• bluesky,  facebook

    ̶m̶a̶r̶c̶h̶ every month is madness

    Posted on 3/13/24. Facebook.

    I’m still on Windows 10 and the urgings to upgrade to Windows 11 are getting more demanding. I’m like, nice try. I would still be using Windows XP if y’all hadn’t forced me to Windows 7, and I’d still be using Windows 7 if you hadn’t forced me to Windows 10, and we are WELL ESTABLISHED NOW that I am not going anywhere until someone shows up at my house and shoves a new computer into my arms.

    ~

    Bluesky.

    you can tell my husband loves me because he laughs at my really bad jokes

    me: next play-thru, i’m gonna respec everyone into bards and call it Barder’s Gate

    him: genuine hearty sustained belly laugh

    that’s true love


    Posted on 3/14/24. Bluesky.

    the anhedonia is STRONG today


    Posted on 3/15/24. Facebook.

    Thank you all for the birthday wishes. ❤ I spent my day disassociating tbh. Dealing with a lot of anhedonia and mortality-related anxiety. But mostly feeling nothing at all, except when I saw all the lovely birthday wishes of course! Definitely a bright spot in the ten-thousand-yard stare of death at my wall, wondering wtf life even means.

    I’ve always been really weird about birthdays. I had my first mortality-related meltdown when I was like, nineteen. Nuts, right? It’s some kind of anxiety trigger.

    I feel bad because I wanna show my gratitude for all the effort people put in around my birthday. I recognize it and genuinely appreciate it so much. But I feel uniformly horrible on the days surrounding my birthday. (It’s gotten markedly worse since 2020, when my birthday was the beginning of lockdowns!) My difficulty showing gratitude and pleasure is not at all a reflection on the love I receive; I just don’t have a filter and can’t conceal how dead I feel.

    Anyhoo, thinking about my 2020 birthday, I was just telling 13yo Moonlight how the person I was in 2020 doesn’t exist anymore. Much of my days are occupied with crochet and plants now. I did not have *either* back then. I devoted a LOT of time to dieting and exercise. I also never played video games at length because I was always stressed out in a working frenzy. I worked hard and played hard. Basically 95% of my time was mindless frenzy, and 5% was getting wrecked on vacations. Now I am sober (!!!) and extremely moderate in my behaviors. I am a whole different Sara, which has been a lot of work to achieve.

    My progress has been, in a way, a lack of progress – comfort treading water, finding smaller joys, spending time with my kids growing SO fast. It’s extremely strange to be an entirely different person every few years. This version of me is good too I guess. I’m still feeling pretty empty right now. Emotions will be back later, I assume.


    Posted on 3/15/24. Bluesky.

    i’m watching paula pell on seth meyers, and i’m wondering if sixty looks young to me these days because i’m getting older, or if people really just don’t age like they used to

    like she looks sixty, but…not an old sixty?? idk, my mom is also sixty and i swear sometimes she looks younger than me.
    i just got off a video call with my mom the other day and it was like this

    me: byyyeeee love you mommy

    *hangs up*

    me to sibling, in a monster voice: WHY THE FUCK DOES SHE LOOK YOUNGER THAN US


    Posted on 3/16/24. Facebook.

    I am not sure if anyone is okay. Are you okay? I often am not. But I strive to be loving, purposeful, curious, kind, nurturing, and overall authentic – a good mother to life and a good roommate with myself.


    Posted on 3/18/24. Bluesky.

    My 9yo introduced me to skibidi toilet and the phrase “sticking out your gyat for the rizzler” and I feel very, uh…educated?


    Posted on 3/19/24. Facebook.

    Breaking news: Writers ain’t robots. If it’s taking a long time to get a book out, we’re not happy about it either. It’s not about torturing you.


    Posted on 3/20/24. Bluesky.

    I’m out walking my dog and some car drove by with the window rolled down

    A masculine voice catcalled me

    He said “I RESPECT YOU!”

    it was my husband on the way to work.

    ~

    Little Sunshine is so thoughtful. I told him I was feeling all crampy from my period, and he ran downstairs to heat up a rice sock for me. 🥹 Didn’t even ask, his own idea, SO SWEET

    ~

    i’m trying to finish creating content for my FILTHY ASS interactive novel (just need a few more scenes and drawings and then to code it out), but i simply wish i would stop embarking on projects with key fetish content when i know i never wanna finish it. lol

    whatever my tolerance for writing/drawing sex is, it’s always about 50% of what i feel like a fetish-themed story demands narratively. my author sense says “i need scenes x, y, and z” and i’m like “woo, scene x!” and then “sigh, scene y” and then “i’d rather die than finish scene z”


    Posted on 3/20/24. Facebook.

    Charlotte Brontë and I are very excited to go through this New Surrealism book. It’s a really good read/flip-through so far. The binding is divine. I appreciate that it included a bit on dadaism so that I could use it as a homeschool lesson.

