Blue-Footed Musings

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry: I am a sucker for book- and book-shop-based stories, and the film’s title naturally caught my interest. Netflix didn’t provide a trailer, so I didn’t entirely know what I was getting into. On the plus side, the movie had some well-portrayed, likeable characters (a book-shop owner living on an out-of-the-way island and a traveling salesperson for a book publisher). But it was also a manipulative tearjerker that left me questioning, at the end, what even is the point of life. I would have skipped the movie if I’d known more of what it was about.

Dune: Part Two : Among the pros are the evocative setting, special effects, riveting faces, and costuming. That is to say, it’s a good-looking film with good-looking actors. Among the cons are poor pacing, bad guys struggling so hard to be menacing that they seem silly instead, and a portrayal of religion that entirely spoils any magic and mysticism that’s in the story. My least favorite thing was the heavy-handed framing of the Fremen as Arabs. Science fiction is all about metaphor. Half the point of reading and/or viewing it is to discover the metaphors for oneself. The other half is enjoying a respite from reality. So, to hang a lantern on the metaphors is both to destroy any intellectual enjoyment one might find in the tale while also turning one’s mind back to real life, where real people fight long and bloody wars over things like oil, which is just depressing. TLDR: I didn’t like the movie. I’m in the minority there, but what else is new?

I’ve always loved disaster films and dystopian films. As a kid, I was fascinated by movies such as Damnation Alley, Earthquake, and Planet of the Apes. In Damnation Alley there were hordes of cockroaches that ate everything, including people, chewing their victims down to bare bone (eek!). In Earthquake, people were trapped in various deadly situations, including a burning skyscraper (classic!). And pretty much everything about Planet of the Apes is awesome, especially the big reveal at the end–the ultimate disaster! As an adult, I’ve added movies such as 2012, Starship Troopers, Independence Day, San Andreas, and Armageddon to my list of movies to watch when the disaster-film mood strikes.

The best disaster films draw out the tension at the beginning. We, the audience, know that danger is brewing, but the main characters don’t know it yet, except perhaps a handful of scientists who, for one reason or another, can’t warn anyone. The characters go about their daily business blissfully unaware, witnessing dire developments but often passing them off as mere inconveniences or simply items of interest. Meanwhile, we the audience are on the edges of our seats with every new sign of impending doom.

There’s so much material available for making disaster movies. Anything can be made scary, even things that exist only in fantasy. But I think that the most effective disaster movies are those that focus on reality-based threats (i.e., earthquakes, nuclear war, asteroids, etc.), because viewers can more easily imagine themselves in the story.

For example, a disaster film about bird flu would hit really close to home. I can imagine exactly how it would go. It would open with a montage. First there would be footage from a few decades ago, when scientists first started speculating about the risk of a bird flu pandemic. Next would come images of articles about die-offs in wild bird populations, followed by pictures of sea lion corpses on a beach (a pivotal moment, because it shows that bird flu has moved into mammals, with devastating results).

Things are moving more rapidly now. We get quick blasts of images and narration about bird flu in cows, people fighting for their right to drink raw milk and screaming over the cost of eggs, and scenes of hazmat crews culling birds at poultry farms around the world.

The visuals now shift to specific people. A teenager in one country has a close call with the virus. A man in another country dies from it. Health officials declare that there’s nothing to be concerned about but quietly ask hospitals to expedite testing of patients who have the flu. To cap off the montage, we get scenes of government leaders making terrible decisions.

We, the audience, would cringe at the last, wondering how anyone could be that stupid. Then we’d remember that real-life leaders make bad decisions all the time. And indeed, some major government blundering would be needed for this movie’s plot to move forward. It’s so much harder to have an all-out disaster if the people in charge are doing things right.

So there you have it: a tense and riveting opening for a disaster film about bird flu. I can hardly imagine anything more terrifying. I’m on the edge of my seat just thinking about it. The script almost writes itself, and I won’t be surprised if you see a full-blown show on the very same theme coming soon to a theater near you.

