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Suzy McHale’s Journal: 2019

January

Saturday 5/1: A sad start

Received some sad and unexpected news last Thursday when a cousin of mine was found dead in his apartment – “no suspicious circumstances.” The initial verdict from the police who found him was that a seizure was the cause of death. He was born the same year I was, and, like me, had never married or had children. I had not spoken to him in many years, though – not since our teenage years, as I can recall – as he lived in another state.

A very hot day yesterday (into the low 40s) then a refreshing cool change – today in contrast is in the low 20s with even a little rain.

Monday 21/1: Mentally dull; playing with programs

Not much has happened. I am mostly lethargic, mentally dull and lacking energy. My worldbuilding project has been stalled for a long time now, and I am just passively consuming media, such as books. I jump from reading bits of one novel to another, though, and I don’t even have the concentration span to sit through a movie – though I spend hours on the Internet, mindlessly jumping from one site or article to another in the hopes of finding something interesting (yes, it is addictive, akin to spending hours at a poker machine). In the early evening I put my TV on, lie in bed and usually fall asleep for a while. I am just existing.

I have been trying out TiddlyWiki again, but spend more time configuring it than actually doing anything constructive (similar to how I might browse or buy stationary – its potential is more appealing than actually sitting down and doing something with it). I think I will just go back to plain old HTML, though this is a bit more cumbersome to type. At least I weaned myself off Dreamweaver a few years ago and use a code editor (mainly Notepad++ and also Visual Studio Code) so I am not dependent upon a WSIWYG program to produce my web pages – I could even produce these in a basic text editor if need be (though a specialized coding editor makes things a little easier). I am comfortable with bare-bones code.

Saturday 26/1: Heatwave; national day; worldbuilding dilemna

Yesterday the temperature climbed to 43°C in Melbourne, even higher in other parts of Victoria and nearby states. I was tired and headachey all day, and almost not functioning. A cool change thankfully blew through from 3 p.m. in the afternoon.

Today is Australia Day, but I am disinterested, and bored with the debate about shifting the date. The fuss, like that from those wanting Australia to become a republic (I don’t – don’t fix what is not broken), seems ridiculous to me and I would keep things as they are now.

My “Star Warrior” worldbuilding project is still mostly stalled, but I am still interested in it. I am uncertain whether to be strictly realistic – namely, no Faster-than-Light travel, so my aliens would have to reside in a (relatively) nearby star system, or retain FTL which brings its own issues (see the Reboot page linked there for more). What I feel like doing depends upon my mood! Alan Kazlev, the creator of his own worldbuilding project and story, Freehauler Alcione, has a similar dilemna.

February

Sunday 24/2: Dull

Month is nearly over. Have not had the energy to write, though there is plenty going through my head.

Monday 25/2: Health issues; alternative to FTL

A late-season warm week forecast for this week, with temperatures in the 30s. I had one of my random headaches early this morning; I think maybe the heat initiates them?

I saw a specialist two weeks ago (Friday 15/2) at Sandringham Hospital; he confirmed my condition (see 6/12/2018 entry) and referred me to the specialist whom I originally saw for my previous surgeries, so I have to make an appointment to see the latter if I can motivate myself to. The prospect of having to go through the whole procedure again is mentally overwhelming and exhausting. I also saw a GP last Thursday; she is obviously still concerned with my weight and related mental issues/health, and sent off a referral to a relevant clinic at Monash Hospital. I am undecided as to whether I want the latter to progress; I feel reluctant to make any committment to anything.

Lockstep by Karl Schroeder is a science fiction novel with an interesting concept. There is (refreshingly) no Faster-Than-Light starship travel in this, so societies get around the long interstellar travel times by hibernating for decades or even centuries. He wrote an initial essay on the concept in Analog magazine, then a novel. There’s a couple of reviews at the Centauri Dreams blog: Creative Constraints and Starflight; Thoughts on Karl Schroeder’s ‘Lockstep’.

March

Sunday 16/3: A corrosive culture of disrespect

Autumn is here. Still some warm days ahead, but not as intense as two weeks ago.

I came across this review of a fantasy novel, The Grass People by Kay Parley, posted at Reddit. The reviewer strongly disliked the novel’s theme of the characters in a small village wanting to preserve their way of life and resist change from outside.

The problem is in the characters. It’s not that they’re unrealistic or badly written, not at all. The problem is more the opposite – they’re too realistic. The village is what I could call a small town dystopia. Everyone knows each other and everyone is really set in their ways, traditionalist, and looking down upon anything new and anyone who dares to be even the slightest bit different. Dyra especially comes off as selfish and often contradicts himself. I somewhat sympathised with his son, Hoyim, who wants to do things his own way, but everyone else I wanted to punt into the sun. They’re against women working, or building their own houses, or people not marrying, and there’s hypocrisy galore. It was irritating to the extreme, but I wondered where will it all go – will the elders be ultimately be proven correct as I feared or will young people introduce some welcome change? On whose side will the book end up being, if any?

