Wednesday Update

I finished my Turkish adventure in Duolingo and have now moved onto Latin. Latin is fantastic, because the voice actors sound like they are in some sort of angry, evil trance.  Since I associate Latin mostly with religious horror movies, it's all so perfect. 

Last night, I finished watching season 1 of Shameless. I used Random.org to pick a new show and ended up with Lucifer. I'm very excited about that. I love Lucifer.

I'm on season 3 with that. I won't get to it for awhile, though. I'll be concentrating on my other show which is The Fosters.  I have a whole system for how I balance my two solo-shows/movies. But it's hard to explain, and I'm not going to try.

It's funny, though because in my last post I brought up old posts related to The Fosters and Lucifer. And now those are both my current shows. 

I'm seeing that the website I've been using to keep up with Congress votes has finally updated.  They're a bit slow, unfortunately. They stopped at Senate vote 10 which was on January 28, and it wasn't until today that they posted Senate vote 11-13 and House votes 19-20.  It's all kind of old news for me, because The Washington Post and Twitter were all more timely. 

But still...now I can see things in more detail.  

Both Republican Senators from Indiana voted Yea for Pete Buttigieg.  That's cool...since he was the Mayor there.

Thirteen Republican Senators said Nay to Pete Buttigieg.  The same Senators keep giving Democrats a lot of no's, including Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Marsha Blackburn. I wonder if they'll say yea to anything.

Alejandro Mayorkas as Homeland Security Secretary is more controversial than Mayor Pete.  He received only six yea's from Republicans.  

Shelley Capito, from West Virginia, is one of the GOP Senators who said yea. West Virginia has had my attention lately, because they've been doing so well with vaccine distribution. 

And here's some more bipartisanship.  Three Democrat Representatives voted with Republicans to say Nay to a bill regarding apprenticeships. 

On Coronation Street, they're doing a storyline about liver transplants. It made me think of the liver transplant storyline on Offspring. 

Daniel (Rob Mallard) is offering up his liver to his brother Peter (Chris Gascoyne). I don't agree with Daniel's actions, because he has a young baby, and the mother of the baby is deceased.

The storyline on Offspring was somewhat similar. Nina (Asher Keddie) was faced with the decision of offering up her liver, and she too was the single parent of a baby. With that situation, I was a bit more torn, because the person needing the liver was a very young child. 

Peter is an adult, and his only dependent is a young adult. The death of a parent is always sad, but I'd rather a young adult lose their parent than a baby. 

When it comes to deciding between parents losing their young child vs a baby being orphaned...that's much harder to me.

 It's not like liver transplants are 100% fatal for the donors. In fact, there's a pretty good chance the donor will survive.  The death rate is 4 out of 1000. But the chance of dreadful complications is 1.1%.  That's pretty scary.

I don't think Daniel should take the risk. But in other situations, the risk might be worth it.  

I'm still listening to Trump harass Raffensperger  I lost my place, so now I might end up missing something or re-listening a part.  I know I was somewhere around 48-50 minutes.

I'll be glad when I'm done with that.

I'm still reading Untamed Shore by Silvia Morena-Garcia, and I'm still liking it. 

Tim and I are still watching Broadchurch. Season 2 is split between two murder storylines—one that was the focus of season 1 and the other which was alluded and flashbacked to during season 1.  I'm wondering now what season 3 will be about. One of the lawyers has a son in prison. I'm wondering if season 3 will focus on his case. Or...will there be a new murder?

I think Tim suggested that the murderer of season 1 will win the court case; go free; someone will take justice into their own hands. And then season 3 will be a who-done-it in terms of the vigilante justice.  

I'm back to reading the 2014 Peru adventures in Dog Food for Chairs. I may be at the end, because the title mentions airlines. Or maybe they end up flying within Peru? Or maybe they're having pre-travel airline issues.

The answers to my questions might have been given in the previous post, and I wasn't paying enough attention. I might have been distracted by the mention of Rainbow Looms.

Right now I'm listening to the final season soundtrack of Lost. I think it's one of the best musical scores. 

Last night I dreamed about Lost...mixed with X-Files, because I was trying to get help from Scully. And also, I slit people's throats with a razor. Okay but before you judge me...it was totally in self defense. It was their razor, and they had plans to use it on me. Or...at least I think they did.  

