archer

I watcher The Starving Games (on Amazon Prime). I highly recommend that everyone who even remotely liked the Hunger Games should watch this movie. Really. No fooling.

Democrats stopped the anti-voting legislation from getting passed in the Texas state legislature by staging a last minute walkout. The session of the state legislature expired so the bill won't get voted on until next session. The governor has said he's going to call a special session of the legislature just to consider this legislation, which is his right. He's also saying he's going to suspend pay for the legislators since they aren't doing their job (essentially doing a line item veto to erase funding for the legislature). Interesting back and forth. At the very least, it buys time for the public pressure to mount against the legislation before it actually gets voted upon.

That house from Up better watch out.

Yeah, it's probably been 20 years since I read any of the books. I've got them stored away in a closet somewhere but considering the problems I have moving boxes, I might not get a chance to read them again any time soon. A shame because I'd like to read Phule and Hammer's Slammers to get me into the mood for playing Battletech on Steam.

To me, it depends on what is meant by "works well". In my personal opinion, men and women ought to be judged exactly the same. If a man behaves in some manner and that's accepted, a woman ought to be able to behave in exactly the same manner and her behavior be similarly accepted. And vice versa. However, that isn't the world we live in. It's not going to "work well" for a woman to behave as if she's a man in some situations and vice versa because the people around them will judge them harshly for that behavior (even though in my opinion they shouldn't). I mean, the person who is doing the behavior can shrug off the opinions of others or pretend they don't care about the opinions of others. But it's still going to create extra effort for them because of the reaction of others. So in that sense, it isn't going to work well for them, it's just going to be work. (And I'll freely admit that I sometimes struggle to live up to my ideal and have to check my initial reaction at times in order to stand back and be more objective.) "It wasn't confidence that was the problem. It was a humorless lack of charisma and likability. It was a lack of any challenge and treating everyone and everything like they were dirt beneath her fingernails. Except women, who she was generally nice to (other than the Skrull woman)." I don't have a problem with the confidence or even the lack of charisma and likability (which is an odd choice for a lead movie character but there are people like that IRL who I've had to tolerate). I've even dealt with a lot of people IRL who treated people like dirt. I went at one point from a job with "a boss who hated everyone and who actively tried to make all his employees miserable" to "a Jewish boss who actively hated Christians who were religious and went out of his way to gleefully dump on them" to a job with "a black boss who openly admitted to me that she downgraded me on employee reviews because of my race and that she gave better grades to black employees because they were black and to female employees because they were female". I had a lot less philosophical problem with the boss who was terrible to everyone than I did with the boss who hated religious Christians or the boss who actively discriminated based on race...even though at the time I was a religious Christian and that later I happened to be the race which was being actively discriminated against. If a female Captain Marvel acted superior to everyone and treated everyone like they were dirt beneath her fingernails, that's far better in my opinion than her treating men one way then women another way. I don't find that behavior to be entertaining. (And I probably wouldn't find it entertaining even if I hadn't had long-term life experiences on the short end of the stick.)

Yes, I have. I don't remember much of it and I specifically don't remember any batman.

I thought that hacks drove cabs and a batman was the personal servant of an officer.

That sounds like a very large number of Protestants I know. On the other hand, they can take you to the Catholic church's own records and show you centuries of that church proudly engaging in the mass executions of adherents to their own particular segment of Protestantism. So I tend to take an agnostic stand on which churches engage in devil-worship or not.

I do that all the time on important stuff.

Yeah, my memory thinks 22 days ago is 1000 years ago. Ironically, I can remember things I learned about what happened thousands of years ago easier than I can remember what happened recently.

I haven't seen WandaVision or Falcon and the Winter Soldier to be able to comment on their message. Carol Danvers as Ms. Marvel was developed to be a feminist icon and was portrayed at having a chip on her shoulder about gender issues more often than not. That's not the way I would have chosen to take the Captain Marvel character, but it's generally in line with the portrayal of the character in the comics. Endgame importing the Captain Marvel character with her over-the-top power levels meant she was going to overshadow some of the lesser-powered characters, even if they'd toned down the (gender) chip on her shoulder aspects of her character. As for Ant-Man and the Wasp, even in the Ant-Man movie, he was played for laughs. In his appearance in Civil War, he was played for laughs. In Ant-Man and the Wasp, after having a few months experience with the suit then no experience with the suit for two years, he was paired up with the Wasp who had more than a decade of experience with the suit. Even if the Ant-Man character hadn't already been played for laughs in two other movies, the person with more experience in the suit SHOULD have been the person who was more competent in the suit. The only reason Hank recruited Scott to be Ant-Man in the first place instead of letting Hope do it was that Hank was being over-protective of her. (Personally if I were doing the Ant-Man and Wasp characters, I'd have done Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne. Let Hank be the obsessed genius and Janet be the wealthy, fashion-conscious, and somewhat ditzy heiress who financed his dreams. But I'd guess that Marvel didn't want to deal with "is this version of Hank going to turn into a wife-beater because the writers want to highlight domestic abuse and this is one of the few married couples we have" speculation.) Personally, I highly dislike the negative "gender in your face" which you get in pop culture and advertising. But I haven't seen it in Marvel movies except where it's been appropriate for one character's personality and in one appropriate situation.