After about halfway in, the switch flipped from “enjoying, but slightly annoyed” to a full on hate read when a larger city was introduced as a counterpoint, to show how idyllic the traditional life is and how corrupt a seemingly more “modern” way. Sure, the city did sound crappy, nobody knows each other, there’s crime, everything’s about money – and, you know, I don’t disagree with critique of consumerism at all, I don’t think the city trying to gain authority over the villages is good, but not when the alternative is rigid traditionalism. The way it seemed to be set up to highlight the rightfulness of the village life I criticise above left a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t really believe people would lose their moral fiber after moving into the city either. It’s an odd, irritating strawman.

From another reviewer on that page with the same viewpoint:

And then about the halfway point of the book, and everything started changing. I started getting more and more frustrated. I started hating everything. The story turned. It was no longer about their way of life. It was about how the society functions and their values. These values are anathema to me. They are too old fashioned, I hated them. I already disliked most of the characters prior to this point. By this point I hated every single one of them. Dyra has become the leader of the village, and it is his way only. He rules. Benevolently, but he has final word, about everything. He is stuck in the old ways, in the traditional ways. Anything not the traditional way is considered bad and wrong. For a man who started the story as being against their entire way of life before they had to move, this is just a little hypocritical.

These values and these traditions are very stifling. Women have their place in the home, but they have no real powers. A woman only really has any place in their world as wives and mothers. If any of them do anything outside of the “traditions”, they are chastised for not following the way. The young people aren’t listened to at all. This is most apparent in Dyra and Koalee’s son, Hoyim, who is a nonconformist and “doesn’t understand his place yet”. Dyra, in his belief that he is the ultimate word, ends up contradicting himself constantly, in both deeds and words. He ends up yelling at his son for not following him, for wanting to speak about the things Hoyim has noticed in his own world. It is a frustrating, yet realistic dynamic.

Then, it gets even more frustrating. People from the big city come, trying to learn the Grass People way. But surely, they must know because it is instinct, right? Nope, the people in the city are corrupted, because there are too many of them! They no longer have any ties to the community because the community is too big! They are no longer part of the Grass People because they do not listen to their instincts! Hoyim and some friends go to find out what it is really like, and all we hear are horror stories. And everything boils down to “we must stick to the traditions, because the traditions are our way.”

The advent of the city people being, in their minds, a complete abomination changes the dynamics of the story. The plot where the young people believe they are being led wrong completely goes away. They are united with their elders against the horrors they have seen and heard. Especially when the city announces that they are now the ultimate leaders of the Grass People, despite some prophesied leader that the elves are supposed to announce – and they haven’t yet. They refuse to be led by Grass People who do not follow Truth.

That isn’t the only plot that is completely forgotten about. The enemies in the first part of the book, the Mower and the Great Shadow are controlled by the big people, as the Grass People learn. The Grass People fear the big people, and hate them because who could harm another person like that. Until they actually meet one of the big people. They become friends, and the big person sort of protects them as best he can. Only, that is the only thing that happens, really. He is completely forgotten. The most interesting part of the story to me was how the big people and the little people were coming to know about each other, and it goes absolutely nowhere.

Unfortunately, the ending let me down. I was really hoping that the end would make up for the frustrating middle part. In my mind, it wasn’t a true ending. It was just someplace to set down the story. Kay Parley worked all that time to establish all these values and traditions. She worked very hard to give everything an out clause, in the form of an ultimate leader to take up the reigns of leadership. And then once the leader comes around, it basically just ends. That is the end, because what else would be told in her mind. Their leader is there to lead everything, we aren’t needed anymore. We just have to follow the way, to follow the Truth, and to look to our leader who will make everything okay again. But, we’re not allowed to see it, not that there is much to see. The Grass People will follow, because that is what they do.

Only, that also wasn’t the actual end of the book. It was the end of the story, but not the end of the book. It was only the end to the fourth part. Then there is a fifth part to the book, which is basically the prologue, stuffed at the end instead. It is the tale of the life of someone named Nanta, who lived before the start of the story. He is important to the story, but he had no real part in it. He was just the person who started certain elements of the story into place. This is at the end because Nanta knew the lessons the characters learn throughout the book already, and lived them. Without having learned those lessons ourselves, his story would have no meaning.

Kay Parley had an amazing idea. I was incredibly interested in reading a fantasy story written by an older woman, a woman in her mid-90s. It is just too bad it feels like I’m being told a story about “the good old days” from my own grandmother. I feel like I’m being yelled at by my grandmother that I’m wrong for wanting to be my own person, for not wanting to be only a wife, to want to live in the modern world. No, Grandma. The good old days weren’t better. They were harder, they were less free, and they were less safe. I like the world I live in now, I hope it gets better in the future. Change isn’t bad, stagnation isn’t better than change. This was just incredibly frustrating for me to read.

I am finding such opinions irksome. Change is not always good, but can be highly stressful, disruptive and upend what might be a perfectly good way of living to those affected. I commented saying such in that post, but it predictably got a downvote. An overarching narrative of the society and culture that I live in is that constant change is good, but tradition and so-called “stagnation” are bad. Adherence to tradition and formality are not negative social traits in my view; they provide a reassuring link with the past and social stability. I would opine that a lot of psychological problems afflicting people today – particularly young people – is the loss of such tradition and ceremonies, and the constant bombardment of endless stimulation from media and popular culture. There is also a narrative of disrespecting authority, which also results in instability; with no one to look up to and emulate, there is only the facile worship of various figures in popular culture (such as so-called “superheroes” who are tediously ubiquitous in the movies at the moment, and video games).

