Bryce Moore's Blog, page 96
January 28, 2020
Movie Review: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
I’m still making my way through as many of the Oscar nominations as I can. Up this time was Quentin Tarantino’s latest, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I’m never entirely sure what I’ll get with a Tarantino movie. Some of his works are brilliant, and some feel like they try too hard, but I’d generally say I’m a fan. I’ve yet to watch a Tarantino and feel like I wasted my time, and that’s saying something. Once Upon a Time has been nominated for 10 Oscars, though, so my expectations were riding pretty high going into the movie.
For the first half to two-thirds, I was left wondering what all the buzz was. The movie seemed headed toward the 6-7 range. Then the last third went and made me revise my rating all the way to a 9, and that’s saying a good deal. Of course, it happens in a way that I’d rather not discuss, on the off chance some of you still haven’t seen the movie and intend to. Suffice it to say it does a great job of tying the various strands together in a very compelling fashion, making you think back on what you’ve already watched and view it in a different light.
The premise is straightforward: Tarantino shows a slice of what life was like in Hollywood in the late 60s. Leonardo DiCaprio plays an actor headed toward has-been status, and Brad Pitt is his longtime stuntman and gofer. The bulk of the first half just follows the two of them through their lives, while also showing us glimpses of real-life people (played by actors, of course): Sharon Tate and Bruce Lee among them. Eventually all paths intersect, though I believe the movie makes several assumptions, the largest being that you realize Sharon Tate’s ultimate fate (murdered along with four friends in her house with four others, at the hands of the Manson Family).
That’s all I’ll say about the plot, but I want to talk a bit about the various awards it’s been nominated in, and my thoughts for each of them (in light of the movies I’ve already seen):
Best Picture–It’s a great movie, but not nearly the level of 1917 or A Marriage Story. That said, it’s all about Hollywood, which often plays to Oscar voters more strongly than it does to me.Best Director–Again, a solid job by Tarantino, but I didn’t see anything here to make me think it’ll win.Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio)–I thought it was fascinating seeing a great actor act as a bad actor, and I imagine that was very tricky to do. Adam Driver still has my vote so far, however.Best Supporting Actor (Brad Pitt)–A great turn by Pitt as the stunt man. I wouldn’t be upset if he won.Best Original Screenplay–Often the category Tarantino does best in, but I didn’t think this writing was Tarantino at his best form.Best Cinematography–If 1917 doesn’t win this, I’ll be stunned. I can’t imagine seeing a better shot movie than 1917.Best Production Design–I could see this movie winning this one. They did a wonderful job recapturing that era of Hollywood, and they did it in a way that felt effortless, which I think is even more remarkable. Loads of little details that all work together perfectly.Best Costume Design–DittoBest Sound Mixing–I’m not a big enough sound guy to be able to give an informed opinion.Best Sound Editing–Ditto
I’m glad to see none of the movies I’ve watched so far have been anything close to duds, though if you’re turned off by violence and language, I wouldn’t say there’s anything in this movie to say you should see it anyway.
Onward!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 27, 2020
Heading to Aruba
In my continuing credit card churning escapades, I managed to kind of accidentally end up qualifying Denisa for Southwest’s Companion Pass for a year. This means that for this entire year, anywhere Denisa flies on Southwest, I can fly with her for free. (If I’d been doing this the right way, I would have qualified her at the beginning of this year, which would have meant the free flights would have gone through this whole year and then all of next year, but . . . I goofed. C’est la vie.)
That’s a pretty great perk, and after talking it over some, Denisa and I decided to see just what we could do with all these points we’ve been accumulating. At first I wanted to go to Hawaii, but getting to Hawaii on Southwest when you live in Maine turns out to be more hassle than we were willing to deal with. So then we turned our eye to the Caribbean. Why not someplace that needed a passport to get to?
From there, it was a matter of finding out which flights were the easiest to manage all along the way. For example, Southwest technically flies to the Grand Caymans or Costa Rica, but actually getting there from Portland was going to be a beast, so I crossed the off the list of potentials. This narrowed my list of candidates to the Bahamas, Cancun, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Aruba.
