Aka Monday 2nd
March - Sunday 8th March 2020
This week it was
back to work after a week off…
...and it felt a bit weird being back, it took a
second or two to get back used to how things go, but it was good seeing
everyone. Aside from work (and sleeping, and cooking, and watching some TV)
what did I do this week, well:
…I started and
finished reading ‘The Tao of Wu’ by Rza this week…and it was a really
enjoyable and thought-provoking read, covering philosophy, conspiracy theories,
the 5 Percent/Nation of Islam thinking, and Wu-Tang Clan (and Rza’s) history.
Plenty of food for thought:
…and there was a nice sun rise on Wednesday:
…in ‘The Batman’s
Grave’ #5 the conspiracy makes a very direct move on Batman (or is it Gordon
they’re after???) as he visits Arkham Asylum. And as he goes deeper and deeper
into Arkham the tension and suspense slow build up until they explode in a kinetic
action scene as the conspiracy attacks. An excellent issue, chock-a-block with
action, written by Warren Ellis, with pencils by Bryan Hitch, inks by Kevin
Nowlan & Bryan Hitch, colours by Alex Sinclair and letters by Richard Starkings.
…while in ‘Snotgirl’
#14 Ashley Von Frick has his bachelor party, which goes very wrong, emotionally
and physically, while Snotgirl’s world starts/continues to collapse. Written and
illustrated by Bryan Lee O’Malley and Leslie Hung, coloured by Rachael Cohen,
colour flatting assist by Studio Jfish, and lettering by Mare Odomo Snotgirl
#14 is chock-a-block with emotions and stress we all face (even if we’re not
fashion bloggers) and mystery/thrills.
…and I picked up
this week’s New Comic Book Day gems:
…and the postman
delivered the new beautiful hardback edition of Andrew MacLean’s ‘Apocalyptigirl’.
I got the original ‘softback’ version years ago and really enjoyed it and this
version feels like it’ll be like when you go from watching a movie on video to
DVD:
…and on Saturday I had
a nice Long Walk:
…and on Sunday I
watched ‘Castlevania’ Season 3…which, with the first few episodes feels like it’s
taking a breather from the excitement and multi-character epic battles of
Season 2, focusing on how Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades and Alucard deal with the
aftermath of Season 2. And while there are whole chucks of dealing with, and
recovering from, Season 2’s aftermath and setting up Season 4, there is also a
lot of time in a mysterious village, a village that may be practicing strange
occult practices. Which ends in a gateway to Hell being opened up and possibly
Dracula returning, just in time for Season 4. An excellent series that just
draws you in. 9/10.
…and I did this
week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to an awful start.
Me and the little grey cells had to cheat on a third of the clues (eight out of
24) a very poor showing. Some I just didn’t know, like ‘Orwell’ from ‘Eric
Arthur Blair’, but most of the others, like ‘earnest’ from ‘heartfelt’ or
‘feints’ from ‘deceptive actions’, we should have. Maybe we should have given
them a little more time and chewing over before giving up…
…and the terribleness continues with Tuesday’s crossword as
again we had to cheat on a third of the clues (seven out of 24) (which I guess
is a little bit better!) We were fooled by ‘talons’ being a clue for ‘nails’
and not ‘claws’ and ‘digital protection’ being a clue for ‘fingerstall’ – I
thought it was pointing towards something like ‘firewall’ or ‘anti-virus’ or
‘McAfee’. What is a fingerstall!!! Oh, it’s a kinda plaster (see pic). A very
poor showing so far this week, hopefully tomorrow’s grid will go better…
…and the terribleness continues to continue with Wednesday’s
crossword, during which we had to cheat on a quarter of the clues (five out of
21). I don’t know why, but me and the little grey cells just seem to be hitting
a brick wall and are unable to get over the top of the tougher clues, or we
just blank on the obvious answers, like ‘shrewd’ for the clue ‘savvy’. But it
does mean that we learnt that ‘Hiawatha’ was an ‘Indian chieftain, subject of a
Longfellow poem’ and that ‘mode’ can mean ‘fashion’…
…Thursday’s crossword goes much better as we only had to
cheat on one of 23 clues. The little grey cells were on fire, except that we
couldn’t get ‘scallops’ from ‘seafood’, but otherwise a damn good performance
today…
…and it’s back to Earth with Friday’s crossword as we had to
cheat on a fifth of the clues (four out of 21), not good. A couple of costly
mistakes – going for ‘bald’ and not ‘bare’ for the clue ‘without the natural
covering’ and ‘rampage’ for ‘run wild’. But we did learn that ‘au courant’
means ‘up on’, that a ‘meteorological boundary between different air masses’ is
called a ‘front’ (which seems pretty obvious in hindsight)…
…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on a bit of a
middling note as we had to cheat on a sixth of the clues (four out of 23).
Again, we just couldn’t make the leap for three of these four – to get
‘potatoes’ from ‘Murphies’, ‘ladykiller’ from ‘philanderer’ and ‘tutee’ from
‘pupil’ – but we did learn that ‘Tyrol’ is a ‘mountainous state of western
Austria’…
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