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Derek’s Mildly Useful Reviews – The Hitman’s Bodyguard

I suck at doing reviews. Still, I feel the need to express my opinions about various things. So, for my first mildly useful review, “The Hitman’s Bodyguard”.

TL;DR – Amusing as hell with a decent amount of pleasing action tropes

The Good:

1. Ryan Reynolds

2. Samuel L. Jackson

3. Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson playing off of each other

4. Lots of gunfights, chases, and explosions

5. Selma Hayek

The Bad:

1. Plot barely hangs together

2. Reynolds love story is kinda stupid

3. This is not “John Wick” with better actors

Going To Do My Civic Duty

I got something that I haven’t gotten for about fifteen years – a jury summons. It’s been even longer than that since I sat at the courthouse waiting to be called. That got me to thinking of what has changed in my thinking since the last time I sat in the pool.

1. I started carrying a gun on a regular basis. That alone has radically shifted my worldview, but then I attended trainings and started learning about the legalities of self defense – and the intricacies of the legal system.

2. I don’t have the automatic deference to police that my younger self had. Because of the powers that a police officer are granted, I’m more likely to hold them to a higher standard.

3. I don’t trust forensics as much as I used to. Some forensic tools, such as DNA testing, were developed through rigorous processes, and are generally reliable. Others, such as handwriting and hair analysis, were developed in crime labs, and are less reliable. Then there’s the small item of the numerous lab scandals.

4. I no longer expect the heroic prosecutors and scumbag defense attorneys. If anything, I don’t trust either side. Probably about as much as I trust MSNBC and Fox to present their cases.

And now I have to go through my EDC and start yanking out stuff that is not allowed at the courthouse. That may take a bit.

Derek’s Week In Review

Sunday – I hope the eclipse will be cool.

Monday – Eclipse is fucking cool!

Tuesday – 25 hour road trips aren’t as easy as I remember.

Wednesday – Beefs O Brady’s is hard when you’re on a diet

Thursday – Traffic is a bitch. Work insane. What exactly did I do to incur this karma?

Friday – Even after a two-day work week, I’m still glad for the weekend.

Saturday – Why am I so addicted to ridiculous and sappy shows? I should be doing something more productive. After another episode.

Software For Writing

For my birthday last month, The Brother bought me the Windows version of Scrivener. I’d heard a lot about from the Mac users, so I was willing to give it a shot. I also picked up the iOS version, because I do a lot of my writing on my iPad and iPhone. Here’s what I’m liking so far:

1. The project folders – everything you need for your writing project can be stored in a folder, including text, PDFs, pictures. You can be as extensive or as concise as needed.

2. Syncing – So far, linking Scrivener and Dropbox has allowed seamless syncing across all of my writing platforms. This was an issue when I was using Byword and Editorial, as I would occasionally get conflicting versions from different platforms.

My biggest issue with Scrivener right now is that it does not support markdown. Part of it is that I’ve been writing in markdown for the past few years, so it’s instinctive, but another is that I don’t have to go looking for buttons or highlight text when I want to do bold or italics. Really important when writing on the phone.

Overall, I’d suggest giving it a shot.

Florida Executed A Murderer, And That’s Not A Good Thing

One of the many reasons I hate the current state of the judicial system – it has forced me to be against the death penalty.

I don’t think it’s morally wrong to put certain people to death. There are some crimes that are too heinous and some people who are too dangerous that I truly believe the death option needs to be there.

However, with something where someone is paying the one penalty with no reversal, the most rigorous safeguards should be in place to prevent an innocent person being executed. Except, the people charged with ensuring those protections are enforced are instead ignoring them. Particularly, the prosecutors.

Time and again we see prosecutors breaking evidentiary rules to win a conviction. We see people let off of death row because of evidence suppressed by the prosecution.

So thank you to all the scumbag prosecutors. Thank you for making me want to save the life of a murderer.

Story Idea – Narrative Cop

I’ve been binging the latest season of Hawaii Five-O. I don’t know why I enjoy it.

The show’s tropie, oversimplified, and generally a popcorn action flick every episode.

While watching, an idea came to me. A cop show/novel/story where the protagonist is considered a brilliant detective. Why, because (s)he can identify the narrative and solve the crimes based on how it interacts with the current media narrative.

Uniform Cop: The deceased is a known gang member who was seen making a drug buy two days ago. Probably killed by a rival gang.

Narrative Detective: No, I talked to his relatives outside. He was turning his life around. This was a corporate hit. Probably some nefarious scheme to keep essentials out of the hands of the poor.