    My only complaint: I picked it up partially because I love Miles Johnston, but the Johnston pieces included are absolutely not his definitive work, nor my favorites, and I’m like. why these? WHY? This big beautiful printing doesn’t include the stuff that made him a notable name in surrealism. One of the paintings is a really nice one tbh, but I literally see movie posters emulating some of his more iconic work, none of which they included. Bah!

    Surrealism is a really fun art movement to approach with a teenager who isn’t sure about fine art, btw. Moonlight confessed they’re 50/50 on “fine art is good” vs “this is nonsense and you’re pulling my leg,” but I think that the internet’s love of memes, random humor, and dadaism helps sway them toward understanding surrealism.


    Posted on 3/21/24. Facebook.

    I have been escorted out of a coyote’s territory before. It’s super cool, kinda haunting, so magical. These are my favorite wild animal that live in my neighborhood (although the hawks and corvids are up there too). I am always surprised how many people *hate* coyotes.

    Bear in mind the statistics show overwhelmingly that coyotes do not present any threat to humans; last I looked, there had only ever been one recorded death of a human by wolves in the Americas (a solo female who broke her leg hiking), while coyotes haven’t killed anyone.

    If you dislike coyotes because of their risk to house pets, I will gently inform you that you should not have outdoor cats. They devastate the local bird populations. Your cat is *perfectly happy* indoors, no matter how much that liar tries to yell at you about it. Also, pet dogs belong inside, too, especially the cute little (delicious) ones. Cats and dogs have a lovely symbiosis with humans over the millennia; it is better for everyone involved if we keep them close.

    When you’re escorted or have a sighting in a populated area: I recommend coyote hazing. That means shouting, waving your arms, throwing rocks near them. You don’t have to hit them or anything. You just want coyotes to continue feeling like humans are scary and hostile and that we shouldn’t be sharing spaces. It will help avoid tragic interactions.

    Large predators are really important to a local ecosystem. We are also part of this ecosystem. It befits us to live alongside coyotes, wolves, predatory birds, etc. Don’t be afraid. Don’t hate. Just respect the delicate interconnectivity of nature and do your part by spooking the coyotes properly.


    Posted on 3/24/24. Facebook.

    Tom Ellis was really born to play Lucifer.

    ~

    There are so many things I’ve never done sober. Like Beat Saber. The game where you swing laser beams around to slice blocks in time with music. Never done it sober until the last week or two.

    Turns out I am so much better at Beat Saber while stoned. You wouldn’t think it, but there you go.


    Posted on 3/25/24. Bluesky.

    stepping away from my interactive novel’s code for two months while i was distracted/finishing the novel means i have absolutely NO IDEA where anything in the code is, or what it means, and i hate Past Sara sooo much

    ~

    i still can’t get over my 13yo being taller than me. i’m 5’10”. they’re at least six feet now. i don’t know what to do with myself. THAT CAME OUT OF ME.


    Posted on 3/26/24. Facebook.

    You know what kind of day it is? I had my phone pinging my headphones, and I could HEAR THEM, and I was looking for them everywhere. But the sound seemed to move.

    Because my headphones were in my pocket the whole time. Yyyyyeeeppp. It’s THAT kind of day.


    Posted 3/27/24. Bluesky.

    I need Kristen Stewart to dress me like a lesbian


    Posted on 3/30/24. Bluesky.

    I’ve been enjoying Beyoncé’s Jolene but I can’t stop singing “Gay Dean” from Community

    🎶 your lifestyle is alternative, your influence is positive 🎶


    Posted on 3/31/24. Facebook.

    Man, spring break is always chaos. Totally throws me off my stride…whatever little stride I’ve had this year, lol.

    But it really strikes me now that my kids are growing up so fast. 13.5 and 9.5 years old. They’re so much easier than they’ve ever been. They can entertain themselves when I need to take care of myself. Emotional self-regulation is at an all time high. Taking care of them when they were small was like getting emotionally run over, lol. Small kids are hard! Big kids are an absolute dream.

    I’m okay getting my “stride” thrown off ad infinitum for a few more years while they’re still mine.

    ~

    Bluesky.

    I got cactus spines in my hand and THIS TIME I remembered not to pull them out with my teeth (thus transferring spines to mouth)

    Please clap


    Posted on 4/1/24. Facebook.

    I’m reading THE BELL JAR for the first time and wondering if I should worry about how relatable it is


    Posted on 4/4/24. Facebook.

    I took Stoker on a walk early this morning, since it’s getting warm during the day. I try not to walk him when it’s more than ~65F outside because he pants too hard. He’s a French bulldog, and that means his sinuses are dreadful, his paws are delicate, and he’s a FANCY BOY who needs pampering. So we were out around 7:30 today (it gets more like 6am in the summer).

    Lately I’ve heard dogs barking in back yards long before I approach with my dog, but I don’t see anyone else out walking. I haven’t been sure what was getting the dogs wound up. Maybe just a morning bark?

