Thursday midday mess

* From the "Well, that was suboptimal" files - our internet access INCLUDING PRINTING TO THE SHARED PRINTER was still out when I got here. Stayed out until I walked out of  my last class of the day.

I pushed off the discussion of "Tragedy of the Commons" (which, wow, I forgot what a dense paper that was, whoops) until Tuesday because a couple people could not print (apparently most of campus was offline). I had to pretty much wing it through the new material (that I had planned for Tuesday) because I couldn't look anything up online to review, and also I had kind of planned on discussing ANYWAY but then decided it was unfair to the people who didn't have their papers in front of them.

Oh well. At least I guess I didn't throw a tantrum and just cancel class, though I admit I kind of WANTED to. (And I had a moment of fear before my second class when the computer was slow logging me in - "Am I going to have to chalk my way through biological polymers, for goodness sake" but it came back up in time.

* My congregation is collecting goods to be delivered to one of the big Dallas arenas that is serving as a shelter. I don't know - as much as in some cases I like the idea of "donations of goods" (I like charities, for example, that I can knit hats for ), I wonder if in this case money wouldn't be more helpful (I have already made a monetary donation to my denomination's Week of Compassion and might donate more elsewhere). Then again: apparently the minister has a contact at the shelter and can deliver the stuff in person....so maybe I do buy some tube socks or something and take them with me on Sunday. I don't know.

* Some talk of potential gas shortages so I don't know. One of my colleagues is like "but there's a big refinery at Ringling so we shouldn't worry" but I don't know.

(And in true me-overthinking-it fashion, I was going: "Maybe I should push off my antiquing trip for two more weeks* so that that gas is there for someone who needs to drive their kid to the hospital or something" but that means, in Tragedy of the Commons, I'd be the loser, because other people are unlikely to behave similarly, and there STILL might not be the gas when needed if there were a true shortage. But I still don't know. Maybe I check up tomorrow evening to see what they're saying)

(*Two weeks, because next weekend is Margaret's memorial service and I expect most of Saturday to be taken up with that. Which would make something like two months I've "floated" this and it makes me a little sad when I have to keep "floating" things I want to do because of things I must do, or bad weather, or some other reason)

A local distributor is fundamentally saying "don't panic, things should be fine within a week" so I guess maybe I go? It takes about a quarter-tank of gas to go and get back, and driving around town, it can take me over a week to run through a quarter-tank. (I don't like to let it drop below a half-tank: old training from living in winter-storm country)

* They still don't have the option to donate to the scholarship for our slain former student on the campus webpage. I don't know whether to call the Foundation (it would not be big enough to be endowed yet) or the Business Office or the Scholarship Office to find out, but I do want to donate to it.

* Something I spotted in the news: They're planning on doing a girl-based reboot of "Lord of the Flies." Of course, lots of people are joking "Didn't they already do that with 'Heathers' or 'Mean Girls'?" and maybe there's a grain of truth in that.

Others are joking, "Well, Girl!Ralph and Girl!Jack would just spread mean rumors about each other, but they would build shelters and look after the Littluns."

Okay. As someone who grew up a girl - and perhaps a girl a bit more like Girl!Piggy than I might want to admit - my initial response was to shudder and go "The deaths would begin much faster."

I dunno.  I kind of think this is not the thing we need, not now. (Not, especially now, when a goodly chunk of South Texas is basically thrown on its own ingenuity to survive, many of the trappings of society gone - already I heard a news story that some of the would-be rescuers have been shot at because...humans, I guess?)

I made myself watch most of the 1963 Lord of the Flies when it was on TCM recently. Partly because I saw it as a high school student (they made us all watch it after reading the novel) and I wanted to see how it held up. And partly, I wanted to try to exorcise some of the lingering horror I remembered it as being, but that didn't work.

I think, as a tired old adult, I found it even more horrifying than I did as a teen. How could they just kill Piggy and not feel remorse, or not think the consequences through beforehand? How could they work themselves up into a  frenzy where the other group became seemingly subhuman to them?

