Where Things are AT Right Now

I have lately been pretty much housebound, since I came down with Covid Omicron for the second time. Wednesday, however, I did manage to get out and see Avatar : The Way of Water in the theater nearest home. My son, home from the Air Force for the holiday, and my daughter went with me. They both liked the movie, just as they liked the first one 13 years ago. I, however, didn’t like it… I mean I didn’t MERELY like it. I LOVED IT! IT WAS BETTER THAN THE FIRST ONE WITH MORE LAYERED CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, SERIOUSLY DETAILED WORLD BUILDING, AND MORE THEMATIC DEVELOPMENT THAT BUILT ON THE FIRST MOVIE! Okay, I overdid it with the yelling in all caps. Sorry. But the movie was brilliant. Better than Titanic or Aliens, or The Abyss. It was absolutely beautiful. I cried at at least eleven different points in the story before I lost count. And I laughed far more. It was a story that fed my soul.

And then I came home and spent the next two days watching YouTube critiques of it. Gol dang them trolls. Too many of them hate it. And not legitimate hate because James Cameron didn’t make a great movie, but petty personal poisons aimed at not liking a thing because others don’t like it and giving no real reason other than their audiences want to see hatred and insults more than anything else. That’s just how it is in this era of Trump, Republicans, people piling up on the border because Abbott doesn’t want to let brown-skinned folks to have the same access to things like asylum as white-skinned folks, and Covid pairing up with other serious flus and flu-like illnesses, and Elon flubbing Twitter, and… dang! Too many things!

This is a time for love rather than hate. For feeling connection with the universe instead of opposition to others. For regretting that I don’t have any grandchildren yet, and knowing that I probably won’t still be alive when they start to appear… if the world even allows it to ever happen.

We don’t celebrate Christmas in this household. My wife is still firmly a Jehovah’s Witness, the last in our family to still be that faith, but we still acknowledge over-commercialization and the ‘Biblical thing Witnesses believe about the evils of birthdays. Any Christmas spirit of any kind has to be kept silently in my heart. I still love and respect her, even though it is not always a two-way street.

I have been too ill to draw for a while, and I have gotten precious little written either. I made this art with the app listed in the corner. I have been reposting a lot of old posts to keep my string going. But I am still not dead. And still capable of thinking. Apparently opposite to the position the average YouTube movie reviewer is in. Umph. “Dead-brained trolls” is probably too harsh to say, but I honestly can’t think of another.