Snow White 2025 and D: BA - March 26

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and in this case, I mean that I have developed issues with my cell phone. At least the big dead rat is gone – hooray for small mercies. In other news, D: BA is back with two new episodes this week, so yuppie? Right?

Eh, the jury is still out here. In the episode 1x05 we re-met Yusuf Khan, who’s Kamala Khan’s father or elder brother, I don’t remember which one. Sigh. MM was swept under the rug when in RL Pakistan, (the homeland of the Khan family in MCU) helped the Taliban topple the pro-US government in Afghanistan, and the follow up ‘Marvels’ movie didn’t really go anywhere either. And in episode 1x06 Jack the Swordsman from ‘Hawkeye’ reappeared; in RL, the actor who played Hawkeye suffered a bad accident a while back, so it is unknown if Kate Bishop will return – so far there’s no sign of her in the ‘Thunderbolts’-related material, so there’s that.

Easter eggs aside, Disney/MCU is doing a good enough job of integrating the ‘Daredevil’-related characters into the overall MCU, (and Muse has appeared as one of the lesser-bads of the show, so extra kudos here), and overall this TV series is better than the 2025 Snow White film.

Listen, you know what a hack job is? Snow White 2025 is an example of this. When they were making it – and they took their time making it – Disney could’ve gone with a number of options; they narrowed them down to two: either a by the numbers re-make of the original 1937 film, or a more ‘upgraded’ version, where Snow White becomes either a Maid Marian or a Robin Hood character. Then, some higher-up in the Disney hierarchy had a bad brain, and the studio mashed both of these versions into one film.

Listen. In 2024, Sony has released its’ ‘Kraven’ film, and it was also a mash-up of two films, essentially: the first would have been about the childhood of Kraven, his brother, his (eventual) love interest and so on. The second would have been Kraven travelling the globe, killing various criminals, up to the Foreigner and the Rhino who by then had had enough of his own XP to give Kraven a proper challenge, (i.e. a lion fighting a rhino and realizing that he needs help winning this one, maybe?). Instead, we got a mash-up of both, and people believe that Sony’s Spider-Man related films are finished, most likely. Pause.

…‘Kraven’ is still a better film than Snow White 2025 is, because the former is a mash-up of two related films, and the latter is more disjointed: Sony at least tried to stitch its’ chimera up appropriately, and Disney didn’t. Instead, we got an almost unending barrage of bad PR from both RZ and GG, as well as the crap about the seven dwarves, the overall bad CGI and anything else that could, and did, go wrong. Given that the amount of money Disney invested into Snow White 2025 could have possibly bought the peace between RF and Ukraine – it was such a huge sum – this is just sad. However, this is real life for you, people. It just sucks.

This is it for now. See you all soon.

D:BA SSS - March 19

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about D: BA once more?

Well, no, real life doesn’t always suck; for a couple of days now I’ve been seeing sharp-shinned hawks in my neighbourhood; of course, they can always be Cooper’s hawks instead, but I’m reasonably sure that they’re ‘sharpies’ instead, because of all the red color in their plumage – it is more in line with the sharp-shinned than with the Cooper’s hawks.

What are those avians doing? Hunting, of course – and primarily small birds, songbirds, it looks like, (as opposed to bigger birds, such as feral pigeons or ducks). First, I saw the hawk chase sparrows on a street corner: it came from down low to a tree, flushing the sparrows out – they promptly fled into a bush. The hawk came after them.

A sharp-shinned hawk is one of North America’s smaller hawks, but it is still larger than a sparrow; it could not get into the shrub, so it landed next to it and stuck its’ head and beak inside, trying to flush the sparrows out. It was not too successful, and the neighbourhood’s not-so-friendly Canada geese were not too thrilled by the raptor’s presence either: they promptly made a flanking manoeuver, and began to approach the hawk, hissing and flapping their wings.

The hawk looked at them, decided that it did not like the odds, and left, to the relief of both the sparrows and the local killdeer – they might be shorebirds, but any wet meadow is fine in their books, especially in spring. The Age of Dinosaurs is officially over, my foot!..