The next step was to figure out where we might stay. I’ve got a war chest of Marriott points, so I decided to focus on Marriotts for now. Ideally, I wanted a place that felt luxurious. Like we were really living it up. Flying off for a romantic getaway at a Residence Inn? Not quite what I was going for. But I also didn’t want to blow all my points at once. I wanted value luxury, if that existed. Cancun and Jamaica either had hotels that were Fairfield Inns or Ritz Carltons. Nothing in the sweet spot. The Bahamas had a nice candidate, until I realized taxes for the room were going to be $556. Paying that much in taxes doesn’t really make it feel free, you know?
At that point, it was down to Puerto Rico, the DR, or Aruba, and in the end, we went with Aruba for a couple of reasons. First, this is going to be a trip with just Denisa and me. Puerto Rico was really appealing, but we might head there with the kids sometime. It’s pretty easy to get to and navigate. Why not try something a bit more adventurous for this trip? In that case, Aruba sounded more exotic than the Dominican Republic, and it’s technically part of the South American continent, which means I could cross an entire continent off my “visited” list. Sold!
In the end, it cost 38,000 Southwest points (plus $180 in taxes) and 135,000 Marriott points (plus $25 in taxes) to book a five night stay in Aruba at a hotel with its own private island. It’ll cost more than that to go, of course, once we pay for parking and food and activities. But considering the flight and hotel have only going to set me back a grand total of $205, I think we can spend a bit on living it up while we’re down there. What will we do? Maybe scuba diving? Snorkeling? Horseback riding? If any of you have been and have suggestions, I’d love to hear them.
Still very glad I started churning. It takes some coordination and some research each time I need a new credit card (which I need to do again now), but I love how it’s been giving me the extra push I’ve needed to go out and try doing some different things that I wouldn’t have done otherwise. Money and time well spent.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 24, 2020
Spammers are Using My Number
It appears some spam phone callers have somehow decided to use my phone number to start calling people. I base this off the fact that I’ve now had two different people call me up within the last two weeks, wondering why I keep calling. These are people I don’t know. I haven’t called them before. They just seem to be calling me out of the blue, and when I answer, they’re fairly irate, wondering why I keep harassing them.
Needless to say, it’s a bit disconcerting to get yelled at by strangers, and I’m more than a little put out about it. On the other hand, my options for dealing with it aren’t too great.
On the one hand, I could do what I always used to do, and just not answer the phone when strangers are calling. However, this became more difficult once I became the Stake Executive Secretary. Now there are members from across the state calling me sporadically, and it’s usually easier for me to help them if I just pick up the phone when they call. Otherwise, I have to deal with trying to get back in touch with them, which isn’t always a hop skip and a jump. (Due in part, no doubt, to the number of spam calls we all keep getting, which makes us want to just not answer the phone.)
I can enable a call filtering service on my phone, which sends unknown numbers straight to my voice mail. Again, not the ideal. Instead of doing that, I think I’d just stop answering my phone first. Either way, if I go down that path, I’d probably change my voice mail message to something like “If you’ve been getting calls from me regularly, know that my number has been picked up by some spam services. It’s not me. Please just block my number, so both of us don’t have to deal with them.” But then again, there are actually people who I am trying to reach, not all of them known to me. I don’t want someone I’m trying to reach from the stake to think I’m a spammer, because then I can’t do the things I need to get done.
So for now, I’m kind of just hoping that this problem goes away on its own. Countless ostriches with their heads in the sand can’t be wrong, can they? It becomes a balancing act between how I want to disrupt my life.
Why has it gotten to this? Why is it that people are using technology to do idiotic things like have robots call strangers in an effort to convince those strangers the IRS wants their money? Probably because a portion of those strangers fall for the scam and send those robots money . . .
I’m just saying, if they’d had spam callers on The Jetsons, the future might not have looked quite so rosy. Where’s my flying car and my cushy button pressing job?
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 23, 2020
Movie Review: A Marriage Story
I think one of the reasons I often don’t get to see as many of the Oscar nominated films as I’d like is that so many of them are movies that require a fairly hefty emotional investment. A lot of the time when I’m ready to watch something, I want to do nothing more than sit and be entertained. “Deep thought” is far from my To Do list. “Get depressed” is even further. Of course, that’s not entirely fair. It’s not as if all serious movies are depressing. They just are designed to make you think much more than your average Marvel movie, say.
