2020 Vision

Yes Yes Yes!
I know we here on the blog normally steer well clear of Current Affairs, because there are an immense number of people out there who live for nothing more than to Be Annoyed, and one of the things that really strums their Hate Tendon is - current affairs.  Usually because they can't avoid whatever's going on; you know - firestorm from the heavens, invasion of mutant killer wallabies, sentient potatoes, lack of toilet rolls, that sort of thing.

Say nothing!

     However, given that this Covid-19 thing is global and with us for the forseeable future, I think a reference or two can be gotten away with.
     Before March 2020, if you heard someone say "Twenty-twenty vision" then they were referring to incredible clarity with their eyesight.  Able to spot a bandit five miles off at angels twenty before the rest of the squadron.

This kind of thing

     Well, no longer.  In years and decades and indeed generations to come, people will mention "2020 vision" and they will mean the eerily deserted urban landscapes that surround us at present, where normally crowds of Hom. Sap. gambolled and <thinks> gyrated?  Art?

Normal

     Okay, walked.  You can see all the pedestrians and the buses and cars in the background, all pretty densely packed.  Let us see what it's like today.  Art?

Ooops!  Sorry, wrong date - move along, move along, nothing to see here -

     Er - quite - shall we try again, Art?  Yes yes yes, I know there's no people in that above, but it's also anachronistic to the tune of another 44 years.  Art!

2020 vision

     There you go.  Also, I would bet that there's a fair few indie horror film makers who are illegally out and about, with digital cameras, filming all these deserted cityscapes so they can edit the footage into their post-apocalyptic dramas, because how much would it cost to shut down a major city to film it emptied?
     Speaking of visual acuity, global pollution has fallen to incredibly low levels thanks to the Populous Dictatorship's industry going off-grid, so there is a silver inter boron isomer lining to this particular cloud.  I wonder what Extinction Rebellion's take on all this is?
     <realises this is veering dangerously close to Politics and ->
     Motley!  You're finally out of your pit.  Shall we play combat tiddlywinks?

CAUTION!  Made out of Semtex

Conrad Is Puzzled
Because why O WHY is "Strictly Come Dancing" so popular?  And all those dismal 'reality' shows where the barely-talented perform like gimps in front of a studio audience?
     Anyway, that's not solely what I'm puzzled about.  A screensaver came up on my laptop last night that caused me to pause and look ascance.  Art?

     A windmill on the Greek island of Leros.  My question is, what on earth is it doing in the middle of the sea?  Windmills use wind-power to operate machinery; grinding flour or pumping water as examples.  What is this one being used for?  If it was pumping water then it has failed spectacularly.  Was the promontory it sits on once high above the waves, and it has been encroached upon over time?  Or even an earthquake?  (This being the Balkans that's not unheard of).  If you look closer you can see the remains of low walls beside it, where it sits in an acute angle.  Your Humble Scribe did do some Googling yet was unable to find answers*.  If you have any the Comments are always open. 

Apparently this is a "Windmill of Doom".  Probably not a Hellenic tourist attraction, then?

Back To That "Rolling Stone" List
And Number 41 - "The O.A.".  Art?

Hmmmm

     Conrad hasn't seen it, nor does he know anyone who's seen it, which is ambiguous as a comment on quality.  Having read the synopsis, which is "Girl vanished for 7 years comes back and keeps quiet about where she's been", and seeing that the star is also the producer, it seems a lot like a Mary Sue in televisual form.  The creators fondly imagined it would run for 5 seasons yet it got cancelled after two, and Your Humble Scribe thinks it was lucky to go beyond 1, because it smells like a vanity project.  The critics were not kind, calling it self-indulgent, pretentious, shallow, expensive and ridiculous on occasion.  I shall not be watching.

The Trifid Nebula.  Much better as a viewing experience

     One wonders how, exactly, it made it onto that list.  Conrad suspects bribery and corruption**.


I have to add this in to make sense on Facebook - just hang on until Art gets ready - any second now - almost there - right!

Big skirt

"The Parable Of The Sower" By Octavia Butler
You may not be familiar with OB, but she was - pretty obviously! - a woman, and a black woman, writing in the oeuvre of sci-fi.  This might not be very noteworthy today but it was back in the Seventies.
     And so to TPOTS.  This is a novel with a truly dystopian background, where global warming is having a definite and daily impact on life, which is not yet the most disturbing thing about what Ol' Oct creates of the life in the 2020's.  You might say she had a rather dark 2020 vision ...

Note the background

     Ol' Oct came up with a designer drug created by accident, which gets nicknamed "Pyro" and which causes the taker to turn into a homicidal pyromaniac, whose one aim in life is to set things alight and watch them burn, because it feels better than anything else in the whole world.  This (illegal, need I say it?) drug is widely used by the Pyros, who tend not to live long yet who manage to inflict misery and murder on a massive scale whilst they still breathe.
     Thanks for that one, Oct.

"Who brought the marshmallows?"

Finally -
Hmmm.  Now that I'm free to go sit in the back yard and watch the world not pass me by, the sun goes in.  Thank you, sun.  Just you wait.  I'll get you back, never fear.



*  This will annoy me.  ANNOY ME!
**  Certainly not audience figures, as it was a Netflix show, and they don't give out same.