What I Watched: The 2024 Season of Gardeners World, with the lead up to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show!!! It airs on Friday evenings for me, and Monty Don has the sweetest demeanor and most soothing voice ā the perfect chill-down shown after a busy week. (Although I do jeer at him when he says ā. . . and here are your jobs for the weekend . . .ā, because I am already busy. The UKās Maritime climate is about three-four weeks ahead of my growth zone, which is 6.5 or 7 theses days. (I am fiendishly jealous of the UK ability to grow tree ferns as an outdoor year-round plant.) I do enjoy seeing the different min-climates and gardens specific to cold and craggy Wales, blustery Scottland, salty beaches, and bucolic midlands. I also like seeing what I unkindly refer to as the āfreak of the weekā. Each week they feature a short clip of a gardener with an over-the-top, hoarder-level fascination for a very specific type of plant, ranging from hostas to house plants to tulips to whatever.
What I Read: Murder in Rose Hill (A Gaslight Mystery Book 27) by Victoria Thompson. I enjoy this long-running series; it is a comfort read for me, as little changes, although it does an intelligent job of not social mores, the transition from carriages to electric or motor vehicles, the prejudice against the Irish and Italians, and other well-researched historical scene building. I also get a kick out seeing New York City streets I roamed in the 1980ās-1990ās described 100 years prior . . . Here is the Amazon blurb:
Midwife Sarah Malloy and her private detective husband Frank discover that the cure is worse than the disease when they investigate the death of a promising young woman in this atmospheric, riveting mystery from the USA TODAY bestselling author of Murder on Bedford Street. Sarah Malloy has just helped with the delivery of a bouncing baby girl at her womenās clinic, when she receives a visit from an engaging and determined young woman writing an article for New Century Magazine. Louisa Rodgers explains that she is researching the dangers of patent remedies. Sarah is only too happy to tell Louisa exactly what she thinks of the so-called medicines whose ingredients include heavy doses of alcohol and other addictive drugs, and hurt much more than they help. A few days later, Sarah receives a visit from a bereft Bernard Rodgers, who explains that his daughter, Louisa, has been found strangled in the lobby of the building where New Century has its offices. The police have decided it was a random attack and have made no attempt to investigate, hinting that Louisa got what she deserved for sticking her nose where it didnāt belong. Sarah wants justice for the bright young woman but as she and Frank delve deeper into Louisaās life, they find that nothing is quite as it seemed and Louisa is not who she claimed to be. The Malloys must first solve the mystery of Louisaās life before they can figure out who wanted to see her deadā¦
What I Listened To: Wunderhorse – July; Dominik Hartz ā Dominik Hartz (@MatthewCrawly, what is he saying?); and Bakermat- Infatuation:
Thank you for playing Brain Drain! How are you, dearest ones? Darling DeadSplinterites, whatās going on? Please do share with us!
I finally finished Fallout S1. Only took a month or so.
1) I liked it because it took a lot of the game and made it work as a TV show. Quests, side quests and your karma*.
*Fallout was one of the first games that codified on how you treated people would change your ending. I know too many gamer types who were doing a lot of terrible shit in these RPGs (some for a laugh- like me or who showed off their inner psycho… which bothered me later, but at the time I didn’t realize it.) Anyway, if you treated people like shit in the game, your ending was poor or not great or you failed your quest.
2) I liked how Lucy, Maximus and (the ghoul) Cooper Howard are different sides of the same Nuka Cola bottle cap. Lucy was the naive dipshit, Maximus was the troubled loner and Cooper was the cynical hardened killer which was the opposite of his non ghoul life. If I were in the shithole of the Fallout wasteland I’d probably be going through all those phases assuming I survived.
3) “You can’t treat people this way!” Ah, Lucy.
4) “War never changes.” It does not.
5) Matt Berry is this era’s BRIAN BLESSED. Although instinctively I would be unloading a lot of rounds on any genial crazy medical robot with his voice.
The theme of Fallout.