    Today I saw the cause: A big ol’ coyote. She’s smaller than my pitbull and shaped more like a cat, and she moved like there’s no gravity. Just effortlessly bounding over sagebrush and slipping under trees. She kept looking at me over her shoulder as she ghosted into the fields.

    No wonder the dogs have had so much to say!

    I know there are coyotes on that trail because they mark it with scat and hear them crying at night. They sound like little babies. It jolts through me every time because I think I have to go check on one of my children…but they are big now and don’t cry out like that.

    Sometimes I’ll see coyotes off other trails carrying rabbits in their mouths, but I think I’ve only *seen* a coyote on that trail once before, and only at night. What a beautiful animal. I feel so lucky. ❤ I hope she’s enjoying all the rabbits because we had a warm, wet winter and everything is kinda overgrown!

    The toads in my backyard are also extremely numerous this year, which means I’m going to have even more garden snakes, which means I’m going to have even more red-whatevered hawks. (I can’t tell the species tbh.)

    I LOVE this time of year.

  • Bridget sitting around in pajamas. image credit: Miramax Films
    movie reviews

    Movie Review: Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) *****

    My original Letterboxd review for this is pretty thorough and I stand beside it.

    IN A WORLD where we are supposed to believe a size 8 needs to lose 20 lbs

    An overgrown ADHD kid overthinks everything, from her underwear to some guy’s Christmas sweater, and fights intrusive thoughts to resist saying TITS PERVERT on stage at work~

    Bridget Jones thinks men will not be attracted to her if they’ve seen her sing badly!

    But thanks to two smoldering lipless Englishmen, she is about to realize–well, probably exactly nothing. There are two sequels after this one.

    A relatable classic for dumpster human beings like me.

    “Bridget Jones’s Diary” is about a single woman who feels insufficient. Most everyone she knows has gotten married. She weighs “too much.” (To the tune of 136 lbs.) She smokes too much. She drinks too many units of alcohol. She’s not smart enough. She’s not clever enough. Bridget wants to improve herself on every metric so that she can get married and her mother will get off her back.

    I wouldn’t call this an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but rather a smart homage. Like the Bennett family, Bridget is always inappropriate. Hugh Grant plays a character like Mr. Wickham, who has a history with Mr. Darcy–uh, Mark Darcy–and he’s a saucy little liar manipulating the women around him. And of course there is Mark Darcy, played by notorious Mr Darcy actor Colin Firth. Even though there are more suitable matches for him, socially speaking, he loves Bridget for exactly who she is. Mess and all.

    Hugh Grant is an extremely charming Wickham-alike, and his floppy hair is the fourth star of the movie. He really stands as a dirtbaggy second option for Bridge in this love triangle, and as a love triangle connoisseur, I can tell you that the alternative option isn’t always so appealing. It all hinges on Hugh Grant’s charm. I mean, if Bridget chose him, you’d kinda get it.

    Personally, I am always cheap for Colin Firth. I truly believe he took this job because he knew it would be hilarious to be Mark Darcy after being Mr Darcy. If you like his pining faces in BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, I promise, you’ll love his pining faces here too. He’s extremely endearing. The truth is that he’s actually really awkward and nerdy (in a way that is complementary to Bridget!) and he’s absolutely *smitten* with her, but you mostly see it in the slightest twitches of his face. I swoon at the fifty shades of wordlessly staring this man can do.

    My lovely English friend tells me that Renee Zellweger has a flawless English accent, which is worthy of note when she’s opposite actual Brits. But my main interest has always been in how well she sells Bridge’s completely-normal-woman personality. No. I’m lying. My main interest has always been in how extremely hot she looks in the bunny costume and also in her knickers at the end. This actress should have absolutely considered keeping the weight on after the movie! She’s so hot! Do either of the men deserve her? Was ending up with me an option?

    It’s actually a really sweet movie, cloaked in a lot of garbage that originates mostly from Bridget’s nonexistent self-esteem. The point is that she’s perfectly fine. She really doesn’t need to lose weight or quit her bad habits to be worthy of love. She just needs to be with the guy who treats her well, not the one who keeps swanning off with an American babe.

    We all deserve a Mark Darcy, really. Someone who will eat the blue soup, twin with our bad Christmas sweaters, and buy us a new journal when we filled the last one up talking crap about him. This is one of my quintessential romcoms.

    (image credit: Miramax Films)

  • Kat and Patrick from 10 Things I Hate About You point directly at the viewer. Who's getting old? YOU ARE. image credit: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
    movie reviews

    Movie Review – 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) *****

    In this Y2K remake of Taming of the Shrew, an overprotective father prevents his teen daughters from dating unless both of them go out. The younger sister convinces guys to get her shrewish older sister hooked up. Enter Shakespearean shenanigans: One guy talks another guy into financing a third guy into dating the older sister, presumably so that the financier can date the younger sister, but *actually* so the first guy can date her. The younger sister does actually want to date the financier. But the ones who fall in love are the third guy and the oldest. Are you keeping up?

