On the strength of the internet saying "Oh wow that was SO COOL", we watched The Old Guard.

I enjoyed it! It felt solid, and included women talking together about women, women talking about powers, Black people having a conversation about a topic including nonwhite people, women having a conversation about domestic violence, and someone getting a richly deserved comeuppance.

It also is about a group of immortal mercenaries who put themselves in dangerous situations. On a scale from The Avengers to Kingsman, this is slightly below Kill Bill, with plot-important and visible gore, stabbings, and torture.

( Miscellaneous chatter about it, not trying to spoil the twists but not going out of my way to avoid things )


I got the call back from the phone repair place, who will be replacing my phone as the screen repair did not take. It still powers on and buzzes, but the screen just doesn't. Belovedest and I may attempt to extract some data, but I'm glad that pretty much everything I cared about on there is backed up elsewhere.

I was able to rescue all my open tabs, so there's that.


Today was hot. I'm very flomp.

I threw away a book today.

Before you go asking me what's wrong with me and should you be rushing me to the hospital -- it was Janelle Taylor's very forgettable Can't Stop Loving You. The book was damaged to start with: water-warped and bent and mildewed. It was one of the discards from easalle's living room floor, the ones that can't be re-sold in an online bookstore for even a fraction of cover price. The Law of Conservation of Characters determines that you know who the skunk is in a matter of pages. Not much suspense. It's written to about a fifth-grade reading level. It's internet-alarmist. It's "family-friendly" in the "small-town conservatism is a good thing" and "adoption was a mistake" fashion. I knew I was going to throw it out before I reached the halfway point, and I was wondering if I would throw it out before I reached the end.

I didn't.

I read it, I finished it, and then I started reading the book upside-down in favor of seeing the gruesome and bloody frames of Hostel. One of the IMDB users doesn't recommend it as a date movie. I don't recommend it as a plasma donation movie. So much so that I stuck around after I was done to specifically complain about the movie. I've never complained about a movie there before. Almost all the guys around me were going "Wow, awesome." I was not. I had the book up in front of my eyes so that I wouldn't be tempted to look at scenes involving manic would-be doctors with chainsaws. There are a lot of movies that get shown there that are tedious, or lacking taste, but this was downright gruesome and disgusting, and is definitely what should be an opt-in experience.

I have a new movie to recommend to Sis, though!