Thrust leavened by lilt

Thursday 8/20/26

There's no such movie rating as PG-ANAL I said to my younger self.

Maybe there should be.

Films and TV shows rely heavily now on cell phones to advance the plot and for exposition. You come away thinking they couldn't tell a story without them. Which is to say that they can't tell a story.

Moving the camera in a circle around two people talking is annoying. What do you think this achieves dramatically? It's just something that's done because directors think it's what you do in that situation.

Jump scares for the sake of jump scares are tacky and contrived. Rare is the twenty-first century horror film that doesn't have a dozen of them.

I see people gush about a particular modern horror film, and I check it out. The film is always bad. I think more about these people than I do the film I just watched. It's like they've never experienced quality and so they don't know what quality is.

Watched Blackwater Lane (2024) and Who Invited Them (2022), both of which were dreadful, with the former being so dreadful that the latter managed to be quite a bit better than it. Blackwater Lane wants to get a Clouzot/Les Diaboliques thing going, I guess, but it's also inept enough that you doubt whether the people responsible for it would've ever seen a good film like that. Who Invited Them at least has some semi-amusing scene chewing from the uninvited guests and the douchebag husband tracks as that kind of modern douchebag. A piece of plywood could guess the movie's big twist about ten minutes into it, though.

No bang-up job in the Bunker Hill Monument yesterday. Five circuits with a very draggy pace. I don't know what's wrong with me. It was a struggle.

I was a little relieved to read further testimonies from people who do hard outdoor workouts about their struggles this summer. Long distance runners and the like. One guy, citing the dew point, was saying he got a mile into his intended ten-mile run and was having a hard time. A lot of the talk centered on that feeling of being overheated and unable to cool down.

The Monument goes back to non-summer hours--meaning it doesn't open until 1 PM--on October 1. I'm banking on September being less humid. I feel like I get so little time in the Monument with it opening at what I consider a practical hour when the conditions are favorable and I can wear shorts, as if there's hardly ever that sweet spot where it opens in the morning, there's no humidity, and I'm able to dress in comfortable attire rather than have to wear sweatpants or sweatpants and sweatshirt or sweatpants, sweatshirt, and fleece because of the walk over and back. If I lived in Monument Square I could nip across the street in shorts, but that's not an option being a mile-and-a-half away. I'm grumbling. The truth is that I just haven't been good enough. I'll stop grumbling now and try to do better.

Russell Orchards in Ipswich, one of my favorite places on earth and somewhere I'd visit multiple times a month if I lived in Rockport, posted a video of this young goat and an older horse on their farm who always hang out together with a heading of unlikely best friends. The only things that don't sicken or depress me on social media usually pertain to animals.

The number of people who don't even know what a sentence is both stunning and entirely to be expected. There's that paradoxical dichotomy again. They couldn't define what a sentence is nor detail what comprises one. If they write a sentence, it's likely to be by accident, and obviously without multiple clauses. If you asked most people what a verb is, they wouldn't know.

How's it possible for humans to be so illiterate? I get not being able to rip through War and Peace in a few months. But to know nothing of language? To not know "then" and "than"? The rudiments of the rudiments? How a comma works? This is at the level of tying your shoelaces. Really. It's like the majority of humans being able to tie their shoes. Put a key in a hole. Or one foot in front of another. Again, how is it even possible? But it's worse. Because you don't sit in classrooms where you're instructed in how to tie your shoes. How can people spend so long around these things and not be able to do or understand them at all? Do you get that?

You always hear that societies only last for so long. Ancient Greece, Rome, etc. But now we're seeing the ending of human society. Not a region-centric breakdown of an empire, the ceasing of a "run." The society now coming to a close is humanity itself. The global human empire. What happens then? Humans won't be extinct. They'll still physically exist, like monkeys in the trees and snails on the ground physically exist. But they'll be "over," if you will. Milling about, drooling and babbling.

And no, I'm not exaggerating. I see what is happening with what might as well be an otherworldly clarity. I see what is happening as clearly as I have ever seen anything. We are destroying ourselves.

Lightened contrast:

The Red Sox lost last night in ten by a score of 7-6. All of the Sox' runs before extras came off of home runs. Payton Tolle wasn't good but Greg Weissert was a bigger problem as he has been quite a few times throughout the year. Not having Garrett Whitlock adds strain on the other bullpen parts. You count on everyone else a bit more and that adds up. Guys are in spots they wouldn't otherwise be in. People are here who might not be. A team like the Red Sox has to lock down the eighth and ninth innings. Weissert did his damage rather earlier than that, but when you know who is going in the eighth and who is taking the ball in the ninth, it's different at earlier parts of the game. The Twins moved into that third Wild Card spot. An installment of that game of musical chairs I was talking about. They were five games under .500 and have now won three in a row. The other teams fighting it out--mediocre-ing it out--for a Wild Card spot all lost as well, so the Twins were the only team to gain ground on the Sox. Roman Anthony is returning this year for Boston (barring a setback). Looks like it'll be soon.

Some lines of John Clare to start the day: "And I will to my true lover with a fond request repair; I will look upon her face, I will in her beauty rest,/And lay my aching weariness upon her lovely breast." That's from a poem called "Summer." I find it interesting that he uses the qualifier "true" for lover. Most telling. Of course, there is true and not so true. The multiple uses of "I will" shows the firmness of purpose, while the repetition creates a thrust leavened by lilt.