars, and the other actors are pretty good. Anyway, my point is that at various times Trump is mentioned – not his name, per se, but the villains in the show will mention attending social events at Mar-A-Lago (with Trump, of course). The funniest mention was by a female Russian mobster who related being at a sex party at Mar-A-Lago, feeding hamburgers to the President! The writers of the show snuck these lines in – if you’re not paying attention, you can easily miss it.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
One horror movie that’s maybe somewhat under the radar that I found particularly terrifying and well done was The Descent. It was done probably mid-2000s and maybe it’s not so under the radar – I really don’t watch a lot of horror. I’ve seen the biggies – The Exorcist, The Shining, The Omen, Psycho, Silence of the Lambs (if that counts as horror), 28 Days Later and the sequel, Poltergeist, Nosferatu…Ghost Busters (both original cast and Amy Poehler versions), Young Frankenstein. I’ve also seen some of the Hammer Pictures campy horror classics. The Descent is definitely not as famous as those but I found it as equally terrifying as the scariest of those movies above.
We might take a scenic drive to the West of here to South Mountain (Maryland) to take in some fall color. Other than that just read, watch TV and walk the dog.
CaseyL
@GregMulka: Oh, gods, yes. I fell in love with their EONS series, which is about all things paleolithic, from the earliest landmasses to the rise of humans. (Mostly skipping the episodes about humans,)
What I do to keep sane is watch old TV shows on Peacock and Netflix. Ran through Columbo a few weeks ago and am now working my way through Law & Order: Criminal Intent, concentrating on the early seasons when D’Onofrio was still skinny and hot. Yeah: crime dramas. Not sure why, except maybe I’m feeling kind of punitive these days!
This weekend is a little weird. I have a vague but firm memory of making plans to do something with someone on Saturday, but can’t remember who or what. Maybe I dreamed it. I’ve called my friends to ask, “Did we plan something for Saturday?” and so far, no. Very weird if I did just dream it, as I’ve never done that before, mistaken a dream for a real thing.
Gravenstone
@James E Powell: The first three books are excellent to good. I personally thought they diminished in quality with each title, but YMMV. I only ready one of his son’s continuations of the series and I was completely unimpressed.
Jeffro
@UncleEbeneezer: I have been meaning to get started on Lovecraft Country…sounds way cool!
Jeffro
@The Thin Black Duke: going to check this (Enola Holmes) out this weekend as well!
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@debbie: Yeah I only followed it for about half the first season but kind of liked it. Guess it went downhill from there?
Leto
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: The Descent is definitely a good one to watch. The way the director built tension was done very well. Another under the radar is Let the Right One In, either the original or the remake. I prefer the original but the remake was fine.
CaseyL
@James E Powell:
@Gravenstone:
I agree with Gravenstone. They should have stopped at Children of Dune. God Emperor wasn’t too bad, but…
I am looking forward to the latest movie, though.
Robert Sneddon
Dune, a series? Uhhh, are you sure about that? Maybe you were just imagining Herbert and even his immediate family would milk that unique, individual and extremely singular novel’s brilliance for mere money’s sake? No no no no no. Inconceivable, as the Sicilian says.
If you’re into horror of a “I don’t know what’s happening to these people but it’s horrible and I want it to stop, please” kind you might like Stalker, the move made from the Strugatsky brothers novel, “Roadside Picnic”. It got remastered and rereleased on Blu-ray in 2017.
Leto
@Gravenstone: I’ve read the original 6 multiple times. Too many times, in fact. I think after God Emperor, #4, there’s a decline, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff still that should be read at least once.
Regarding his kid, Brian: the estate decided to partner with a known fucking hack, Kevin J Anderson, who values just churning shit out at a prodigious rate versus quality. I read all of the prequels, then read their version of the final book of the original series. They essentially destroyed all the themes that his dad developed in the original series. I basically hate read the last book, and when I finished it I literally flung it across the room because that’s how pissed off I was. Just utter, worthless drivel. Not even fit for bird cage lining.
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator: @Omnes Omnibus: Carole Nelson Douglas wrote a whole series of wonderful Irene Adler books, where she and her companion Penelope Huxleigh solve murders and other mayhem very much a la Holmes and Watson. The first book, Good Night, Mr Holmes, sets up the events that are chronicled in A Scandal in Bohemia, but tells them from Adler’s (and Huxleigh’s) POV. A very fun series, and well-written, too!
Delk
@MomSense:&nb@MomSense:
Where do you get your yarn? I saw the hat you were making and meant to ask. I made my first stranded hat last year out of scraps. This year I’d like to make one that matches my coats.
aliasofwestgate
I’m finally reading the last two books of the Rivers of London series, Lies Sleeping and False Value. So yeah. I absolutely adore that series and how atmospheric it is, even with Peter’s rather amusing nerdy view of it.
I still need to get around to watching Enola Holmes and A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting, which just looks like so much FUN. Then i have to get around to finishing the final season of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, which has been absolutely delightful for its first two seasons.
Kent
It’s great but remember the target audience is 14 year old girls. So don’t expect it to be super sophisticated in the traditional British mystery way. My teen daughters loved it. I wish they had made it a series not a one-off movie.
Brachiator
@MomSense:
I never saw Young Sherlock. It’s funny, I remember renting the video, in the ancient times, but returning the video having never watched it.
I am not too hot on the younger adventures of most characters. I also didn’t much care for the extended family Holmes in the recent tv series.
I agree that he was damned impressive in the last Mission Impossible movie. I thought he was a great Superman, but also that Zack Snyder’s conception of the character prevented Cavill from soaring. He was too brooding and never really was shown as a hero.
Elba and even Cavill are too old. You need someone in their early 30s who can grow into the role. I hear that Henry Golding, from “Crazy Rich Asians,” is in the running. He is 33.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
As far as autumn musical accompaniment goes this song from The Kinks is hard to beat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_u0gn1I8xQ.