Also this comment on a post about Reddit’s general dislike of Christianity:

Reddit, in general, dislikes authority as a whole. There seem to be a whole lot of really young posters who really, really, really, really have issues w/authority period. Religion obviously represents authority so there is definitely a lot of hatred toward it but you see the same thing directed at police officers, governments, teachers, parents and pretty much anyone else whose job is to tell people what to do. Reddit is basically an edgy teenager a lot of times.

This disrespect is a cancer undermining social stability. Again, disrespect towards authority is a theme encouraged by popular culture – I note that a lot of young adult literature has the theme of rebelling against authority by its young protagonists. Many years ago I saved this book review (which has since disappeared from the Amazon.com site):

Another irritation is the “change for change’s sake” theme – rebelling against the standing social order – as this now-deleted Amazon.com book review for Promise of the Wolves grumbles:

It’s really getting old, stories like this that are built upon the following premise:

Boring plot line, especially since our society today is so saturated with this depraved philosophy. Honestly, I long for a book that has the OPPOSITE plot-line. A society of a modern-day relativistic feel-gooders where one person discovers an ancient way … a way of order, of tradition, and formality. Now that’s a way of living quite foreign to 21st century man and would make for an interesting read.

April

Monday 8/4: Morning migraine; cooler days

Had one of my random and debilitating migraines early this morning. I was feeling off-color last night. I don’t know what triggers them, but they have been an occurrence for years now. I am feeling OK again now (as much as I can be in my current state, which is not optimal health).

I’ve had a lot of thoughts and opinions going through my head as usual, but have felt unable to write them down, let alone do anything creative, so I have not written here much at all.

The equinox has passed, so we are into Autumn now and the sun is lower and kinder. The chilly mornings are beginning, though, which I am rather dreading! The extreme heat also nearly kills me, though. If I could find adequately warm clothing the cold is more bearable – most clothing available does not keep the chill off me. Probably only the clothing designed for extreme cold (such as described on this page at the Australian Government Antarctica site) might do the task!

Daylight Savings ended last weekend, so evenings are darker. I don’t mind DS so much anymore as I arise early anyway in the mornings (I don’t sleep very well).

Sunday 14/4: Squeaky bike; RuSpace updates; FTL annoyances

Fine, sunny and still Autumn weather. Makes me feel nostalgic for days long gone.

My old (1991) mountain bicycle has developed a squeaking and grinding in the pedal shaft; lubrication has gone a bit. I am really in need of a new (or refurbished second-hand) bicycle but can’t afford one. I would ideally like a basic road bike, steel frame with the drop handles.

I have been going through my RuSpace site, trying to fix broken links and updating a few pages. I still have interest in the Russian manned spaceflight program, but do not have the energy to maintain the site as much as I once did. I still welcome any input for it, though!

The major space event for last week was the direct image of the event horizon surrounding the black hole in the Messier 87 galaxy, 55 million light years away! An amazing achievement, and again Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity has been proven to be correct.

I finished the first three novels in the science fiction Aurora Rhapsody series – the Aurora Rising sequence – by G. S. Jennsen. It follows the adventures of various individuals and their uncovering of a vast conspiracy where aliens from another dimension – who have been observing humanity for aeons – enter our universe via a dimensional portal and seek to destroy us as they perceive us as a threat. One of the aliens is sympathetic towards humanity, however, and aids and advises two of the main characters (Alex Solovy and Caleb Marano, who become lovers). A massive battle ensues, and the aliens are driven back through the portal.

There are six more books in the series (three in Aurora Renegades and the final three in Aurora Resonant). The first three were a decent read, with a lot of “magical” advanced technology that is standard in most sci-fi these days, such as sapient Artificial Intelligences and Faster-than-Light travel, in the form of a “sLume drive” (superluminal drive) – a version of the Alcubierre warp drive.

I would not thus describe the novels as “hard” sci-fi, though, as that problem of FTL travel also implying time travel is ignored (as a lot of such authors do, probably out of lack of awareness as most are not physicists with degrees). From that blog entry I linked to:

If you allow faster-than-light (FTL), then you break causality: you are allowing time-travel. One pithy way of saying this is:

Pick two:

The Universe has picked relativity and causality, it seems. Thus, we cannot travel or communicate faster than light.

There is also FTL communication, in the form of quantum entanglement:

By Monday morning on the planet Atlantis (which for added fun was around three in the morning in Seattle) all his assets would be in place, and everything they saw, touched and interacted with fed to his office via an instantaneous quantum entanglement communication network.

– Starshine, Chapter 6

In reality this is impossible, again due to causality issues. From the linked blog entry:

I could, for example, create pairs of entangled photons in different particular quantum states. One state could represent a 1, and the other a 0. All my distant colleague needs to do is determine which quantum state a particular pair is in. But to do this my colleague would need to make lots of copies of a quantum state, then make measurements of these copies in order to determine statistically the state of the original. But it turns out you can’t make a copy of a quantum system without knowing the state of the quantum system. This is known as the no-cloning theorem, and it means entangled systems can’t transmit messages faster than light.

