Trump Supporters

I forgive the people who voted for Trump and now admit they made a mistake.

I admire and (sometimes) adore the people who voted for Trump and now actively speak out against him. 

I don't hold their past mistake against them, because I know what it's like to be misled. I know what it's like to go down the wrong path.  I know what it's like to believe in lies and to allow these lies to make us feel special...the waiting for the vindication. 

I don't care how long it took for someone to realize the extreme awfulness of Trump.

I also don't care so much why they crossed over to the Anti-Trump side. Yeah, it's better if something like anti-racism, anti-misogyny, anti-fascism, anti-gaslighting, etc. brought them there.  But if they crossed over for more selfish reasons...like realizing Trump didn't make their own lives better and things have actually gotten worse. Well, my feeling is there's hope that once they're angry at Trump for personal reasons, they'll start looking at the other stuff and come to a realization that Trump's bigotry, narcissism and abuse are horrible things. And then these ex-Trump supporters might join the resistance against awful things like psychological abuse, xenophobia, misogyny, racism, police brutality, tax evasion, downplaying the Coronavirus, fucking up the Coronavirus response, etc. 

What I plan NOT to forgive is the people who continue to speak out in support of Trump up through the election.  This might be in the form of directly saying positive things about Trump or it might be in the form of speaking out against those of us who speak out against Trump.  

There is the awful possibility that, like with the Confederacy, history will forgive and glorify the Trump supporters.

We might end up with epic Oscar-winning portrayals of romances among families of The Proud Boys. 

Schools might end up being named after Mitch McConnell and Herman Caine. 

We might get statues of Trump and Lindsay Graham in our city parks.

Shit.

I really hope that doesn't happen.

So...let's say it doesn't.

Let's say that through the decades, Trump supporting becomes more and more marginalized. 

Let's say America ends up treating Trump, Trump supporters, and Trump's actions in the same way the Germans treat Hitler, Nazis, and the Holocaust.

I can imagine, in that case, there will be people who will try hard to downplay their support of Trump. I can also imagine, that despite openly supporting/defending Trump, they will claim to have ended up voting for Biden.  

To me, that will be too little too late.

Because yeah. Each vote counts....or at least tries to count despite the ridiculous Electoral College method.  

But what also counts is what we say and do that might influence other voters.  

So yeah. I'd be very reluctant to forgive or excuse these people.

I'm thinking, though, that there ARE exceptions. 

Let's say years down the road, a Trump supporter realizes they did wrong. 

It's one thing if they gaslight, downplay, try to change the subject, etc.  Or they fake a change of heart for financial gain or a grab at fame or power.  

But if they truly realize they're mistake....

Maybe they speak out, fight hard from letting this shit happen again...write books and articles about it...and donate most of the proceeds to charity.  

Well...if I can forgive and love Ben Linus despite his participation in mass murder, I can forgive these past Trump supporters as well.  




How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-beloved to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts 

Where Australia Fits

 In my last post I talked about regrets.

I've decided I want to clarify something.

I listed my two main regrets as not finishing film school and not staying in NYC.

I didn't list not-moving-to-Australia.

Here's how I feel about that.

Though I'm no longer obsessed with Australia, I do still wish we had moved there.

Well...especially now!

But besides all my political fears....

I can imagine us having a happy life in Australia. Because A) Australia is awesome B) I think it would have helped us avoid some of the problems that we've had here. 

I doubt count it as a regret, though, because we were never given any opportunity to move there. We never even came close.

So it's not like I made a choice that I now regret.

With film school, I was accepted and already IN film school. Though I found the intro to filmmaking class very challenging, I didn't fail it. I could have easily made the choice to stay and finish the film degree.

With NYC, we already lived there.  Now the apartment we were renting had a huge hike in rent price...but we could have probably found another place to live. Maybe we could have moved to Brooklyn or Queens?  Long Island?

But yeah...looking back in my life, I think there's a definite difference between unfulfilled wishes and regrets.

And that's not to say I'm not content with where life has led us.

Well....I'm less content lately. I feel like I'm in a nightmare that's going to get a whole lot worse.

BUT....besides that. Texas has been pretty awesome in some ways.  


Misplaced Blame

 I know we're not supposed to dwell on regrets. 

But sometimes I do.

My two main regrets are usually:

A) Quitting film school. 

B) Moving to Texas from NYC

Today I started dwelling on another one. The fact that it took me about twenty years to get back to writing screenplays. 

And where did I put that blame on that one?

