Glitter on cards.


Whoever thought this was a good idea????

Oh god, the holiday season.


Is it over yet?

Movie: Everybody Knows

In Spanish with subtitles.

Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem in top form.

The story got more and more intriguing as the film went on.

Movie: Love After Love

Always nice to see Andie MacDowell.
I think she's greatly underrated as an actress.

The cast is uniformly good.

It was a good story.  I often would like to have slapped both her sons.

TV: Luther, Season 5

Engrossing, watchable, but in the end unsatisfying.

Movie: Every Day

I wasn't impressed at the beginning but the story grew on me as it went along.
It did have "themes" and "messages" but they weren't jammed down your throat.

I do question the morality/ethics of occupying another person's body and then using it for sex.

Movie: Holmes & Watson

OK.  I'm not a Will Ferrell fan.  At all.
I do like John C. Reilly

I didn't expect to like this film but I did.  There was some slapstick stuff (which I don't generally like) but it was basically under control.

Movie: Jonathan

One of the saddest stories I've ever seen on film.


(With Patricia Clarkson who is always excellent.)

Movie: Can You Ever Forgive Me?

*****


Pretty much perfect.

Movie: Aquaman

Oh dear.

Oh for Christ's sake!

I made my once in every three or four months visit to Pinterest today.

I see that grey hair is now a "thing".  Not natural grey hair though but some weird artificial colour of grey hair like the purple etc tints old ladies used to get that people made unending fun of.

Why are people so stupid?

What is wrong with naturally grey hair?

What is wrong with salt and pepper hair?


I applaud the idea of letting one's hair go grey, but why turn stopping colouring your hair into something else that requires unnatural treatments?


Is it so that the bloodsucking fashion industry can make more money?

There's something about a person who rides in the passenger seat with their bare feet propped up on the dashboard that just pisses the hell of out me.


Actually, in general people who put their bare feet places that only hands should go piss the hell out of me.

I've been thinking about the "It Gets Better" campaign.


It is true, it does get better.


But being bullied in high school (or anywhere) - the feelings about yourself, about the world, they can follow you your whole life.

I leave the apartment less and less.  Groceries.  Library.  Occasional meal with friends.
I know it's not healthy. 
I need to walk for exercise.
I just find people so awful and the busy city so overwhelming.

I do wish this craze for men's facial hair would soon end.

Human beings ruin everything.

A beautiful spring Sunday in Toronto.


I was out for a walk and there are people everywhere.


I don't like people.


I hate to think how crowded downtown is going to be when people move in to all these condos that are currently under construction.

It's amazing how thin they've managed to make 3-ring binder paper.


It's almost as thin as what we used to call tracing paper or copy paper for typewriters.

There's a theory/idea that we are living in a computer simulation.


But if that is so, what kind of sadistic being would create a simulation with child birth, cancer, war and root canals?

Movie: Upgrade (2018)

This movie was much more subtle than I had expected.  A well done addition to the AI taking control/cyborg genre.


As with all good sci-fi it provides lots of ideas to ponder.


Leigh Whannell (writer/director) is quite the talent.

Movie: Butterfly Kisses (2017)

I'm not a big fan of "found footage" films but this one is pretty clever.

Movie: Out in the Dark (2012)

A most disturbing film, as was intended.


The acting throughout, for every character, was excellent.


It has been haunting me since I watched it last evening.  It does make me remember just how lucky I am to have been born and be living my life in Canada. 


It also reminds me how brutish, frightening, precarious and fragile life is for probably the majority of people living on this planet.


Especially gay people - as a gay person I tend to think of gay people around the world as my people, as my kind, as my brothers and sisters.

It's not always a kindness to say "yes" when you really want to say "no" just because it's a little thing and you don't want to hurt someone's feelings. 


It can seem like you're doing the person a favour but they can latch onto that act as meaning more than it does and be set up to be really disappointed when later you have to say "no" to something bigger.

"Your pants are out of style."


"Yes, but they're not worn out yet."

I know it's just a subjective feeling but it seems that when there's an annoying person blocking the aisle or otherwise being a pain in the grocery they will continue to bother you, over and over, the whole time you're in the store.


Even if you move to the furthest aisle and work back from there somehow you keep running into them again and again.


It just feels sometimes like the universe is out to get you.

I recently returned from a trip and took transit in from Pearson Airport in Toronto to the heart of the city where I live.


It was crowded and noisy and people were so impatient and crabby and obnoxious and unhappy.


It made me realize that I live in a sort of personal island downtown. I rarely take transit anywhere and as a retired person I'm able to do most errands on weekday mornings.   There is such a difference in the world after noon.


I also no longer go to public events like movies, theatre, the symphony, galleries etc.  This has been a gradual pulling away from the public world and the people in it.   I fill my time with books and video content that I can access at home.


I don't think I could live in this city anymore if I still worked and had to deal with transit and busy crabby people day after day.  If I weren't able to maintain my personal bubble I would have to move away.

It's so annoying when someone asks you a question about yourself and then interrupts your answer and you realize that the only reason they asked was so that they could talk about something about themselves.