Also Van Morrison’s Moondance Album always evokes autumn to me. It think it all stems back to my Jr. year in college. I was doing a paper for an Environmental Economics class and decided to write it on the process by which the Little Miami River got it’s Wild and Scenic River designation. My professor told me about this guy who spearheaded the whole process so I put that album in the cassette deck of my girlfriend’s car (which she graciously let me borrow for the morning) and drove down from Springfield, OH to the leftist little burg of Yellow Springs on winding State highways. The colors were at their peak and the whole thing just worked spectacularly. I recall that day every time I hear that album. Got down there and spent a couple hours taking furious notes as this total hippie recounted his organization’s push to get the river its national wild and scenic designation. Then drove back under late October skies.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Cool!
piratedan
@Brachiator: I actually thought that there was going to be a female bond taking over the franchise… but I kind of feel outta touch from the netertainment world these days.
frosty
Diversions? Does reading every post and every comment in B-J every day count as a diversion?
Seriously, I had plans for what to do with my time after I retired this year, some of it even fun, but I’ve done virtually none of it. I’m voting for Biden because I need LESS NEWS DAMMIT!!!!
Off to continue clearing out the basement. Or weedwhacking. Or something.
satby
@JoyceH: I keep vowing to get back into shape but have no motivation at all. Living in a constant state of underlying dread does that to one, I guess.
And I found this site that has great tips for pressure cooking (in between all the damn ads). Tl,dr: Don’t use the presets, look up a recipe online for what you’re cooking and use the pressure and time they say. The settings on the Pot seem to assume that everyone starts with frozen food, and are longer than you usually need.
NotMax
First thing on the list of attributes I look for in a computer game.
@JoyceH
Huzzah! Do take the time to read through the instruction manual. And here’s a selection of some good recipe sites:
https://twosleevers.com/
https://pressureluckcooking.com/
https://www.hippressurecooking.com/pressure-cooker-recipes/
https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/recipes-you-can-make-in-your-instant-pot/
(Haven’t gone to check if all those sites are still active; apologies if any of them have gone bye-bye since I first threw together the list.)
MomSense
@Delk:
Four questions.
Weight?
Wool tolerance?
Price?
Hand or machine wash?
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
Interesting. I may check these out if they are easily available.
jl
This is an airing of grievances about my creeping development of obsessive compulsive disorder. Which is surprising to me, since I’ve never had to deal with it before. In the beforetimes, I have been informed by friends that I could use a little more OCD in my life. I tend to do too much on the fly and not plan ahead enough for routine daily tasks. Totally underestimating the time it takes to do the tasks of ordinary living, and then having to rush through them and being sloppy, and then blowing things off was the problem. In the beforetimes, I thought these Big City people I live with these days to be the ones who had dysfunctional OCD baked in from their provincial upbringing, producing odd arbitrary obsessions about how things should always be.
Why OCD? I think it is that I try to be careful in budgeting risk, and stay up with current developments, but just cannot get away from routines that got baked in early in the epidemic that turn out to be not that important. Like, washing all groceries that can be washed, like a fricken racoon. And carefully quarantining the rest. Very frequent hand disinfecting. And then mask protocols. Add that to the isolation, even with my OG pod, internet socializing. I think all that stuff messes with your mind after a while.
A lot of people I know are talking about depression, or getting pissy, short tempers. I’m OCD. I don’t know whether I am handling it better than they are or not. Is it better to deal with nascent OCD, or depression, or having to resist being a short tempered jerk.
So, now I have to go do some ceremonial routine or other.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Kristine: I watched Enola Holmes last weekend. It’s based on a series of young adult novels, so keep that in mind. The intended audience isn’t really adults but it features a strong female lead and was a nice fun diversion.
I liked the first couple of seasons of Sherlock (the one starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Morgan Freeman) but after that it really started going in a direction that was…strange.
One thing I never checked out when it was on but am now binging is the old USA Network show Psych. The main character is very loosely based on Sherlock Holmes. It’s more than a little silly and campy – I can see certain people thinking it’s terrible – but what with the state of the world I find silly and campy kind of soothing right now.
PJ
Midsommar was 45 minutes too long (god, did it drag), and the story was just The Wicker Man in a slightly different setting. Not recommended.
Leto
@Delk:
I know my wife shops at Knit Picks, Jimmy Beans Wool, and a local shop here.
Brachiator
@piratedan:
There is a black woman with a license to kill introduced in the next Bond movie. I don’t know if there is any idea to have her involved in future films.
Of course, the pandemic has really upended the movie industry. It may not survive as it exists now if things continue.
It’s funny. There are people who don’t care if movie theaters cease to exist and everything goes to streaming. But right now I don’t think that the studios know how to make a profitable big budget movie if streaming is the primary viewing platform.
And in addition to the next Bond film, there are about 90 completed studio films with no place to go.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Pete Souza documentary on his stunning photography and the behind the scenes events on MSNBC tonight
Here’s a preview (video)
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Also on Netflix…not really horror per se but deals with serial killers because it’s about the early days of the FBI’s psychological profiling program – Mindhunters. I’m only a few episodes in but it’s enjoyable.
Nora Lenderbee
@zhena gogolia: I hope it’ll be powerful for the intended audience. All I could think was, it took you 4 years to realize what he said?
Kent
Scariest horror movie I have ever seen was Angel Heart with Robert De Niro, Mickey Rourke, and Lisa Bonet from the mid 1980s.
What made it scarier is that I watched it one Friday evening in Guatemala City and then hopped a late bus back to my Peace Corps site in rural Guatemala. Due to some unknown reason (construction protests etc.) the bus diverted off the regular freeway out of town and wandered through some endless working class slum neighborhoods on the north side of the city. This happened to be the night of December 7 which is a traditional celebration in Guatemala City called Quema del Diablo (burning the devil) and on every street corner there were crowds gathered around giant devil scarecrows and setting them on fire. So flames, smoke, firecrackers, and people dancing around in the streets with devil costumes in the dark were what I saw outside my bus window as we slowly rolled through an endless maze of strange slum neighborhoods while Angel Heart was very fresh in my mind. I was pretty new to Guatemala so not entirely sure what was going on. Spooky as hell.
This is what it looked like on every street corner.
https://www.ngenespanol.com/culturas/diciembre-quema-del-diablo-guatemala/
That movie still gives me the chills.
Brachiator
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
That would have been a very interesting series. I think you mean Martin Freeman.