My own Star Warrior worldbuilding project (in a very slow reboot) is becoming more reality-based, rather than the previous “magic” sci-fi version with FTL travel and such. I seem to have the sort of mindset that demands rational explanations for everything, and to be reality-based – so fantasy fiction does not appeal that much to me. A lot of so-called science fiction is magic by another name – anything with FTL travel, psychic powers and so on (Star Trek and Star Wars are major offenders in this) – and I am increasingly exasperated with this.

This factor is why I tend to be disappointed with authors who introduce FTL travel later on in their series when they have previously used relatively realistic means of slower-than-light interstellar travel – it is a kind of cheating, in my view. Two examples of this:

May

Wednesday 1/5: Japan’s new Emperor; a painful decluttering

Japan now has a new Emperor, Naruhito, after his father, Akihito, voluntarily abdicated last night in a restrained, austere and short ceremony (6 p.m. Australian time). (More coverage at Japan Forward and Nippon.com.) The Reiwa (“beautiful harmony”) period is now underway. Unlike in the West, Japan’s monarchy is mostly still respected. I am in favor of monarchy now – I do not support Australia becoming a republic as the current system (a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy) is stable and it functions well.

I still am very much interested in Japan – mainly its traditional culture; it is a lifelong interest. I would like to visit, but in my current situation that is impossible.

I have been doing more possessions purging, including nearly all memorabilia of a video game franchise that no longer “sparks joy” for me. It has been painful, but much of it has been in storage for years in my bedroom, rarely if ever looked at after purchase. My room is badly in need of decluttering. I find it very hard to resist buying clothes and books that appeal to me, though. At least with books I can get most as ebooks – though the main disadvantage of ebooks is that access to a usually-expensive electronic device is needed to read them. Physical books, however, get very heavy and a house can only support so much weight! I do have hoarding tendencies.

Even that has mentally and physically exhausted me; I have not been writing much for the same reason. I have some energy in the early morning, but by afternoon I am spent – the dreaded mid-afternoon slump.

June

Sunday 2/6: Sergei site mention

Hello to anyone at MetaFilter who might have wandered here from the recent The last Soviet citizen post :-). I am still following Sergei Krikalev’s career – he is currently Executive Director of Manned Space Programs at Roscosmos. (I have been visiting MeFi for many years, but have not paid up membership as I dislike using PayPal.)

As usual, I have simply not felt much like writing, though a lot of thoughts have gone through my head. The weather is now wintry; cold and gloomy and generally unpleasant, and that is in a relatively moderate climate (compared to some regions in the USA and Canada, which have brutally cold winters). I have just endured a head cold – it “turned the corner” two nights ago and I am feeling better, with just a remnant phlegmy cough. Not influenza, at least. I am in a “holding pattern” as regards my ongoing other health issues – I have yet to follow up on any of them (see 25/2 entry), simply due to apathy.

Via this recent Reddit post, I learned of this article from 2008 – “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr (and backup Archive.org link) – on why Internet use can destroy one’s ability to concentrate for long on such activities as reading books and long articles. I have certainly noticed that trait in myself as the years have passed; reading an entire novel is an achivement for me now! I can only focus in short bursts; prolonged reading of anything is difficult. I have already noted that surfing the Internet is akin to being seated at a poker machine for hours on end; in the Internet’s case it is curiosity about where the next hyperlink takes me (will it be something of interest to me?). I can spend hours doing that.

Monday 24/6: Winter blues

Winter solstice was on Friday 21/6. Cold, damp, miserable weather – last night got down to 2°C. Feeling depressed and agitated; having thoughts of deleting my site yet again. I never get any feedback on it now, so I wonder why I keep it going; it feels sometimes more like a burden rather than enjoyable. I am creatively dead due to various “mental health issues” and physical ailments, and have not drawn or written anything in months. It all seems pointless.

I have been doing a lot of decluttering of my possessions over the last few weeks. I have accumulated so much stuff over the years and my room is overflowing. I do have hoarding tendencies. A lot of items that have been in storage for years have been taken to charity shops.

Thursday 27/6: Michael Jackson 10 years on

25 June marked 10 years since the untimely death of singer Michael Jackson (see 30/6/2009 entry). I was a fan of his during his heyday in the 1980s, and I still miss him. I do not believe the child abuse allegations against him, but sadly, in the current hysterical “witch hunting” climate, where supposed victims are believed without real evidence, a lot more people believe them.

October

Friday 4/10: Still alive; Swankivy; hard SF; black holes

Just checking in! I have simply not felt like writing much, though I have had a lot of thoughts going through my head that I want to get out – same frustrating dilemna. I did just add a brief book review of a novel series that I just read, Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky (whose surname is rather difficult to spell!). It was reasonably “hard” science fiction, which I am more inclined towards these days. As I noted in my 14/4 entry, I have lost much patience for the more unrealistic technologies that are often featured in the genre, one of the main offenders being Faster-than-Light travel.

In my 11/11 entry I mentioned “Swankivy,” the nickname of a woman (Julie Sondra Decker) who has maintained an extensive personal website for many years. As noted there, she is a fan of a TV cartoon series called Steven Universe. She posted updated photos some of her merchandise on her Amino account (an annoying social media site that, like others of this type, nags visitors to sign up or in if they have not – a major reason I dislike visiting such sites) – I have copied one here (edit: and she has posted the photos on her site). There is a lot more of it! I can’t ascertain the appeal of the program myself, though I do rather like the Gem worldbuilding (I like crystals).