And later this week I saw another (or the same?) sharp-shinned hawk in the part. This time, the bird was hunting high in the treetops, but though it is the second half of March, the trees are still bare of leaves, and so the hawk was exposed, and the local songbirds, squirrels (both grey and red species), and chipmunks were avoiding it, easily enough. The local mallard ducks, on the other hand, were just ignoring it, and vice versa. Both events were interesting to see, and so the real life does not always suck; (the Norway rat that was lying dead on a road as roadkill would probably disagree, however. I wonder how long is will remain there, as it is a public road and all. Oh dear, maybe a turkey vulture will pop up too, as it is a big rat, dead or not).

As for D: BA, well, first a reply to all of you who pointed out that ‘YFNSM’ (remember it?) tried to racially diversify its’ characters; of all the main cast, only Peter and his aunt are Anglo-American, the rest tend of P.O.C.s, or else foreign immigrants to the U.S. instead. Pause.

In the current socio-political climate, you think that the U.S. mainstream culture needs more depiction of predominantly Afro-American street gangs in NYC, cartoons or not? In addition, oh, here comes an Anglo-American Spider-Man and handles them easy peasy! Oh, and the Osborns, (who are often Spider-Man’s greatest foes) are Afro-American too now! Hooray! The Green Goblin is going to be actually a different color, cough!

…Well, ok, ‘YFNSM’ might try to do something similar to what Disney did to Will Smith in its’ ‘Aladdin’ remake – make the Green Goblin a different color entirely. Given that Will Smith looked wrong in that purple-indigo shade and that Disney quickly had him walking around in his real appearance, probably not. The Osborns are going to be Afro-American, the Green Goblin – his signature color, and etc. Can we have more Miles Morales Spider-Man films instead?

No, of course not – onto D: BA. In this week’s episode, we get re-introduced to Frank Castle the vigilante, (as opposed to Richard Castle the writer), who claims that he didn’t kill Hector Ayala the White Tiger. We also get to meet Angela Del Toro, who is probably the next White Tiger. The catch here is that Netflix tried to introduce her already in one of the Jessica Jones episodes, but because that show was swept under the rug, (and JJ herself as well), guess that Disney/MCU is rebooting Ms. Del Toro as someone else, not a P.I. as she was intended to be on the ‘Defenders’ shows. What next?

A bunch of new and re-introduced secondary characters, some of whom are actually original, but so far D: BA seems to be going with the reinvention of the White Tiger as its’ main new engine for now – the other heavy hitters, such as the Punisher, Daredevil, and the Kingpin are already established. So far, the show is not bad to watch, and given that MCU aims to entertain first, and everything else second, this is what it planned to do with D: BA all along.

Therefore, for now, this is it. See you all soon!

SI, 'Promises' - June 28

Obligatory disclaimer: the dead rat is actually gone. Wait, what?

Let me try again: real life sucks, but for a while there was a dead rat, located not far from where the dead skunk had been lying, but because the rat – a female one, judging by its’ size – was lying on private property, it was gone in a matter of days going for weeks, rather than weeks going for months, as the skunk had been. Pause.

Again, real life sucks, but when I tried to do something different and continue to watch Marvel’s™ ‘Secret Invasion’ series – the second episode, ‘Promises’. Again, so far SI feels like a prequel to something – there’s action going on, true, but mostly there’s exposition and talking; ‘Promises’ was driven less by action and more by dialogue, which is ironic, given how the writers are going on strike in Hollywood, and lately, (June 2023), quite a few actors, (even A-List actors) are threatening to do the same. This may be the reason as to why SI is being downplayed in the online news, especially since SI was using CGI artwork in its’ episodes – because otherwise my only idea is that USA, RF, UK, and several other countries will team up to take the Skrulls down. Put otherwise, this is a ‘Ms. Marvel’ situation – when an MCU (Disney+) TV series made such a tone-deaf semi-political SNAFU that everyone is doing his or her best to pretend that it doesn’t exist. Fun!

…On the other hand, what else is there to discuss? The evolution of the vulture birds? Thanks, but Mr. Keith L. has done it already, having written a very interesting and comprehensive book about them, (published and released back in 2022). In it, he discusses those overlooked and often neglected birds of prey, clarifying their relationships to each other, (which are more complex than how they look), as well as their evolution, ecologies, interactions with humans, and so on. Given that vultures are even less popular animals than the hyenas are, Mr. Keith L.’s achievement is quite something! Positively better and more interesting than SI is.

