SI and real life - July 11

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks… but we will be talking about it regardless, it looks like.

Why, you may ask? Because SI continues to… not deliver: whereas AoS was all about ‘pieces solving a puzzle’, to quote Skye, SI is just mostly about Nick Fury, running around the world trying to stop the deviant Skrulls, yet almost never engaging them directly. Meanwhile, both Talos and Ms. Falsworth seem to be doing their own thing and so does G’iyah the Skrull-girl… who seems to be a rip-off of Skye/Daisy Johnson/Quake. Pause.

Let us try again, without going too far into an AoS-rant. Initially, AoS was supposed to be a big deal, as the above-mentioned character of Quake was an important character in the Marvel comics for a while, she even ran S.H.I.E.L.D., in one of the comic universes. Sadly, whatever the show’s intent was, it quickly went off in a completely different direction and from S4 onwards it became an outlier of MCU; now, there is no mention of S.H.I.E.L.D. or S.W.O.R.D. in MCU – but we have discussed that earlier. Now, let me just stay that it is MCU’s loss, as out of the two shows, SI is the lesser one, and not just because it is 6 episodes long, while AoS had been 7 seasons long instead – both quality and quantity matter here.

AoS issues aside, so far SI seems to be mostly laying a groundwork for the upcoming MCU… elements, making the deviant Skrulls the main villains of MCU to come, as team Fury still doesn’t appear to have gotten their shite together, while the ‘evil Skrulls’ appear to have done just that. Therefore, let us leave them for now, go, and face reality.

What do we have there? As a California condor has proclaimed – “Carrion, of course!” The dead squirrel/skunk is gone from the road, the dead Norway rat/house mouse is… mostly gone from the street walk, but while those remains are few in number, (mostly the tail and some bones), they still fill the streets with the stench of ripe rotten meat… and since we got wild coyotes, (red) foxes and raccoons going around the neighborhood on one hand, and pet dogs, as well as cats, and human children on the other… the locals should really go an extra mile here and get rid of all the carrion, before something bad happens – but that’s just a condor’s perspective.

Done with the dead, onto the living. We have seen a couple of eastern cottontail bunnies feeding around, and they are both adorable and super-fast. However, quite a few people have seen rabbits or hares in their lives, either wild, pet or feral, so let us leave them aside, (for now, maybe). What we have also seen are mergansers.

What are mergansers? They are ducks, just as the mallards are, only not. The mallards are an example of dabbling ducks: they feed on the water’s surface, their bills are long and broad as they filter food from there; the Shoveler duck has a bill that is especially adapted for filtering; maybe not as derived as a flamingo bill, but still there.

A diving duck, on the other hand, dives. A dabbling duck may briefly turn downside up on the water surface before returning into the air, but a diving duck can soundlessly slide beneath the water’s surface just as a loon or a cormorant does. Moreover, just like them, diving ducks, such as mergansers, have long, thin bills designed to catch fish. Unlike loons or cormorants, however, a merganser’s bill, (there are several species, but all look similar enough to each other not to be distinguished without a bird guide), has serrations in it to better grasp and hold onto a slippery fish, while loons and cormorants don’t have them. Moreover, as in all of the ducks, male and female mergansers look different from each other, (though the female mergansers are much more colourful than mallard females are, for example), while loons and cormorants don’t have that. Put otherwise, the mergansers were amazing as they fed in shallow waters, (it was a female with ducklings, though a male was nearby – maybe a father of the family, maybe not), submerging and emerging with ease that a fabricated sub could only dream off. Anything else?

No, not really. The point that is being made here is that while usually real life sucks more and imaginary life sucks less, sometimes the reverse is true.

This is all for now, see you all soon!

Quarantine entry #80 - May 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. So, what about the police?

Here is the crux of the matter. Many people claim that the modern police force is outdated and flawed and corrupt and so forth, so it needs to be defunded and/or changed. Pause.

What is the issue with that? (Not a problem, an issue). ‘Tis that the police is a representation of a country as a political state, aka entity. Any country, political-wise, consists of a government and a society, among other things, but we are focusing on those two, for when a country’s government and society do not get along, bad things happen. Cough.

…Yes, the U.S.’ current troubles have partially occurred because of COVID-19, (real life sucks, see the disclaimer), but COVID-19 only exacerbated them, made them worse, but did not create them outright. Yes, on a personal level, many lives got changed because of COVID-19, but it can be noticed that many countries, and governments, in the Old World do not appear to be as bad as the U.S., or even Canada.

Canada, it should be noted, has its’ own problems with POCs and WASPs and the rest, but somehow the issue there of defunding or changing the police system does not appear to be surfacing in the news very often, unlike the U.S., where it is for real. This makes suspect that whatever is going on in Canada right now is just an imitation of the American issue, and a rather superficial one instead. And, since we’re back talking about the United States of America, let’s get back to that political entity, which has to deal with at least two other issues that became influenced by its’ ‘civil unrest’: COVID-19. And the matter of voting.