    You can transpose Taming of the Shrew onto any generation, but this one effortlessly touches down on late-90s Hollywood High School. The daughters of a rich family have so many of the same concerns about finding appropriate matches — although here, the matches matter for school reputation and a father’s approval, not marriage.

    Our hero-for-hire, Patrick, is played by handsome young Heath Ledger. He’s gorgeous in this movie. His curls! His bone structure! The intensity when he worries over Kat! He played a bad boy with arresting tenderness, and he remains a complete heart-breaker. I’m thirty-old now and I’m still like, damn, just as much as when I was a kiddo.

    I always found Kat so relatable — played here by Julia Stiles, dancing slightly better than she does in Save the Last Dance. (Can we please note how she really got thee best romantic heroes in her early movies? Heath Ledger, Sean Patrick Thomas, Freddie Prinze Junior…) Her bad attitude has been my entire life goal.

    It’s funny how Kat is built up like a stereotypical lesbian in many ways — her fashion sense, her music preferences, the books she reads, her school of feminism — and I feel like the sequel would have her character discovering lesbianism in college, yet I also totally believe her chemistry with Heath Ledger. I bet a lotta lesbians would have made him their exception.

    How could you *not* fall for a boy so committed to keeping you awake after hitting your head drunkenly at a party? Or who tries to win you back by performing a huge song with the marching band, while also fleeing from cops? One who uses his illicit gains to buy you a friggin guitar? I can’t even.

    Though the romance is what kept a lot of us coming back when we were young teens, I really think what makes this movie persist twenty-five years after its release is the goofy humor. 10 Things walked so that Bottoms could run. Which passing gag is the funniest: the cowboys using their lariats on trash cans, the PE teacher getting shot in the butt by an arrow, Joey Donner’s terrible modeling, the penis on Michael’s cheek, the kid weirdly interested in sheep…?

    On a personal note, this is one of the few movies where I still haven’t mentally transitioned from relating to adult characters from the teen characters. When I watched Addam’s Family as a kid, I was Wednesday; I have been Morticia for over a decade. But something about 10 Things I Hate About You makes me regress completely to being in high school again. Falling in love with Heath Ledger again. Drawing boobs on cafeteria trays again.

    (image credit: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution)

  • lichen on a tree
    sara reads the feed

    Timelessness, ice, and the anthropocene

    I’ve lost track of the days playing Stardew Valley. It’s funny…I’m sixty-five days away from cannabis, and I still have periods where I feel stoned, and life blurs away just like it did when I was using constantly. If I have a tv show on, if I play a game, time just vanishes utterly. It’s a miracle I’ve managed to walk my dogs and do the dishes and a couple other minor tasks. Otherwise, things have just slipped away.

    This is one of those things I hope will improve sooner rather than later, but (as I think I’ve said before) the brainfog may last up to a year as my system rebalances. Something something endocannabinoid system something. I could also say something about paying the piper. Anyway, a year of weird unbalanced junk is the price to pay for eight years of psychedelic experiences, probably, and it really does seem fair. I can only complain so much about something I did knowingly to myself.

    It’s nice to lose time *pleasantly* at the moment, because I’ve also been intermittently losing days to blind anxiety. This one is preferable.

    But I’d really like to have time back!

    ~

    I got a new countertop ice maker, though. I really cannot overemphasize how delighted I remain by the small things. Watching it work brings me Actual Joy.

    ~

    Here is a beautiful, haunting poem by Only Fragments.

    ~

    NPR shares photos from The Anthropocene Project, which show some of the mighty impact humans have had in shaping our world. I’m afraid the subject matter is mostly depressing. The photos are beautiful, though.

    ~

    Jails are really inventive about the ways they harm people. Here’s an Ars Technica piece about jails limiting face-to-face visits in order to earn more money from prison phone companies. It’s monstrous: there is no comparison to actually being able to see and touch and share space with people you love.

    ~

    Via Quartz, Gizmodo reports on scientists making super-fast broadband internet. We’re talking 301,000,000 mbps compared to the average USA broadband speed of 64-ish mbps (nice).

    The feat was achieved by using new wavelength bands that aren’t used in traditional fiber optic systems. The new wavelength bands are equivalent to “different colors of light being transmitted down the optical fiber.”

    The solution is remarkable because it does not require new infrastructure to drastically improve internet speeds, and could allow significantly faster internet speeds through existing fiber cables.

    Higher broadband speeds isn’t the only limiting factor in how quick your internet goes, mind. A lot of loading pages is dependent on hardware (your RAM, if I remember correctly) and other things. In order for us to eventually make use of this future possible speed, people will need better hardware too. Also, if higher speeds are available, you can bet files will get much larger, which also means a need for more storage. This is just layman commentary; I’ve observed the parallel developments of technology over my life, but I barely know what I’m talking about.