One other thing...on the subject of Lucifer.  I was thinking of Tom Ellis the other day...not in terms of Lucifer but from when he was on the show Miranda. There's an episode where Miranda (Miranda Hart) tells her friends she's on a vacation but in reality she's just in a local hotel.  I thought of that episode because on Coronation Street, Leanne (Jane Danson) tells her family and friends that she's gone to France to visit her mother and sister, but she's secretly actually at home.

The Coronation Street storyline is much darker than the Miranda one, because Leanne is grieving the loss of her three-year-old son and is very depressed. She faked the trip to Paris to keep concerned family and friends off her back.

Read my novel: The Dead are Online 

Monday Update

I'm really liking Shameless...so much so that I kind of regret my practice of watching one season at a time; then waiting for Random.org to pick it again for me.

On the other hand, I'm excited to see what my next show will be.

My favorite episode of Shameless so far has been "It's Time to Kill the Turtle".

In this episode, Frank (William H Macy) the alcoholic, narcissistic, father is told he will get $3000 if he stops drinking for three weeks.

He's a struggling, grumpy mess in the first hour or so of the experiment. But once he discovers the powers of sugar via his daughter's (Emma Kenney's) juice box, his mood picks up, and he becomes sober-super dad. 

He entertains and impresses his kids with his piano talent. He makes pancakes. He takes the kids bowling....

Most importantly, for the first time in the show, he shows interest in being with his children.

The tragedy in the episode is the children knowing that none of it will last.

One thing I wondered while watching the episode is if Frank's narcissism is dependent on his drinking. Without a drinking problem, would he be NOT-a-narcissist?

OR was he still a narcissist while sober but in a less noticeable way?  

The episode reminded me of two of my old blog posts.

Lucifer had inspired me to write God Narcissists and Demon Narcissists, and The Fosters inspired me to write this post. The former was my way of dividing narcissists into those who are adored by many and those who are scorned. The latter was about a character in a similar situation as Frank. She seemed to be a narcissistic heroin addict. Then she gave up the drugs and also seemed to give up the narcissism. 

Oh! I just saw that the post talked about another thing I've been wondering about. (Past me and Present me sometimes REALLY think alike)

Anyway, what I was and am wondering is if narcissism could influence the behavior of the drug addict and/or alcoholic.  

Do alcoholics without narcissism put in more effort to be sober/clean? And even when drunk/high, do they treat their kids better than a narcissistic drug user?  

What I asked in the old The Fosters post is this: I'm also wondering, are all addicts that desperately manipulative?  Are there some addicts who manage to have standards?  Like, I'll steal to get high. But NOT from my own children! If some addicts have lower standards and are more manipulative, could these manipulative traits be there before the addiction began and after they've become sober?  Could it simply take a more subtle and different form? 

As for the god and demon narcissist thing. I would definitely put Frank in the demon category. He's not seen in good light, maybe partly because of the narcissism but more so because of the heavy drinking and irresponsibility with money.  

Did Frank's narcissism disappear when he stopped drinking? And would it permanently go away if he stayed permanently sober? OR would he just become a God narcissist—someone who is self-absorbed, dishonest, and manipulative but hides it behind things like physical attractiveness, wealth, charm, talent, philanthropy, etc.  

Moving on....

I'm starting to like season 2 of Broadchurch. I wasn't too into it with the first two episodes. But with the third episode, I started warming up to the whole thing. And I was even dismayed when the episode ended...longing for more.  

I usually try to not play on my phone while watching shows. I'm bad at multitasking. But I started doing that while we were watching the second episode. I was looking for Broadchurch actors older than me so I could feel less old.  Yeah. I do that sometimes.

I found a few.

But I also found out that Jodie Whittaker and Arthur Darvill (who are dreadfully younger than me) have the exact same birthday. I was so excited about this. I blurted it out to Tim and actually asked him to pause the show, so he could fully hear the news.

Tim listened and then asked if they were born the same year.

I was like...hello? Why else would I see this as being newsworthy?  I mean it would be mildly cool for actors on the same show to have the same birthday. I probably wouldn't have interrupted the show for that, though. I might have just said it quietly to myself not caring if Tim heard or not.

I feel it's kind of a big deal to know someone who was born on the same day as you.

I don't think I ever met anyone who was born the same day as me.

