Xmas time is here

Christmas music has begun, both on the local radio station and some stores and malls. So annoying that they don't even wait for Thanksgiving.

Anyway, I got my new fridge installed yesterday. It's making a lot of noise while trying to make ice. I hope it'll settle down soon. The installers gave me a packet of documents, but it had the short version of the user manual, with installation instructions that are useless to me, the owner. I had to use my Centriq app to get the full manual with instructions on priming the water line and waiting 24 hours for the icemaker. Because of this major appliance purchase I'll have to put off getting a new phone. Maybe those prices will come down after Black Friday.

Meanwhile in Barbie news, I tried to do a leg swap on my Aztec princess Atotoztli so she wouldn't have high heels anymore. I was going to give her the leftover legs from my beach feet Barbies because they're a close color match. But this swap is not as easy as the previous leg swap I did.

First, the fabric shoes aren't big enough for flat feet, so I can't reuse the shoes unless I undo the seams and resew them with extra fabric. However the gold cuffs can be removed from the shoes, so theoretically she could just wear those cuffs as anklets and go barefoot.

Second, the legs are on strange hip joints not typical of other Barbie legs. Anybody know what part # 50-9199 is? I keep searching online but not coming up with anything.

Maybe if I heat the legs up, the vinyl will stretch enough to come off, but there is no guarantee that the new legs will be able to fit over the weird joints. If I can get the legs off, I could probably use scissors to cut the weird joints to normal shape, though.

Look ahead

After the election and for about a week after, I had a cold. The first 3 days were worst of all, with a fever and nausea. I tested for COVID, in case that came back, but I was negative. Then I just was sniffly with a runny nose and sore throat for a few more days. I hate colds in general, but on top of the disappointing election, it made the mourning more sucky.

Still, we have to pick ourselves up and continue as we did in 2016. Maybe make the most of life before January comes. We can fight on, but maybe have a little rest and break to restore our energy. Why wallow in following news about his garbage cabinet picks when we have four years to deal with that chaos? Enjoy Thankgsiving and Christmas before he ruins our economy with tariffs. Celebrate the wins we did get like new Black senators and abortion rights legislation. Even in Texas, it appears we defeated a horrid ordinance in Lubbock to ban travel for abortion. 

And celebrate the mass exodus from Twitter to Bluesky. I even got an account too, though I haven't posted anything yet. I'm still sporadic on my Substack.

In other news, my refrigerator is really dying now, not like last time. It started with the freezer not working and all my ice cream melting. I suppose there could be a repair option, but the fridge itself is many years old and it's not worth keeping. I had hoped it would survive longer, but I guess it's close enough to Black Friday sales. I'm having a new one installed on Monday.

God Damn

Can't sleep. Apparently American voters love fascism. The only bright spot locally was that our Democratic Congresspeople such as Jasmine Crockett and Marc Veasey got reelected. Other states may have some bright spots too, but nationally, such a disaster.

Fuck Ted Cruz.

Election Day

I have jitters but I also have a bunch of work to catch up on so I don't get obsessed with election watching and reading political sites all day. If you haven't already voted, please vote today.

It's been cold and rainy the last few days in Texas, with clouds blocking the sun all day. Time to get out my fall/winter gear I guess.

I did finish Agatha All Along, and was mostly satisfied with the ending, except that we got no backstory about Agatha and Rio's first meeting. I also didn't like Agatha's line about Nicky's death, saying she lets people lie about Nicky "Because the truth is too awful." That misled us to think that the truth was worse than the evil rumors that Agatha traded her son for the Darkhold. Instead we find out that the boy lived on stolen time for six years and then died peacefully in his sleep. Nicky's death may have been emotionally awful for his mother, but how is it "too awful"? Awful enough for her to ignore people spreading lies that she killed her baby or traded him for power? What mother would let people spread such dark lies instead of saying, "I loved that boy! I hated losing him!" But I guess she never got close to other people over the years, basically killing all covens that she tricked with the ballad, so there was no friend to share the truth with. Maybe it was easier to let the lies increase her villainous reputation. Well, I hope we'll see Billy reunite with Tommy soon, maybe in Visionquest starring the white Vision.

Speaking of Vision, Paul Bettany is in Tom Hank's new movie Here. I saw it last week and mostly enjoyed it. It's apparently based on a comic, where individual panels on the screen show glimpses of the same location, but in different time periods. The movie uses this technique to let us view multiple storylines in the same space. Paul Bettany is Al Young, the father of Tom Hank's character Richard. Their family are the main characters, though we get scenes of other people in the same space, such as a Native American couple, Benjamin Franklin's estranged family, an inventor and his girlfriend, and a Black family with a housekeeper who dies during the pandemic. Normally I don't like nonlinear storytelling, but this was well done with interesting juxtapositions between events in different timelines.