I agree that the series seemed to go off in a wild direction.
piratedan
@Brachiator: especially with people sticking TV’s in their living rooms that are 80″ behemoths to replicate a theatre feel without the overpriced popcorn
Miss Bianca
I’m in the middle of several books right now – including our own Tom Levenson’s Newton and the Counterfeiter – but I can’t seem to actually concentrate on anything but fiction.
Right now I’m also trying not to stress out too badly about my horse’s spectacular propensity for injuring herself, resulting in hundreds of dollars’ worth of vet bills that I can’t really afford. Seriously, I’ve probably had to spend between $3,000-$4,000 on her since March, and the end is apparently nowhere in sight yet. : (
Then there’s the election, and the state of the world. I’m usually a pretty heavy sleeper, with the aid of time-release melatonin, but even that isn’t helping right at the moment. Last few days my pattern seems to be to wake up fretting at 4 in the morning, and I should probably just get up at 5 after thrashing around for that hour or so, instead of finally falling into a heavy and unrefreshing slumber that leaves me groggy at 8.
Oh, well. At least the weather is still nice.
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator:
I liked Golding very much in this film — he has a Cary Grant quality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Simple_Favor_(film)
debbie
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
After the first season, it was basically monster of the week.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Mo Salad: Schitt’s Creek is such a good show.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I’ve been provided a diversion by the Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles, Jury Duty. After spending the last 6 months limiting human contact and only shopping for food and limiting close interior exposure to family, I get the privilege of meeting new people in an enclosed space. Lucky me.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Brachiator:Re: Sherlock.
This may be kind of a spoiler comment, so I’ll color it white.
They killed off my favorite character and I kind of lost interest. And I don’t buy the producers’ excuse that “it’s supposed to be Holmes and Watson, a couple of blokes, no extra characters”.
jl
OTOH, in other ways I am very non OCD, especially in terms of going out and doing things. The way covid is handled in the US is such a shit show, including risk communication, why pay any attention to it at all? Part of my day gig is to monitor how things are going around the world, so I read, for example, country policies and updates on the the WHO European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies like the morning newspaper.
I look at countries with policies that have resulted in top notch control at low cost and gets them much a more normal economic and social life than we have here. Places like Estonia, Switzerland, Norway, Finland. I like Estonia’s, so I just do that. Just add stricter masking. OK fine, I’m done. I make sure I follow it, and stay in settings where things are approximately consistent with those rules, and don’t worry so damn much.
Still wash my groceries like a nutcase, even though I know I really don’t have to.
Delk
@MomSense: worsted (unless you think a lighter weight is better for making men’s hats.
No problems with wool.
Reasonably priced
Washing doesn’t matter
I’d like to make 2-3 hats with 3 colors (not sure if I can handle 4) that match my winter jackets. Chicago weather
Oh, and I’m balding in case that makes any difference. ?
zhena gogolia
@jl:
I’m sorry you’re dealing with that. I gave up on worrying about surfaces a while ago and it’s very liberating.
What concerns me is that my own tendency to agoraphobia is being nurtured by this situation and I hope I’ll be able to go back to being around people some day.
satby
@Miss Bianca: @Omnes Omnibus: I’ll have to look for those. I love another Holmes adjacent series, the Mary Russell books, written by Laurie R. King. Russell is Sherlock Holmes’ protege early in the series, later his wife. A new one is coming out, I’ve read them all. Fun, escapism.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@debbie: See, with the X Files the monster of the week episodes were the ones I liked best. They built so much suspense with the main story arc that after a couple seasons I was like, no way is the payoff going to live up to this…and it didn’t. It wasn’t a disastrous conclusion but the problem with building up too much tension and mystery for too long is that nothing you do with the eventual ending will live up to the buildup.
NotMax
Not recommending it necessarily, simply noting that have been plowing through The Gentle Touch on Prime. As a series, weak but does build up its dramatic muscle as the seasons pass. Mostly finding it an in focus snapshot showing how attitudes regarding women, gays, non-whites, etc. have matured since the time it was made (early 1980s). Also how deeply entrenched was social class stratification in Britain.
zhena gogolia
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I guess they’re also justified by that character disappearing in the original stories.
Michael
I played Pong once.
This comment system is STILL TERRIBLE. No votes, and no realistic way to have a discussion as replies are unconnected to the original post and it’s a mess when you try to read it.
jl
@zhena gogolia: Don’t worry, it’s just a nuisance. I don’t let it interfere with my life and I was just venting. I figure, we are not responsible for our spontaneous thoughts and whims and emotions, we are responsible for how we deal with them. A little Buddhist and Catholic contemplative prayer wisdom I think is good advice, even though I am neither.
Edit: but thanks for accepting my ‘sharing’ with good humor.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Brachiator: Yes Martin. Ooops.
Delk
@Leto: thanks! I get emails from knit picks.
CaseyL
Speaking of Holmes, let me recommend and oldie but goodie: The Seven Percent Solution, book and movie, both by Nicholas Meyer. Holmes is descending into cocaine addiction; Watson gets him to Dr Sigmund Freud who has a method for breaking addiction; murder and chase scenes galore ensue. Excellent cast, with Nicol Williamson as Holmes, Robert Duvall as Watson, Alan Arkin as Freud, and Vanessa Redgrave as Irene Adler; also Joel Gray, Lawrence Olivier (as Moriarty), Charles Gray (Mycroft), and Jeremy Kemp.
Meyer excels at playing in other peoples’ universes. He was also the writer/director for the two best (IMO) Star Trek movies, “The Wrath of Khan” and “The Undiscovered Country.”
Brachiator
@zhena gogolia:
Interesting comparison. The producers offered the Bond role to Cary Grant, but he did not want to do a series of films.
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Well, Conan Doyle tried to kill Holmes, but that didn’t work out. But I agree that some of the producers’ excuses were weak.
Miss Bianca
@satby: These and Laurie King’s are the best “non-Canon Holmes” series I’ve read. Interesting that they both favor a woman’s POV.
@CaseyL: And that one is the best stand-alone I’ve read.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Brachiator: The original Holmes stories were just fantastic. I’ve read them all multiple times…there’s a reason there are so many spinoffs, re-imaginings, and new adaptations, and its because the original source material was really good.
debbie
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
That’s a valid point. But I really liked the first season where the mythical beasts (for lack of a better description) were more an expression of a person’s darker side than a literal beast from some fairy tale. But I stuck it out until the end anyway. I had the same issues with Lost, but stuck that out anyway too.