COVID-19 is obvious: no one can, or even willing, to guess, as to how many people got sick by the coronavirus during the protest process, as the self-isolation was dismantled and discarded by the protesters and the police. How many of them got sick, will recover, will die? Somehow, no one is talking about that, let alone raising an issue – and it is sad, for should you really defund the police if its’ officers will catch the COVID-19 virus for real and start to die-off or at least be hospitalized? One of a pandemic’s consequences is a population crash, and if American population crashes, then abruptly the issues of police just may not be as important anymore.

This brings us to the matter of voting. Right now, the RF is having its’ own political issues – Putin and his cabinet are being accused of messing with the RF’s, and especially Moscow’s, quarantine, so that people could vote and annul the Constitution, or Putin’s previous reigns, or whatever. The issue of how people will be able to vote and not get sick is one of the central ones.

Well, back in the U.S., the Americans have a ‘voting by mail’ option, and it is controversial, because of course it is. Many people have many issues with this…and then the public protests began, which brings us back to the probable resurgence of COVID-19 in the States and the potential population crash that can follow that resurgence.

Right now, the Donald is standing to lose the elections because of public protests at last, but after over a week of them, those protests are starting to transform into a call for governmental reform, or rather – its’ police aspect, (though as the toppled Confederation-related statues show, not only that, maybe). Fair enough, but, again, if the COVID-19 pandemic reboots and people once again begin to get sick for real, (and on all of the social strata, too), then the entire hullaballoo might vanish, as people would no longer be able to sustain the pressure through the sheer lack of healthy populace…and the changed priorities too. Pause.

Now, ironically, today, I wanted to revisit rabbits, (insert an appropriate populace joke here, see the ‘Zootopia’ movie for reference), but after this today’s rant of mine, even I find it crude. Ergo, for now, this is it. I will see you all soon instead!

Quarantine entry #59 - May 19

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. In particular, the COVID-19 lockdown got prolonged for another month – until June 2020, so here is a big middle finger to all of those who made this decision; I do not know as to how Doug Ford was involved in it, directly or otherwise, but I’m sure that he was, so there!

…Aye, on the other hand, J.C. from the team Snowbirds has it worse – she died. She took the risks and she died. What risks, you may ask? Well, from 1974 until now – that’s 46 years, almost half a century – the Snowbirds’ jets crashed every few years, so the odds were in odds of another crash now or sometime soon, and so it happened, last weekend, (aka May 17, 2020), and so Ms. J.C. died, and her partner broke both of his legs while escaping the crash. Canada! Canada! …And the woman’s from Halifax, Nova Scotia, aka the province where a certain mass shooting has occurred earlier this year already. Seriously, can we go back to the Asian giant hornets now?..

That said, because my personal state of affairs is derived from my family issues, (and I am not, admittedly, ready to share them on this blog online), here, instead, a piece of original fiction from yours truly. Enjoy!

Once upon a time, there was a mother rabbit, and she had two little bunnies...

The mother rabbit in question was not happy. The dog in the backyard was scary enough, (especially for a little rabbit), but the presence of cats was something else. True, the older feline preferred just to sit on the kennel roof, while her kitten played with the dog, but a mother rabbit is a worry-wart and couldn’t help herself, safety of an enclosure or not.

“Shouldn’t something be done about them?” She asked her neighbour, (a domestic pig, incidentally).

“Feel free,” the swine replied, as she went through a hole in the fence. “Personally, I am off to talk to my wild cousins - good luck!”

“Aren’t you worried about the humans-?”

“Silly rabbit - our story has no humans, at least not so far!” Commented the pig and left, leaving the rabbit family behind.

The rabbits just looked at each other, but before they could reach any conclusion, in popped their wild cousin, the hare.

“Yo! You!” He called out to the cats and the dog. “Where’s the lynx from our plot line?”

The mother cat just jabbed one of her paws in the direction of the hole through the fourth wall, (from the previous chapter).

“Is she coming back any time soon?” The hare pressed on.

The mother cat gave him a flat look.

“Oh good,” said the hare, “Since I was worried.” To further emphasize his relief, he turned around and jumping into the rabbits’ enclosure. “Hey there, cousins,” he told them brightly. “Want to hang around?”

The bunnies looked at their mom. “Fine,” their mother relented. “But let’s not get carried away, or our swine neighbour will come back or something!”

“Done,” agreed the hare, and the foursome went to the local vegetable garden, (which was located not far from the pigsty, actually), but that was another story.

…Well, this is it for now. Did you enjoy this piece? All comments and criticisms are welcome! See you all soon!