This blog.

Which then led me to blaming my Australia-obsession. Because that's why I started this blog, and that's why I spent so much of my time writing on this blog.

BUT then I came to my senses.

Neither my blog nor my Australia obsession had anything to do with my super long hiatus from screenwriting.

It's not like I was busy writing screenplays and then I quit, because I became too busy with Australia.

No. I had quit years before.

What happened is I wrote a screenplay about time travel. I'm barely smart enough to watch and understand time traveling stories. I am NOT smart enough to write a time traveling screenplay. I think it fried my brain a bit.  

I mean I don't actually think the screenplay was that bad. But I think I overexerted my brain cells. And I think it made me lose the desire to write more screenplays.

The other thing is, I lost my Final Draft account. Or I lost the disk. Well....whatever. I didn't have access to it anymore.  And it's not cheap to re-buy.

I think in the last few years, I had some brief, vague desires to write screenplays. But I was too cheap to buy Final Draft and too lazy to do research on which free programs are decent.

Anyway, the good thing about the last regret is....though, I can't erase the past, I can write screenplays in the present and future. So it's not a completely lost cause.

 

Back to Wonderland

 I watched the Aussie show Wonderland, on Hulu, five years ago and loved it.

At the time, Hulu had only season 1 and part of season 2.

I've been waiting for the rest of the series to appear AND waiting for Random.org to pick it as my next show.

Okay...to be honest, I haven't been eagerly waiting.

I mean I haven't been dreading it.

I just haven't really cared.

My usual thing is to love a show with all my heart...while I'm watching it. Then when I'm done watching it, or I'm on hiatus from watching it, the interest and love fades.

So it's not like I've been dying to watch Wonderland the last five years.

BUT I will say I was pleased when Random.org said it would be my next show.

It's on Amazon Prime now, so that's where I'm watching it. 

At first, I thought they were missing the last season, but then I came to see that it's split up differently in the U.S than it is in Australia.  

Australia has it divided into three seasons.

The U.S has it divided into two.

I'm pretty sure that's what was going on with Hulu as well. I think what I watched was probably season 1 and part of season 2...and now season 2 equals the last part of season 2 plus all of season 3.  

Anyway...it wasn't hard getting back into it after five years.  My memory was a little hazy about what had last happened but not enough to make me feel confused or lost. Either that or the show is good at hinting to what has happened in the past.

The show did have me very much on edge, though.

I do NOT trust Australian dramas.

So what happens is that Steve (Tim Ross) and Dani (Jessica Tovey) are planning to move to Singapore for Steve's job. 

I wondered about that. Are the actors leaving the show? 

Or is something going to happen to make them change their mind about moving to Singapore?

Well, suddenly Dani is driving while using the phone, and she crashes.

Oh no. 

This is so Australian-television.

Fictional-Australia really needs to just get rid of all cars, trucks, and buses. 

Anyway....

Next thing I know, there's a hospital scene. And some of the characters are told that Dani is fine. She just broke her leg.

Did I relax?

Uh...no.

Not at all.

I saw Dani chatting and laughing...and waited for her to suddenly go unconscious. She may look happy, but her brain is bleeding.

When that didn't happen, I figured it was her broken leg. She's going to develop a blood clot. It will move to her lungs, and she'll collapse...dead in the kitchen.

There was a part of me that thought maybe she WILL be okay.

So it's her husband that's going to die. 

Dani and all their friends push Steve to go off to Singapore without Dani. They tell him they'll take care of her. They don't want him late for his work stuff.

I thought maybe Tim Ross is the one leaving the show, and he'll get in a plane crash. Or in a more Australian fashion, he'll get hit by a car as he's walking to a taxi.

Well...I finished the first episode, and so far....Steve and Dani are both alive.

It seems Steve has made it to the hotel in one piece.

Dani hasn't had a cerebral hematoma or a pulmonary embolism.

I'm slightly less on edge now.

But not completely.  

I can't imagine how they're going to continue the show with both characters in Singapore.  But I also can't imagine why Singapore would be canceled.

One idea I have is that....

Oh! I think I know.

Dani has a very close relationship with her father (Roy Billing) I bet something will happen to him.  Dani will feel obligated to stay with him while he's recovering. Then alone in Singapore, Steve will fall in love with a coworker.

Or maybe Steve will NOT fall in love with his coworker. Maybe he'll be bullied by a coworker...all his coworkers. He'll decide he doesn't want to deal with a toxic work environment, and he'll move back to Australia.

