November verse 18 &19: 29 and 30/11 Using the rhyme words from Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, stanza 11.29 and 11.30 As 2020 nears completion, gurgling swiftly down time's drain, and leaves behind its vast accretion of damaged lives, despair, rage, pain, let's build our souls some insulation, not give way to desperation, put our faith in humankind and the power of the mind. May politicians' treachery be no more wrapped in pious sighs (no way to hide their lyin' eyes), buffoonery and lechery in office meet with decent scorn and find they are no longer borne. Greenhouse gas accumulation challenges the world's combined resourcefulness. The fermentation of bullshit would leave us resigned to dying off without compunction, but we can overcome disjunction. The clock is nearing 12 at night but tunnel's end shows flicking light: I'll join a crowd, not be a stranger, join hands, write letters, march, and then do it again, again, again. It's hard to face how real the danger, feel climate grief, but then the lust for life kicks in. In science I trust.
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- SBS: World on Fire, Season 1 (Peter Bowker 2019) 20 January 2021A series about world War Two that focuses on a diversity of characters, including African Americans, gay men, women, a person with epilepsy, Poles, Germans, a US journalist working in Germany, working class English, a man with 'shellshock' from WW1, a refugee child, a Mosley supporter, Jews, Catholics, Anglicans ...
- Vienna Blood, Season 1 (Steve Thompson 2019) 18 January 2021Based on books by Frank Tallis, this is a stock odd-couple crime series, with the extra twist that it''s set in eary 20th century Viena, so Freud, Mahler, and other luminaries appear in walk-on moments.
- Kenny (Clayton Jacobson 2006) 17 January 2021Shane Jacobson is Kenny in this mockumentary about a man who looks after temporary toilets at big events. It's a wonderful film, and it's taken me all this time to see it. Not least of the pleasures is that it feels like a family affair: Shane Jacobson wrote it with is brother, who directs it, and their father plays their film father, Shane's […]
- My Salinger Year (Philippe Falardeau 2020) 17 January 2021Joanna SMith Rakoff spent a year working in a literary agency and wrote a memoir about it. The hook is that J D Salinger was the agency's key client and protecting his privacy posed big ethical dilemma's for the naive Rakoff. But the culture of the agency and of young ambitious literary types in New York City is the meat. I enjoyed this a lot. Sigo […]
- Age of Adaline (Lee Toland Krieger 2015) 16 January 2021Silly, and surprisingly moving story about how terrible it is to be forever young! Ellen Burstyn and Harrison Ford in secondary roles lift it out of the shallows.
- SBS: World on Fire, Season 1 (Peter Bowker 2019) 20 January 2021
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