I don’t think I mentioned that in April the first direct image of a black hole was released by the operators of the Event Horizon Telescope; a momentous and awesome achievement! (More accurately, it was the image of a black hole’s shadow.) NASA also just released a new visualization of a black hole.

I will try to write more often, if I can motivate myself.

Spring has arrived and the weather is warming up.

Sunday 6/10: Jetlagged; TiddlyWiki-ing

Daylight Savings began today, so I have been feeling even more fatigued than usual (I arise around 3:30 a.m., so up at the equivalent of 2:30 this morning from now on).

I have been keeping a local TiddlyWiki Journal as well as this one, so I have uploaded a static copy onto my site (I won’t link to it directly as I might remove it), linked on this Journal’s home page. As I have a few TiddlyWikis open in my Firefox browser, I find it easy to jot down thoughts there, so I have been writing in them a bit more frequently at the moment. TW has some limitations, but of the various software I have tried (such as Dokuwiki), TW has been the one I have persisted with.

Monday 14/10: Seldom-seen sibling; space dreams

My sister visited and stayed here (parents’ home) from Friday to today, where she departed for Tullamarine Airport to return to her family in Queensland. I do not see her in person very much due to her living interstate.

I have mostly adjusted to Daylight Savings.

If I were offered a journey to a planet in another star system, hibernating for the decades or even centuries it might take to reach the exoplanet, I just might sign up! Admittedly I would have no useful skills to offer, but the scenario is a little fantasy I have been indulging. I have been reading about it in various novels, as well as the laser-driven and fusion-powered starships required (also serving as research for my Star Warrior worldbuilding reboot). Suspended animation in humans is a long way from being made safe and viable, but it is certainly more realistic than achieving Faster-than-Light travel or communication, the latter being strictly in the realm of science fantasy.

Thursday 24/10: Asperger’s obsessions; childish culture

Hot today, around 34°C, with a strong northerly wind – the first hot day for the season this year in Melbourne.

A post in the r/Aspergers forum asks: Anyone else feel intense boredom when they're not fixating on a special interest? I can emphatically relate to that! If I do not have an interest/obsession to fixate on, I feel unfocused, restless, unhappy. I have endured several periods in my life where an obsession has ended, and the transition period is quite psychologically unpleasant. My interests also serve as a creative outlet. I can define my life by the interests I have had. Some are long-term and permanent though, examples being spaceflight, space generally and some historical eras such as Samurai/Japan, ancient China and Mesoamerica.

An article from today’s Herald-Sun about a survey finding that many students do not see Shakespeare’s plays as relevant:

Why schoolkids are rejecting Shakespeare

Charles Miranda, News Corp Australia Network
October 23, 2019 8:00am

To be or not to be – that is the question school teachers may well be asking themselves after a poll found students did not consider learning Shakespeare’s work relevant to today’s society or helpful to get a job.

And almost all respondents said the Bard’s language was too difficult to understand and his works should be contemporised.

But federal Education Minister Dan Tehan said Aussie school kids should not be expecting his “timeless” works to be dropped from the syllabus any time soon.

He may be considered the world’s greatest dramatist and writer of the English language but a survey in his birth nation Britain found more than two fifths of students did not see how studying Shakespeare or his works would help them get a job when they left school.

The survey, commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and digital technology company Adobe, found 29 per cent of respondents said they might learn more if his plays were set to modern day, one in five believed video and animation would help them understand scenes better and 77 per cent found his language simply too challenging to follow.

More than 40 per cent of those 2000 11 to 18-year-old students surveyed concluded studying Shakespeare would not help them get a job when they left school.

Commenting on the British education poll, Australia’s Education Minister said the Bard’s work was very much relevant.

“Every student should study Shakespeare,” Mr Tehan told News Corp yesterday.

“He is one of the most influential writers in English literature and his plays address timeless themes that are still relevant today. Our Government believes that strong literacy skills are an essential element of an education and learning Shakespeare will strengthen those skills.”

The debate about including Shakespeare in the HSC or exam syllabuses arises from time to time with some in the Australian education system believing it was no longer relevant.

The survey was commissioned to mark a new digital art series which reimagines Shakespeare’s best-loved and most studied scenes and characters.

RSC director of education Jacqui O’Hanlon said regardless of the finding, he was studied around the world including by two million students in the UK.

“We know from our extensive research that having access to arts and cultural learning improves empathy, critical and creative thinking in young people as well as developing their social and communication skills,” she said.

“All these qualities and attributes are essential for helping prepare young people to take their place in the world.”

She said however a new partnership with Adobe on the new digital art series reimagined Shakespeare’s best-loved and most studied scenes and characters and they would continue to look at ways to bring his best loved texts to life for contemporary audiences.

A rather dismaying finding, but not surprising, given the declining state of education and subsequent dumbing-down of the curriculum – at least, in Western countries (USA, Britain, Australia). I did study some of the plays when I was in school; my favorite was Macbeth due to all its violence and action :-). My favorite director, Akira Kurosawa, based two of his films on Shakespeare plays: Throne of Blood (Macbeth) and Ran (King Lear). The language is challenging but lovely; it makes one’s brain work! Students should be challenged when learning, not pandered to. That is a reason I detest much of Young Adult and children’s fiction produced now: it is simplistic and dumb.