It would actually be kind of cool if NOTHING bad happened regarding them going to Singapore. What if they just lived and flourished in Singapore, and the show became partly about characters in Australia and partly about characters in Singapore.  

Yeah. TV shows don't usually do those kind of things.  But....fictional Australians don't often survive car accidents.  So...you never know.


 

How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts 

What Colleges Should Have and Should Be Doing

 I am so angry and disgusted with what American colleges have been doing regarding Covid.  

Well, I shouldn't lump all of them together. Some schools seem to be doing right by their students, staff, families, and the wider communities. But others have used Covid to put their greed and incompetency on full display.

Really. Universities SHOULD be being transparent in terms of their Covid response and case numbers. Instead they're being horribly transparent about how shitty they are.

Anyway...to help me deal with all this anger that's swirling around in me, I'm going to make a list of things I feel colleges should have done in the near past and should be doing now. 

1. As many classes as possible should have been online.

2. Residence halls should have been open for students desperately needing a place to stay. They should have had to write to the schools to explain their situation. THEY should have been the special exception rather than making students, preferring to stay away from campus dorms during a pandemic, the exception.

3. The number of students needing housing should have been reduced to the point that all students could have a private room. And the price of these rooms should have been reduced to double/triple room prices for students struggling financially. 

4. Schools should NOT have required Freshmen to live on campus. How greedy and desperate do you have to be to make students live in a crowded dorm with roommates?  It's quite strange that schools are so strict on not letting students come to college if they're lacking a meningitis vaccine, but the same schools will require students to come to school even though these students lack a Covid 19 vaccine.  

5. If schools wanted to be more welcoming than what I mentioned in #2, then they should have at most made it a choice. They could say, you may take in-person classes and live on campus or you can live off campus and take online classes.  

And no. It does not count as a choice if your school requires you to write to administration for an exception that may or may not be granted. 

Asking permission for an exception does not equal having a choice. Because almost everything in life has the possibility of exceptions...if you're willing to beg for it, and you have an excuse that those-in-power deem as sympathetic.

6. Schools should show some damn consistency. If you feel it's safe enough to require Freshman to live on campus, then it should be safe enough for students to be able to hold in-person club meetings. Administration can leave the safety of their homes or offices and police these meetings to ensure good mask-wearing and social distancing practices.

If a school feels it's safe enough to hold Football games, they certainly can find a way to hold a graduation ceremony. Have it outdoors. Masks. Immediate family only. Chairs spaced apart. 

Onto Isolation and quarantine rooms....

I've heard dreadful stories about this from various colleges. They're so awful that they've inspired me to write a horror screenplay about college Covid isolation.

Before the school year even began, I started questioning things. For the most part, my questions were ignored.

But I was wondering...

How are students....who MIGHT be feeling like shit....

How are they going to pack up all that they need for two weeks?

Will they be supplied with towels, pillows, linen, etc? Or will they have to bring their own? If they have to bring their own, who is going to help them carry it all?

I was told that they'd have to bring their own stuff. I never got an answer on who would help them carry it all.

The other question I had is whether anyone will be checking up on these students?  Will they get medical attention?  

Yeah. I know. It's extremely rare for young adults to die of Covid. But there are times where a young adult might get horribly sick...and at the very least, they need some TLC. Or at least they need a medical professional to check up on them. And some of them do get sick enough that they might need hospitalization. 

Anyway....so with all that in mind.

7. Isolation rooms should all be equipped with what one might find in a typical hotel room. Students should be provided with hand soap, towels, pillows, basic shower toiletries, Kleenex, and bed linen.  This way they only need to pack up their clothes, medicines, school supplies, and electronics. 

8. If possible, sick Covid-positive students should be placed together in a large room/ward rather than isolated in individual rooms. There should be nurses looking out for them. I personally prefer this image to a very sick student alone in their room.

Yes. Covid-possible students definitely need to be quarantined...alone. Because you don't want an yes-it's-Covid student hanging out with a no-it's-actually-not-Covid student.

But if a student is known to have Covid, why should they be isolated from other Covid students?

Heck, I'd be telling the students...Hey, this is your time to relax all the rules. Take off your masks! Hug each other! Kiss each other!  Hold hands and play Ring-around-the-Rosie.  

9. I want to return to the hand soap thing. It seems that schools were so unprepared for isolation and quarantine, they didn't stop to consider that students wouldn't have hand soap handy (ha) to take with them to isolation. Because you know....most students are sharing a bathroom. They don't have their own hand soap.