The ending especially, with Ralph crying as they are rescued, because of what he has seen and because he knows that even if he goes back to his "safe" life (though in the Golding novel, hadn't there been a nuclear war? So there was no "safe" life to go back to...) he will never be the person he was before crashing on the island.

And yes, I know: humans gonna human.

But yeah. If they're gonna set up the all-female version as "Look, guys got Toxic Masculinity but girls Gonna Work it Out," I'm sorry - they have NO EXPERIENCE around 13 year old girls. Or at least being an unpopular 13 year old girl.

(There are other bad places this could go, that I'm fearful of - like, to keep it G here: "Underage exploration of each other" which is probably the eager dream of some guys who might see the movie, and that's problematic for a lot of reasons).

I'm guessing how a person sees this reboot depends a bit on their experience as (or of, in the case of guys) teen girls: the people who saw more of the "kumbaya" mentality are the ones arguing "nothing would happen, they'll just set up a peaceful society" but I bet a lot of us who were the unpopular girls who got excluded and/or bullied are the ones going "It will be just like with the boys, except there will be more cattiness."

* Actually, if we're doing a gender-swapped island-adventure movie, why not reboot Gilligan's Island? Call it "Jillian's Island." Have it be an all-women cruise company (maybe add another employee or two - a doctor and maybe replace The Professor's role with a woman conservation biologist who leads tours for the company). Have "Ginger" be a male model and Mary Ann either a farm boy who won a contest, or maybe an earnest young college guy....the rich couple could still be a couple, or they could maybe be a same-sex couple for updating....and maybe have one or two others added in. And play it as a regular old straight comedy, or at least a "dumb" comedy. I'm tired of things being gritty reboots, too much of life feels like a gritty reboot so I want some silliness in my entertainment.

And while we're at gender-swaps, how about Charlize's Archangels? Three young guys with excellent fighting skills, and maybe a hoarse, battle-axey former FBI employee as their mysterious boss....

*  I may have to bring in some brown paper or something and tape it up over the air conditioning vent. When it blows, it blows RIGHT DOWN on me and I get chilled and tense up. I wonder if some of my little aches and pains recently have been the result of that - I am pretty sure a headache I got the other day was the result of getting chilled.


* Tuesday evening I opened another of the pony blindbags I was saving up. Got the one I wanted most out of this "wave":

Coco Pommel, or, "Miss Pommel to you," I guess, because they have her styled on the bag as "Miss Pommel"

She doesn't look a WHOLE lot like herself - they used the Raven Inkwell mold and the hairstyle isn't quite right, but close enough for a blindbag. (She really kind of needs a flower in her mane, though, and for them to paint on her little collar.

I opened another this afternoon:

Random boy pony called Neigh Sayer, who apparently loves listening to music with his friend Levon Song. (I think the conceit with these is the ponies are in friend-dyads.)

I might open another (I have two more), I don't know. At least this wave is all new figures that aren't just repeats of ones before. (Apparently there are also individually packaged figures where you know which one you are buying, and they have a show-accurate Sapphire Shores, which I want, if I can ever find one - I don't think I'll pay the "what the market will bear" prices through a third-party Amazon seller, but maybe I get lucky at some random Target or even wal-mart run.)

I still enjoy these. Part of it is the little surprise of "which pony will I get," part of it is these are just small and cute and are fun to line up on shelves.

Okay, one more:

"Berry Preppy," who does not look outstandingly preppy to me. (I went to prep school and also grew up in a time and a place where some people treated "The Preppy Handbook" as a sort of fashion Bible), but whatever.*

She is apparently friends with Neigh Sayer (I guess he can have more than one friend for more than one thing) because she "shares the latest fashions" with him.

Um. okay. Not sure about that. Neigh Sayer confirmed as drag pony?

(*My style sometimes borders on preppy - I like classic tailored things that last well and don't go out of style - but most of the preppy ATTITUDES were extremely off-putting to me. And still are. And I don't JUST mean the "walking around kind of half-sloshed all the time" kind.)