SI, on the other hand, is flat-out lackluster. Pardon me, but it is. My home city of Toronto has only turkey vultures out of all the scavenger birds, and only in summer, but even that is enough to see that SI may be joining ‘Ms. Marvel’ in MCU’s hall of fame as one of its’ aspects that is not so much as good or bad, but just lackluster – and we’re only two episodes in. Harsh, and yet I find myself almost wanting for some sort of a vulture to swoop in and to carry-off the streamable series into the land of the dead – but that is a different story…

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Lightyear - June 18

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so let us talk about our main man known as Buzz Lightyear. The 2022 film, known simply as ‘Lightyear’, seemingly throws everything else that we knew about BL out of the window… only it does not. In the cartoon series ‘Buzz Lightyear of the Star Command’ (or something along those lines), there were a couple of episodes with an evil, Zurg-like Buzz… who came from an alternate universe. He appeared on the show irregularly, but was still defeated, but he was still Buzz. Therefore, what is the point?

The point is that ‘Lightyear’ is set in an alternate universe, that is what! Until now, the ‘Toy Story’ franchise’s installments, (a heterogeneous bunch in their own right), were set in one universe – let us call it ‘Universe A’. But ‘Lightyear’ and all of its’ associations, are taking place in a different universe – ‘Universe B’, one where sexual minorities and important characters, played by POCs appeared in the early 1990s, unlike, say, our universe, where they, (and especially the former), didn’t. Therefore, all that we knew about BL from the previous ‘Toy Story’ installments is not really relevant anymore – it is a different Buzz, with a different crew, in a different world. ‘To infinity and beyond’, indeed – to infinite multiverses! Anything else?

Aye, I met an opossum earlier this week. Real life might suck, but sometimes it does deliver. Pause.

Let us try again. Until I met it, I thought that an opossum was just a variant rat, especially since I have seen the latter, both in pet shops and in the wild. Same for mice. However…

Let us start with mice. They are the smallest out of this bunch – I could easily hold a mouse on one finger. The rats I saw were two or three times bigger than a mouse – the size of my head, (the males were usually bigger than the females), and I would need one, or both, of my hands, to hold one, (we are talking about pet rats here – wild rats, especially Norway rats, should be avoided). And the opossum was two or three times bigger than a Norway rat – it was the size of an average house cat or a small dog, and the one I met was distinctly unfriendly, so no physical contact with this one either.

The second point are the teeth. Mice and rats are rodents; you put a mouse and a rat alongside a squirrel, a chipmunk, a marmot, and, say, a beaver, and they will all have baseline similarities to each other, especially in the teeth: huge incisors, no canines, and some premolar and molar teeth. The ‘professional’ carnivores and herbivores have different dental formulas, but you still can, usually, figure out which tooth is which. The opossum doesn’t really have this differentiation; from what I could see: all of the teeth in its’ jaws looked mostly the same, not unlike the teeth on a saw, (sorry for the lame pun). Obviously, an opossum is a competent biter and chewer in its’ own right, and I had no intention of having it bite me – it looked quite formidable for a creature the size of a small dog – but I’m guessing that it was a very different biter and chewer from a rodent. Then again, the opossum is no rodent, but a marsupial – it is proportionally closer to the kangaroo and the koala than to rodents or to us. Though keep it mind that among the marsupials, the opossum family – most of which live in the American tropics, and only one species – the common opossum – lives in North America instead; the point is that the American opossums are treated separately from the rest of the (Australian) marsupials, but let us move on…

The final topic is the tail – in the earlier days people assumed that the common opossum’s tail was prehensile, like a spider monkey’s but to me, it certainly didn’t look like it; it did look a bit like a rat’s, or a mouse’s, tail – long and hairless, but it also looked fairly thick: maybe the opossum uses it to store fat for the winter or something, The point is that the opossum has authentically surprised me, and I have certainly enjoyed observing it. Real life does suck, but sometimes – not so much.

This is it for now, see you all soon!