CaseyL
@Miss Bianca: The movie isn’t quite as good as the book, story-wise, but the performances and visuals more than make up for it. There’s a train chase that is to die for.
ETA: Oh, and Seven Percent isn’t quite a stand-alone. Meyer wrote another Holmes novel, The West End Horror, but it wasn’t nearly as good.
jl
@zhena gogolia:
” What concerns me is that my own tendency to agoraphobia is being nurtured by this situation and I hope I’ll be able to go back to being around people some day.”
Good luck with that. Whatever you do, don’t blame yourself. I think there are two problems with dealing with risk management, neither of which is any or our own faults.
One is inescapable, which is that our individual risk is inherently unknowable, just like our individual risk of getting TB, or typhoid (yes, hundreds of cases in the US per year) is unknowable. We accept those no question because the baseline risk is so low. All you can know is that if you do follow protocols, your risk can be reduced by 70, 80, 90 percent. But we can’t blow it off for covid, since now and for the foreseeable future in the US, the risk of covid is not low, and not predictable, since any place can see a sudden increase.
And the other is that in the US, nearly everything about covid control, including good risk education and communication ranges from very substandard (in the good ‘right minded’ states) to a total shit show.
jl
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: “The original Holmes stories were just fantastic. ”
Me too. I was addicted for a while and read my favorites repeatedly. Remakes and attempts to replicate very uneven. Many I blow of bail half way through.
Edit: re another comment I can’t find now: X files, I never watched regularly but bailed with bee nonsense. Maybe I didn’t watch often enough to follow the story arcs, so didn’t understand the imports, significances, and meanings.
Edit: OK, here we go, @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@debbie: I should pick up with it again. It’s good Halloween viewing without being too terrifying. Real life is terrifying enough right now that I don’t feel like a full on horror movie is in the cards this year.
Michael
I just watched the final Last Tango In Halifax. PBS just reran the whole series up to its recent end. The whole series (about six six episode seasons) is about the best thing I’ve ever seen in every way. Tons of drama but all of it in the realm of possibility, some hilarious scenes as well, great actors, writing and direction. It can be found on PBS Passport ($5 a month or something) and also I think on Netflix.
I get two major PBS stations and four or five substations on antenna in Brooklyn. There’s often something really good on – drama, comedy, and crime shows and also Frontline and POV etc. They are rerunning the Ken Burns WWII series from ten years ago. Somehow i missed it – very clear history lessons and I think every bit of color film they could find. Lately PBS has also been running other detective crime shows that are either EU coproductions in English or EU productions in some other language. Professor T (Belgium) is really great. The Swedish detective shows on PBS vary in quality. And PBS keeps coming up with different UK series.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Another listening rec is the new Fleet Foxes album Shore – it might be the best thing they’ve done so far and I really liked all their other albums.
Miss Bianca
@CaseyL: Oh, I forgot about that one, I think I’ve actually read that one too – probably speaks to its general quality that I didn’t remember it!
Yeah, trying to get Holmes to tackle a real-life unsolved murder or murders like Jack the Ripper’s is tricky, tricky. Almost impossible to pull off, really.
raven
@Michael:
Sarah Lancashire and Nicole Wallace are treasures and everything Sally Wainwright does is great. Gentleman Jack, The Unforgiven and Scott and Bailey are great and Happy Valley is spectacular (and wrenching).
James E Powell
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I wonder how many jury trials are actually going forward during corona time. Do you know if it’s criminal or civil? I have friends who are getting trial date that are quite a ways off in the future. Somebody filed a motion in a case I worked on years ago; it was set for hearing in May 2021.
Kilgore Trout
For me it’s music. Our youngest moved out in August, and I took over the bonus room (there’s also a bedroom down there that was his) and set up a reasonably good stereo listening area. Ponied up for a one year subscription to Qobuz for hi-rez music streaming since I’m betting it’s a year before we are back to being able to travel much again. Mostly jazz and rock for me. It’s my refuge, although one of our cats waits for me to head down there and makes herself home on my lap. Every. Time.
Amir Khalid
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
The X-Files stayed on the air too long for its own good. Basically Chris Carter ran out of mythology about halfway through season six. While the MOTW episodes thereafter were still excellent, and the Mulder-Scully relationship (by now an understated romance) was always compelling, Carter’s mythology just kept getting sillier and sillier.
Brachiator
@jl:
“The original Holmes stories were just fantastic. ”
When I was a teen I went through a phase where I read a lot of mystery novels and stories. Loved the Holmes stuff.
At the main library I ran into a series of Holmes pastiche novels, by August Derleth. The hero was Solar Pons, very much a Holmes knock off. Most of these stories were pretty good.
Jeffro
@burnspbesq: that. rocks.
James E Powell
@Michael:
I actually really like the comment section here. All taste is taste.
Jeffro
@MJS: noted and thanks!
raven
We finished “The Morning Show” last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s on Apple TV + so not many people have seen it but it won a bunch of Emmy’s.
Jeffro
This deserves a thread all its own. =)
As someone who slogged through both Herbert trilogies, and then the two Herbert Jr/Anderson prequel trilogies, AND ‘The Road to Dune’…
…just read DUNE, and if you like it, then maybe the first Herbert Jr/Anderson prequel trilogy.
(Jeffro runs for cover…)
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I recently received a notice as well. Ultimately, I had to ask to be excused. I know that they are doing everything they can to make sure that the environment is safe, but I try to limit my exposure to crowds, other people, etc.
jl
@Brachiator: Thanks for recommendation. I tried my hand at writing my own, since usually dissatisfied with knock offs and remakes. It was unbelievable hard to churn out one that was not total junk, unbelievably harder than I imagined. Doyle had a genius for writing that specific type of literature. Too bad he got sick and tired of the business and killed off the series.
Why not send Holmes off to India for something new? IIRC, Doyle was a military doc on India for a while.
Kent
If you want out, answer something like this during voir dire.
“Yes, I think I can be impartial. But given that we are in a pandemic, I think I would be extremely annoyed if I felt like my time was being wasted by unnecessary nonsense and delays. I’m willing to do my duty, but I don’t like being jerked around.”
