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Quote Of The Day

Books & Movies, QOTD

Via Insty:

“[Kathleen Kennedy] gambled some of the biggest franchises in Hollywood history on the modern audience. And wow, did she lose big. To paraphrase Chris Gore, she took boy brands that everyone could enjoy and turned them into girl brands that nobody enjoyed. Men felt excluded and disrespected, and women felt patronized and pandered to. The modern audience had failed to show up, and the existing audience was abandoning ship. Kennedy’s greatest gamble had failed, and inevitably it all finally caught up with her.”

Can I be frank here for a moment?  I grant you that the destruction of these comic-book “franchises” leaves me totally unmoved because I have never been in the target audience for these infantile fantasies.  So to Star Wars, Star Trek, all those ur-Nordic fairy tales, Justice League and all the nochschleppers… good bye, fuck off and good riddance.  Ditto to the directors and producers, and indeed likewise to the actors and actresses, all of whom have made billions of dollars from filming this silly, inconsequential oeuvre  of fluff and nonsense.

A pox on all their houses.

Let me add to that the opinion that I will be really, really glad if none of these fantasies see the light of day for a generation or two so that maybe, just maybe some of those bloated production budgets might instead make their way into the production of decent movies with grownup storylines, good acting and productions that don’t rely on the deafening of their audiences.

But I risk being as naïve as the franchises’ audiences if I truly believe that any of this will ever happen.

Thank goodness for my DVD collection, which grows monthly.

Uncertain Weather

Weather

Oh, joy… Max is usually on the money, and this doesn’t look good.

I’m not too worried about ice and such here in north Texas, because we can just hunker down at home.

What worries me is that ice storms lead to frigging power outages and those, coupled with sub-freezing temperatures are no fun at all.

Let’s see how our fabled ERCOT system handles it, but based on past performance I’m not optimistic.  (Back in 2014, we were without power for over three weeks.  At times, I didn’t think we were going to make it because the cold was that intense.)

So I’ll be bringing in the SHTF infrastructure — gas cookers, water supplies, batteries and alternative power sources, not to mention stuff like industrial-strength flashlights and so on.

If this back porch of mine goes dark, it’s most likely because of no power, i.e. no Intarwebz.  Be patient, and take care of yourselves.  And run yer taps to guard against freezing pipes because trust me, you do not want to have to deal with that, in sub-freezing temperatures.

Last time this happened to us back in 2021, we lost our apartment and most of our household goods in floods from burst pipes, and were stranded in a hotel for four months while the complex was essentially rebuilt.

Comes from living in a climate which isn’t used to this kind of temperature extreme, I guess.

But right now I sure wouldn’t mind some of that global warming stuff we’ve been threatened with.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

So down in Arizona, this happened.  Executive summary:  Folks sitting at home doing family things, when an alleged intruder allegedly broke down the alleged front door.  One of the alleged family members happened to have an alleged gun, which he allegedly used to fire multiple shots into the allegedly worthless hide of said alleged intruder, whereupon said shootee’s body temperature allegedly moved quickly to room temperature.

Nothing to see here, move along.