Day 301: I actually went to work today! And then was busy enough that I totally forgot to take a picture to prove that I was feeling well enough to leave the house, so my wife snapped this shot on our way home.
Year 50 Day 300
Day 300: Heard something dropping on the roof, looked outside, and realized it was snowing and hailing simultaneously — snailing! So I had to go out and stand in the snail.
These Are Facts
From Solarbird’s latest Fascism Watch (see the original post for more details and links to sources):
I want to present a list of items which are very well documented facts, but would’ve been absolutely, patently insane 10 years ago. I mean, the kind of rantings that got you thrown out of every conversation and mocked for years afterwards – and which are all now verified as true.
[…]
- The Republican House is a tool of Russian intelligence, routinely using disinformation from Russian intelligence services, and either not caring whether the disinformation was true or not or knowing it was using disinformation and using it anyway, in conjunction with the Russians.
[…]
The ‘Russia hoax’ was never, ever a hoax.
Trumpist allies within in the FBI and US intelligence services have similarly shown willingness to either take money from Russian agents or suppress information about Russian intelligence disinformation, particularly when doing so benefits the Republican party.
CPAC – the Conservative Political Action Conference, where insurrectionist leader and former President Trump spoke on Satuday – is a Nazi forum that welcomes Nazis. This isn’t an allegation anymore, there were literal Nazis openly welcomed on the floor and throughout the event.
Some of these fascists overtly called for the end of democracy at this event and its replacement by a theocratic government. […]
Said former president and insurrectionist is running for president and thus far easily winning the Republican nomination. Amongst other actions, he’s promising to be a dictator on day one, and he and his allies are planning to use Red-state militaries against Blue states and to build a mass system of concentration camps. […]
Where Republicans have power now, they are trying to overturn marriage equality as a stepping stone to making LGBT people illegal again, arresting women for miscarriages, banning trans people and health care for trans people, banning books at scale and criminalising librarians who try to run underground book sharing programmes with laws which carry felony sentences, appointing terrorists to library oversight committees, introducing bills to criminalise sexting between adults, pledging ‘holy war’ against women pop stars.
Oh yes, and doing everything they can to stop people from voting.
And they will do all of this – every single bit of it – nationally, if they can.
Year 50 Day 299
Day 299: More work on prepping for DJing at Norwescon. Today I was working on making sure I had a good video output setup with OBS to send to the projection screen that will be behind me on stage during the dance. It’s a variation on what I use when streaming, and I really like the way it comes out.
🎥 Meg 2: The Trench
Meg 2: The Trench (2023): ⭐️⭐️
This was dumb. The first Meg was entertaining; still a big dumb monster movie, but at least with it you could (just) hit the point of suspension of disbelief and go along for the ride. This one took far too long with the setup for very little payoff, and just prompts eye rolls when it tries to be entertaining. Another one we’re glad we didn’t chance in the theater.
🎥 Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical
Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (2022): ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This was fun. While the songs weren’t such that I’m going to want the soundtrack, I really did enjoy the creativity of a lot of the lyrics. And somehow I hadn’t realized that Emma Thompson was in this (and made a marvelous Ms. Trunchbull).
Must admit, though — I actually think that the choreography for Revolting Children works better for this parody video than with the original music.
Year 50 Day 298
Day 298: I have more energy, but still have a head full of goo. Spending some of my downtime on prepping my music library for DJing the Thursday night dance at Norwescon.
Which involves more swearing at Apple than this long-time Apple user would like it to. I really wish they’d give the Music app the love and care it so desperately needs, particularly when it comes to people like me, who have a large library of owned music and care about metadata, and are not interested in cloud features. I just want an app that concentrates on organizing, managing, and playing what’s on my computer. iTunes in its early days did a great job of that, but it (or its current “Music” incarnation) hasn’t been solid in years.
Year 50 Day 297
Day 297: I made it outside of the house today! Just far enough to take out the trash and check the mail, but it counts.
Year 50 Day 296
Day 296: Good news — improvements are being made! While not at 100%, I’m definitely feeling better, and actually got dressed today instead of spending another day in pajamas. (Though, really, sweats and a t-shirt aren’t that different from pajamas, but still!)
Bad news — it looks suspiciously like now it’s my wife’s turn to go through this. Which is not great, but better to go in series so that we can take turns taking care of each other, instead of both of us being sick at the same time and nobody having the energy to do anything for the other.
It Was All My Fault
I was one of the first of my friends group to really get into “home theater” — at least, as much as I could in the mid-’90s on a financially questionable 20-something’s budget. Our apartment had a big-screen rear-projection TV (bought used, of course), later replaced with a (ridiculously huge) three-beam projector sourced from a bar that was closing down, an early surround sound system, and I started collecting widescreen movies with the special edition of The Abyss on widescreen VHS. I had a pretty decent widescreen VHS collection before finally upgrading to DVD.
At one point, Chad and I were sitting around, bored, and looking for something to watch. “I’ve got The Crow,” says Chad. Sounded good to me, so he went to grab it. And pulled out his copy — a home VHS tape, with the movie taped off of TV, over something else, in broadcast pan-and-scan, and probably in mono. He popped it in, and we started watching.
About ten minutes in, suddenly he turns to me and spouts off with a hearty and apparently random, “Fuck you!”
“What the hell?” I said.
“Until I lived with you, I didn’t care about widescreen, or surround sound, or any of that. I’d just watch the movie. You’ve ruined me!” And as I laughed, he turned off the movie in amused disgust. And it wasn’t too long before the widescreen DVD found its way into the collection.
(Originally posted to Mastodon, and prompted by the announcement of The Crow on 4K Blu-ray.)