You will be sent home immediately. No attorney wants a juror who will be pissed at them for dragging things out.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Brachiator: Neil Gaiman wrote a fun story set in an alternate Lovecraft / Sherlock Holmes universe. It’s called A Study in Emerald and it’s available in PDF form on his website.
The Pale Scot
“Double 0” licenses about to become reality
Undercover agents: License to break law plan at critical stage
Yea right, sure
Boris said an hour ago that there is “no point” to further discussions with the EU, so Ni is going to go pear shaped by a no deal Brexit. Which really was always going to happen since the Tories don’t want to have a rational relationship with the EU. They think that the violence will happen in NI, I think that’s fucking stupid, NI voted against Brexit, they know who to blame. Except for the DUP evangelicals, most Protestants voted to stay in the EU.
I think no matter how strident a Unionist one is, losing your job because it depends on cross border access that is cut off is going to peel the scales from one’s eyes. Boris is trying really hard to be Trump’s mini-me, but the cause – effect relationship isn’t going to be hand waved away like what happens in the US
jl
Too bad the Trumpster/QAnon mythos is not based on some TV show, it would be much classier. Maybe the X Files. But I guess they have to work with the material Trump gave them in order to accuse others of more sensational versions of Trump’s own depravities, for distraction.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Carter’s next series, Millenium, started out very strong and then just dwindled to…nothing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@James E Powell: The summons are for the Mosk Courthouse(the Perry Mason courthouse for you non-LA folk), so civil. Though they can re-assign you to another courthouse.
Brachiator
@James E Powell:
I enjoyed the original novel, but never cared much for the sequels and follow-ons. But you might take a look at the sequel to see if it appeals to you.
Mary G
I signed up for the Hamilton fundraiser with Biden tonight. Also, Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena CA, which has been in business for 126 years, sent up an SOS that they were about to go under because of Amazon/Covid, and since they were a refuge for me for years, I ordered two books about low water gardening and a book about sketching. They just came, so I’ll be doing that too. Plus, I’m finishing up 60 letters to voters in Georgia I did this week and need to be mailed tomorrow.
sdhays
Apparently the Very White House has realized that the wildfires in California do, in fact, constitute a national disaster. Stupid to refuse in the first place, but good that California won’t have to hang on until late January. I guess Devin made a call…
zhena gogolia
@Michael:
We’re enjoying Flesh and Blood, which is on after Halifax on our station. Silly story but great cast.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
You must mean Nicola Walker! Although Nicolle Wallace isn’t bad these days.
ETA: If you love Nicola Walker you should check out her episode of Jonathan Creek, “Mother Redcap.”
Sloane Ranger
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Have you read the Professor Moriarty novels by Michael Kurland? Moriarty’s the hero and a kind of Raffles character. Holmes appears as a subsidiary character. There’s about 5 or 6, the first being The Infernal Device where Moriarty is employed by the Russians to stop a rogue agent from assassinating Queen Victoria. It ends with a hot air balloon chase. The books are great light hearted fun.
Anotherlurker
I’ve started going to the gym again, after all this time. I am aiming to go 3X/week and tomorrow is my 3rd day.
I’m sailing S.F. Bay on Sunday.
It looks to be a good weekend.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: I’ve been on one jury for a civil trial, it was a shit show with delay after delay. The high point was when the judge’s ear fell off(he had a prosthetic ear).
ETA: The attorneys didn’t notice that the judge’s ear fell off, one of my fellow jurors raised his hand, “Judge, your ear fell off”.
Brachiator
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Thanks very much!
Done and downloaded.
J R in WV
OK, it is Friday afternoon.
Shouldn’t there be a news dump any minute now?
I mean really!
Election coming up, President losing his marbles on network TV, surely someone with the authority to have a news conference will be firing one up any minute now!!
Gin & Tonic
@James E Powell:
No.
Martin
@sdhays: Actually McCarthy. He’s taking credit for it.
raven
@zhena gogolia: Indeed, I’m watching Wallace now so that might be it!
jl
@The Pale Scot: thanks for info on Brexit bust. I thought Johnson assured everyone that he was a world historical statesman who had everything in hand, so the prefect best deal would be made for the UK.
Two questions I have:
How with the NI border issue be handled? Being geographically separated from rest of UK, and connected to Ireland, can they just informally make their own arrangements and ask whose army will stop them?
And, will the worst case scenario materialize? UK now has to negotiate individual trade deals with all the EU countries, which will exponentially complicate and delay imports and exports? Miles long lines of trucks, bust in exports, shortages of imports? Or not?
Steeplejack
@RSA:
Two more weeks and sunrise will be an hour earlier again. Can’t help with the cold weather.
StringOnAStick
I just mailed the 160 letters to voters that I did with a group of teachers; tomorrow is the official mailing date but I’m packing for our big move from CO to OR and tomorrow is going to be insanely busy. We’ve got 11 days before the moving van arrives and my husband is still working so I’m trying to do as much of this as I can so he’s not distracted.
I just bought a soft sides cat carrier to go with our existing hard one so I can take both to the vet next week to get their travel meds prescribed. We got a large wire cage for the trip and I made a cover for it with a zip up door so they can see me when we’re driving. It’s a two day drive and one hotel stay. The only real stress I’m feeling about this move is how the kitties are going to handle the drive.
jl
@J R in WV: I think a glitch in the system and the news dumps are coming out randomly. Hope it’s fixed soon, I’d like to return to a regular schedule, with the new improved CA covid reopening and all.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
My dog is farting and is acting like he thinks somebody is attacking his butt. Now that’s riveting entertainment.
Anotherlurker
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: It is an excellent story! I comes from an equally excellent compilation titled: “Shadows over Baker Street”.
satby
@Brachiator: I also got a summons, for the 28th of this month I think. The last time I got one they cancelled the night before, hoping for that again.
jl
@sdhays: “I guess Devin made a call…”
Pretty sure one of the big fires still going is near his district, maybe in it, since parts go into the Sierra foothills.