Marshall’s Page

10/2/2016: I am Marshall. I am in 2nd grade, and I am seven years old. My favorite TV shows are “Odd Squad,” “Nature Cat,” and “Ready Jet Go!” My favorite activity is playing my tablet. My favorite games are “Angry Birds Transformers,” “Singing Monsters,” “Bad Piggies,” and “Pac-Man.” I like to laugh.

10/9/2016: I like Mommy the most in the world. I like Daddy, too. I like TV a lot more than everything else except my tablet. Yesterday Mommy took me to the library. It was very fun. I played with the kitchen toys. I played Pumpkin Tick-Tack-Toe and put together a puzzle. I colored in a pumpkin and I hung it up at the desk.

Livia’s Page

10/9/2016: My name is Livia. I’m 5-and-a-half years old. My favorite shows are “Odd Squad,” “Nature Cat,” and “Power Puff Girls.” I like Barbie movies so much. I have a favorite Barbie movie. It is “Barbie in the Twelve Dancing Princesses.” I have a Barbie movie I didn’t watch. Seriously, I do (my mother said, “What?”). And I like to be happy. My favorite cat is Peeps, because she meows with me and I feel nice with her. And I want to name her for her last name, Peeps Love. My favorite thing to do is play my tablet. And I laugh a lot. I like ladybugs. I like bees. My favorite parents are Mommy and Daddy. I have a brother named Marshall. And I have my very own art class. It’s an art class where you make art and I put checks and exes if I like it or not. I like grasshoppers. And since my mom let me do this, I’m happy. And my mom and me are good friends, even though I fart on her <toot!>. And my favorite daddy is my daddy. I like that he lets me watch his video game. He’s very huggable. He’s very nice. And I just love my whole family. And Marshall is mean to me sometimes. I don’t feel happy when Marshall is being mean to me. My brother and I have walkie-talkies. Daddy bought those. And I feel so happy! I found out how they work and my daddy is very funny. My mom is very nice and I love her.

• I struggle more with language now than I did when I was younger. It’s part of why I blog so much less frequently these days–I’m too tired for battle. But, difficulty in using language is a sign of mental decline, and the only way to stave off mental decline is to go to battle, doing the things that are hard, no matter how tired you are. <sigh> Why does life have to be like this?
• Speaking of mental decline . . . last week, while proofreading something I’d typed weeks before, I found that I’d substituted “becomes” with “because.” I see things like that and wonder if I’m really losing it. I have to remind myself that I’ve always made typing errors involving like-sounding words and that though “becomes” and “because” are a little farther apart in sound than the usual culprits, it’s still the same kind of mistake. Nothing to fret over.
• Now more than ever, it’s imperative that I keep myself busy. I didn’t keep myself busy enough yesterday, and the results weren’t pretty. I’ll do better today. Today I will be busy, busy, busy. And detached. Cool as a cucumber. Unflappable even.

I spent the tail end of New Year’s Eve in the usual way: with my family, watching a TV broadcast of the ball dropping in Times Square. As the people in the crowd chanted the countdown (“ten, nine, eight, . . .”), I felt strangely dislocated from time, because how could it be the end of the year already. Hadn’t we just started it?

Each new year feels more that way as I get older. My blog usually helps with that, letting me see each year in retrospect as a connected series of stories, rather than a puddle of mixed-up half-memories, random and detached from the calendar. Regretfully, I didn’t blog much in 2024, so the year will always be more muddled in my memory. But, I suppose the scarcity of posts for the year makes each one more precious. Let’s review the highlights and talk about what’s happened since, shall we?

January: 17 posts (the most I wrote for any month of 2024)

• I posted about my daily puzzling habit. Since then, I quit my NYT subscription, and I only do the puzzles on the website that are free, so no more Spelling Bee for me. My mom later gave me a Spelling Bee mug for Christmas, which would seem like an ill-fitting present were it not that I now solve the puzzle’s twin (Word Flower) over at the Boston Globe, and I still feel like I’m solving the Spelling Bee daily.
• I also posted about my knee. The cortisone shot lasted for several months. Now, the knee is a little stiff and sometimes painful, but not so bad that I need to get another shot. I hope to delay getting more shots for as long as possible. I suspect that they will get less efficacious the more I get of them, and I want to save them as a last resort.