Ms. Marvel, series premiere - June 8

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so here is a shout-out to Mr. Nicklaus Brendborg: this learned worthy, while writing – and publishing – his treatise on old age, aging, and immortality, talked about – well, mentioned, really – the naked mole rat. That is fair enough, but he implied that the ‘ordinary’ rats and mice used in labs are its’ relatives. Yeah, no – the terms ‘rat’ and ‘mouse’ are very broad; the term ‘mouse’, for example, includes not only the various rodents, but also the so-called marsupial mice – distant cousins of the kangaroos and the koala, and close cousins of the quolls, the numbat, and the extinct Thylacine. By contrast, the term ‘rat’ includes several genera, including, obviously, the naked mole rat, as well as several of its relatives from the parvorder (or infraorder) Phiomorpha, but the ‘true’ rats aren’t closely related to them; this parvorder actually includes the Old World porcupines, (not the ones found in North America, but the ones found in Africa, Asia, and sometimes even in southern Europe); proportionally, the naked mole rat is a much further relative to the lab rats (derived from the black and Norway rat stocks, mainly), and lab mice, (variant house mouse, primarily), than we are to the apes. For Mr. Brendborg, a man of science and philosophy, to make such a mistake slash generalization is just rude and wrong – so let us end this rant for now, and turn onto ‘Ms. Marvel’, the series’ premiere.

So, what have we here? Last time, when we have talked about the ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ series, we talked about how Disney was playing it safe with SW now, producing new content that is only fan-approved. Whether that is a good long-term strategy is another matter, but this is what Disney does with SW. And what about MCU?

First, in ‘Ms. Marvel’, Disney is playing it safe, again. The series’ opener, ‘Generation Why’, is an introductory chapter through and through; in it we meet Kamala Khan, a modern young woman with a strong personality and personal values, whose relationship with the rest of her family is loving, of course, but there’re some pesky personal issues that initiate the rise of a conflict between them – a generational gap or whatever the modern term is… Wait a second…

…In ‘Encanto’, we have Mirabel Madrigal, who is a teen/young adult, who is a good person, (some character flaws notwithstanding), who loves her family and vice versa, but due to some pesky personal issues she and the rest of her family end up fighting…before making up.

…In ‘Turning Red’, we have Mei-Mei, who is a teen, who is a good person, (some character flaws notwithstanding), who loves her family and vice versa, but due to some pesky personal issues she and the rest of her family end up fighting…before making up.

…And in ‘Ms. Marvel’, (the TV 2022 series), we have Kamala Khan, who is a teen, who is a good person, (some character flaws notwithstanding), who loves her family and vice versa, but due to some pesky personal issues she and the rest of her family end up fighting…before making up – wait, what?

…Without a doubt, there are some differences between our three protagonists; i.e., Mirabel is the only one without powers in a power-ful family, (pun intended, sorry), while in Kamala’s case it is more of a reverse, (so far), and Mei-Mei and her mother both have powers to turn into giant red pandas now. Conversely, though…

In ‘Encanto’, the Madrigals are depicted – each of them is depicted – in a unique and a standout way, to a point where Julietta and Pepa’s families don’t appear to be very closely related at all, from a physical P.O.V.

In ‘Turning Red’, the citizens of Toronto – for example, Mei-Mei and her friends – are depicted in all of their multicultural glory, where each and every one of them is unique, in a standout way.

And in ‘Ms. Marvel’, we are about to meet the citizens of New Jersey, all of whom are depicted in a way that promotes America’s multicultural glory, with its’ characters depicted in a unique, standout way, each and every one of them…

Again, there are differences – ‘Turning Red’ and ‘Ms. Marvel’ don’t display the same high level of individualism as ‘Encanto’ has, but their levels are high enough…and then we come to the religious issues. ‘Encanto’ takes place in Colombia, (late 19^th century-first half of 20^th century, most likely), so the odds are that it is a Catholic, rather than a Protestant or Orthodox, community, though that is only a minor element in the movie. ‘Turning Red’… yeah, this one is a bit fudgey, but there are religious-cultural elements as well. And in ‘Ms. Marvel’, we learned from the trailers and the teasers, that Islam will be playing a BIG role in the TV series. Ergo-?

Ergo, while being something of a variation on the theme of a politically correct progressive young woman main character, ‘Ms. Marvel’ is also a propaganda piece, (unlike ‘Encanto’ & ‘Turning Red’, presumably): it aims to show ‘the life and times’ of a Muslim family in the U.S., how it lives, (as a unit), and how it functions, (as a unit), how it is both same and different from the WASP American families, and so on. So-?