Immanentize
@Kilgore Trout: That sounds so great! My son is getting into vinyl. I still have a reasonable collection, plus my wife’s albums will be his inheritance. My wife was a HUGE Bowie fan and has at least a shelf foot of Bowie vinyl. I got myself a good USB turntable with the idea of getting all my records onto the computer. But the software wore me out. You are inspiring me to try again.
zhena gogolia
Now they notice. (NYT)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/16/opinion/donald-trump-worst-president.html
Bobby Thomson
@narya: I play it on my laptop through Steam.
Immanentize
@burnspbesq: Bad Brains? Funny how different my east coast soundtrack would be with some crossovers (Marsalis).
sdhays
@Martin: Ah, makes sense.
MisterForkbeard
@James E Powell: I was summoned in CA back in August. It was cancelled for six months.
I gather only the really important stuff is getting a jury trial right now, but CA has basically halted most juries since… May? April? Sometime around then. I expect that to continue through March, to be honest.
Bobby Thomson
@Brachiator: I would watch the hell out of some Irene Adler stories.
Hers was the best episode of the Benedict Cummerbund reboot.
Immanentize
@James E Powell: It’s funny because the two things Michael wants will never happen as long as Cole is alive — up votes and threaded comments. Personally, like you, I love the randomness of the comments here. It makes my brain make interesting connections.
Martin
@The Pale Scot: I have always thought that Brexit would lead to NI seceding and unifying with the Irish Republic, and Scotland seceding and the hard border moving over there. Just rebuild Hadrian’s wall and call it a day. Build yourself proper train service since the English aren’t interested in exporting that.
Delk
@Immanentize: a couple days ago was the 43 anniversary of Heroes.
Martin
@zhena gogolia: Jake reporting that John Kelly privately said “The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”
I guess he’s okay with that person running the country.
Gin & Tonic
@Michael:
You must be new here.
Immanentize
@Jeffro: The original Dune books slipped away from the original universe view which was so cool in Dune itself. Keto worm guy — no. But all of the prequels, sequels and allquels were good enough to keep my attention.
Can we now talk about Revelation Space and Alistair Reynolds? ?
MisterForkbeard
@Bobby Thomson: The Talos Principle is really excellent, and is available on a number of devices. The Witness is similar, but the puzzles are more perspective-based rather than physics based.
All good choices. :)
Amir Khalid
@debbie:
The Lone Gunmen was brilliant comedy, though. But the Fox network, after debuting it in mid-season, didn’t see fit to give it a full season. As I remember, Millennium went flat after the actress playing Frank Black’s wife quit. They brought Frank back in an X-files episode, titled Millennium, to give his character closure.
Gin & Tonic
@Martin: John Kelly is pathetic. What a fucking waste of protoplasm.
Martin
@Brachiator: Dune should be done as a high quality anime series. It’s too much for a movie.
BethanyAnne
Kerbal Space Program is on Steam for $10. I finally took the plunge, and am going to try it out.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@jl: Yeah good film and television adaptations of the original Sherlock Holmes stories are few and far between. A lot of them make him look kind of dweeb-ish/scholarly…basically it’s impossible to see the character as a man of action, i.e. one who can straighten a fire iron bent by an adversary, or as an expert pugilist.
@Amir Khalid: Yup…it was still a good show but they ran out of gas on the main story arc.
@Sloane Ranger: Have not read those. Maybe I should give them a try. Hard to see Moriarty as a hero given how he’s portrayed in the original though.
Martin
Current game is Oxygen Not Included. A wonderfully complex and charming base building game. Last played it a year or so ago, but it’s still in active development, so much had changed.
Immanentize
@Delk: Helden. Love that song so much. We have the album, the singles, German, English….
zhena gogolia
@Martin:
Sounds as if he has some contract for private prisons that prevents him from speaking out for fear of losing some cash. Such a patriot.
NotMax
@Immanentize
Seconded, with a cherry on top.
BethanyAnne
@Martin: My bff ran across an interview with a Siemens engineer talking about their new cars developed for British service. He very carefully and euphemistically said they had had to build their own rail test line, as none of the ones on mainland Europe… matched the quality of the British lines.
MomSense
@Delk:
If you want super reasonably priced yarn that is still soft and has nice colors, then I would check out wool of the andes and swish worsted at knitpicks.
For two beautiful lines of Maine yarn there is Quince and Co. Lark – lots of really nice colors and great patterns.
Jagger Spun Mousam Falls is wonderful – Heathered and solid colors and you can buy direct from the factory. Jaggerspunyarn
Splurge would be Swan’s Island or Starcroft/Nash Island wool. The Nash Island flock is legendary with the coolest background story. You will love reading about it.
Then there is Harrisville Designs Peace Fleece which is more rustic and a little more woolly – but it softens with washing. They source all the wool from Navajo ranchers. It has an amazing history. The company was started in Maine by a hippie couple who decided they would solve the cold war by mixing fiber from the US and USSR. Harrisville bought it a couple years ago. They are one of the oldest mills in the country. Full disclosure- I am a sample and test knitter for them. If you don’t make a hat with peace fleece, make a sweater at some point. You will have it for decades and it won’t pill.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MisterForkbeard: I’ll know at 7pm if I have to go in.
Brachiator
@jl:
The Good Friday agreement emphasizes that there should not be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And the complicated BREXIT agreement tries to honor that.
The problem is (and this is an American outsider’s view) the Conservatives hate Ireland, hate that the Republic of Ireland is a member of the EU and hate that they have to think about the Irish at all. Throughout the BREXIT negotiations, the British kept ignoring the Ireland question, even though nonpartisan experts kept insisting that it was important. And sure enough, when they really had to deal with the question, it became a sticking point.
Unionists are insistent that Northern Ireland be connected to Britain in every way. But the Good Friday Agreement and the EU interpretation emphasizes the connection between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
So far, Boris Johnson hammered out a more or less acceptable compromise. But because of the underlying British antipathy, I think that a Conservative government will find a way to spectacularly screw things up.
This is the strange thing. Boris Johnson has said from the beginning that he is happy with a no deal BREXIT. And yet he has done very little to actually prepare for any kind of BREXIT.
It is really hard to believe that even the most die-hard BREXIT supporters have accepted Johnson’s incredible incompetence.
Imagine that in the US a sizeable minority of citizens just sat back and watched an incompetent blowhard take charge of the country.