Now maybe there's something I don't know?  Maybe students were asked to bring hand soap and have it handy in case they went into isolation?

I'm doubting it, though. I think it's much more likely that those-in-charge didn't think ahead.

And the students probably assumed that if you pay thousands of dollars in tuition plus room and board, the schools would care enough and be smart enough to consider issues like hand soap.

10. Since many/some schools require students to buy into expensive meal plans, these meal plans should include the delivery of delicious, healthy, and safe meals and snacks to isolation rooms.  The food should also fit into all dietary needs whether those needs are dictated by medical needs, ethical decisions, or religious rules.  

And now onto testing.

11. All testing should be free.

Or well....

I guess you could have hypochondriacs or students who LIKE things stuck up way high up in their nose. So to be fair....how about the first three tests are free. Then if a student wants testing after that, they pay a small fee of 10-15 dollars.  

This is in contrast to schools who charge 30 dollars for sick students to be tested plus an office fee. When schools do things like this, it's hard not to imagine that they are trying to DISCOURAGE sick students from being tested. 

12. There should be a lot of testing of asymptomatic students. If there aren't enough students interested in taking the test, incentives would probably help. How about any student who gets tested is entered into a daily raffle?

13. This is a hard thing to balance. But schools need to be strict about social distancing and at the same time not punitive. 

If students are punished for breaking social distancing rules. And if these punishments are harsh shame-inducing, then it's less likely that students will want to cooperate with contact tracers. 

My feeling, though, is that if students have more supervised social-distanced activities, then maybe there will be less secret parties and secret dorm room get-togethers.

14. Schools should be very transparent about their Covid cases. They should have a dashboard that's updated frequently. Once a week is fine, but daily is preferable.

The dashboards should include:

A) New cases.

B) Total cases since the school year began.

C) Number of tests given/positivity rate

D) Isolation and Quarantine room occupancy rates. 

Oh! Let me just mention....

When I started asking questions about where students would be quarantined/isolated, how many rooms were available, whether there'd be medical assistance provided, etc....we were reminded that students could go home and isolate.

Okay. Even though it's better for community health NOT to allow students to go home if they have or might have Covid....I would feel very uneasy if there was a forced separation between students and family.

But for Fuck's sake. Schools should not act like they actually encourage or hope that students go home with Covid. And that is definitely the vibe I was getting.  

These schools really care only about getting their checks and staying in business. They don't give a crap about their students or the community. Covid has made that abundantly clear to me.

There was something else I wanted to mention.

I wish there wasn't.

I wish I didn't have any more complaints.

But I feel there is another big thing. And I can't remember what it is.....

15. Okay. I remember.

In order to keep the dashboards honest, all sick, isolated students need to either be tested. Or the dashboard needs to have a separate section for assumed-positive students.

Colleges should not try to suppress their case numbers by discouraging testing of sick students.

How do you discourage sick students from getting tested?

Well, first, as I mention before, you charge students for getting a test. And you also require them to have and pay for an office visit.

Then you also make a rule that students with typical Covid symptoms and students who've had contact with Covid positive people will have to go into quarantine even if their test is negative. This will make it sound like you're being extra careful...you know false negatives and all that.  And yeah. It's good to be extra careful about the false negatives. But this is also a really good way of discouraging students from getting tested. Who wants to pay all that money or endure an uncomfortable test if they're going to have to go into quarantine anyway?

If honest and decent schools are going to require students to quarantine no matter what their test result, these students should be added to the dashboard. The symptomatic-non-tested students should be added immediately to the dashboard. The contact-students should be watched, and if they develop symptoms, they should also be added.

16. Colleges should have a dedicated Covid staff. These staff members should be named and their email addresses and phone numbers should be available to the public, students, and family members. The staff should include a person in charge of testing, a person in charge of isolation and quarantine, and a person in charge of the dashboard and other transparency issues.  


Anyway, that's it for now.

If I think of more things in the future, I shall add them.  

 


Outnumbered

Okay.

Something VERY weird just happened to me.

Weird but meaningless...probably.

So I finished watching this pretty cool low budget horror movie called Chatter.  It's like ghosts via video chat. 

Well, I'm assuming it's low budget by what I saw on the film. If it's not low budget...yikes on them.

Anyway, when I finished watching the show, I got a little message from Amazon Prime saying something like Coming up next: Outnumbered Season 3.

I thought that was odd, because I'm pretty sure that back when I watched Outnumbered, I did so on Hulu and not on Amazon.