Al Young is a WWII veteran buying the house on the GI Bill in 1945. He and Rose are initially a happy couple, but due to PTSD and job disappointments, Al becomes more angry and drunk through the years. He doesn't become physically abusive that we can see, but the marriage becomes strained and he's been unfaithful offscreen. (At one point he does reveal to his son that Rose left him for a short while to go to New York and live life before she came back, presumably for the kids.) Al at least is devoted enough to Rose that he throws out his alcohol after she suffers a stroke, and he mourns her after she dies. Richard meanwhile also has career disappointments, having to give up art to become a salesman and support his family. His wife Margaret also gave up a career and hates having to live in his parents' house, and feels trapped there. Watching these couples age over the years and go through hardships was touching to me. I wish the movie was doing better, but I think it was released too close to Halloween rather than family moviegoing time closer to Thanksgiving and Christmas. On the other hand, if you want to get away from election coverage, Here is a nice movie to while away some time.

Age of Elon

I tried out a new recipe for Chicken A La King and the cream sauce actually held together well despite me missing some ingredients. I also used soy milk instead of whole milk, and it worked great.

Anyway, as I've been watching Agatha All Along I've also been rewatching some WandaVision episodes too. So then I got interested in Wanda's past, and some movies I skipped in the MCU with her and Vision. I even went back to Avengers: Age of Ultron, and I remembered why I hated that movie the first time and still hate it today. Tony Stark is such an arrogant egocentric asshole, and he convinces Bruce Banner to go mad scientist with him TWICE, making both Ultron and then later Vision. I mean, eventually we find out that Vision's a good guy and he's essential to Wanda's story, but why the fuck would anyone trust Tony Stark to keep going rogue? And he arrogantly talks about how he saved the world from a nuke as Iron Man, so that means he should get a free pass to do whatever he wants now without consulting the team. It's so fucking white male privilege and it reeks of the insanity that Elon Musk has revealed in recent years. Tony even openly cheats in trying to lift Thor's hammer by grabbing an Iron Man arm and having Rhodey help too. Plus, Tony's throwaway "joke" about reinstating "prima nocte" is so godawful. It reminds me of the stupid lewd remarks Tony made about Black Widow in Iron Man 2 when he thought she was just an eyecandy secretary. We let these sexist jokes pass and let Tony still be considered a hero because he's a tech genius. Fuck him and the writers thinking that shit was no big deal!

Plus the movie overall was depressing and weird what with Thor's dark visions of the future, and the endless scenes at Clint Barton's farm, and Ultron being over-the-top evil, and Captain America suddenly deciding/accepting that the Maximoff twins are good guys now just because they helped him during a bus battle against Ultron. He didn't stop to think, "Are you sure this isn't a mindtrick or a trap? Why did they betray Ultron?" He doesn't ask them for any explanation. There were more questions about whether Vision was evil or not, than about the twins changing sides. Not to mention the baffling Natasha and Bruce storyline where he just leaves her and the team without a goodbye. Just the whole movie is a piece of shit. The only good part of it was Wanda and Hawkeye having a moment in Sokovia in which he gives her a choice to hide or to come outside and be an Avenger. I'm never watching that film again even if it is the origin story of both Wanda and Vision. So glad they grew as characters beyond this stinker of a movie.

Voting in Texas

I voted today. I normally always vote early, since I cannot guarantee that my work schedule will let me vote on Election Day. I usually go during the daytime when there's no line. Today I arrived minutes after opening time and there were already 20+ people in line ahead of me. I hope that's good news that so many people were prepared and ready to go. There were a lot of local judges on the ballot, and many had Democrats running, but about a dozen were unopposed Republicans. Disappointing. I hope we can do better in future.

Anyway I read that Kamala is coming to Texas on Friday. She'll have a rally in Houston, but of course I can't go as I have to work and Houston's too far from DFW. It's very exciting, though the naysayers at Daily Kos say she's neglecting the "blue wall" and this is a sign of desperation. Hey, she and Tim Walz have been to the battleground states over a dozen times during this campaign. Why the fuck can't Texas get one visit? They're so greedy and full of doom & gloom over the polls. This is why I don't ever join Daily Kos. They're so hysterical and constantly fighting over there.

Yes I get worried too, but bringing other people down is not how to motivate them to vote. I am seeing some political ads lately, including Colin Allred's, but there have been a bunch of anonymous attack ads against "liberal judges who are soft on crime" and fearmongering about "open borders" while ignoring that the Republicans were the ones to kill the immigration bill. I find the radio ads more annoying than the TV ads, since with TV ads I can at least fast forward and see when the ad is over. I'll be glad when this is over.