Renowned director Martin Scorsese recently spoke out against the overwhelming dominance of Marvel superhero movies in an interview with Empire magazine (November issue).

“I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema,” Scorsese told Empire magazine. “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

Not surprisingly, his view has come under heavy criticism from some in the movie industry, not to mention rabid superhero fans. But I adamantly agree with him – the glut of comicbook movies dominating the cinema now (most made by the Disney behemoth) are the cinematic equivalent of junk food: entertaining but ultimately empty and bad for one’s intelligence. They are childish wish fulfillment. Their massive success is a sad indictment of the immaturity of current society.

“Disney reveals the future of cinema and for grown-ups it’s not good,” The Age 8/5. I have come to hate Disney and its overarching domination of cinema now; the rubbish and childish blockbuster movies that it churns out each year overshadow all other movies, namely the lower budget, independent and truly original movies. The company has been buying up other movie companies and is slowly but surely consuming all competition.

That’s the response from the grown-ups who wonder if there will soon be no room at all left on the big screen for anything but big-budget franchise blockbusters.

[…] If this was the first glimpse of the future now that Disney has acquired Fox, there’s reason to be a little afraid. Though a handful of the sort of adult-oriented award-friendly films that Fox has released under its Searchlight banner have a place on the line-up, they are massively outnumbered by franchises, sequels and spin-offs. If you care about original stories for grown-ups, move along – there’s nothing (much) to see here.

[…] But Disney releases aren’t the same as other releases. With their massive marketing campaigns and monopolisation of screens, they suck the oxygen out of the market, leaving competitors to scrap it out for whatever audience tidbits remain.

And it’s only getting more so. A decade ago, Disney’s share of the North American box office was 11.5 per cent. In 2014 it was just under 15 per cent. Last year, Disney accounted for just over one-quarter of the North American market. In the year to date, it has just over a third – and with the Fox share added, the total is now hovering around the 40 per cent mark.

An older article from 2009 laments that “Grown-up movies are an endangered species.” Again, thoughtful mature movies have little chance when competing against shallow blockbuster-style movies.

In the wake of high-profile dramas flopping at the box office – including Frost/Nixon, Australia, Revolutionary Road and State of Play – studios are increasingly gun-shy about making movies that don’t offer pure escapism. Even the frothy, adult-oriented caper “Duplicity” struggled to find a wide audience.

One producer who specializes in dramas says the climate is as brutal as he’s ever seen it: “Anything that can’t be sold as a genre film or wasn’t conceived as a franchise is dead.”

Even projects that might once have been considered Oscar bait have fallen prey to executives’ squeamishness. Paramount turned down director Bill Condon’s planned biopic about Richard Pryor, with Eddie Murphy attached to star. Universal axed a drama starring Naomi Watts about a global activist.

“With the economy being what it is, no one wants to get blamed for a failure,” says one agent. “If you greenlight something that’s (totally mainstream) and it fails, it’s not your fault. If you greenlight an adult drama and it tanks, you lose your job.”

An internet personality I have been following for a few months is Ran Prieur. He is a sort of … activist? Survivalist? “I am known on the Internet as somebody who writes about dropping out of society, the critique of civilization, sustainability and the collapse. I'm a softcore doomer. I write about why this entire society is unbalanced and a large mistake and why the mistake is ending and how you can, how we can get out of it. How we can live better.” (Boing Boing interview) Of interest to me also is his website – it seems to be “hand-made” like mine and he also keeps a manually-written (plain HTML) journal, which these days is quite rare and refreshing. (Other hand-made websites include Chris Wayan’s World Dream Bank, Mark Rosenfelder’s Metaverse and Well of Souls – I have them listed on my general “Links” page.)

Friday 25/10: Website woes

Very warm (mid-20s) overnight, followed by a rather violent windy cool change this morning, with a couple of thunder bursts. Seemed to be a lot of dust mixed in with the frontal cloud.

Had thoughts of deleting my website again, a periodical urge. It is my little place on the Internet, but I wonder what the point of maintaining it is, sometimes. I never get any feedback about it anymore, in contrast to its early years when I got a lot of emails (mainly for the Russian spaceflight pages). A lot of people now use social media as their main outlet and web presence. I do have accounts at all the main social sites, but these are no real substitute for one’s own site, in my view. As I keep grumbling (4/10 and 11/11/2018 entries), I hate visiting social media pages as one is pestered incessantly to sign up or in (presumably so the sites can get advertising revenue and personal data via logging visitors).

My site also has some “cruft” – a few pages have outdated opinions of mine or are no longer relevant; I don’t want to delete them though as I have linked to them from early Journal entries. Then again it is a reflection of my web history, so perhaps I should just leave these.

