The Moon
It sounded like a pack of dogs in the night. I arose confused and looked to the blinds. A number of dogs live in our neighbourhood, true, but it's unlikely they would be roaming and snapping in the snow at stupid am in the morning.
The sounds came closer.
Then I heard the human chant.
They were drunk and slurring their words!
And I was still waking; don't know what I heard!
Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf!
Boys from a team or frat, I supposed, wandering back home and chanting something that may have held meaning for someone, at least once. Every two lines were followed by an outbreak of barking. Our fun-loving band had already passed by the time I peeked through the blinders.
Six of Cups
Coincidentally, I watched the first ep of Peaky Blinders the next day. It's well-made, but I filed it under maybe pick up in the future. We only watch a couple shows at a time, usually something that's already finished a season or a run. We rotate between seasons. The new Daredevil will be next. Currently, we've picked up Gilmore Girls, which we missed during its original seven-year run. If you watched it, you know the riffs: quirky characters with quality chemistry, quick-witted dialogue, quaint small town snippets, coming of age at the turn of the millennium. Also, a few too many problems that would resolve if people just spoke to each other. We immediately caught a shift in setting between the pilot and everything that follows. They filmed the first episode in Unionville, Ontario. That town continues to star as the Hollow in the credit sequence and some establishing shots. Otherwise, the series shot on the Warner Brothers backlot, and it's fairly obvious if you focus on the background. The towns, real and staged, share some similarities: both boast a gazebo in a central patch of park, over which rises the steeple of a postcard church. The show trades, even in its original run, on a kind of situational nostalgia, a longing for a simpler place. The effect gets heightened when watching it a generation later, in the new Golden Age of Uncertainty and Chaos.
I've said something similar before about SF conventions. Attendees may be forward-seeking fans of boldly going, but they like the experience of living in their own town, inhabited by relatable oddballs. A con is a weekend space station, an otherworldly colony for nerds. And not a few of us really do look back, to a future that has failed us.
SJB, retired librarian, attends science fiction and pop culture events, often organizes tracks and sits on panels. He co-ran a small, single-day convention for some years in Sarnia, Ontario, and assisted with two WorldCons.
He turned 65 and I attended the party, upstairs at his favorite pub. It's the same events room where we would eat at the end of his now-defunct local con. Downstairs musicians played and the regulars and irregulars ate and drank and sang along. Upstairs most of SJB's guests were gaming. I spent much of my time there speaking with him and a local journalist of note who would like to write fiction.
I also hung out with Thomson and Thompson (let us call them), whom I've encountered before. They're part of the local fandom, neurologically divergent brother and sister with nearly identical first names. Fandom's like that.
As I turned onto the highway home I saw the trucks lining up to cross the border, delayed by enhanced security (Trump's fiction that this is all about fentanyl) for kilometres.
The Hierophant
Conclave is fine, as far as it goes, well-acted. The plot simplifies controversies within the Roman Catholic Church, tipping the scales by making the traditionalist candidate, Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) an anti-African racist. The film serves as a reflection on politicking of all kinds or, at least, the most conventional kinds. Anora I'll grant the best actress win, maybe director, too. Best picture and editing? Less certain, personally. A judicious editor would have shortened its overly-long first act. Best screenplay? Hmmm....
I have now watched three of writer/director/editor Sean Baker's films. All three have creditable scripts and are worth seeing. And they all lean heavily into "shocking" dialogue and feature central female figures who are whores.
The Devil
You know how to make Costco even more like a lesser circle of hell? Have the power go out, causing darkness to fall on the cavernous warehouse and its rows of rolls of toilet paper, outsized boxes of cereal and sweet potato biscuits, odours of bodies and cleaning supplies.
My wife and I were waiting on automotive to finish installing the all-weather tires, and laughing our way through the current New York Times best-selling Self-help book, Mel Robbins's The Let Them Theory. They had a Smart car-sized block of them piled near the checkout:
At the age of 41, I found myself $800,000 in debt, unemployed, and watching my husband’s restaurant business crumble. It felt like we had failed at life with no hope of ever escaping the debt.
Oh no! What did she do?