BUT....one of the few things I remember from my late 1970's St. Louis life is that there was a girl in preschool. Her name was Allison, and her birthday was close to mine. I don't think we had the same  exact birthday. But it was a big enough deal to me just to have a friend with a close birthday.  I mean a big enough deal that I still think about it 43 years later.  

I wonder if we were the same age. Were we born days apart? It's possible that she was a 1973 birthday instead of my 1972.  

In screenwriting news, I'm feeling somewhat good about The Dead are Online version B. I had decided to NOT submit that one to contests.  I was unhappy with one of the characters...Anna.  My plan was to save the scenes in version B and use them when/if I wrote a miniseries version.  

I felt somewhat okay with her character in a full length project but felt things about her personality and storyline would be a deterrent to a contest judge liking my screenplay.  

SO I ended up deleting a couple of scenes that might have fixed the problem.

Well...to be less vague. Anna and her fiancee Eugene have a bad relationship. They are awful to each other; maybe more her to him than vice-versa. Then, in the end, they start mending their relationship. But I started to think that maybe Anna was too toxic, and the mending of the relationship wouldn't be seen as a positive thing.  So I took out her more toxic bits.  

I've not been a podcast person, but I was suddenly in the mood to hear the Horizons theme song and ended up finding the Imagineer Podcast, and they have a whole episode about the ride. I listened to it in bits...just like I've been listening to Trump bully Raffensperger in bits. But with the Horizons thing, I listened in larger bits, and I'm already done listening to it.    

I might listen to more episodes. Well...actually I started this one while doing some chores. So I'll probably continue with it.  

One last thing (hopefully).

Eastern Europe is the section of the world I've usually been the least interested in and attracted to. But I watched this video from the Frank James channel, and my interest was sparked when he said Latvia is the best country for introverts.

So this morning, I watched the Latvia episode of Geography Now! and learned about the Singing Revolution. That got my attention. My days of being disinterested in Eastern Europe are probably over (which is good because my great grandparents come from the Soviet Ukraine).

 

 Read my novel: The Dead are Online 

Thursday Update

I've been meaning to mention, and now I'm finally remembering to....

Another thing on my current watch-list is Schitt's Creek. 

It's my second time watching it. I love that show SO much.

I watch it with our Alexa Echo, which we have near our sink.  I watch, a little bit at a time, while I put dishes away, wash my water bottle, or feed the cats.

I alternate between Schitt's Creek and listening to various news reports on Alexa. And with the news, I alternate between the BBC (British) CBC (Canadian) and SBS (Australian).

And yes, I also get American news.

I read the Washington Post in the morning with Annie on my lap. 

Anyway, back to Schitt's Creek.  I'm currently on episode 7 of season 4. I'm surprised I've already gotten that far, because I watch only a little bit a day. Maybe a third or half an episode?

My plan, though, is to keep rewatching and rewatching until I'm fully vaccinated. OR...well, maybe when I'm fully vaccinated, I will stop going back to the beginning. I think it would be best if I get to the end of the series. Then I'll say good-bye. until the next pandemic comes along.

What else?

I'm really into Broadchurch now.  

Tonight we'll be watching the first season finale.

I'm wondering how the first season will end and what will happen in the next two seasons. Will it take them three seasons to figure out the murderer? Or will they find the murderer this season, and the next two seasons will be about the court case and all that?

Oh! Maybe it will be a serial killer?

Oops. I just realized I gave Tim the wrong information about the shame woman from Game of Thrones. I told him she (Susan Brown) played the reporter in Broadchurch. But now I see she plays Grandma Liz.

Edited to add: 10/3/22- Rereading this post, and I'm feeling SHAME for my mistake.  Susan Brown didn't play the shame woman on Game of Thrones. She played the Septa of Winterfell.  I know this only, because we've seen watched Ted Lasso which stars the actual Shame-woman (Hannah Waddingham)

I was thinking, last night, of all the Broadchurch actors from various other shows/franchises.  

From Game of Thrones, there's Brown, David Bradley, and Jacob Anderson.

From Harry Potter, there's David Tennant, David Bradley, and Alfred Enoch. Though I can't remember actually seeing Enoch in the show. I just remember seeing his face and name when looking at IMDb.

From the Crown, there's Olivia Coleman and Andrew Buchan. 

From Doctor Who, there's David Tennant, Jodie Whittaker, David Bradley, and Arthur Darvill

I know I'm missing at least one person from somewhere. I remember looking at IMDb and seeing an actor in one of those shows, but I didn't remember their character.