That one definitely displaced the dumbest one I'd seen so far: The Rangers have a runner on third and first and I think no outs vs Seattle. Batter hits a ground ball to the infield. The runner on third goes for home. The fielder throws it to the catcher who tags home then throws the ball to second...but too late. Only after the play was over did the catcher appear to realize that he didn't have a force out at home so tagging home plate before throwing to second didn't accomplish anything.

Goatbusters: We ain't afraid of no goats!

If you meant on my part, it was completely intentional.

I don't know, "Doolittle" did okay with just putting RDJ and a bunch of talking animals out there in front of the camera and letting them adlib the whole movie.

That could be a UFO which follows you around shining a light into the back of your truck.

I'm nothing if not original....

Red Lantern Green Hulk

Judges at a beauty pageant. Participants in a spaceship race. Mysterious time travel event with no apparent motive. Heist at a space museum where the security guard steals a flight ring and a flying security robot then tries to flee into the past.

You really have to read the whole article to get the impact of how mentally ill this business owner is. https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/fiddleheads-cafe-vaccines-mask-policy-sign-16206085.php

About these "election security" bills. < rant on > I absolutely don't mind the "you have to have an ID and show the ID to vote", which has been a hobby-horse for conservatives for decades before Trump ever raised his ugly head in Republican politics. IMO everyone should be registered to vote and should be registered to vote at only one address so an ID requirement doesn't bother me. Make the ID free and make the state come to the person's home to make him/her/other an ID (if he doesn't already have one). And make the state come at the convenience of the voter whatever time of day that happens to be. (Sure, offer to pick him up and bring him into the office first or pay for an Uber during office hours. But when all else fails, go to him. Working odd hours or not having transportation to go get the ID should never be an obstacle.) The restriction to the voter of voter ID's comes when the state makes you go through hell to get an ID, whether it makes you show an impossible number of other ID's in order to get a state ID or whether the state ID's are only given out in certain locations and certain times which make it highly inconvenient for a potential voter to get one. Actually carrying that ID, after you get it, to the polls on election day is not any kind of significant restriction to the voter. If the ID is lost/stolen on election day, let the person do a provisional ballot, take his photograph to keep conservatives from gasping in horror at someone voting without an ID, and call it good. I personally think Democrats should push that as a compromise on the state level in every state. It'd defang a lot of the "elections aren't secure" chatter/concerns that have been around for decades and make the Democrats part of "securing elections" rather leaving that as a Republicans-only issue. And it'd not allow some common sense low-key "voter ID" concerns be a smoke screen to allow Republicans to push for draconian anti-voter legislation.

Far From Home budget: $160,000,000 gross: $1.132 billion Endgame budget: $400,000,000 gross: $2.798 billion Endgame is the 2nd highest grossing of all time, outpaced only by Avatar which has been out years longer and has been released twice. Far From Home is the 25th highest grossing of all time. Very respectable numbers for both.

My wife is from Ulysses which is in the southwest corner of the state. I grew up 15 miles outside of a small town in another state but was still shocked at how little there was in Ulysses (stores, gas stations, etc.)...and my wife assured me that there was a lot more in the town when we visited than there was when she was growing up. I'm firmly convinced that people came up with the idea of pancakes by visiting Ulysses, Kansas then looking around. And that the locals erected a barbed wire fence in order to have something, anything to block the wind. The small towns I was used to didn't give the feeling of being desolate because there was always hills or trees to block line of sight, which hides just how little there is. In these days of internet, satellite TV, and Amazon delivery, I guess you could live anywhere and be okay. But I felt sorry for my wife having to grow up in such a place. And I'm saying that as someone who grew up for the first six years of my life in a house without a telephone or indoor plumbing. (My parents installed indoor plumbing after that point and we got a party line telephone when I was in high school). Of course, when my wife got to see the home where I grew up and the immediate surrounding area, she felt the same way I did about Ulysses. But she was impressed with my small town. edit: In checking Wikipedia about the surrounding communities where I grew up, I just found out my family's rather unique surname has been attached to a road connecting two of those very tiny places. I'm in Wikipedia! Take that all you people in high school who said I'd never amount to anything!

Advertising that you intend to kill the FF cast isn't making me feel better....

That looks like absolute hell to me.