Oh, wait…
The Thin Black Duke
Hey, guys. Back again. Sorry, I had chores to do. Anyway, getting back to Enola Holmes, what I found impressive about Cavill’s performance was, for a change, he didn’t take off his shirt or wear a stupid wig; liberated from the silly props, Cavill had the opportunity to do some genuine acting, and I was surprised at how well he did. In previous interpretations of Holmes, actors have either played him as a soulless automaton or a freakish and unpleasant oddball. What Cavill chose to do instead was to portray how lonely and alone it was being the smartest person in the room. There’s a nuanced sadness in this version of Holmes. His fierce intelligence set him apart from other people, and although he accepted it, he didn’t like it very much. Which is why Holmes connects with his younger sister so much because he realizes Enola is a kindred spirit.
Immanentize
@Amir Khalid: Millennium was fabulous! We loved it. Favorite dialogue oft quoted in my house (I don’t remember at all what episode or who was talking):
Guy number 1: Frank doesn’t see things the way other people do…
Guy 2: How does he see them?
Guy 1: Differently
RSA
@narya:
That’s so great! I started running I think in 2016, so far only short distances. I was happy when I managed to run 5k without stopping. That’s my regular distance these days, plus a 10k on the weekends. I’ve sometimes thought about training for a half-marathon or even a marathon, but there’s (a) the time commitment and (b) my aging joints. :-)
@Steeplejack:
That’s right! Silly me. Thanks for the reminder.
BethanyAnne
Oh, and a cold front moved through Houston today. Little bit of rain, so I took the opportunity to go vote. There was still a line, but it was moving briskly. Happy to have my voting done!
raven
President Donald Trump approved California’s request for a presidential disaster declaration to help combat the state’s record-setting wildfires, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday, a day after the administration initially rejected the request.
burnspbesq
@Delk:
‘As far as I’m concerned the two best American bands of my lifetime are Los Lobos and Drive-By Truckers.
Delk
@Immanentize:
I just watched a video about how Heroes was put together. Tony Visconti was explaining. You can find it on YouTube.
Delk
@MomSense: thank you so much!
Avalune
blasphemer! You should run! Seriously though the Brian/Kevin books are traaaaaash. You get whiplash from short chapter point of view changes. Couldn’t care less about the characters. It was just so bad.
Original Dune is good. I didn’t care for any of the rest of the books and Brian’s books deserve burned.
Immanentize
@raven: I suspect he was getting his ass kicked over that stupid decision. Disaster relief should be something done on autopilot. But I bet Trump tweets that California should kiss his ring for his largess.
Sloane Ranger
@jl:
Not The Pale Scot but will try to answer.
Northern Ireland- The British government says they won’t put a hard border between NI and the Republic. This puts the EU in a bind as they will have to decide whether to reciprocate and risk undermining the integrity of the EU single market or to institute border controls and be accused by Britain of undermining the Good Friday peace agreement. I imagine the views of the Irish government will be important in their decision but other nations will also have views. In the long term it’s not good for the UK government either as I assume British business will get ratty if cheap European goods enter the UK through NI but they have to pay duties to export to the EU. It might be good for NI if neither the UK nor the EU put up a hard border as UK goods could be laundered through NI.
If no agreement is reached the UK will trade with all EU countries under WTO conditions. As I understand it individual nations cannot negotiate their own trade deals.
Yes, it will be a shitshow. Lorries jammed nose to tail at every south coast port, food and other shortages and higher prices. I think both sides are currently playing Chicken and wouldn’t be surprised to see something cobbled together in late November/early December.
Immanentize
@Delk: Thanks. Will do!
Avalune
@MomSense: I’ll have to note a couple of those. I tend to end up with malabrigo. Squiiiiishy.
MisterForkbeard
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I think you’ll be fine. In my county they summon you and then every week at Friday 7pm they cancel the next week’s court sessions.
Even so, good luck!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator:
Fortunately that could never happen here.
Delk
@Immanentize: we have a piece of the Berlin Wall in my neighborhood. I always think of the song when I walk past it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Immanentize: Gee, I hope he just sends us some rakes.
Tony Jay
@jl:
Badly, with a salting of constant lies. It was the issue of how you reconcile the UK leaving the EU (meaning either a free trade deal where the UK retains all the EU’s standards and regulations or a customs border) with the Good Friday Agreement (a legally binding international treaty) guaranteeing no border checks and free travel between Ulster and the Republic, that scuppered Theresa May’s attempts to get a Brexit bill through Parliament. The Tory Party Brextremists wouldn’t accept the retention of EU regulations and standards (Freedom! Sovereignty! Regulations are nooses made of red tape!), but they also wouldn’t accept the only alternative, a virtual border down the Irish Sea with Ulster staying under EU regulations and customs checks taking place on the mainland (Freedom! Sovereignty! Regulations are nooses made of red tape!).
Johnson got around all that by lying through his teeth. Claiming he had ‘a plan’, telling the EU he could get his Party to swallow the Irish Sea border while telling his Brextremist colleagues they’d just renege on the deal with the EU once Parliament had voted it through. Bluster. Bullshit. Zero due diligence from the British Media. Won him the Election and now we’re here, with the fuckwit having sponsored an Act of Parliament that ‘allows’ the UK to break international law by ignoring the Good Friday Agreement and the EU telling him to shove it up his ample arse.
That would be…. bad. A replay of the Troubles is only too possible. All it would take would be a bomb or two and we’d be back where we were thirty years ago.
That would be totally on trend.
Already scheduled to happen. Kent, the ‘Garden of England’, is going to be turned into a transit sub-state with internal borders, colossal lorry parks and, more than likely, a thriving smuggling sub-culture with crime, prostitution, and all that good shit catering to the thousands and thousands of lorries that will be stuck unmoving there while the paramilitary legions of Border Security try to deal with the chaos while getting rich on kick-backs and bribes.
Some wag has already christened the county as ‘Kent-Trucky’. But since they voted 60/40 for Brexit and the Tories, I’m 60/40 in favour of saying fuckem.
Brachiator
@The Thin Black Duke:
This makes perfect sense for a movie or series pitched to 14 year old girls, and am glad that Cavill finds a way into the character of Holmes.
