Blackmoor Vituperative

If you are ever in a movie:

• Don’t mock the locals.
• Do not touch your ear when speaking on your HANDS-FREE earpierce.
• When sneaking, do not walk like a tap-dancing hunchback. It does not make you harder to see or hear.
• Do not send five people into obviously deadly danger to rescue one person. Four of them will die, along with the person you wanted to save.
• If someone asks who else you’ve told, say “I think it would be safer not to discuss that”. It’s not a lie. Also, they’re the villain.
• Always take the weapon with you.
• When the serial killer threatens to kill someone to force your cooperation, shoot them, right then. Don’t talk. Just shoot them. Immediately.
• Don’t stop attacking the villain until they stop breathing.
• Cut the villain’s head off immediately. Kick it away from the body.

Consider printing this out and carrying it with you, just in case.

For no particular reason, the song “Fame”, by Irene Cara, came into my mind today. Google tells me it was released in 1980: 42 years ago. I haven’t heard it in very nearly that long, but I recall it clearly, and I even recall the name of the singer.

That is just how hugely popular that song was… briefly. And then nothing. When’s the last time you thought of it? How strange that is. The fleeting popularity of fame, so to speak.

It’s not really my style of pop song, and I still haven’t seen the eponymous movie, but even I loved the song and sang along to it, at the time. Of course, I was in my early teens then, and a boy, so I could never actually tell anyone I loved that song. It would have been indistinguishable to wearing a “call me a ‘homo’ and push me down” sign. (I’m not gay, and was even less so then, thanks to adolescent hormones, but bullies don’t place a high value on accuracy. Hopefully, my own miserable teen years helped distract the bullies from actual gay kids.)

Anyway, that’s not what compelled me to write this post. I’m writing this post because I asked Google to “play ‘Fame’ by Irene Cara on YouTube, on ‘downstairs group'” (my downstairs speakers). And, obligingly, it did (Google can be… contrary, sometimes).

And then it played “YMCA”, by the Village People.

And THAT made me laugh out loud.

I did not love “Spider-Man 8: No Way Home“, but I did think it was interesting. I am not sure making the villains more pathetic was a good choice for this kind of film. I think it’s worth seeing, though.

Avengers: Endgame…

Society dealing with a 50% loss in population is nothing — NOTHING — compared to the mass starvation and tragedy that would result from a sudden 100% increase in population after society has adapted to the previous 50% population loss.

Today you have two children. You have a job, and you can feed them.

Tomorrow you have another unemployed adult in your household, and two more children to feed.

How does that feel?

And that’s if you are lucky. If you aren’t, you (SUDDENLY — to you it seems five years have gone by in a moment) are a single adult with a child, and you have no job and nowhere to live. And there are THREE BILLION people who, like you, weren’t here yesterday. Good luck finding a job or a place to live.

Avengers: Endgame is the beginning of a tragedy the likes of which the world has never seen.

“I have absolutely no idea what we’re doing here, or what I’m doing here, or what this place is about. But I am determined to enjoy myself.”

I’ve spent the last week or so watching the 4K extremely-high-definition blu-ray of the extended 11 hour “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy. The difference between this and the DVD is truly breathtaking. And the trilogy itself is, of course… it has no peer.

I am glad that I lived to see this.

Letting “Alligator” (1980) play while I work. I remember seeing this when I was 15 or 16 and thinking it was really funny. I’m only five minutes into it, but I feel so sad for the baby alligator. That’s true of pretty much any old movie I see that has real animals. I am a lot more sensitive to it now than I was when I was a kid. I have a hard time watching “Night Of The Lepus” (1972) nowadays.

I prefer fake-looking CGI animals over seeing real animals mistreated.

We watched a movie called “The Colony” (2021) last night. It was kind of like “Escape From New York” (1981), but without the bright colour palette and upbeat tone.

Today we watched a very interesting movie on Netflix DVD, “The Current War” (2017), about Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and (to a much lesser extent) Nikola Tesla. We enjoyed it.

If you get a chance to see “Nancy Drew And The Hidden Staircase” (2019), do. It’s cute and fun.

No spoilers.

If you’ll take my suggestion, do not read anything about it or watch any trailers. I didn’t, and I’m glad. This is a much better film than I expected it to be. Susan called it “a lovely surprise”. Maybe you will enjoy it, too.