It was either Harry Potter or Game of Thrones. Or...both.  

Here we go. Carolyn Pickles- who is the woman I mistakingly thought was Shame-Woman on Game of Thrones-was in Harry Potter. She played Charity Burgage.

I don't know who that is.  

Okay. Googled.

She was a professor  that was kidnapped and murdered by Voldemort before the Deathly Hollows. I think I vaguely remember that.

Speaking of Harry Potter, after reading a few more chapters, I opted to return the Robert Galbraith book. In lieu of that, I'm now reading Untamed Shore by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. 

It's good so far.

I recently read her other book Mexican Gothic and liked that a lot. 

This morning, on YouTube, I watched a video from The Daily Show about the whole unity thing.

The whole thing makes me so angry.

It makes me wonder if Biden has had a lack of experience dealing with manipulative, hypocritical, selfish people.

Well, now that I write that out, it sounds a bit nuts. He works with politicians. At least some of them have had to be manipulative, hypocritical, and selfish.

BUT sometimes people deal with these types of people not realizing that they are these types of people. 

In my book, unity involves compromise. And with compromise, both sides give in a little. 

Well, actually with politics...the losing side should have to give in more. 

When the winning side says unity, it doesn't mean...Hey, we're going to put away OUR agenda and let you put in your agenda...because we want your side to get everything they want. 

I think it's more along the lines of , We're going to put through our agenda, but if we get along...maybe we'll listen and consider your positions and maybe even put some of them into action.  

Personally, I'm not at all interested in having unity with Trumplicans. And sadly, most Republicans these days are Trumplicans. 

I want unity with the people who are against Trumplicans and Trumpism. 

Now I'm fine having unity with Trumplicans outside of politics. My family started a new rule of no political discussions, and we've all been getting along much better. It's impossible for us to unite on subjects like Trump, Impeachment, BLM protests, antisemitism, etc. But we get along pretty well when we're talking about TV shows, pets, family happenings, etc.  

In other news...

I'm still liking Shameless a lot. I think the Joan Cusack storyline is very sad. 

Some of the show is very pre-MeToo. They go with the trope of women lying about assault, and there's also a teenage girl (Laura Wiggins) sexually harassing an adult man (William H Macy). 

I think these are the storylines we tend to get when men are dominating the writer's rooms. 

I wonder what is the motivation behind these types of storylines. Is it male writers exorcising their personal anger? And if it's anger, does that anger come from their personal traumas? Or is it anger they've built up from seeing the women-are-liars-and-aggressors storylines in other TV shows, movies, books, etc. 

Is it fantasy? Older men wishing teenage girls would proposition them?

Is it a way to appease some of the guilt for their own experiences or fantasies?  Yes. I had sex with a fifteen year old. But it's not my fault. She was so sexy, and she kept flirting with me! What was I supposed to do?  

I have zero doubts that flirtatious, hyper-sexual teenager girls exist and that they sometimes target older men.

BUT...I think in the real world women are much more often the victim of men. I think there are more incidents of women being harassed and assaulted by men than men being falsely accused of crime.

And I think there are more incidents of children and teenagers being groomed by sexual predators to become victims than children and teenagers sexually harassing disinterested men trying to mind their own business.

I think shows like Shameless, and other shows in the pre-MeToo era, present a picture that is the opposite of reality.    

Hopefully that is changing a lot, because I think this false picture is one of the reasons that female victims are so often doubted when they speak up about abuse.  

 

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 

Sunday Update

I've been struggling with this blog lately...well, even more so than usual.

Of course, I've considered quitting again. But I've tried that and failed way too many times. Also, dead blogs kind of depress me. I mean I don't like finding other people's blogs out there that have died. So I guess I also don't want the same thing happening to mine. 

What happens often lately is I start writing a post. I spend too much time on it; then I get frustrated and delete it. I end up feeling like I've wasted a chunk of my day.

So...anyway I've decided to try doing basic update posts where I, at the minimum, list what I'm reading, watching, working on, etc.  If something inspires me to ramble a bit, I'll do that. But I won't feel obligated to. OR I should say I'll TRY not to feel obligated to.  

I'll also try not to feel obligated to shut up if my rambling goes on too long...feeling that whoever reading this can skip past those paragraphs if they're bored.

Anyway. I should start.

