Aka Monday 15th
June - Sunday 21st June 2020
This week I was
working from home, lots of tip-taping on the computer at the dining room table
for seven and a half hours…and I am starting to feel pretty burnt out with
working from home…I think I just need some time off to decompress…and when I
wasn’t tip-taping I:
…read Batman: Curse of the White Knight #1 - #8 and Batman: White Knight Presents Von Freeze (which
Sean Gordon Murphy, the creator of the White Knight Universe, describes as a deleted
scene in between #6 and #7).
This is a follow-up to Murphy’s ‘Batman: White
Knight’ and continues Batman’s growing realisation that to really help Gotham
his methods need to change. And this is brought home by the introduction of
this Universe’s Azrael and a deeply buried Wayne family secret. I really
enjoyed this series (and the preceding one) in how it takes existing Batman
plot points and story lines and just runs with them to their/a logical
conclusion, without the worry that this Batman has to continue on in several
other books and guest spots. It can, and does, make major changes. Yes, there’s
plenty of punching and superheroics, but there’s also a nice little mystery and
plenty of character moments and growth. It also fun to see old characters re-imagined
for this Universe. Looking forward to the next trip to the White Knight
Universe!
…and I got some
comics (which I haven’t read yet):
…and the postman
delivered my new Converse arrived. I had worn a hole into the sole of my old
ones, and with the Lockdown in effect but eased, I didn’t really fancy popping
to the local JD Sports to get a pair…but I did feel fine in taking advantage of
the easing of Lockdown to do a bit of music and DVD shopping. And I picked up
the new Liam Gallagher album, ‘Liam Gallagher: MTV Unplugged’, which was fine,
but didn’t soar, and ‘Birds of Prey: The Emancipation of One Harley Quinn’,
which was fine, but didn’t soar, and ‘Colour Out Of Space’, which I haven’t watched
yet:
…and I saw this odd Covid-19
conspiracy sticker while I was out at the shops:
…which as some
element of truth, that poor farming conditions can cause a concentration of
disease and enable novel disease to develop and transfer from animals to humans
and dragged it out to cover all farming. Like, humans have been farming and
eating animals for millennia, but HIV only appeared fifty or so years ago.
…and I read on
Tweeter that the comic book artist and writer Cameron Stewart had been perving
on 16+ year old girls, grooming them and “dating” them. There were enough
allegations to suggest that it wasn’t a one-off or a mistake and no apology or
denial. So, that’s a new name on the do not want to support list. And then
there were allegations about Warren Ellis, a comic book writer and TV writer
and novelist, whose work I really liked. The allegations were that he groomed
young women, by offering mentorship and friendship, into sexual relationships (in
either real life or cyber life). And at first it just seemed like he was a bit
of a cad, a bit of a dick. He didn’t mention that he was in a long-term
relationship, that he would ghost women you didn’t respond positively to his
advances. None of which are illegal, but are dickish. And made me question if
he had done enough to be castigated. But everyone is entitled to being treated
with dignity, respect, justice and equality and when the number of women reporting
that he had done this to them reached double figures, it was obvious that Ellis
had moved from being dickish to being outright creepy and predatory. And then
the number of women he had done this kept increasing to about 100 women/femme identifying
people. So many that they set up a website! Which just makes it ultra-creepy.
Ellis has issued an apology:
…in which he admits
to hurting people and wanting to change, so maybe he will and it’ll be okay to
support his work in the future, but it all depends on what he does next. It
will be a shame if he doesn’t because he makes good work, but nothing is good
enough to excuse hurting someone.
…no Long Walk this
weekend, I just felt to tired…maybe I’ll get back to it next week?
…and I did this
week’s G2 Crosswords:
…Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a pretty good start
as we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). The little
grey cells just powered through the clues like a powered-up Pac-Man chomping
through ghosts! The only clues that gave us trouble were the two we couldn’t
get, which meant that we learnt that ‘acutely’ means ‘in a shrewd way’ (maybe
if the powers that be were acting a shrewd way we would have gotten this
clue!!!) and that ‘Myrtle’ is an ‘evergreen shrub with white flowers’…
…Tuesday’s crossword was a little trickier, meaning that we
had to cheat on a few more clues, a sixth in total (four out of 24). Today’s
clues were a little more chewy or we might have overthought some of them. Like
13 across ‘turtle, for example (7)’, rather than thinking about what a turtle
is, a ‘reptile’, we spent too long trying to remember the Ninja Turtles names!
But we did learn that an ‘acolyte’ is an ‘assistant to a priest’ (we were
thinking to technical and thought ‘acolyte’ was just a general term for
follower), that ‘cocky’ means ‘overweening’ and that a ‘flying trumpeter’ is a
‘Canada Goose’ (still not sure how it ties in with the clue!). And we really
should have gotten ‘driftwood’ from ‘washed up pieces of tree’, hopefully
tomorrow’s grid will go better…
…things pick up with Wednesday’s crossword as we only had to
cheat on a tenth of the clues (two out of 21). And we got half of 21 across
‘mitt worn by fielders (8, 5)’, we got ‘something glove’ (which I guess was
fairly obvious), but for some reason we were thinking of British sports and
didn’t try foreign sports, even with the intersecting letters, if we had we
might have got ‘baseball glove’. And we learnt that ‘Tonga’ is a ‘Polynesian
monarchy, member of the Commonwealth’…
…and Thursday’s crossword ticks along nicely as we only had
to cheat on an eighth of the clues (three out of 23). The little grey cells
sailed through (most of the) clues leaving answers in their wake. A little bit
annoyed that we didn’t get ‘Dublin’ from ‘European capital’ and that we mucked
up 2 down ‘completer protection from unpleasant consequences (8)’. We went with
‘immunity’, but if we’d check the intersecting clues, we would have seen that
the answer had to include a ‘p’ and we might have gotten the right answer of
‘impunity’. But we did learn that ‘Beaujolais’ is a ‘light red wine from
south-east France’…and talking of wine, is it too early for a cheeky drink?...
…and Friday’s crossword goes pretty much perfectly as we did
not have to cheat on any of the 21 clues. The answers all just slotted into
place like it was preordained or fated to be. Maybe because the little grey
cells were distracted by some bad news and a bit of a family fight and didn’t
overthink things or it might be that doing the crossword was a relief from
thinking about this news and the fight? Either way it was a nice moment in what
had been a pretty dire day…
…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on a bit of a bum
note as we had to cheat on a quarter of the clues (six out of 23), a bit of a
drop from acing all the clues! Over the first couple of answer we just hit a
brick wall and it was a right ‘mare to get any of the other clues we did get.
Maybe it was ‘cos we’d had a late night on Friday and we just weren’t up to
speed? Or maybe it’s just Lockdown burn out? ‘Cos some of the answers were very
obvious in hindsight. But is does mean that we learnt that ‘ecru’ is a ‘light
fawn colour’, that ‘outstrip’ can mean ‘leave behind’ and that ‘obsequious’
means ‘sycophantic’…
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