So nothing. This week’s episode – ‘Generation Why’ – was pretty much just that: an introduction to yet another politically correct progressive young woman character, and another introduction to a politically correct and properly presented Islamic-American family. People, who like this sort of thing, will like ‘Ms. Marvel’; those who do not, will call it ‘Woke’, and will not. Such ‘soft power’ may be better than the ‘hard power’ that Putin’s Russia is trying to execute in Ukraine, but it has its’ own flaws – but that is a discussion for a different time. Is this it?

…Wait! There is more! There is the Avengers-con! And the magical bracelet from one of Kamala’s grandparents! (A person has two parents, but four grandparents – and we are talking a standard nuclear family here, anything more derived, and we get much more confusing numbers). And Bruno! But we do not talk about Bruno- wait, sorry, wrong Bruno. In ‘Encanto’, Bruno is a seer, (with a strong moon symbolism, but we will not get into it here). In ‘Ms. Marvel’, Bruno is just a teen/young man, who got friendzoned by Kamala so hard, that even the crappy Avenger-con feels sorry for him. No, seriously, there is a feeling that Disney/MCU is poking fun at itself – first there was the Avengers musical in ‘Hawkeye’, which was nothing more than window dressing in that series, and an unnecessary one at that, and now we get the Avengers-con, which was the weakest part of the episode, and as for the ‘magical bracelet’… well, we already talked about it: between AoS and ‘InHumans’, the InHumans became especially toxic and anathema to Disney/MCU, so Kamala will get to be something else other than an InHuman. Good for her!

…For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

What if, 'Thor' - Sep 22

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life, sometimes, can be… weird: earlier this week I have encountered a real life rat in the broad daylight, and it was a big one: about the size of a small groundhog, (aka a woodchuck), and just as massive. Some sources of mine claim that it was a male rat, (a Norway rat, for classification’s sake), since the females of the species are smaller and slimmer than the males are, but that is redundant; the point is that I saw a real live rat, in broad daylight, and that isn’t something that has happened to me before, not ever, and probably won’t happen to me again either, (not in a long while, anyhow), and this sort of thing makes life rather tolerable to live, at least some of the times… Where were we?

My rat-related rant aside, this week’s episode of ‘What if?’ was the comedy episode; in it, we got to meet Thor who did not grow up alongside Loki, as the latter was returned to Laufey in this particular universe. Fair enough, an AU is an AU, and it does not have to be relatable to the main timeline either, but where does it leave us?

…Well, with variant Ultrons up the proverbial wazoos, if you want to be literal, but also – in the finishing stretch; let me elaborate. So far, ‘What if?’ was a rather restrained show for a cartoon: it took a single premise and ran with it – sometimes wildly, sometimes not so much, but always within the framework laid down by the mainline Disney/MCU, meaning that this season of ‘What if?’ is about the Avengers and no one else, though, admittedly, this ‘limited’ cast was big enough for the episodes – so far – each to have a different set of main characters; secondary characters are a different story, but they’re secondary for a reason… what else?

…A crossover episode, or rather episodes, as the odds of ‘What if?’ S1 ending on a double-episode finale are good, plus it would give the showrunners of ‘What if?’ to show the audiences how the MCU multiverse can handle this sort of an emergency without the TVA, (cough, ‘Loki’, cough), fixing it prematurely, but now we may have multidimensional Avengers assembling, so yay, here we go! What is left?

Nothing, I must admit. ‘What if?’ has begun on a mixed note: a tame job that pretends to be wild, and it remains as such; there are no Agents, (because AoS evolved into a hot mess), no InHumans, (because that show was insipidly bad so now its’ core concept was probably reworked in the ‘Eternals’ movie, cough), no Defends or X-Men or Fantastic Four because of copyright issues, no outsiders period. Fair enough and so far ‘What if?’ does deliver what it has intended to deliver – an entertaining pageant and a spectacle. That is not bad, but by now, seven episodes into the S1 – we are almost at a season’s finale, people! – the aforementioned people are getting rather tired of ‘What if?’, especially with such new gems as ‘Hawkeye’ and ‘Hit-Monkey’ are appearing on the horizon, to say nothing of the Eternals and what not. People are getting tired of ‘What if?’ for the moment, the show is losing steam, and I, for one, was, and am, and will be, more interested in the wild/feral Norway rat that I’ve encountered earlier this week than about the show, (at the moment), but that’s just me. I have been known to be weird after all.

