Oh well.
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Regulation and taxation make illegal weed less expensive than legal weed. The only difference is now it's not "possession" but "tax evasion" that they get you for.
Only California could screw this kind of thing up. Sheesh.
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Garbage collection is usually a day late in the Fungal Vale in weeks where there's a holiday. Strangely, though, trash was not picked up yesterday, but this morning. WTF, guys.
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Started reading Tales From The Loop and it's just as good as I expected. It's a picture book first, but includes text vignettes which explain the pictures and put them in context. The image I ganked for my desktop image lo these many years ago--Percy's Promenade--was a two-page spread.
I haven't finished reading it yet, but it's a welcome addition to my library, I can tell you that.
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The Bird Box is all the rage right now. It's a NetFlix movie about some weird thing happening. Aliens or demons or something come to Earth. If you see them, you go suicidally insane. If you're already insane, they look wondrous to you and you try to get everyone else to look at them.
Plenty of folks are raving about how good it is, but it kind of left me cold. SPOILERS AHEAD.
First, "invisible creatures which drive you insane" doesn't do it for me. We never see them, and in fact the main character never sees one (of course) even though her sister sees one and she looks in the same direction. So, not sure WTF that's about. Best look we get is sketches. But I get the gimmick, and that's not really a problem.
Second, these creatures never enter buildings. No explanation; they just don't ever go indoors, and no one ever seems to question that. That was a big problem for me, because
Third, the creatures, knowing the effect they have on people, nonetheless want to be seen, which indicates they're not-good. In one scene, they try to trick the main character and Boy and Girl into removing their blindfolds. In another, they try to drag Girl away. The problem is, these are the only times in the film they do stuff like that. When it adds tension to an otherwise normal scene. Otherwise, they just hang out and wait for people to look at them. Their actions are pure "plot devicium".
Fourth, seeing the creatures makes a person's eyes change color, or adds these weird black inclusions in their irises, so you can tell when someone's seen a creature. Why? There's no sign of that earlier in the film; we only see that happen about halfway through.
END SPOILERS
...overall, as I said, it left me cold. This was basically the movie about the creatures that attack any source of noise, only inverted. I don't like movies like this one, particularly where the threat to humanity is not neutralized or defeated, or where there isn't at least some glimmer of hope that will happen. The other movie had that; this one didn't. As expected, I didn't like it very much.
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Tomorrow is the last day of 2018. Woot.