February: 12 posts

• I wrote a post in which I mentioned Livia’s puzzle-solving abilities. During 2024, she became an ardent puzzler, tackling many of the NYT puzzles daily, as well as the Octordle. She can solve them on her own, and sometimes does, but she’s just as likely to solve them with me or her Dad, who is now also a puzzler (OMG, what? I did not see that coming!).
• We got an air fryer/toaster oven. As a toaster, it’s a mixed bag. It makes great toast, but it takes forever. Consequently, we weren’t able to get rid of the actual toaster, which was part of our plan for clearing clutter from the kitchen counters. The kids don’t have a lot of time in the morning when they’re getting ready for school, so they need a quick toaster. But we find the oven incredibly helpful when we need to make toast for the entire family, because it can handle up to 9 slices at a time. As an air fryer, I’m not sure it’s much better than a regular oven, but it did get us to try a bunch of new recipes, some of which (such as the fajita recipe) were keepers. As a toaster oven, it’s useful for reheating food that would get destroyed by the microwave. All things considered, it was a good purchase.
• In a post that is now private, I wrote about the ridiculous “bait-and-switch” bill that I got for my cortisone shot. I never paid the bill. I haven’t heard from the collections agency in a while. I’m unsure whether they’ve decided to let it go or are working on another way to pursue me. I can only hope that 2025 will have no unpleasant billing surprises.

March: 14 posts

As mentioned above, some posts that were once viewable by the general public are now private. In most cases, that’s because the post contained political commentary, and I’ve since decided to keep such posts private. For March, I want to highlight a quote from one such post. I wrote, “Dwelling on the big messes that I can’t control makes little sense when there are smaller messes all around me that I could control if I so chose. Perspective.” That’s exactly the mindset I need right now. I should focus more on what’s going on in my daily life and less on whatever the fuck the world is doing, because I can’t control the world or even handle its insanity right now.

April: No posts

I don’t remember April at all. I can only assume that the lack of posts was caused by the lack of sleep.

May: 2 posts

OMG, was I was in sorry shape in May, as I explained in this post: Gotta Go With What You’ve Got. Sleep-deprivation is terrible and dangerous and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone ever.

June: 12 posts

• Though I didn’t mention it on the blog until July, I joined the YMCA so that the kids could take swim lessons. The kids enjoyed the lessons, but the Y didn’t have any openings in the next-level class, so they couldn’t continue. Meanwhile, I couldn’t justify the expense of the memberships while waiting for spaces to open up in the class, so I decided to cancel. The Y makes it hard to do so, though, and I ended up having to pay for a whole extra month. Due to these and other assorted issues, the experience ultimately left a bad taste in my mouth, and I’m unlikely to join the Y again, but I hope the kids will at least remember the swim lessons fondly.
• Other odds and ends from June: the kids (especially Marshall) were thoroughly sick of school and I was at the end of my rope. I don’t know how we made it through, but we did. I’d lost patience with people, resolving that my new default for climate-change questioners/deniers would be “Are you a fucking moron?” I haven’t been called upon to use it, but I have no doubt that the time will come. In music, I was working on a dissonant 4-part 6-tone piece, which my teacher liked. I’ve since started a second one but haven’t made as much progress as I’d like, largely because I had writer’s block (composer’s block?) for many weeks in late 2024.

July: 8 posts

July was mostly about work. After apparently tempting the evil genies in June by saying I was sick of my job, in July I learned that I might indeed lose my job. I haven’t, at least not yet, and I’m relieved. But, I’m pissed at my employers for the way they handled the situation. I get that they needed to reduce costs. But, they didn’t have to be so cruel, making us live with the fear of job-loss for months and then axing people right before the holidays.

August: 3 posts

I wrote about planning to go to Great Wolf Lodge. I had had high hopes for that trip, but it didn’t turn out very well. First, it got postponed. Then, when we finally did go, there was a lack of enthusiasm that was not helped by the fact that the place was both packed with visitors and freezing cold. I’d call it a big waste of money except that we had some family time, which is priceless. I was still sleeping poorly in August and finally tried melatonin (it didn’t work and it had unpleasant side-effects. Ugh.).