But at the same time, those Oscar movies are often the best ones I see. I know they’re worth my while in theory. I’m just too lazy to prod myself to watch them in practice, which is why I’m glad I have this goal to watch as many of them as I can. (Goals work best for me when they get me to do something I want to do and wouldn’t do without that goal.)
Marriage Story is a classic example of this. Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver portray a couple that’s falling apart. The film depicts the demise of their marriage in all its painful, excruciatingly acted detail. It’s a hard movie to watch, but it’s a very well done movie. (I had no idea Randy Newman did the score, which I felt added a great touch to the whole thing. I should have known.)
Driver and Johansson really dig into their roles, inhabiting them to the point that we feel we know them by the end of the movie. This isn’t a divorce where one person is “bad” and the other is “good.” Rather, they’re both complex, and the marriage fell apart for a number of reasons, with hints of other reasons lying deeper still.
One of the things I appreciated most about the movie was the attention to detail. Driver plays a director, and Johansson plays an actress. When they’re preparing (individually) to be observed by a social worker to report to the judge on their parenting skills, Driver focuses on getting the house just right. He perfects the setting, talks to his son, works on dinner. Johansson, on the other hand, focuses on her performance, practicing through what she’ll say beforehand. Details like that make me want to parse the movie apart further, because they hint at the sort of thought that went into the construction of the movie.
Was it perfect? Not quite, in my book. I gave it a 9.5 instead of 10 for one basic reason: I felt like the movie skewed a bit too heavily toward Driver’s character, slightly favoring him in the divorce’s fallout, and glossing over some of the mistakes he’d made that caused the divorce. It’s nothing glaring, but it was enough to make me keep expecting they’d finally address it in the movie, but they never really did.
Maybe that’s unfair of me. Maybe I should just be accepting of the fact that Driver’s character was a shade nicer than Johansson’s. But it felt off to me, and that held it back from a perfect score. That said, I still loved the movie. Loved how much the real communication between these two people who clearly still had feelings for each other had broken down to the point that the only time they actually communicated, they were shouting and crying. Loved how it led by listing all the things they liked about each other, and how even that led to their relationship’s ruin.
It’s a thought provoking movie, but it’s not one you’re going to leave feeling good about life. (Well, maybe you’ll feel good that your life isn’t Driver and Johansson’s . . .) I would not be surprised to see any actors walk away with awards, but I would be disappointed if it wins best picture instead of 1917. (I’d be surprised if it won, considering the director didn’t get a nod for best director . . .)
Have you seen it? What did you think? It’s streaming on Netflix now for free. (Rated R for language, but a fair bit of it. If that’s not a turn off, I think this would be a good one to watch as a couple, if only to discuss ways you feel their relationship went wrong, and what you can do to avoid that. My takeaway? Communication. It always seems to come back to that for me. If your communication lines breakdown, then your relationship tends to wither away.)
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 22, 2020
Movie Review: 1917
When I watched the Oscars last year, I decided that this year I wanted to do a better job actually watching as many of the films before the Oscars came around again. So that’s what I’ve set out to do, though there’s not a ton of time before they come (the 9th this year! That feels about 2-3 weeks earlier. Am I wrong?)
First up, I went and saw 1917 when it opened. I’d heard a lot about the movie ahead of time: the tale of a pair of young soldiers in WWI tasked with bringing vital information across the battlefield. If they succeeded, they’d save the lives of 1,600 men. If they failed, those men were doomed. Even more intriguingly (to me), the movie was made to seem like it was one long continuous shot. No cuts. How could I resist?
The movie is a masterpiece. I loved the whole thing. I know some had found the continuous take to be a bit too gimmicky, but it worked wonderfully for me. It made the movie that much more compelling, and I felt like it was a real callback to a simpler sort of film. “This is the story. These two men. That’s all we’re going to show.” When you use that approach, you can’t have a bunch of cheats you usually get to use. No cutting away to a different scene to raise tension. The audience knows and sees exactly what your characters know and see. Because of this, I found some of the action pieces so much more riveting than they might have been had they been told in the standard style.
