Review: "Doctor Strange"

Over the Thanksgiving break, I took some time to finally catch a matinee of Doctor Strange.

As origin stories for one of the weirder Marvel superheroes go, it didn't suck. Thoughts:

Pros:

• Casting Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Stephen Strange
• Cool effects
• Nice settings
• Avengers tower shot
• Captain America: Civil War shout-out
• Casting Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mordo
• Benedict Wong as... um... Wong. And making Wong a badass librarian.
• Entertaining fight scenes
• Good placement of humor
• Solid end-credits scenes

Cons:

• Casting Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One. Kinda white-washy.
• Yawn-inducing villains
• A bit too... Inception
• A little heavy on the psychedelic coloring at points
• Cumberbatch's American accent - it wasn't bad, but I found it a little jarring.

Overall, I enjoyed it. Solidly-entertaining.

Decompression

I spent the last week in the UK on business.

Yes, I escaped Trump-land to go to Brexit-land.

There, everyone asked me what I thought about Trump's winning the election.

I avoided profanity, for the most part. I explained that Trump lost the popular vote but won the Electoral, and that I'm bitterly disappointed. Every Brit I talked to was sympathetic. Makes me wonder how Brexit really came about.

Other than the hell of traveling to get there, I had a great time. I love British beers and pub food. My co-workers are delightful and hospitable, making my week great fun and my departure bittersweet.

I have to admit I had a few thoughts that linger in my mind as I recover from jetlag and, hopefully, any potential plague caught from flying:

• I have yet to stay at a place in the UK (or Ireland) with decent water pressure in the shower.
• UK light switches are weird, but cooler than US lights witches. They have individual power switches for each outlet!
• UK plugs are ungainly and weird. US plugs are far more compact.
• The British make delightful savory pies.
• US craft beers are invading the UK. Lots of hoppy IPAs on tap there.
• UK money and credit cards are far superior to US currency and credit cards.
• Apparently there's a vague concept of pedestrian right-of-way in the UK, but if it exists, it's well-hidden.
• Every bed I've slept on in the UK is harder than a rock. Every hotel room I've stayed in has been sweltering-hot.

Still processing

I'm seeing lots of calls for unity now in media. Lots of "okay, the election is done, let's get back together as a country and get through this" kind of stuff.

You know what? Fuck that.

Alaska, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas (both of you), Nebraska, Kansas, Oaklahoma, fucking Texas, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, fucking Ohio, the whole goddamn South (Texas got special mention), Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Fuck all of you. You are populated by idiots. You put a frothing lunatic into the White House. Into the fucking WHITE HOUSE! This guy has never, ever worked in government. He's been bankrupt God-knows how many times. He is incoherent and has no actual plan beyond making funny noises with his mouth and groping women.

And you elected him.

I don't want to give a hug to any dipshit who voted for Trump. Ever.

This guy now has access to all those lovely, barely-understood, surveillance programs. He's buddy-buddy with Vladimir goddamn Putin.

He is not your friend. He is not going to do any of us any good.

Sinclair Lewis wrote a book called "It Can't Happen Here". Ironic title, given how the story went. And prescient. God damn us all.

Coping with yesterday

Soooo... we've got a mentally-unstable man-child with access to nuclear codes in 2017. With him is a very red House of Representatives and a pretty damn red Senate.

Bad time to be in the United States as a woman or have any color to your skin.

On the plus side: California has legalized recreational marijuana. That ought to take the edge off. I certainly plan to work on my alcohol-abuse skills in the coming months and years.

If we're really lucky, SMOD could come along any day and make it quick.

And there's always Cthulhu. Surely the stars are right already. At this point, Lovecraftian horror is looking pretty goddamn good.

...

Congratulations, 'Merica!

Specifically I'm talking to the inbred, knuckle-dragging fuckwits in the red states.

Apparently there's a lot of you.

You made the film Idiocracy a reality. Thanks for making me glad I don't have kids.

Electoral Madness and feeling some Luddite Love

So yeah. It's the U.S. Presidential election.

I voted a few weeks back. The day I got my absentee ballot, truth-be-told. As a California resident, my vote counts for jack shit in the presidential election, but I wasn't leaving anything to chance. Besides, California ballots have tons of other matters on them (*cough*marijuana legalization*cough*).

I won't lie. This election has had me stressed like mad. Fucking 2016 has not been a great year and all the bullshit in this election has not helped me sleep at night.

In a weird way, I have the demons of technology to thank for my not refreshing FiveThirtyEight every ten seconds. You see, yesterday, my Internet access crashed out. I figured it was my modem, but wasn't sure. Today, my ISP sent techs who swapped out my modem and felt they'd finished the job. They had some doubts based on their own tests on my line, but thought the modem ought to handle my issues.

Turns out my modem is only part of the problem. My Internet access is more than a bit unreliable and, at times, slower than frozen molasses. I am not happy.

Still, it's distracting me from watching how much of my country has opted to back a misogynistic, racist, irrational, incoherent, bankruptcy-addicted coke fiend as candidate for the highest office in the country.

Silver linings.

That was a first

It's almost a cliche. When a stranger walks up to you on or around public transportation to strike up conversation, that person is almost always either asking for money or preaching religion. Every now and again you get someone who is lost, but that's rare. It's almost always the first two categories.

And when I say "preaching religion", I generally mean Bible-thumpers. You know the sort. "Have you heard the word of Jesus?" "Have you found Jesus?" (I once pointed someone to the BART agent for directions to lost-and-found). And so on.

So the other day I'm walking from a BART station and an older couple approach me. They're too well-dressed to hit me up for cash (though that's not always an indicator). They don't look lost.

They ask me if I want to hear about Buddhism.

Seriously. I had proselytizers approach me for Buddhism. I didn't even know there was such thing as Buddhist missionaries in the area!

Okay, I guess it's not all that odd, but that particular approach isn't one I tend to associate with Buddhists.

What the hell do I even call someone like that? A Buddha-thumper? I swear 2016 is just trying to out-weird itself.