Did you watch the Oscars?

I didn’t. My two favorite movies of the past year, Little Women and The Lighthouse were barely acknowledged in the nominations, so I was uninterested. I still have opinions, though!

Best picture and best director: Parasite. OK, good choice. It is a great movie, but did the voters even realize what it was about? It’s a horror movie where the monster is class and wealth inequality. Hollywood obliviously chose the anti-Hollywood movie.

Best actress: Rene Zellweger in Judy. I haven’t seen it, although I’d like to, and Zellweger does good work.

Best actor: Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. Joker was a better movie than I expected, but it was still a hopeless muddle in what it was trying to say. Phoenix did put in a very strong performance though, so I won’t complain.

Best supporting actress: Laura Dern in Marriage Story. Another one I haven’t seen, because I’m in a happy marriage and have no interest in a story about a marriage self-destructing. I’m gonna pretend Dern won this for Little Women.

Best supporting actor: Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I like Brad Pitt but despise Quentin Tarentino, so this is another one I skipped.

Best adapted screenplay: Jojo Rabbit. A really good movie. I was surprised that Taika Waititi actually pulled off a comedy that was respectful of the tragedy.

Cinematography: 1917. Look. This was a mundane story with a simple plot that went from A to B on a linear trajectory. But what it really was 2 hours for Roger Deakins to show off, and it deserved this award.

Hmmmph. Little Women did win best costume design, but The Lighthouse was skunked. I could probably complain more, but generally I think The Academy made some safe choices.

It happened again!

I had to go to the hardware store this morning to get a little craft saw, and as he was ringing up my purchase, the clerk cheerfully asked, “What are you working on?” In my newfound spirit of sharing my scientific interests with the community, I said:

“I’m cutting bamboo strips to make artisanal cages for the spiders in my lab!”, with a smile.

Ftzzt. Short circuit. No comment. Silently handed me my receipt. I left.

Maybe it was the smile. I’m not very good at the smiling thing.

What’s Jordan Peterson been up to?

Recent photo

We haven’t heard much from him lately. Last year, you couldn’t go on the internet without groaning over yet another fanboi raving about how wonderful Dr Peterson is, he changed my life, don’t you know, and his self-help book is the greatest, and millions of people everywhere have turned their life around with his advice. He was raking in so much money from Patreon and his best-seller book that he was certainly able to live a life of indolence and leisure, and of course, as the master of giving advice to others, he was sure to be living his life as an exemplar of moderation and reason.

Nope. Peterson has been living in ‘absolute hell’. We learn about all this from his daughter Mikhaila, who has been promoted to being “a well known speaker on diet”, eliding over the fact that she has no training or qualifications in nutrition.

  • He acquired “a severe addiction to benzodiazepine tranquilizers”. Really severe.
  • He claims to have started taking them because of his “autoimmune reaction to food”. This is also why he started his bizarre all-beef diet. (By the way, one of the side effects of benzodiazepine is constipation. The man has been corked up for a while.)
  • Getting off of a benzodiazepine addiction is tough; withdrawal seizures are common, and they can kill.
  • North American doctors are aware of this, and wanted to wean him off the dangerous addiction with other drugs. Therefore, they are all puppets of the pharmaceutical companies.
  • So he flew off to Russia to get treatment, where the doctors have the guts to treat him as a man should be treated.
  • The Russian doctors put him in an induced coma, presumably as a consequence of his seizures. And his pneumonia.
  • He nearly died several times.

  • Jordan Peterson has only just come out of an intensive care unit, Mikhaila said. He has neurological damage, and a long way to go to full recovery. He is taking anti-seizure medication and cannot type or walk unaided, but is “on the mend” and his sense of humour has returned.

I’m glad he’s well enough now to laugh, but I would have just told him to stand up straight and clean his room. That would have fixed him right up.

Do people still take advice from this horrific wreck of a man? Not to blame victims of disease or accident, but all of his problems seem to be self-inflicted.

That settles what I’m doing tonight

My wife reminded me that tonight is the Democratic debate. I noted that tonight is also the premiere of the Birds of Prey. I had to think for a moment: crappy super hero movie that I’ll probably dislike, vs. the best show the Democrats have to offer?

Yeah, I’m going to the movies.

I trust my wife to fill me in on any substance offered in the debate. I think both choices are going to be fluff.

Conversational gambit…failed

I listened to your suggestions. So, this morning when I made my trip to the bait shop to pick up wiggly things and the clerk made a friendly remark about fishing, I said, “Oh, I’m not fishing. I use these to feed my spider colony.”