But maybe I'm wrong.

Well, I'm looking at my Amazon Prime app now. There's a list of my shows, and Outnumbered isn't on it.  Although to be fair, I also looked at Outnumbered on Hulu, and it has me starting Outnumbered with season 1.  But that's happened to me with other shows recently.

Anyway, though....that's not the weird thing. I mean that's mildly weird but not super weird.

Okay, but then....

My tradition is to pick a new show after I've finished watching an old one.

I have a list of 150 shows and movies. I use Random.org to pick my next one.

So after finishing Chatter, I picked my next show.

Can you guess where this is going?

Yep.

I ended up with Outnumbered!!!

Now I have to figure out which season I'm on.

It might actually be season 3.

Maybe instead of having a scary video chat ghost, I have a very helpful screening app ghost.

Outnumbered, by the way, is a very cute and funny British comedy about parents who struggle to deal with three very clever and energetic children. 

The other show I'm watching lately is season 2 of Supernatural.  Well, that's by myself. Then Tim and I started watching Ramy last night. I learned about Ramy from one of my cousins. So far, I'm loving it. It's a comedy about a young Muslim man who's looking for his first Muslim girlfriend. And when he loses his job, he's pushed by his mother to work for his anti-semitic uncle. It really shows Muslims in a different way than they're usually showed in American movies and TV shows. 

Not all fictional Muslims are terrorists on the American screen, but I think most of them are really serious and uptight. Ramy is a refreshing change to all that. 

Back to Outnumbered, I'm going to try to figure out what season I'm on. Since 2016, I've been keeping a list of every single movie and show I watch. I should've written it down by season, but I didn't.  I can, though. maybe figure it out by counting the number of times I've watched Outnumbered.

Okay. I looked on my Google Doc.

I watched Outnumbered in December 2016 and then again in March 2017. So I'm probably on season 3...UNLESS I started watching the show before I started writing all the shows down. 

Actually, now I remember recently, while reading old posts, seeing mention of Outnumbered. I should find that post. There might be a clue there.

Before I do that, let me just say...it doesn't seem like it's been three years since I've watched Outnumbered. Time really goes by fast.

Well, shit. Never mind. 

I found an old post from February 2018 where I mention watching Outnumbered.

Did I forget to write that long on my massive list. If so, can I ever trust that list again?

Or maybe the FIND function simply wasn't working well when I searched the document for Outnumbered.

Okay. Good. It's the FIND function that messed up.  I do have it written down that in February 2018 I watched Outnumbered.

Time still goes by fast...but not as fast as I was feeling a few moments ago. 

Well...and I just did the FIND function again, and it turns out I also watched a season of Outnumbered in July 2017.

So I've actually watched four seasons of Outnumbered. I'm on season 5.

The TV show streaming ghost app failed me. But that's okay. I forgive it. 




How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts 

It is what it is

I hope we shall always remember

that Trump supporters decided to turn this all into survival of the fittest.

So for those who end up on their death bed....

Just understand that if you are overweight, elderly, have heart disease, diabetes, cancer, lung disease, are immunocompromised, have kidney disease, etc.

Well....if you have those things, your death is deemed as acceptable. 

No. Don't get me wrong. The Trump supporters might miss you. They might shed tears. They might provide heart-tugging eulogies at your funeral.  But still...they felt the economy was more important than keeping you safe and healthy.

And it's actually not the economy. It's the status quo. Because we could have gone true market economy—let pandemic-friendly businesses thrive and allow pandemic-not-friendly businesses fail...giving money to people so they can survive rather than pushing them back to work.  

But back to the dying.  

Here's an analogy.  

If someone dies on a Disney World rollercoaster, we say that it wasn't the roller coaster that killed them. We say they died from an underlying condition.  Right?

These roller coaster deaths are rare.  Healthy people can go on the ride without a scary. fatal incident. And despite the warning signs, I'm betting most people with mild to moderate underlying conditions will live through the experience and go onto fight evil alien toys on the Buzz Lightyear ride.  

But what if 180,000 Americans died on Space Mountain?  Would we still be saying that the roller coaster is safe and not anything to worry about?  

What if 6% of the people dying on Space Mountain had no underlying condition? Would we then say...hey! See. Told you Space Mountain is not a concern!  Only 11,000 healthy people were killed on that ride!

No. I don't think we would.

And I'm quite sure Disney would have shut down Space Mountain way before we got even remotely close to 180,000 deaths.    




How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts