Tuesday Update

First things first.

I now like Broadchurch.

The other day I had been thinking to myself, why in the world would I want to be watching a show where everyone is unhappy, because a very bad thing happened to a child.

Okay, but then we were watching the show. I started warming to it a little bit. They had a scene with the townspeople having a meeting with the police at the school. I turned to Tim and told him that it reminded me of Dark.

Because Dark has a scene with the townspeople meeting at the school. And guess what, Dark is about a child who goes missing in a small town. And like Broadchurch, the town is filled with unhappy people. 

Dark is very dark.

Then I soon realized that I love yet another show with a bad thing happening to a child and a bunch of unhappy townspeople. That's Fortitude. In this one, the show begins with a young child getting a horrible case of frost bite.

I noticed another interesting similarity between the three shows, but I think it's too much of a spoiler. So what I'm going to do is put the spoiler way at the bottom of this post.  That way, people can skip if they want. 

It's actually not a huge spoiler. It's just not something you're likely to get from reading or seeing a brief promo of the show. 

Anyway, I AM liking Broadchurch a lot now. I think, though, that I might end up liking it less than Dark and Fortitude, because those two have supernatural elements. I THINK Broadchurch is straight murder mystery. Though there is a psychic. But I'm not sure if they're going to go with the message that psychics are fake and predatory, or they're going to take a more magical realism path.  

Or I could be totally wrong, and young Danny Latimer (Oskar McNamara) was kidnapped by demons. 

Other stuff....

I'm liking Shameless a lot.  Yesterday I watched the Aunt Ginger episode.

As for Coronation Street, I felt some regret for saying that Shona (Julie Goulding and David (Jack P Shepherd) are my favorite couple. I love them. But I also must say that Tim (Joe Duttine) and Sally (Sally Dynevor) are my other favorite couple. I hope they remain a couple for longer than what's average for soap opera couples. 

I finished A Tale for the Time Being and am in the process of selecting my next book. 

I've downloaded The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling) and started reading it. I'm not liking it so much, but I'm going to give it another chapter or two.

I read the first book in the series years ago and didn't like it very much. But I thought maybe I was having too many Harry Potter desires at the time. 

I have liked Rowling's other two non-Harry Potter books, though—The Casual Vacancy and The Ickabog. 

The vote tracking website I've been following has been finally updated. I've been so excited about tracking the votes in our Congress. The last one was on Friday at 10:31 when the Senate confirmed Loyd Austin as Secretary of Defense.

I had to then wait through the weekend. I hoped to see some action Monday and kept checking.  Well, I guess I checked during the day and not into the evening. Because something finally did happen at 5:30.  The Senate confirmed Janet Yellen as Secretary of the Treasury.  She got passed 84-15.  Democrats all said Yeah. Republicans were split. I think it's good news for us Democrats if the Republicans are split a lot...just because it means some of them are willing to step outside the party and help us get things passed.  

The same players who heavily pushed the of election fraud narrative and/or fawn over Trump are some of the ones who voted against Yellen: Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Josh Hawley, Rand Paul.....

I'm glad to see that Lindsay Graham and Mitch McConnell are being more cooperative. 

On Duolingo, I've finished with the French lesson "Emergency" and shall be moving onto "Dream Trip".

I'm still listening to the recording of Trump and Raffensperger; though Washington Post reloaded or something, and started me back at the beginning. I'm trying to find my place. The last time I posted I was at 37 minutes. So I think I'm a few minutes past that.  

I'm still working on revising my The Dead are Online (version A) Screenplay and still reading about the McGinley's 2014 trip to Peru. 

In part of my morning YouTube adventures, I watched this The Daily Show video pointing out the hypocrisy of Fox News—complaints about the mainstream media being too gentle with Biden intercut with Fox News pundits kissing Trump's ass.  

In other YouTube news, yesterday or the day before I watched The Take's video about gaslighting. I liked how they defined gaslighting and how they showed examples in film and television...ESPECIALLY because they actually mentioned Coronation Street! That was very exciting to me. They don't often mention non-American shows.  

The term gaslighting is thrown around so much these days. I think it's become if you don't like someone's opinion or the way they've treated you, you accuse them of gaslighting.

I personally feel it should have a more narrow definition and I go along with what The Take says. It's a type of behavior/abuse that leads the victim to question their reality and/or mental health. Or I should say it ATTEMPTS to lead the victim.....

Gaslighting doesn't always work.  

I was going to say that the more people are aware of gaslighting, the less it will work...the less it will hurt people. I used to think that. But now I think the gaslighters know the term, and they're going to use it against their victims.

So someone might say to their parent, I was traumatized by you cooking my pet rabbit for dinner and then gaslighting me about it when I brought it up later. Then the parent is likely going to say. I never killed your pet rabbit. What the hell are you talking about? You're just making things up! You're gaslighting ME and trying to make me imagine I was a bad parent. How dare you!

I don't want to end on that note, so I'll say a bit about food.

My new thing is eating oatmeal with milk and cinnamon. No added sugar. And I'm into green tea.

It sounds like I'm a healthy person. But trust me. I'm not. I love junk food and sugar. I eat too much of it. But I'm weird. With certain things, I don't like them sweetened. I prefer oatmeal unsweetened. With the cinnamon and sugar in the milk, it's sweet enough. And I also don't like sugar in my tea. 

But see...I will sit there and eat sugar cubes plan...just stick them in my mouth.

Another weird thing is Tim recently bought pumpernickel bread. I love pumpernickel bread. I also love bread with butter. But I've come to realize, I do NOT like butter on pumpernickel bread. I like it completely dry.

  

Read my novel: The Dead are Online 

Spoiler: Okay, so in all three of the shows, Broadchurch, Fortitude, and Dark...the father of the dead, missing, or injured child is having an affair.  In both Broadchurch and Fortitude, the dad is doing adultery things the night the bad things happen to the child. In Dark, I can't remember if that's the case.  From what I can remember, most of the town's adults were at a party. I don't think there was any sex happening with the Dad, but I think there was some secret flirting.