    I suspect faster rates will first benefit corporations and possibly academic institutions. I bet stock traders are salivating.

    ~

    Al Jazeera English shares “grief food” from three different cultures. Funeral potatoes are not included.

    AJE also talks about caste issues highlighted by food delivery services in India. This is the kind of thing my Anglo ass would never think of, so the perspective is interesting.

    ~

    This is another one of those Sara Reads the Feed posts where I’m unflagging a bunch of articles I flagged to share in my RSS reader. Sometimes what I find interesting is too depressing to dwell upon without elements of added interest. What I am omitting today involves unusual animal behavior from climate change, rising meningitis rates, microplastics in archaeological sites, American politicians openly supporting genocide, and more.

    Just because I read it and stuck it in my brain-box for consideration doesn’t mean I want it to land on my blog, necessarily. I reread these posts sometimes to find things I care about. I do try to counter the overwhelmingly shouty narrative of mass media by carefully picking what sticks.

    ~

    Well, this is literally destructive, but interesting nonetheless. The Tropicana in Vegas is getting torn down and replaced by a ballpark. (NPR)

    ~

    Kathryn Murdoch, related to that Murdoch, wants more focus on protopias rather than dystopias. (NPR) She points to Star Trek as an example. You can imagine me grimacing but also waving a little pompom. I’m skeptical of anyone who says “let’s imagine a rosier future!” who’s deeply vested in the systems that make our current-day not-so-rosy. People never seem willing to hurt their own position of power for the greater good.

    I don’t want to argue with the message, really. I know a lot of people focusing on hopepunk and grimbright for similar reasons. We have to imagine better to achieve it.

    ~

    In California, half a million workers are getting a $20 minimum wage now. (NPR)

    That’s incrementalism right there, which is definitely better than a sharp stick in the eyeball. However, I seem to remember inflation means we should be arguing for a minimum wage upwards of $24/hr.

    Maybe my current politics are “discontent with anything short of the best because I’m sick of a lifetime watching occasional, intermittent growth.”

    ~

    Sam Raimi isn’t working on a Spider-Man 4 with Tobey Maguire at the moment. (Variety) I guess I’d be there for it if he did, though. I still think his MCU movie had more interesting moments than a lot of the late-stage MCU.

    ~

    The Gen V cast is mourning the loss of Chance Perdomo. I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around this one for a couple days now. He was prominent in the Netflix Sabrina show, and I honestly loved Gen V. He’s just taken up a lot of real estate in my entertainment life. And now he’s gone. Twenty-seven is way too young.

    ~

    The Guardian talks about “Tory rebels” working with Labour et al to decriminalize sleeping rough. I am to USian to fully contextualize this, but…it sounds good? This is good, right?

    My city just added new laws to make being homeless more illegal, so I’m just glad to see *somewhere* trying to make things easier for our unhoused community members and neighbors.

    ~

    Dude, twenty-two people are still on the ship that hit the bridge in Baltimore. (Quartz) Still working. Keeping the whole thing running. Not going anywhere. It sounds like they’re doing well enough, but man, I wish they could be home with their families.

    ~

    Engadget talks about Gmail priming us to be the product online. I have been wondering if we shouldn’t expect Gmail’s freeness to last. The decline in Google as a search engine makes me think we’re getting to the part of the business model where they work on squeezing more profit out of the thing.

    ~

    This Refinery29 article on Cowboy Carter highlights something I find personally interesting.

    The four Black women country artists who appear on “Blackbird” are experiencing the kind of overnight attention they’ve long deserved, but wouldn’t have achieved at this level and this quickly, without the Beyoncé effect. In just 96 (ish) hours, emerging country stars Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts have seen their followers quadruple and their streaming numbers skyrocket. For the first time in history, six Black country acts (including Martell and Shaboozey) are featured on Spotify’s US daily top artists chart. These stats will have a tangible and extraordinary impact on these artists and on mainstream country music.

    I’ve heard a lot of criticism of Blackbird, but it’s important to a lot of women’s careers. The intention is important. Community responsibility remains part of Beyonce’s messaging.

    ~

    In archaeology news, a bunch of Roman curse scrolls were found in an English town. (Smithsonian Mag)

    They also found a Pompeii construction site, which is teaching us about the ways they built things.

    Aaaaand a medieval castle under a French hotel!

    In news about much more modern historical sites of personal interest to me, here’s a bit about Nevada’s ghost towns. Some are abandoned, some are living. They talk about Virginia City, my favorite local tourist trap ghost town. Hey, I like the candy stores.

  • A villainous Martian holds Santa at laser-point. image source: Embassy Pictures
    movie reviews

    Movie Review: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) ***

    In “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” the Martians become worried about how boring their children have become since discovering Earth TV. The obvious solution is to kidnap Santa Claus and make him bring joy to Mars. This offers an alternate history United States where reporters have access to the North Pole, and Santa’s failure to hold a press conference as expected alerts the military to his abduction. Or something like that.

    We watched this unseasonable classic at the request of my teenager, who’s a big science fiction fan and also has a great sense of humor. They didn’t want to watch the version with MST3K commentary, though. They wanted us to just dive into this low budget sixties-era holiday flick raw. So we did.

    First of all, this title is totally misleading. Santa Claus does zero conquering. Santa Claus “smokes” his bubble pipe, allows the Martians to wreck his staff, and complains about what a nag his wife is.

    Second of all, has any movie had a bigger asbestos budget? All the snow in this movie suspiciously looks like the makings of mesothelioma. I’m pretty sure that Billy and Betty (the human children) spent half this flick rolling around in huge piles of asbestos. When Billy put an asbestos-covered glove up to his lips, I actually screamed.

    But for all the cheesy costumes, poor effects, and over-use of USA military propaganda, this…isn’t a bad movie? I really feel like I gotta reiterate my ethos: If a movie accomplishes what it sets out to do, and it’s not boring or especially offensive, then it’s a fine movie. This was obviously made to amuse children at Christmastime. I think it probably achieved that.

    It doesn’t *look* good. But. It’s not like kids back then were watching on 4K widescreen TVs; most of them probably didn’t even have color. You gotta imagine watching this thing so blurry that you can’t tell the “radar box” is a loose handful of wires taped inside of a plywood box. So blurry that the uneven greenish makeup covering alien skin might have looked consistent. The aluminum foil antennae and flimsy costumes literally could not matter less.

    We’ll just ignore all that. What you get, then, is a goofy story about Martians making up an excuse to kidnap Santa Claus, and Santa Claus setting up his first franchise location on Mars. You get a cartoon villain with a satisfyingly thick mustache trying to eject children out an airlock! Grown ups act goofy. Children get menaced by a legitimately scary polar bear costume and a robot with dial nipples. Kids defeating the bad guys by attacking them with toys during an acid trip of shaking cameras.

    Nothing holds up to analysis, but it’s not meant to. This is basically one of those Marvin the Martian cartoons acted out by a handful of people on plywood sets. It’s kinda funny, very seasonal, and you won’t miss any critical plot developments if you wander to the bathroom.

    I’d happily rewatch this camp classic with my family at Christmas if they wanted to, but they don’t. Making a load of inappropriate jokes about Santa “conquering” Martians is only funny once, I guess.

    (image source: Embassy Pictures)

  • sara reads the feed

    Not a good housewife, baby groundhogs and licky parrots, and expensive chocolate

    I think I used to keep my apartment very clean when I lived alone — now half a lifetime ago, when I was 18. It was under 700 square feet. I recall cleaning it every weekend, top to bottom, and being pleased with the results. I spent half my time outside the apartment between commuting to work and work itself. Often, I didn’t cook for myself. There was a mall food court across the parking lot. One big serving from Flaming Wok could keep me fed a full day, split across three meals.

    Of course I could keep it clean. Simplicity, low-mess, and limited space is easy to clean. It was important in such a dingy old apartment; it would have fast become bleak otherwise.

    At no other point in my life have I been as tidy. At best, I can keep one room in my house clean. Of course, now my house is almost three thousand square feet. I spend all of my time here. So does my eldest, our cats, and two dogs. There is also a younger kid (who is sometimes at school) and a spouse (who is sometimes at work) and a sibling (who is pretty self-contained).

    I grew up in a family where my mom felt obligated to keep things clean-clean. Although my siblings and I were expected to contribute to specific chores (like dishes or garbage), my mom did everything else, and took care of us too. It meant I didn’t learn how to deep clean from her. But I expected my spaces to be as clean as though I had a self-conscious mom around doing all the work.

    Expectations and reality have not aligned for me in a long time.

    Yesterday I spent a while cleaning — mostly the downstairs floors, some counters. It feels like I did nothing at all. The work was nice for my body though. My mood is better when I spend a bunch of time hauling things around and trying to keep stuff tidy, even if I don’t really dent the big-family ADHD chaos. Most of my publishing peers hire cleaners. I’ve never been comfortable having strangers in the house, nor do I like the way big households call for maintenance labor that is too-low-paid. But I also can’t afford a proper household employee anymore.

    So here I am, always feeling lacking, never quite doing enough, and mostly just shrugging it off. We’re not hoarders. We’re just not organized…or sterile. Should homes be sterile? If I have little mammal friends, is it realistic to think I should be able to eat off the floor the way my high school friend’s mom expected?

    ~

    Al Jazeera English: How US police are co-opting a law meant to protect victims of crime. A young pregnant woman was shot and killed by two police officers.

    Nadine’s anguish was compounded when she discovered that officials considered there to be three possible victims in the deadly incident: Young plus the two cops.