I’m not sure that this interpretation would appeal to me as an adult. And of course, one thing about mysteries as a genre, is that although villains and secondary characters might have an inner life, the sleuth often lacks much in the way of any psychological depth.
Sebastian
Elite Dangerous. One of the GOAT.
J R in WV
@Michael:
You must be a totally stone idiot, if you haven’t figured out that there’s a reply button on every comment yet. That works well for me, and everyone else who spends much time here.
You can go away now, if you’re that dim ~!~
I don’t want to have a discussion with you if you haven’t figured that out.
J R in WV
@James E Powell:
I do too. I would ahve to say Balloon Juice and my fellow commenters are keeping me sane … dunno what I would do. I guess lots more time at LGM? etc. But I like the people here way more than at LGM. Plus the comment style. Don’t much like threaded comments.
cckids
@Miss Bianca: Late to the Holmes discussion, but Laurie R. King has a Holmes series, starting with “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice” that are fun, diverting reads. The second one has the best title – “A Monstrous Regiment of Women”. Well worth the time.
Martin
@BethanyAnne: Wonderful game. If you get to the point that you start tweaking the game, consider the Restock mod. A good chunk of it was made in my house.
jl
@Tony Jay: @Sloane Ranger:
Thanks.
Sloane Ranger’s comment, which no offense intended is a knock-off of many previous ones, that something might be cobbled together by Nov/Dec sounds like an extraordinarily tedious remake of the Groundhog Day movie. Maybe we can lend you the holiday, unless ours is some knockoff of an old English version, but wiki says you don’t have it.
The Scots have a version, but you might not be able to claim that for long.
MomSense
@Avalune:
I love malabrigo, but it doesn’t wear as well as I would like.
Sundays from 2-4 there is a crafternoon zoom with portfiber. It’s so much fun. Casey plays awesome music for an hour and a half while we all craft together. Then we say hello at the end.
J R in WV
@Immanentize:
I very much like Alistair Reynolds and all his works. Not quite as good as Banks and the Culture, but very close.
I also really like all of Charlie Stross’s work. Not just the Laundry series, all of his stuff…
Doug R
@UncleEbeneezer: Agree on Lovecraft Country. And as long as you’re on HBO, you might as well check out the Emmy winning Watchmen.
And maybe the first season of Avenue 5. It starts out slow but gets funnier and funnier in a macabre sort of way.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
“Trial of the Chicago 7” debuts on Netflix today
(Trailer )
Matt McIrvin
The hype around the gorgeous new Microsoft Flight Simulator got me reminiscing about playing with 1980s versions of it, and with its Sublogic-branded version for other platforms, Flight Simulator II. I had some nostalgic fun playing with the Atari ST version of Flight Simulator II in an emulator, which handles it with aplomb, faster than my old ST ran it.
My computer is a Mac so it can’t run MSFS 2020, at least not without putting Windows on it. Given the hardware-crushing nature of the program (running it with maxed-out settings seems to have become the new benchmark for an ultimate gamer rig) I suspect the support would not be great anyway.
So I ended up instead getting X-Plane 11, the reigning commercial simulator before MSFS 2020’s release, which runs on a Mac. It’s not as stunning as MSFS, doesn’t have its streaming global scenery derived from Bing Maps with extra AI sauce, but is still pretty demanding–my four-year-old MacBook Pro needs some of the graphical settings dialed down a bit before it will run at a frame rate that modern flight-simulator fans consider decent. But to me it looks fine. In the 80s I was impressed if I could get several frames a second, with a world that consisted of a smattering of flat-shaded polygons.
I find it oddly soothing. Sometimes I like playing a “game” that has no particular conflict or objective beyond, if you like, trying to land a simulated airplane and live to tell the tale. There’s an almost meditative quality to the rituals of flying an aircraft, the way you have to pay attention to slowly changing scenery or instrument readings; I think it’s one of the reasons that pilots attribute mystical ecstatic aspects to the experience.
The world as represented in X-Plane is somewhat schematic aside from airport runway configurations, but there’s an extensive add-on scene that offers additional aircraft and improved scenery (some free and some payware). Lately I’ve become fascinated with autogyros (aka gyrocopters), which look like helicopters but handle more like airplanes… but not exactly.
The Moar You Know
Saturday at the gun range.
Sloane Ranger
@jl: Probably a dead thread but felt the urge to respond. I’m sorry you think my comments are a knock off but the history of negotiations with the EU is that stuff tends to happen at the 11th hour. Will something happen here? I don’t know but it’s certainly on the cards and pressure will be growing on both parties for something to happen.
Denali
There is a new series of Last Tango in Halifax up on PBS. I have been awaiting it, and it does not disappoint.
burnspbesq
@Tony Jay:
In my view, there is a non-zero (and maybe even a non-trivial) probability that Boris will fuck things up so badly that even the most dim-witted DUP’ers will come to realize that being in a country run by Catholics is a fair price to pay to be in the EU.
The Pale Scot
@Sloane Ranger:
Twenty Years down the drain. Back in day it was obvious to me that the English were going to have to just wave lorries thru to keep their supermarket shelves stocked enough to prevent food riots. I thought that would last a couple of months until ISIS sent a bomb or huge shipments of Afghani heroin hit the streets, then they’d be bopped by a cluebat. I never thought that the English would be so stupid to poke the real Provos awake, Those guys aren’t dissenter nut jobs, they have institutional memory about how to operate in the UK. They’re going to be really pissed about being pulled back in. The English will not able to inspect a fraction of what they need delivered, they haven’t hired agents, they haven’t built any of infrastructure. The borders will be a sieve. And I expect Putin will do whatever he can to increase the chaos.
“I got a bad feeling”, Every extra in an Alien movie
Boussinesque
@J R in WV: I enjoy his primary future-history setting a lot, but his stand-alone one-offs are also quite good. I’ve particularly enjoyed the world building in his recent Revenger, Shadow Captain, Bone Silence trilogy (I’ve been contemplating trying to adapt it for tabletop roleplaying).
Which ones are the favorites for you two?
Miss Bianca
@cckids: I have read many of them, and thoroughly enjoyed them!
jl
@Sloane Ranger: Thanks. I appreciated your comments, I was trying to make a joke.