Diary of a Necromancer

As one can see from the Media Consumption List, the Household has made the semi-annual-or-indeed-occasionally-biennial pilgrimage to a Real Live Movie Palace to see a film on the big screen, this instance of arse-getting-off-of being occasioned by the debut of Blade Runner 2049, which as one can imagine with the Sekrit Project being a dystopia and all has been on the to-do list for a while now. (As opposed to the practice of recent years of looking up at some point on xmas or new year's day and deciding to hell with it, let's call 'going to see this year's effects-blockbuster' the best of a bad job for the day and/or year.)

So, nonspoilery thoughts: I'd characterise BR2049 as an interesting failure; it's trying to do too much, and ends up collapsing beneath the weight of all the subplots, but I'll give it partial credit for trying to do anything at all, which is rare enough these days, and it was absolutely worth going to see on the house-sized screen, not least because I suspect that the actual story part isn't going to hold up well at a remove from the physical bombardment of images. Overall, contented enough that I went, and an extra half-point for not having walked out of the theater feeling motion-sick like after a couple of my last few trips to the local googleplex. (Difference there possibly that I got new glasses since the last time I went to the movies, and have been realising that the depth-perception issues weren't my eyes...)

As to the film immediately preceding BR2049 on the List, I have some vitriolic Feels about twentysomething studio execs who decide to change a setting from WWII to WWI and then fail a spot-check for realising that "german military" is NOT eternally coterminous with "cartoon nazis"; my grandfather who switched sides between the wars to go punch the latter because that was a whole different quantum-shell of asshattery would surely have had some Feels of his own about that, I do think.

(Also none of the women's costuming was within five years either side of the general period the film was allegedly trying for, but I've pretty much given up on that dead horse.)

Next Big Shiny films to look forward to specifically (as opposed to "we'll probably get bored at some point on xmas or new year's and go see the Last Jedi" because Reasons) are Pacific Rim 2: More Giant Robots Punching Monsters, the first film of which is one of the few I genuinely regret not getting to see on a big screen back when it was released, and Ready Player One, which already has my inner fangirl squeaking things that sound suspiciously like shut up and take my money is it next spring yet. I shall console myself until then by thinking that it will probably go horribly, horribly wrong anyway because, well, these things always do.



Also, as an aside, given that BR 2049 and Wonder Woman both had Robin Wright in them, I am now having passing fancies about Princess Buttercup punching Nazis. My Muse is not a well anthropomorphic personification.

OK, um, well, did not mean to leave this hanging for a year and a bloody half, whether or not 2016 sucked dead celebrity balls, but at any rate here Something finally is, and I think I may even have got to some sort of a space where I can at least ignore the Brainweaselly voice pointing out that the drive towards fame and recognition is a mug's reflection of one's formative caregivers not being attentive enough to suit (and here I will redact some remarks-at-length about celebrity culture and the state of politics, because my Brainweasels are probably rabid) and just get the damn work done, even if it may well be the equivalent of deciding to enjoy the fall off the building since what's the alternative? Ahem. So:


( Trevor and Jason, Vignette #59: It's the practicalities I always hate... )

Back to hamsterwheeling. Lately it's more or less on the subject of how long it's been since I've managed to knuckle down and write a coherent next installment of Trevor and Jason's story, whilst still not really having a damn thing to show for other distractions, and while I do have to keep reminding myself that one whole year of that inactivity was basically 2016 fucking us over with something or other every fifteen minutes, even the excuse that that hasn't actually stopped being the case does begin to wear a bit thin by, oh, around August or so. So. New Year's Resolution for... um... let's call it "calling a mulligan on 2016" is to try to get back to any sort of head-space where I can just let myself dance write like no one's watching (because it's probably true anyway at this point) and bloody well do something with myself.

Watch the computer finally break now.

I had thought that Cheratussin was the most unutterably disgusting substance I would ever be expected to stick in my mouth.

And then the pharmacy refilled the prescription with generic guaiatussin, and I discovered what true misery was.

Rolled a critical fumble on breakfast that involved two rolls of paper towels, bleach-spray, the house and my hands now smelling like bleach-spray, a load of laundry, and breaking a bowl, the good scissors, and my pants. I have really missed my calling as some sort of "finding the impossibly-worst-case scenario" troubleshooter-slash-doomsayer. But at least there was cereal to eat instead, and in that spirit, I shall enumerate some of the other bright sides that I've managed to look on lately:

• Reported the hole I sprained my ankle on to the appropriate alderthing's office
  
• Thyroid function will not be repossessed for another month despite the ongoing state of higgledy-piggledy after the pharmacy updated its systems
  
• Didn't actually lose library holds after library system update regardless of what the self-check terminal may believe about it
  
• New-new Upstairs has no sex-life that I need concern myself about so far, knock wood
  
• I can turn the heat up to flash-fry in May if I have to
  
• Flat is small enough that there are a limited number of places that a cat who still doesn't understand that he has a name can disappear into
  
• Uterus still ticking over in good order
  
• Lilacs. Just lilacs.
  

...I'm not very good at this optimism thing, am I.

I made the mistake of reading the recipe on the back of the Cheap Yellow Mustard this morning:

"Sloppy Joes"
(paraphrasing for copyright reasons)

package of buns
ketchup
Cheap Yellow Mustard
onions
meat

Fry meat and mix in all ingredients except the buns (emphasis added).

Umm, I'm the first to admit that I can't exactly cook, as such, but I am so picturing the product-liability-slash-test-kitchen meeting that led to them having to specify that...

Ren says hi, BTW.

Well, dammit, I finally get a chance at something resembling a vacation and y'all go and let the final sign of the Apocalypse happen while I was out of town. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

It struck me that a bit in the most recent installment of "Trevor & Jason" had a potentially problematic reading. So I gave it some thought, and came up with a revision that I think/hope gets to the same place that the narrative needs to go, without the detour into "um, wait, or did they mean..." of the initial version. So. Live, learn, rinse, repeat.

(And it does trouble me, on the meta-level, that I do have the power to go in and alter the available text like this, which is why I mention it; it's probably not an accident that the Sekrit Project is a high-tech dystopia where they wouldn't even be aware that they had memory-holes things could drop into... and there's a certain irony in the fact that I think I lost a high-tech physical-backup of that at a free movie in a park the other night. :/ )

"Captivity enters year two. Gay line-dancing is Ren's only solace."




Now the water-heater broke. I'm beginning to sympathise with Ren's plight.