Therefore, for now, this is it. See you all soon, instead!

Quarantine entry #25 - April 15

Obligatory disclaimer: real life still sucks. Snow still comes, even though it’s mid-April, and the lockdown continues until the middle of May at least. My computer is not doing so well either, so let us talk about something else – mice.

No, not computer mice, but the real life mice in whose honor the computer devices are named. Ergo, what about them?

The term ‘mouse’ is not very scientific; neither is ‘rat’, though technically speaking, a ‘rat’ is bigger than a ‘mouse’ is. As for mice themselves, they are a mixed bag, which consists of…

…'True mice', aka rodents from the Muridae family – the so-called ‘true mice’. Most of those rodents live in the Old World rather than the New, and by the rodent standard they consist of those that humans call ‘mice’, ‘rats’ and ‘gerbils’ to begin with. They feature the house mouse, the Eurasian field mice, and also – the Eurasian harvester mouse, one of the smallest rodents ever.

Closely related to the ‘true mice’ are several species of ‘mice’-named rodents, (such as the American harvester mouse), which, however, belong to the Cricetidae family instead. Most of the Cricetid rodents are identified as hamsters, lemmings, voles… the ‘mice’ from this family live primarily in New World instead. Murids and Cricetids are close relatives, both belong to the Myomorpha suborder of rodents, but they belong to two different families all the same.

The rest of ‘mice’ look much more exotic than the rodents that we usually associated the name of ‘mouse’ with – mice do make popular pets, and even more popular lab animals slash subjects – real life sucks not just for people, but for animals as well. Firstly, there are the ‘mice’ from the Heteromyidae family – these rodents are known as kangaroo mice and rats, and also pocket and spiny pocket mice, and they all look to be slightly more…derived than the ‘ordinary mice & rats’ do. Instead, physically, they appear to be more like miniature kangaroos of Australia instead, although, yes, pocket and spiny pocket mice do look mouse-like, but they all live in the wild, often away from humans, so people aren’t aware of them as much as they are of the kangaroo mice and rats, (and yes, we’ll get to the kangaroos soon as well).

Secondly, there are the flying mice. Now, in such languages, such as Russian, the term ‘flying mouse’ is the local analogue to the English ‘bat’, (remember, we've talked about them earlier as well?), which does look like a mouse with wings, but the ‘true flying mouse’ are more like flying squirrels; if the aforementioned pocket mice and co. belong to the Castriomorpha subfamily, which also features the beavers, (while the muskrat is just an oversized aquatic vole, but that is a different story), then the flying mice are actually ‘scaly-tailed squirrels’ or ‘scaly-tailed flying squirrels’. They, too, belong to a separate suborder – the Anomaluramorpha, and their closest relative is the African springhare, which looks like a kangaroo rat…or just a kangaroo.

This, in turn, brings us to Australia proper – this small continent features not only true rodents, both native and introduced, (which includes the house mouse from the aforementioned ‘true mice’ group), but also the so-called marsupial mice, which aren’t rodents at all, but are marsupials, just as the kangaroos are. Only, while the kangaroos feature the biggest modern marsupials – the red kangaroo, the two greys and the antilopine kangaroo, the marsupial mice are some of the smallest marsupials, and they belong to the Dasyuridae family, which features not only them, but also the infamous Tasmanian devil, and the quolls, which are marsupial ‘cats’, or rather ‘martens’, (real martens are cousins of weasels, FYI). The marsupial mice themselves are carnivores, (while their rodent counterparts are more herbivorous; the flying mice, which are one of the genera of the scaly-tailed squirrels are supposedly food specialists, even), and behave more like shrews rather than true mice, (let us keep the rats out of this equation, shall we?). Consequently, these days, the terms ‘marsupial shrew’ and ‘marsupial mouse’ isn’t used much anymore; the terms ‘antechinus’, ‘dunnart’, and the like instead…

…Well, I must admit – this was informative. I never knew that there were so many different mice, marsupial and otherwise, and that they had even more relatives among both placental mammals and marsupials. They had certainly distracted me from the realization that real life still sucks and that COVID-19 is still going strong through the planet. How about you? Any comments? All criticisms are welcome, and this is for now, see you all soon!