Saturday 26/10: Wild winds; bicycle freedom; Zen routines and reads

Gale-force westerly winds today, up to 100 km/h. I nearly got blown off my bicycle a few times during my ride! I went along what has become a regular route: north up Tucker Road → west down North Road → south along Beach Road → then back up Dendy Street then Patterson Road and to home, which takes a little over one hour. I like to get a look at Port Phillip Bay and the different colors the ocean takes on depending upon the weather (on Thursday it was a nice bright teal blue; today very rough and grey-blue). Since I was gifted the road bicycle in April (see my Bicycles section on my “Life and likes” page), I have done a lot of riding; before then I had not gone along Beach Road or seen the Bay for many years. I also ride to Chadstone SC frequently (there is also a bus route there, but I would rather not pay a fare unless I have to). It is quite marvellous to be able to ride again, after years of struggling on a heavy and aging mountain bike! One curious thing I like to admire while riding are the various metallic paint colors of cars – there are some attractive colors on some! I love metallic and iridescent effects generally, so my attention is captured by any objects or creatures featuring these.

One of my favorite articles from 2013 is “Last Call – A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture.” The description of the monks’ daily routine in their monastery struck me as a little like my own self-inflicted regime (I am up before 4 a.m.):

Apprentice monks are treated like slaves on a brutal plantation. They must follow orders and never say no. They sleep very little. They rise at four. Most of the time they eat only a small amount of rice and, occasionally, pickles (fresh vegetables and meat are forbidden). There is no heat, even though it can be very cold on the mountain, and the monks wear sandals and cotton robes. Junior monks are not permitted to read.

There are many menial tasks a monk must complete in a day (cooking, cleaning, cutting down trees, chopping wood, making brooms), and he is given very little time to do them. If he does not move fast enough, senior monks scream at him. There is very little talking – only bell ringing (to indicate a change in activity) and screaming. There is a correct way to do everything, which is vigorously enforced. When a monk wakes in the morning, he must not move until a bell is rung. When the bell rings, he must move very fast. He has about four minutes (until the next bell rings) to put up his futon, open a window, run to the toilet, gargle with salt water, wash his face, put on his robes, and run to the meditation hall. At first, it is very hard to do all those things in four minutes, but gradually he develops techniques for increasing his speed. Because he is forced to develop these techniques, and because even with the techniques it is still difficult to move fast enough, he is intensely aware of everything he is doing.

He is always too slow, he is always afraid, and he is always being scrutinized. In the winter, he is cold, but if he looks cold he is screamed at. There is no solitude. The constant screaming and the running, along with chronic exhaustion, produce in him a state of low-level panic, which is also a state of acute focus. It is as if his thinking mind, his doubting and critical and interpreting mind, had shut down and been replaced by a simpler mechanism that serves the body.

In August, I read a couple of Zen-related books: Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner and Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan’s Most Rigorous Zen Temple by Kaoru Nonomura. I am more interested in the details of training rather than the philosophy, though Brad’s book had a lot of “well, that makes sense!” impressions from me; it is a “no bullshit” approach to the philosophy (like me, he is wary of mysticism, which is too often used to entice and con those interested, usually parting them from their money). I do find philosophy, theology and mythology generally boring – in a similar way, I am more interested in the details of the training of activities such as ballet or gymnastics, rather than the result or output.

November

Monday 4/11: Upcoming anniversary

I turn 49 next Saturday! It will be my last year of being a “40-something,” then I will have reached half-a-century old. I do not feel my age mentally – I have not attained the life events that most people my age now will have, in this society (graduating school and university, starting a career, dating, perhaps marrying and having children). I do feel left behind and that I am a failure in life. If anyone asks the dreaded question, “What do you do?” I would literally have nothing to say about myself.

Last Thursday and Friday were hot – into the mid-30’s – then rain and some humidity, and more rain today; yuck. I hate rain intensely as I can’t get washing dry and it makes traveling anywhere very difficult (by foot, bicycling or on public transport).

Tomorrow is Melbourne Cup day, a public holiday here for a horserace. I am not much interested.

I have a fairly long list of various tasks to do for my website – quite a few pages need updating and rewriting – but have trouble motivating myself to do anything. I briefly considered moving all my creative work into one subfolder, but decided not to, for now.

Wednesday 6/11: Moronic movies

Film director Martin Scorsese had an opinion piece featured in the 4/11 The New York Times, clarifying his controversial comments on the Marvel superhero movies not being true cinema (commented on in my 24/10 entry) (this was linked to via a MetaFilter post, and also in r/movies and r/TrueFilm at Reddit). The mass-market superhero and recent Star Wars franchise movies dominating cinemas are formulaic and unchallenging – they are, in fact, childish and dumbed-down.

Saturday 9/11: 49; toothache

I turn 49 today and I have toothache :-(. I’ve had it for the last week or so – the lower alignl second molar (which had a filling placed on 28/5/2013). Made a dentist appointment for next Wednesday with Team Dental Bayside at Southland SC. The dentist I saw last time in March 2018 was fully booked for over a month, so I am seeing another whom I don’t know. As usual I am dreading the prospect – the filling might need redoing, but even worse is the anticipated cost; it is not something I can easily afford (nor can my parents). If I need a root canal (and crown) I will simply not be able to; that would cost several times my entire savings, so I would have to reluctantly get the tooth extracted instead. So I am not having a happy birthday, and will be fretting until the issue is resolved one way or another.

Sunday 10/11: Identity issues

It is that time of day – late afternoon before dinner, around 4 p.m. – when I am tired and cranky, and all the intentions of doing various tasks on my website and such have evaporated with what energy I had.

