Another Day Another Pondering


Believe it or not, I actually keep track of time. Weekends do have some significance for me because they determine how bad traffic can be, how crowded a market might be as well as certain gaming parameters that are event driven.

Yesterday, I finally managed to break out of my little apartment and hit the neighboring market. Amazon Fresh has proven to have either a constantly unavailable or poor selection at any given time during this pandemic. Thus, it was nice to leave my place as the weather was good whereas today it’s overcast.

That said, it was still reasonably crowded at the market while certain shelves remained empty. That part was disturbing as I am still awaiting a food run that seems to be affecting the UK. Even with the election being over, the sentiment in the US hasn’t changed much (will return on this subject later).

Nonetheless, I managed to grab enough stuff for a few recipes I’ve been meaning to cook in the Instant Pot. If I hadn’t conked out last night so early, I would have cooked up some pork chops. But today I’m far more energized with an early nap and will make an attempt maybe midday to get these pork chops up and running.

Over on the Boom Beach front, I managed to conquer Dr T on both accounts as well as start some upgrades. On my main account, I ended up choosing a Machine Gun to start for level 23 while on my secondary, I pushed another Flamethrower to max along with the Shock Mines.

Admittedly, I was a little miffed on my main account because I didn’t receive very much Iron from my Trader like I had hoped. It would have been nice starting the Machine Gun a day earlier. I suppose in the end it wouldn’t make a difference since neither accounts will see the effect until the following week for Hammerman Strikes Back day.

Also, I ended up rearranging my secondary base. While I haven’t received too many attacks, I felt that the current layout was lazy and thoughtless. I updated it to match one closer to my main account, front loading cannons and machine guns and having a second layer of Sniper Towers and Boom Cannons. I’m hoping this will dissuade more invaders but we’ll see.

I did notice on my main account that I am extremely close to level 70. Possibly after the Machine Gun full upgrade, my base will be at that level.

From there, I have no picked up Path of Exile thus far. I might do some today just because it is the last day. Pretty much, I will be finishing up getting my Ground Slam Champion into maps. After that, I’ll have the next league announcement to look forward to towards the end of the week, if I’m not mistaken. I have no ideas what’s going on and all I can hope for is that the company focuses on fixing that damn map system and making Harvest actually useful as opposed to nerfing this and that randomly.

I did some writing this morning and yesterday. I had pushed out 8 or pages on New Years but the last 2-3 felt like a bad direction after thinking it over. So I ended up starting from scratch on the scene and leaving the rest still around but underneath.

The newer version feels better, more environmental and psychological with emotion building up. The previous few pages were too impulsive and silly. I wanted to remove the silliness as much as I could in order to create a more somber tone for the chapter and I think I am accomplishing that mission with the rewrite.

On the side, I, for some odd reason, started binging a bunch of random clips of Kristen Wiig. Honestly, I never was a huge fan of her work and only knew her by name. Wonder Woman 1984 did not give me a good view of her as an actress. Thus, I decided to do some research to learn that she was in the original Knocked Up movie.

I found a few clips of her and became intensely curious because one person remarked in the comments section, “No one plays passive-aggressive like Kristen Wiig.” The scene was from Knocked Up where she has a minor but highly memorable role as a bitchy studio assistant. There’s a lot of interesting comments about how her character makes constant nasty snipes at Katherine Heigl’s character and I had to re-watch the clip a few times to really see the subtleties.

After that, I found her in a variety of other clips, mostly older Saturday Night Live stuff and boy I lost my shit as they say. Bill Hader and her are such a funny team. But I really like her range in being able to assume different characters and having no sense of repression when it comes to laying it all on the ground.

Then when I look at that tragic piece of horror called Wonder Woman, I keep thinking to myself, “what a waste!” It’s quite clear to me that despite me liking Pedro Pascal’s performance, the movie should have been split to help do an origin story for Cheetah. Instead, we ended up with a stupid mess that does not come close to the real Cheetah origin story. Not to mention it was such a huge missed opportunity to see Krisen Wiig get her own Kevin Spacey villain moment because she certain is on that level.

As I re-watched her Knocked Up clip (it’s really funny!), I kept thinking to myself how she probably could play a role from my novel if it ever made it to television or a movie. I’d have her play Cassandra the High Priestess. The way I would describe the role would be a Cybil Shepherd from the 80s at her peak as a religious fanatic.

Now, I mentioned earlier about the current emotional unrest that still is ongoing in America. I’m guessing because of the holidays, many of the protests had died down. However, from New Years, Woke.net started up on YouTube again.

Part of the insurrection was over in Portland where police said various protestors were “rioting”. I only caught part of the action where there was burning debris and some pyrotechnics. However, police were gassing people and the words were not gracefully exchanged.

Then more unrest with Minnesota, Kentucky, Washington and parts of Canada with a few more protests the following day. Also, a few politicians in Nancy Pelosi along with Mitch McConnell had their homes vandalized. After the incident with Portland, the mayor declared stiffer punishments, which means the restitution of the militarization of police that had been temporarily suspended.

The way I look at things is that 2020 was only the start of the avalanche. While COVID-19 can be blamed as a huge part of the unrest along with Trump’s outgoing behavior, the reality is that these elements simply expose the ugly truths of the nature of America, the underlying weaknesses of the current system of capitalism and what probably won’t be the escalating battle between the elite and the middle and lower classes.

In many ways, I am happy that the protests aren’t stopping. Outside of a single digit, nothing has really changed. I honestly do not think Biden stepping into office will offer much in what people hope for nor need. Because it’s not the presidency alone that can alter a massive set of defects in the current system governing the country, which in turn influences the rest of the world. That should be the real wake up call.

The fact that people are now targeting politicians’ homes is a huge message. I think the mayor of Portland is making the wrong move  and will subsequently incite more bad blood. All this will do is escalate on both sides. It wouldn’t be unfathomable for a group to go further than vandalize his home. I mean, there was the conspiracy against that one governor I believe to kidnap and murder her.

I’ve read how actually killing some of these politicians would treat them like a martyr. I think there’s only a half truth there. Instead, it might simply encourage more people to target them because they will lose their image of invulnerability, which may lead to a domino effect.

The question though is who really would make the move? America is very fragile at the moment and being capable of getting overthrown. It’s truly a scary thought in the idea of foreign countries or certain elites that may be attempting to de-stabilize this nation. But what would be the end goal from this?

 

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