    That allowed the officer who fired the fatal shot to invoke a state measure called Marsy’s Law, designed to conceal the identities of crime victims.

    Criminal justice advocates, however, warn this is part of a dangerous trend in the United States, where police officers use Marsy’s Law to shield themselves from public scrutiny.

    “They were saying he was a victim?” Nadine asked incredulously. “He was the man with the gun.”

    ~

    NPR: Pricier Easter bunnies and eggs. Half-dipped Kit Kats. What’s up with chocolate?

    Spoiler alert: It’s climate change. We’ve known this is coming for a while.

    The world is facing the biggest deficit of cocoa in decades. Most cocoa beans are grown in West Africa, where extreme weather and changing climate patterns have upended crop harvests, which are forecast to fall short for the third year in a row.

    That means another year of higher prices for makers, sellers and, ultimately, eaters of chocolate. Chocolate bunnies and eggs are expected to be pricier this Easter and perhaps for some time to come.

    ~

    From the Guardian: Punxsutawney Phil and his partner Phyllis (omg cute) have unexpectedly had two baby groundhogs (OMG CUTE!).

    “When we went in to feed them their fresh fruits and vegetables, we found Phyllis with two little baby groundhogs. It was very unexpected, we had no idea that she was pregnant,” Dunkel said, adding that the club has not had a baby groundhog in over a century.

    ~

    BookRiot: How Public Libraries Are Targeted Right Now — It’s Not “Just” Books

    ~

    Balloon Juice: The Many Tragedies of the Baltimore Bridge Collapse

    I’m excerpting an excerpt here, but this is the main thing I learned from this post.

    The six victims of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse were all immigrants from Mexico and Central America, doing the kind of grueling work that many immigrants take on, when a container ship crashed into a support pillar at 1:30 a.m. EDT on Tuesday (0530 GMT) and sent them plunging into the icy Patapsco River.

    ~

    In heart-refilling “news,” Smithsonian Mag has videos of parrots learning to play games on tablet using their tongues. Eeee!

    ~

    NPR shares a cool picture of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. This is using polarized light, and the article compares trying to photograph Sagittarius A to taking a picture of a donut on the Moon from Earth.

    ~

    Semaglutide products are famously expensive. I’ve heard around $1000 USD per dose. It’s made insurers reluctant to cover it for weight loss (Ars Technica), and then it made producers get the drug approved for weight loss to limit risk of heart attacks and whatnot (NPR).

    Now we’re learning that it costs about $5 to make a single dose. (Quartz) Which means basically that the makers are wringing money out of us through insurers. Fun. Sounds like a pretty normal American medical industry scam.

  • Doc Martin (the greatest show ever) Episode Recaps
    doc martin

    Doc Martin s1e6 “Haemophobia” (2004)

    This is an ongoing feature recapping episodes of the Greatest Show Ever, ITV’s “Doc Martin.” Please watch the episodes before reading if you don’t want spoilers.

    It’s another glorious day in Portwenn. Doc Martin promptly gets called a tosser for looking at a woman’s jubblies, which have a suspicious mole on them. He’s worried about cancer. She’s understandably displeased about the eyes on her jubblies. This parallels the first episode nicely, where Louisa got miffed at Martin for staring at her closely before he diagnosed her with glaucoma.

    Adrian Pitts shows up–you know, Adrian? The young doctor who was mentored by Martin, who we haven’t seen in a few episodes and won’t see again? He wants to be promoted at the hospital, so he’s hoping that Martin will give him a good recommendation. Both Parsons and Martin are in agreement though: He’s an arse. And he is! He doesn’t take it well when Martin tells him he’s an arse to his face.

    The town is catching onto the fact that Martin has haemophobia, and they’re giving him trouble for it. More than one patient brings it up in their appointments. Then Bert Large goes and fakes an injury at the pub, claiming he slipped with the drill. They cover his arm in ketchup to get Martin fainting/vomiting/whatever. Bullies! And a douche move from Bert, who’s been one of the only sorta-friends Martin has in town.

    Even Caroline on the radio is gossiping about the blood issue. When multiple people call in to discuss the haemophobia, Martin calls in to yell at everyone, which is an absolutely fabulous rant. And everyone deserves to hear it! Of course, this does not stop the giggling girls from mocking Martin and calling him a tosser. Maybe I should have been keeping a count on how many times Martin is called a Tosser?

    Martin can’t figure out who spilled his secret until the end of the episode, when we meet Adrian again at hospital. Adrian smugly admits that he’s the one who told the village about Martin’s haemophobia. What an absolute arse!

    The medical mystery: Peter Cronk is back! He hates school and lies about having a note to get out of PE. He doesn’t fit in. Louisa’s decided to make him her special project (“Is it because you’ve given up on Doc Martin, then?”), and she’s got an eye on Peter when he falls at the PE he didn’t want to do. Some jerk kid grabs his ankle so he beefs it off a ladder onto a crash pad. Louisa encourages him to laugh along with the bullies so he’ll be part of the in-crowd, but it doesn’t change the fact he took a bad spill. Martin gets summoned.