In many ways, the movie reminded me of Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old, which was also a great piece. The acting and plot in this film were great, but I really have to hand it to the cinematographer. It looks amazing, and the tricks they had to pull to make the “one continuous shot” feel real are fairly incredible. It’s telling to me that the film was nominated for 10 Oscars, but not one of those was for acting. That doesn’t often happen, I don’t think. This is not an actor’s film (anymore than DiCaprio’s Revenant was an actor’s film, but let’s not go there). This is all about story and execution. I loved it.
The movie is rated R for language (11 f-words, if you’re keeping exact count) and its grisly depiction of war. (It’s filmed in the middle of trench warfare, and it doesn’t shy from showing exactly what that would have been like.) However, this would be a movie that I’d recommend to just about anyone who’s at all a fan of movies (and is mature enough to handle the gore). I found it completely gripping. 10/10, and I would be pleased as punch to see it rake in the awards.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 21, 2020
New Book Deal Announced: MURDER CASTLE Heading Your Way!
If you were following me on Facebook or Twitter over the weekend, you already know the big news: while I was offline in Utah, the news broke about a new book deal for yours truly. This would be one of those things I’ve wanted to tell you about for the last while that I couldn’t. I first got news of the offer right before I went out Trick or Treating with my kids on Halloween. That’s a long time to sit on something before I get to share it with others.
So what does this deal actually mean? For one thing, there’s the obvious: MURDER CASTLE will be out in bookstores, ready for you to read in summer 2021. I began writing the first draft of the book in October 2016, so that’s five years from the first words to being in print. What’s it about? Etta’s sister runs away to Chicago in the 1890s, intent on seeing the Chicago world’s fair, even though it’s half a continent away. Everything seems wonderful at first. She sends Etta a series of letters describing the fair, her new job as a maid, and even a man she’s met. And then the letters stop. Convinced something has happened to her, Etta runs away herself, intent on going to Chicago and discovering the truth. But the truth turns out to be much more sinister than she ever imagined . . .
It’s based on the real life story of HH Holmes, America’s first serial killer, though I take considerable license with the plot. It was a very different book for me to write, and I had a lot of fun in the process. It’s got some pretty gruesome scenes in it, but nothing too awful. (That I can remember . . . it’s been a while since I read it . . .) Definitely YA and not Middle Grade, however.
You’ll notice the deal is for two books. That means MURDER CASTLE will be the first, and then I’m on contract for a second, as yet to be determined novel. My hope is that will be one I’ve already written, as I’ve got several primed and ready to go, but I’ll have to submit those to my editor and see what she thinks of them before I know what will happen there.
I haven’t seen my first edits on the book yet, and I’ve never worked with this new editor before, so I have no idea how much revising I’m going to have in front of me. Could be a lot, could be a little. That will derail current writing projects, but that’s a problem I’m more than ready and eager to deal with. 
January 7, 2020
Degu Housing Crisis
Over Christmas break, one of the items on the family To Do list was to clean out the degu cage. Never a popular task, but one which we’ve followed for years without serious incident. Our degu lives in a two tier affair, the bottom made out of a 30 gallon aquarium tank filled with wood shavings, and the top being a wire construction complete with an exercise wheel and a second floor lair. It’s worked well for us these past eight years.
This time, however, when Tomas and DC went to dump the cage contents on the compost pile, the glass aquarium finally gave up the ghost, with an entire side of it shattering into the snow. This was, needless to say, Not Part of the Plan, and it left us in a bit of a jam. We had a cage top that was still fine, but no cage bottom. Without a bottom, there would be no place to contain the wood shavings. We could try putting it in a cardboard box (we had plenty of those after the holidays), but that would get nasty fast.
A quick perusal of Craig’s List and Facebook Marketplace showed us there were other glass tanks around, but none the right size. And a new one would cost upwards of $100. That’s a bit rich for my blood, especially for an eight year old degu and no plans to get a new degu once she departs us. So I did what any self-respecting American would do: I took the dimensions of the cage top and went to Walmart.