September: 3 posts

I wrote a little bit, in a post that is now private, about the upcoming election and my trip to CT to visit with my friend (we got totally soaked–not the first time that has happened to us, and probably not the last!). I started my music lessons back up after having taken a much-needed break during the summer. I had a good birthday.

October: no posts

What was happening in October? I can’t recall. I know that I was struggling to find books to suit my mood, and at some point I stopped finishing the books I’d started. I kept trying to read, switching from one book to another, hoping to find one that could hold my interest, but I met with little luck. I am only just now starting to get my reading mojo back. Halloween, which is usually the highlight of the year, was a letdown. Marshall didn’t want to dress up, and Natalie had made other plans for Arianna without telling us in advance, so it was just me, Livia, and my hubby who went trick-or-treating. We didn’t even visit the kids’ vovos. The vovos are getting old (my MIL is 90!). They don’t get out much anymore, and we see them less often, which is sad. In December, they didn’t go to the Christmas Eve get-together at my SIL’s house, and their absence was a drag on the evening.

November: 6 posts

The big thing that happened in November was the election, of course, and I mentioned my subsequent reactions to it. The biggest reaction was that I quit social media. My Facebook and Twitter accounts are now gone, assuming they were deleted as promised. I’m somehow still on Instagram, apparently, as I continue to get e-mails from that site. I’ll have to go delete that one at some point. The loss of social media didn’t hurt as much as I’d feared. It was tough for a week or so, and then suddenly it wasn’t.

December: 3 posts

I didn’t write much, so I’ll just give a quick recap now.

• The writer’s block that had kept me from composing finally eased a bit, which was a relief.
• I fell behind on almost all Christmas prep. I didn’t even decorate the tree or wrap any presents until Christmas Eve. Thank goodness for cheatah bags! (I may write separately about cheatah bags later, but for now, I’ll just say that those cloth drawstring bags in Christmassy colors were a real life-saver that night).
• The jelly Advent Calendar that I bought for my husband was a big hit with the entire family, though technically we still haven’t finished the last few days of it because we were so busy then with other things. The jams will still be just as tasty when we get around to them, I’m sure.
• In preparation for my parents’ visit, we cleaned the house as much as possible. It’s nicer now, and we got to use our dining-room table for the first time. Same as last year, once there was a table available, we wanted to put a jigsaw puzzle on it. My husband selected the puzzle, and OMG it turned out to be the Garbage Pail Kids. What a blast from the past! My husband hid the cover of the box, so solving the puzzle has been challenging. We’re still working on it.

• I had fallen a day behind on the Advent Calendar, for which I felt really bad. To make up for it, today I made tickets to cover every day through Tuesday. Now, with just a week of tickets left to do, I can finally see the Christmas lights at the end of the tunnel. Whew!
• Don’t you hate it when you receive a shipping box marked “Do No Open With a Sharp Instrument” but it’s so thoroughly webbed in tape that you have no choice but to use a sharp instrument to open it? Like really, how do the shipers think you’re going to manage it?
• I was doing some Christmas shopping on my computer today. I had dozens of tabs open in my web browser. I took a short break to go to the grocery store. When I got back, Windows had done an update and all my tabs were gone. Hours of shopping down the tubes. 🙁
• Also this week, after making hundreds of edits to the word list in my crossword generation program, the program spontaneously deleted over 15,000 words. There was no way to get them back. I had to revert to an older version of the list. Losing hundreds of edits hurt, but it was preferable to losing thousands of words.
• The other day I wrote down something funny that Livia said. I don’t remember where I wrote it down, though, and now I can’t find it. Frustrating. I guess it was just that kind of week.

My hearing is not so great. Yesterday I was in the kitchen while that popular Shaboozey song was playing on the radio in the living room. The chorus sounded like “Everybody at a park in Texas” or “Everybody had a parking ticket.” That bit of the song got stuck in my head, playing over and over, and it was super irritating not knowing the actual lyrics. I didn’t know who the singer was, so I couldn’t easily look the song up. The words might have remained a mystery forever had the NYT Mini not referenced the song today. Thank God for puzzles!

P.S. It’s “Everybody at the bar getting tipsy.”