I enjoyed Fallout too. It’s not something my wife would watch with me (too much gore) but I’m ready for season 2.
I really enjoyed Fallout also.Ā Very excited for next season of it.
…richard linklater’s “hitman” on netflix was pretty entertaining
…& in at least some ways not your “regular” hitman movie…what with the guy who’s the hitman not being a hitman & all
…so…would recommend?
I have been to the Chelsea Flower Show! Unfortunately the day I went there were no Royals swanning about, making small talk and deploying the tried and true “Have you traveled far?” To which, the answer is, “We’re just down from Crumbley-super-Mare. Most people would take the A9 to the B504 but it’s much quicker if you head over to Saltmine, pick up the B223, then at the roundabout get on the B717. And then, Bob’s yer uncle, you’re here in a jif.”
What I watched: My fellow physical therapist clients. Yes, I just got back. I have been through physical therapy so many times but so far in a hospital and sometimes a physical rehab center and then visits from a home PT, who I have spent so much time with I’m going to invite him along to my family’s next reunion, should we have one.
I have lost the privileges of having a PT come to me (insurance ran out) so I have to go to them. It was really interesting. There was almost nobody there. I thought it would be mobbed because I remember the days when you had Saturday and Sunday to get everything done, but apparently that’s not the case nowadays.
There were two fellow guys in my little area. One was this very statuesque older guy wearing the traditional hat and garment, sort of like a muu-muu, found in West Africa. I googled this to find out what these were called but it all came up garbage. I was not surprised by this because there are many West Africans in my neighborhood. I felt like I was in the presence of a village elder. We bonded, naturally. [Side note: I don’t know why we’re not taking in more migrants. This neighborhood, this greater neighborhood, is about as diverse as it gets so the migrants would doubtless find some countrymen to befriend and they could learn the ropes that way. Instead, we either warehouse them in Midtown or pack them off to the far corners of the city, and neither option really helps them. No doubt it helps out Adams and Hochul cronies who land the contracts.]
The other guy was pretty shaky. He looked like he had had a pretty rough life. He had a mobility scooter, so I was incredibly jealous, and on the floor of the mobility scooter was his pack of Marlboros. I wanted to congratulate him. “Good for you, hon! I smoked Marlboro Reds for 30 years and I still miss them 13 years later. Smoke ’em if you got ’em!” But I didn’t engage because he seemed a little off and not particularly open to random convos, unlike my village elder friend.
I’m two episodes into the new season of The Boys.Ā I can see why all the Trumpers are pissed but obviously they are too stupid to see that even the first season was making fun of them being Nazi fucks.
I’m listening to some amazing horns from my favorite band from Portugal…
some rare footage of the early euros turned up
England settles into a conservative, defensive formation, loses something they should have won.
Ha. Typical English Football coaching.
Although some might say it is also typical Canadian Hockey coaching. I hate that style of play… Aka Playing not to lose.
I’m literally watching paint dry.
…call it guided meditation & you could probably get someone to pay you to do it on your behalf?
I don’t suppose you work in the visual arts, maybe you do. If you spend enough time on projects, editing them, arranging them, adjusting the colors, getting them web- and printer-ready, your visual perception of the image can get a little skewed. The cure for this is to have a white patch of wall, or, failing this, some white printer paper, and you stare at that for a few minutes. It readjusts your visual color perception to make it more faithful.
Which is a wordy way of saying that I have never sat around watching paint dry, but I have come damn close over the years. So close. So many times.
and on a side note….i think ive found my well this is going to be stupid fun movie for the year
I watchedĀ Six Schizophrenic Brothers on Max. Documentary about this family that had 12 kids in the 50s and 60s (Catholic, naturally) and 6 of the 10 boys are diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Man that family had it rough, part of the issue being the lack of decent institutions to help the boys when they had rough patches, part of it being the parents’ unwillingness to let on how bad it was.
What mad me angry watching it was that the situation with the older brothers meant that the younger siblings got abused by them. Like not just the emotional abuse of living in that situation, but sexual and physical abuse, too.