My mission? Find something (anything!) that would work for a cage bottom for the little critter. The trick? The cage top was exceptionally long. 31 inches long, 14 inches wide. And after scouring the entire Walmart, DC and I were coming up with nothing. I had figured a plastic bin would work, but all the ones we found were just an inch or two too short. We tried bookcases as well, but they were just too big, or too expensive.
Finally, we tried the Christmas section, and there we hit pay dirt, coming across a single bin that was 34 inches long and 18 inches wide. Better yet, it was all of $15. We bought it, brought it home, and set the degu cage top inside it.
Problem: it was so tall, the cage almost completely disappeared inside it. This made it less than ideal for our degu, since she couldn’t see out, and the kids couldn’t see in to watch her. So I did what any self-respecting American would do: I got out my Dremel and cut windows in the side of the bin.
I’m pleased to say that with about 20 minutes of work, our degu can now see out just fine. Better yet, her new cage has convenient carrying handles, so moving it around for cleaning and transportation is simpler. Would I recommend it if we were just starting out on our degu ownership adventure? No. But for the end portion of the ride, I think it should be perfect.
American ingenuity wins again!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 6, 2020
Tropical Vacations
Maybe it’s because I just finished one vacation and I have a second one lined up for the end of this week. Or maybe it’s because it was just above zero this morning when I headed into work. (Not that I was cold. I had my nice LL Bean coat on, so the cold doesn’t bother me much.) But one way or the other, I’ve got vacationing on the brain, and I’d like to ask you lovely people for some advice.
I’m debating going somewhere tropical. I’ve toyed with the idea of Hawaii, but that’s like . . . over 5,000 miles away from me, which seems a bit much. Slovakia is only 4,000 miles away, after all. I want to go someplace tropical, but not “farther away than Eastern Europe” tropical. That said, I’ve been to Hawaii. It’s lovely. I’d love to go back.
But I haven’t been to the Caribbean (unless you count the many voyages I went on to see the Pirates there over the years). I’ve been looking into different islands. Puerto Rico (no passport needed!), Aruba (I’ve already got a passport, so what does it matter?), the Bahamas, Jamaica, etc. What I’d really like is to hear from people who’ve been to these places. I’ve talked with a friend who went to Puerto Rico recently and loved it. I’d like that kind of experienced feedback on other places.
How hard is it to get around? What do you do with your time there? How expensive was the food? Favorite experiences? Places to avoid? When did you go? Any general tips? Have you been to Hawaii? How did it compare to there?
Anyway. I’m all ears (or eyes, I suppose, though I’d be happy to discuss this in person as well.) If you got suggestions/thoughts, please share!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
January 3, 2020
What is a “Terrorist”?
When I was growing up, “terrorist” seemed like a word that didn’t need a definition. It was self apparent. My first memory of encountering the word was actually through Back to the Future, where Doc Brown buys plutonium off “Libyan nationalists.” I remember not understanding what that meant, and asking for an explanation, which led to me having pictures of evil men going around blowing people up for little to no reason other than to make people afraid. When I found out terrorists would sometimes hijack airplanes or blow them up, that didn’t do wonders for my fears of flying, either.
But the fact was that “terrorists” were people who did terrible acts of violence against civilians, and as I grew older, I understood it was usually for political reasons. But the actual definition of the word appears to be much more complex. Webster’s has a great history of the word’s usage, showing how it has gone back and forth between terrorism originally being acts of the government against its citizens, over to acts of citizens against a government.
Today, Webster’s defines a terrorist as “an advocate or practitioner of terrorism as a means of coercion,” and defines terrorism as “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.”
Why does this matter? To me, it matters because I think many people still equate “terrorist” with suicide vests and planes exploding or crashing into buildings. When someone is called a terrorist, it’s a straightforward accusation of evil. But when I woke up this morning to find news that the US had killed a top ranking Iranian official via a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport, it took some time for me to come to grips with what exactly had happened. Who had been killed. Why. How. And (most importantly) what the fallout from this action would be.
I am not a military expert. I’m far from up to speed on the inner workings of the Middle East. I’m just a person sifting through the stories online, trying to make sense of what happened. You’d think that would be simple, but as with most things these days, it’s more an exercise in trying to read between the lines of political spin to try to get an inkling of the truth. Read the Republican accounts, and a top terrorist was killed, saving the lives of many Americans. Read the more liberal news, and it was a reckless action that has endangered America’s interests abroad.