I'm watching Coronation Street....like always. My favorite couple on that show lately is Shona (Julia Goulding) and David (Jack P. Shepherd).

I just finally noticed that name Jack Shepherd. What kind of Lost fan am I?  Although it's spelled differently. Maybe that will be my excuse for not noticing.

Shona is brain-injured and her personality changed. I was missing the old Shona, but now I'm quite liking the new version.

Also on Corrie, there was this storyline where Tim's (Joe Duttine) long-lost mom Elaine (Paula Wilcox) gives him all the toys she had tried to send him through the years. His abusive father (Ian Bartholomew) kept returning the toys. Elaine held onto them and then gave them to Tim this Christmas. He then stupidly agreed to letting a neighbor (Maureen Lipman) sell the toys. His wife (Sally Dynevor) made him realize how awful a mistake that was, and he and his friends worked on getting the toys back.

That storyline stressed me out. It was very suspenseful. Fortunately...it seems things have worked out in that department.

My two other (solo-watching) current shows are season three of The Fosters and the first season of Shameless.  I had a hard time deciding whether to watch the British or American version of Shameless. I love watching British shows, but from when I can see online, it seems the American one is more-liked. 

Tim and I are watching the first season of Broadchurch. I'm not loving it. It's dark and depressing, but I feel if we quit, I'll be left hanging...and the show will haunt me.  

Still...I don't enjoy seeing the 13th Doctor in severe emotional grief-agony and the 10th Doctor being all grouchy. I can't imagine things are going to get better for 13, but maybe there's hope for 10. Although I think he might be dying...so maybe not.

I have a feeling that the whole point of Broadchurch is to be utterly depressing.  

On my virtual bookshelf: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. I love this book so much, and unfortunately I'm almost finished with it.

The book is about a Canadian woman who finds the diary of a Japanese girl.  The Japanese girl wrote the diary sort of as a letter to the person she hoped would find it. It's that feeling of writing to a hoped for audience. 

As a blogger without many readers, I could really relate. It's that idea of reaching out with our writing and hoping that someone out there will eventually find us and care enough to read.  

Speaking of blogs for the last several months, I've been reading the travelogues in Jeff's Dog Food For Chairs blog. 

Lately, I've been reading about his family's 2014 trip to Peru. His post about having stomach problems during Water Fountain Adventure Day is pretty much as stressful as the Tim's lost-toy storyline on Coronation Street.

Also open on my browser....

Duolingo. I've been working on French for the last several years. Then also, Jack gave me the idea of going through and doing each language up to the first checkpoint. So right now, I'm on Turkish.

As for French, I'm currently on the Emergency lesson. No. It's not an urgent lesson. It's about emergency things like car accidents, a strange man on the street, and robbers. Oh, also there's a big spider in the shower.  

I'm slowly listening to the recording of Trump pressuring the Georgia Secretary of State to give him 11,780 votes. I promised myself I would listen to the whole thing...but only a minute at a time. I did that so it wouldn't seem like such a huge stressful, assignment. The problem is, now I'm kind of wanting to just move on from Trump. But I feel obligated to finish listening.  

At this point, I'm at 37 minutes.

I have my screenplay The Dead are Online (Version A) opened for more proofreading and revising. I've already entered it into a few screenwriting contests, so hopefully I won't be finding any horrible mistakes. But...I feel I should keep working on it, so it's in even better shape for future screenwriting contests.

I took my novel The Dead are Online which has a LOT of characters and split everyone up into three different pilot screenplays.  

The problem is, after breaking them all up, it started to look impossible to put them back together again...which I'm hoping to do for a miniseries screenplay.

The main problem is I added these scenes with people becoming possessed in order to make the pilots more exciting. But put together, there would be too many possession moments. It would be major overkill. Just take them out, you say? Well, the problem there is, I love all the possessed scenes. It's going to be hard to say good-bye. Although I'll just remind myself that they live on in the pilot screenplays. 

What else....

I have a voting tracking website open on my browser to keep track of votes in the Senate and House. 

I've been keeping stuff open on my browser, because I bookmark too often and then forget to look at the bookmarks.

BUT...I do have some bookmarks I manage to keep track of on a daily basis.

I'm still looking at Covid stats for Tarrant and Denton county in Texas. And I'm now also looking at vaccine data for Texas. 

Well, that's about it for now. I'll update again soon. I'm thinking of doing this 3 or 4 days a week.  But we shall see what happens.  

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