    Martin goes to see Peter after the whole blood prank, and Peter tells him that nothing is wrong. Martin tells him to shut up because he isn’t a doctor, recommends Peter goes to hospital, and leaves abruptly. This is heartbreaking to wee Peter. “Mum said not to show people that you’re clever, because if they’re not clever, they won’t like it. But Doc is clever and I thought he’d like it.”

    Louisa does take Peter to the hospital. It’s necessary: Peter’s mom has severe anxiety, and she doesn’t handle issues well. Louisa’s a good surrogate for the appointment. But they still don’t catch the problem. They rule out broken bones and send him onward, even though he still doesn’t feel good.

    Joy Cronk shows why Peter has grown to be so protective (and only gets worse over the course of the show). Just learning he went to hospital because of a PE accident sends her into a long panic attack. She’s still crying hours later because Peter’s condition declines. She manages to summon Louisa, who summons Martin, and they discover that Peter is severely ill. He’s vomited everywhere, is terribly pale, and unresponsive to attempts to awaken him.

    Peter has a ruptured spleen from his bully tripping him! They need an emergency transfer to hospital!

    And it’s so dramatic that Martin has to operate on him in the ambulance! This is the first time Louisa assists on a procedure, and it’s one of the first really graphic procedures we’ve got on the show. It’s not enough to transfuse fluids into Peter, so Martin cuts into little Peter to stop the bleed. It’s a little gory if that bothers you. It certainly bothers Martin. He does the procedure while also being sick. He has to put his hand into the child to clamp the splenic artery and keep it there until they arrive at the hospital. Holy crap??

    But he pulls through, and so does Peter.

    The Auntie: Martin’s not getting any relief from Joan. She tears into him for missing lunch, and eats without him while he’s addressing other things. Plus, she tells him that he’s responsible for the way the town treats him. I don’t know if that’s actually true. It doesn’t feel quite right. It’s a pretty old-fashioned way to think about things.

    The Assistant: This is Elaine’s last episode, and I’m glad. As much as I love her actress, Elaine is a terrible assistant — Martin couldn’t fire her, so this is the only way to get her out of the surgery. Begone, white girl dreads! She’s barely in this one. We can just look forward to Pauline now.

    The Larges: Although Bert is the main actor in the blood prank against Martin, Al is clearly not keen on the bullying. They don’t go anywhere with it. But throughout the show, we do get a lot of clear delineation between Al (sometimes competent) and Bert (the opposite of the Midas Touch), and one more delineation is Al’s humanity.

    Louisa & Martin: This is such a great episode for Louisa & Martin, though it initially doesn’t seem to be the case. Louisa confronts Martin about his “minor blood issue,” since she was on the panel that hired him and didn’t hear a word about the haemophobia. But before it can turn into a fight, she asks him why they have to fight all the time. They’ve got no answer for that. (“Because it’s good for ratings over ten seasons?”)

    In my favorite moment, Martin has an excellent dream where he imagines Louisa sitting on him, kissing on him…licking him…aaaand it’s actually the dog. Well, he wakes up, anyway, which he needs in order to join Louisa in taking care of the Cronks.

    Martin tells the story of his haemophobia to Louisa in this episode. And Louisa gets to lose her shit on Martin’s behalf, which is when she most obviously loves Martin. As angry as she gets at him, she won’t put up with anyone else treating him badly. That’s her job! Because she does it with love!

    This also has their first kiss. Which Martin ruins promptly by saying that her breath smells like she has some kind of gastroesophageal reflux. I’ll take “What’s the least sexy thing for a guy to say to a woman after their first kiss?” for twenty, Alex.

    Favorite Quote: As to the so-called homeopathic remedies, if there’s one for chronic infantilism then I suggest that your caller and the entire village embark on a course immediately!

    ~

    Louisa’s Hair Rating: 10/10. This episode has Louisa’s staple ponytail-with-bangs. It looks great on her! But her hair is a fuller lifted ponytail that’s sort of…fanned out and teased? by the end of the episode, which is even better. Weird how nice she looks when getting awakened in the middle of the night, but then again, Louisa always looks good. We also get her hair down at the end of the episode. All the hairs! All of them excellent!

    Infuriating Level: 8/10. Peter’s a little turd, but kids don’t deserve bullying, and Martin doesn’t deserve it either. I’ve never cottoned onto the whole “put up with bullying” thing. The show doesn’t endorse it either (Louisa changes her mind by the end of the episode). Still, going through multiple people advocating for bullying behavior for an hour is infuriating! This town sucks and their hellspawn children suck!

    Episode Greatness Level: 10/10. The splenectomy in the ambulance is memorable and Martin’s cock-up after the kiss is legendary. I love it soooo much. But of course, I always love this damn show!