I don’t know Qassim Suleimani. I wouldn’t have recognized the name if you’d said it to me yesterday. But from what I read now, it appears he was a high figure in Iran, second only to the Supreme Leader, according to some reports. A military leader. And I try to picture what it would be like if I had woken up this morning to discover a top general had been killed by an Iranian air strike at Heathrow. How disturbing and upsetting that would be.
Certainly the word “terrorist” has become politicized in much the same way “socialist” has over the years. When people use the word, it’s meant to make a complicated issue clean cut. Terrorists are bad, and they need to be stopped. But when the word applies not to rogue agents blowing up citizens and airplanes, but rather to governments that are acting counter to a different country’s interests, I think that clean cut nature dissolves in many ways.
Many have accused George W. Bush and Dick Cheney of being terrorists. Depending on how you’re using the word and who’s speaking, I can see that argument being made, especially by governments in Iran or other Middle Eastern nations. Would those nations be justified in killing Bush or Cheney via drone strike if they could?
What I mean to say is that the nature of war seems to only get blurrier with each passing year. Should Suleimani have been killed? I have no idea, honestly. I don’t know what he’s done, and I don’t know what he was planning on doing. I can’t imagine the political fallout that would have occurred if he had been captured and arrested by American forces. That would have been a much more difficult operation to carryout. Killing him with a drone, however, just meant they needed to know where he was at a particular point in time. It was, ironically, much easier to just kill him.
Just because we can do something, does it mean we should? Most of the articles I’m reading about the man say he’s been directly involved in killing American troops. Is that what it means to be a terrorist now? I think we need to be very cautious of how we use the word, because other people can then use that same definition to justify their actions on a global stage.
The more I read about it and think about it, the more unsettled I am with what happened last night. The justifications I read for it today don’t allay my concerns. I’m worried for what might come because of this action, and what the continued blurry definition of “terrorist” might mean in the years ahead. It’s one thing to be accused of something, it’s another to be found guilty. I get that war isn’t the time for courts and accusations, it’s the time for action. But when did we become involved in a war with Iran that justified this sort of action?
Welcome to 2020, I suppose.
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January 2, 2020
The Best (and Worst) Media of 2019
It’s a new year, and I’m back from vacation! (For a bit, at least. I’ll be in Utah starting the end of next week . . .) And launching the new year off, I wanted to do a retrospective of my reading and watching last year. As always, I keep track of what I’ve consumed, media-wise, and I’m here to report in on all the best and worst things I came across. Ready? Let’s go.
Best Reading
In total, I watched 96 things over the course of the year. Some of those things were just movies. Some were entire seasons of television shows. (Still just counts as “1 thing” on my master chart.) Of those 96 “things,” the ones I gave a perfect 10/10 to were:
Groundhog Day (naturally)The Americans (season 6)Game of Thrones (season 1)ChernobylInto the SpiderverseFerris Bueller’s Day OffPulp FictionCold Comfort Farm
Movies or shows that got a 9.5/10 were:
When They See UsThe Rise of Skywalker
And items that got a 9 were:
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (season 2)BlackkklansmanThe Sopranos (season 1)Free SoloGame of Thrones (season 7)Avengers EndgameThe Good Place (season 3)Various Game of Thrones episodes (I rewatched key episodes across many seasonsDeadpool 2Game of Thrones (season 8)Deadwood (season 2)Mary Poppins ReturnsClueRogue One
There are some items on there that many people would disagree with me about. I don’t care. I’ve become increasingly tired of the nonsensical need to justify my tastes. As if the entire world has to decide what is “good” and what is “bad.” The Star Wars original series? Good. Prequels? Bad. Sequels? Tons of debate, and people take it as a personal affront if you disagree with them. I love social media and the way it helps bring people together, but I despise the backbiting and nitpicking that happens on it. I love the Hobbit movies. I thought the Game of Thrones finale was great. I don’t feel the need to write a thesis to defend that position, just as I won’t attack you if you say the Hobbit movies are terrible.
Make your own list.