He hesitated for a second, gave me a funny look, and reacted as if he was going to pretend I didn’t say that. He gave me my change and didn’t say another word. I may have derailed his brain, and he didn’t have an easy reply to mind.

I’m not taking your advice anymore, especially if a mob with torches and pitchforks shows up outside my house tonight.

How I will respond if you insult my cooking

I need to memorize this speech, just in case.


Damn ye! Let Neptune strike ye dead Winslow! HAAARK!

Hark Triton, hark! Bellow, bid our father the Sea King rise from the depths full foul in his fury! Black waves teeming with salt foam to smother this young mouth with pungent slime, to choke ye, engorging your organs til’ ye turn blue and bloated with bilge and brine and can scream no more — only when he, crowned in cockle shells with slitherin’ tentacle tail and steaming beard take up his fell be-finned arm, his coral-tine trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest and plunges right through yer gullet, bursting ye — a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now and nothing for the harpies and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the Dread Emperor himself — forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff for part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea!

Come to think of it, that is a generally useful response to any complaint. A student tries to tell me my exam was too hard…”Damn ye! Let Neptune strike ye dead Amanda! HAAARK!” etc.

The Lighthouse is such a great movie — it, and Willem Dafoe, were robbed in the Academy Award nominations. They ought to swap out that boring, self-indulgent, overlong piece of mobster dreck, The Irishman, and replace it with this. It’s a disgrace that Dafoe has never won the award.

Total wreck here

Our cat has reached new heights of obnoxious behavior. She is not the kind of cat who curls contentedly at the foot of the bed and lets us all sleep peacefully — no, she goes into bouts of antic behavior, rooting about, jumping on things, deciding to rearrange our closets. So she’s not allowed in the bedroom. Her new discovery is that she can get our attention at all hours of the night by scratching at our door and hurling herself at it, effectively pounding on it to wake us up. All night long. I would start to fall asleep and then … scratch, scratch, pound, pound, and I’d yell at her to make her go away, and then she’d start up again as soon as I began to drift off to sleep.

Today I am bleary-eyed and crankier than usual, barely able to think straight. Fortunately, today is an exam day so I don’t need to think or speak much, but this evil psycho cat is going to drive me mad.

Our next solution is to confine her to the kitchen at night, keeping her 10 or 15 feet away from our bedroom door, so she’ll really have to figure out how to make a ruckus loud enough to be heard. I anticipate that we’ll be awakened by the sound of crashing glassware. Or that she’ll figure out how to use a butcher knife.

I don’t care anymore. I welcome the sleep of oblivion.

Hey, why do people freak out at the sight of spiders, but get all melty goo-goo eyes at the sight of a kitty? Those responses ought to be reversed.

I was just sent a link to this extraordinarily appropriate song.

Take me back to giant spider mountain,
Where the zombie goblins, are toiling in the sun,
Take me back to giant spider mountain,
And let me join the zombies when I’m done,
When I’m done, when I’m done,
Let me join the zombies when I’m done,
When I’m done, when I’m done,
Let me join the zombies when I’m done

I’m already there!

Worldcon contemplates the abominable

I guess it’s that time when the venue for Worldcon is considered, and there are currently two candidate sites. One of them is … Saudi Arabia? Yikes. This is not a criticism of Muslim science fiction writers — I’m a fan of Saladin Ahmed, for instance — but the country has some major problems.

…Local laws require men and women to dress modestly covering shoulders and knees in public, avoiding tight-fitting clothing or clothes with profane language or images. It is not mandatory for female travellers to wear the traditional robe or abaaya. Information on important laws and etiquette around dress codes is available to visitors on the Visit Saudi website.

Forget about cosplay, then? But there’s worse:

…Homosexual or extra-marital sexual relations, including adultery, are illegal and can be subject to severe penalties. It’s also illegal to be transgender. Transgender people travelling to Saudi Arabia are likely to face significant difficulties and risks if this is discovered by the authorities. See our information and advice page for the LGBT community before you travel.

Shouldn’t that be instantly disqualifying? The only people who would be pleased at that choice would be the rabid puppies fans, who would find Saudi-style oppression perfectly copacetic.

The alternative choice is Chicago, in the US. That makes it tough to argue that we should avoid repressive puritanical governments. So far, though, the US is clearly to the left of Saudi Arabia.