She developed a superficial and derivative program which probably works for some people, and which made her a fortune through book sales and seminars. No more debt, the American Way!
But back to Costco or, at least, Colorado.
JD-2 of Colorado and I have been crossing paths online for the last twenty years. We have the same last name, first initial, and nearly-identical email addresses. Every once in a while, we have to inform someone that they have reached the wrong JD.
The most recent misfire involved the new tires I purchased at Costco. Look, I like Costco even less in this era of Trump-inspired rising Canadian nationalism. My wife joined about a decade ago and shops there once a month to take advantage of cheap prices on staples. And we couldn't pass up the price they offered on premium all-weather tires.
The confirmation that my new Michelins had arrived went to JD-2 in Colorado. It included my phone number. So we finally had a conversation.
It went well. His great-grandfather and my paternal grandparents grew up in nearby villages in the same region of Abruzzo. Given that they shared the same last name, there's no doubt that we are related, though we have not determined the degree.
Back at Costco, I caught a snatch of conversation from the people eating Costco all-beef hot dogs behind us.
"Is it just me or are all Chinese boys cute until they get older?" His acquaintance's response was non-committal. I assume their conversation was prompted by a family of, possibly, Chinese descent having hot dogs and fries nearby. I don't know if they overheard or how they felt-- I suspect it would be a "just let them" shrug or shake-- but at that moment, the lights went out, followed by a rippling chorus of Ohs!
My wife wrinkled her nose and realized that she would have to wait to return the book for refund. A moment later, I received a call on my cell. They had finished our tire job moments before the power died. We wandered through the dark to automotive so that we could get the key.
They were not letting additional customers into the warehouse until the power returned.
In the lot we passed a group of young guys, possibly university or college boys, enroute to the doors. They didn't look like the sort who'd bark in reply, so I let them know that they wouldn't be able to get in for a bit. "Power's out."
"Thank you," one said. He had an accent.
Chinese boys.
Queen of Cups
World Day of Prayer has been running since 1887, an ecumenical Christian women's initiative. Various churches host it in towns and cities and villages around the world, on a Friday afternoon in March. This year, local to us, the Catholics hosted the event (the Catholic women joined in 1967); coffee, tea, and baked goods were served afterwards at the Anglican church next door.
It's supposed to bring together women of various faiths (well, Christian faiths, though they don't bar anyone at the door), ethnicities, and races together. Each year has a theme and a country from which inspiring stories are taken. This year the categories were "I made you wonderful" and "The Cook Islands." Very DEI. I imagine it wouldn't please Trump much.
He's not actually a Christian.
Of course, neither am I, but I was raised Catholic, and my United Church wife was going to be singing at this event. It was a small afternoon crowd, about fifty. Women, mainly, as one might expect. The inevitable confused and possibly disturbed man wandered in. Another man accompanied his wife. A priest, African-born, delivered the devotional message. He otherwise seemed a bit bemused by the proceedings, but maybe that's just my perception. The event carried a whiff of kumbaya.
I enjoyed my wife's singing.
The priest did not attend the post-service beverages and baked goods: it's a poor fit for a Catholic priest during lent. He also struck me-- and this is feeling, not fact-- as the sort of priest who might not entirely approve of quite so ecumenical an event—even if Tedesco wouldn't have approved of him, had he been running for Pope.
The Star
Has the future failed us? Can it, definitionally? We're but one species on one small planet. Time and space owe us nothing.
And the lights in my quaint community came back within an hour. Other parts of the world have been less fortunate.
Then again, as I've said before, those old science-fiction timelines, Star Trek's, Robert Heinlein's, the ones in mainstream comic books and Ace SF Doubles, imagined we'd be exploring our solar system by the late twentieth century, but that fractious factions would then cause chaos and conflict back on earth. Heinlein even predicted the rise of theocracies and authoritarians about now. War would ensue, causing widespread devastation and social collapse. Mutants and radiation monsters optional. Ultimately, the remnants of humanity would rise, more united, and we would reach for the stars.
So we haven't gone entirely off-script.
Maybe everything will turn out okay for our descendants.