Relevant to my remarks about childish movies in my 24/10 entry, this post at r/Catholicism, Catholicism and the infantilisation of culture, touches on similar issues (and it links to an essay, “The Role of Marketing in the Infantilization of the Postmodern Adult” – and Archive.org link).

While I am not Catholic – I am nominally Protestant as is my close family – I still find the subReddit a relief from much of the nonsense on other forums on the site. I am finding myself becoming more conservative in some opinions, perhaps a result of getting older and losing much tolerance for some of the ridiculous nonsense espoused by liberal/left-wing extremists.

I do have to admit, however, that I have not really “grown up” mentally – I don’t feel or act my age – and I have missed attaining the markers of adulthood in the society I live in. I thus have even more of an identity problem.

Monday 11/11: The Last Angel

In August I began reading a web science fiction (“Web Original” is the genre) called The Last Angel, by “Proximal Flame,” posted on an Internet forum called Spacebattles (and summarized at the TV Tropes website). I finished it today, and it has been a good read – better than many published novels I have read. It just needs a little editing. Though it does have Faster-than-Light travel and many other sci-fi tropes that might as well be magic, the story does pull one in. Humanity has been subjugated and almost made extinct by the Compact, an organization of various alien species (some willingly joined, others not) – a concept similar to the Covenant in the Halo video games. Some Artificial Intelligences created by humans and uploaded into starships have survived, and these encounter the human main characters, who overcome their alien brainwashing upon learning of the atrocities the Compact visited upon humanity thousands of years ago, and a resistance begins. The story is continued in The Last Angel: Ascension, which I will be starting next.

Wednesday 13/11: Teeth okay

I saw the dentist (Dr Lakshmi Gade) today – thankfully, she found no cavities. The pain seems to be my usual issue with jaw and bite dysfunction, which I have had trouble with for years. Orthodontic correction is the treatment offered, but there is no way I can afford the thousands of dollars required, and even if I could, I don’t think I would want to endure the discomfort of months or years of wearing braces. So I will just put up with it as usual; the aching has abated somewhat anyway. I am more concerned with preventing more cavities. My teeth also need a scale and polish (this was last done in March 2018) but that can wait for a while longer.

Thursday 21/11: Wild hot winds; TV busted

The hottest day of the season so far today – 39°C or so – but thankfully a cool change has just arrived over Melbourne. Very strong gale-force winds have wreaked havoc across Victoria, and there have been dust storms (a lot of dust in the sky here). I did not go out on my bicycle – I would have been blown off! – or even for a walk.

I neglected to mention that Dad bought me a new digital TV (HiSense 24P2) on 4 April. (My old TV – a birthday present in 2009 – had long been having trouble picking up some digital channels when tuning it, so Dad went out this afternoon and unexpectedly bought me a new one.) Yesterday, however, it stopped working! The standby light was showing but it did not power on (a power board failure, from what I could ascertain after searching online). It has a 3-year warranty, so Dad called and a new TV will be delivered within a few days – it is not worth trying to repair the malfunctioning one; unfortunately the norm with products now.

Saturday 23/11: Stomach migraine

I had a stomach migraine this morning – I have not had one of that type in a few years (last one recorded was on Monday 15/9/2014). I felt nauseous for a while, then had an urge to vomit (only saliva as I had not eaten since the previous evening), then I felt better; though this happened twice within half-an-hour. As well as “normal” (headache) migraines, I have also had one retinal migraine so far, on Thursday 17/1/2019 (which I did not mention in that month’s entry for some reason). The retinal migraine was quite disconcerting as I lost my vision for around 30 minutes or so; it was obscured by a sparkly jagged hollowed-out circle wherever I looked. (Researching this online showed that exact image, named as a scintillating scotoma.)

Temperatures have been much milder (mid-20s) since what I think of as the Gates of Hell briefly opening on Thursday.

December

Sunday 22/12: Extreme heatwave

Last Wednesday 18/12 and Friday 20/12 were extremely hot, with Melbourne reaching 43.5°C on Friday before a cool change came in after midnight. Very hard to function in such heat, especially in a poorly-insulated old weatherboard house with no air conditioning. At least the heat was very dry rather than humid, though the sky became covered in a smoke haze from bushfires in NSW.

Monday 23/12: A bit cooler; movie events

I rode my bicycle to Chadstone SC on that hot Friday; I returned home (around 12:30 p.m.) before the air really heated up. Cooler – up to mid-20s – from Saturday, though warming up again for Christmas (high 20s) and into the 30s later in the week. There was a smoky haze in the sky today again from distant bushfires.

The new Star Wars movie, The Rise of Skywalker, was released last week to ridiculous hype. I have little interest in the Disney sequels and will not see it in cinema (I have not been to the cinema since I saw Transcendence in May 2014). Tickets are too expensive now, anyway. Last week – 17/12 – also marked 10 years since James Cameron’s Avatar was released! The sequel is not due until 2021, unfortunately. I still have all the merchandise I bought then (mainly books and a lot of digital files), but I am struggling to keep up my interest.

I am also struggling to find motivation to write, or do anything much. I feel mentally dull; I seem to feel more enthusiastic in the early morning and make vague plans for creative work I want to do, but this urge has evaporated later in the day, when I am too tired from various chores.