Language and Cultural Appropriation

One of my weekly podcasts is Econtalk. This week’s was on the changing nature of language. Highly recommend, especially if you constantly feel the need to correct people’s grammar.

As a writer, it’s important to understand how language is used – especially for dialogue. Knowing the “rules” helps to properly convey the movies in my head to the reader’s. Much to the frustration of many an instructor or curmudgeon, language is not static. Especially not the English language. The meaning of words and the usage of words change. Trying to force people to use “proper” English (or whatever language) is in the end, foolish.

And now we get to the second half of today’s title. Culture, like language, is not static. No one practices the same culture as their ancestors did. Cultures change with technology and new ideas. Moreover, cultures share and absorb new things as their practitioners come into contact with others. In short, appropriation is a feature, not a bug.

Total Eclipse of 2017 (Turn Around, Bright Eyes!)

At the beginning of August, The Brother and I decided to drive up and see if we could catch the eclipse. The plan was simple. Choose an out of the way place, drive up, see the eclipse, and drive back to Tampa. Based on the horror stories, we expected there was a very good chance we would miss it because of traffic jams prevention is from reaching the totality zone.

We left Tampa around midnight Sunday night/Monday morning. The Brother mapped out a route to Greenville, South Carolina. The first leg was simple. Take 75 North until we hit Macon, Georgia. The second leg would be state roads the rest of the way up. Since my brother had a wrestling event the night before, I was going to drive at least the first leg. While my brother dozed, I cleared out my significant backlog of podcasts.

At Macon, we stopped for food, and looked at our mapped route. It wasn’t to Greenville. The Brother routed us to Greentown. Still in the totality zone, and about twenty minutes closer. We considered the mistake serendipitous and went out into the early morning. Every twenty miles I kept expecting to hit traffic. Nothing. The roads were gloriously free of anything resembling a backup. About the only issue was we had to do a detour shortly after crossing into South Carolina due to a bridge being out. Of note, we passed an establishment named “Yo Mama’s Cooking Restaurant.” We both found this witty and amusing. We might have been tempted to stop, but neither of us are into soul food.

We pulled into Greentown around 10. Being the introverts that we are, The Brother and I eschewed the town’s various events and found the perfect place to ensconce ourselves – a Panera. We had air conditioning, easy access bathrooms, and Wifi. In short, civilization. As we sat in Panera, there was concern as the clouds rolling in. Feck. Did we just drive all that way and not be able to see the sun? We did our best to be nonchalant and agreed that even if we couldn’t see the sun, at least we’d see everything go dark.

1:30 – We used the special glasses and looked up. The sun looked like an Apple logo. Very cool. We returned to the AC and waited.

2:30 – nine minutes to go. The Brother and I step outside. Wait. Did my transitions lenses darken? Nope. That was an almost totally occluded sun. And not a cloud in the sky. I put in my earbuds and flipped on Holst’s “Mars, The Bringer of War.”

2:39 – Total Eclipse – Twilight in the middle of the day. Somehow, I timed the music perfectly. As the strong music boomed in my ears, I was looking at the corona of the sun. The black orb with flames of silver dancing along its edge. It was awesome It was glorious. It was an entire thesaurus’s worth of superlatives. It is a sight I will treasure for all of my days.

Definitely worth the twenty-five hours.

Time For Unpopular Opinions

1. Confederate statues – I think they should be taken down. People shouldn’t be forced to pay for art that is offensive, whether it be a statue of a fighter for slavery or a jar of piss with a cross in it.

That being said, if local groups want to raise funds and move the statues to private property and spend their own money on upkeep, go ahead.

And yes, I’ve seen the George Orwell quote ad nauseam. First, if you want to remember your history, pay for it. Also, there’s how many books, films, and Wikipedia articles of the Civil War?

2. President Trump – Bumbled a golden opportunity to support free speech and decry the violence on both sides. Instead he gave the packs of jackels everything they wanted. Because he’s such a mealy mouthed boor with no articulable values, everyone gets to project their desires onto him and read into his words what they want. And would someone on his team get him off Twitter?

3. The “Alt-Right” coalition – A pathetic bunch of losers following dead religions in hopes of some relevance. Everyone thinks Trump emboldened them (including themselves), but really it was the left’s hatred of Trump and need to link him with scum that shone a big limelight on these pathetic losers. (Tikinacht? Really? Who thought this was a good idea?)

Oh and to the “alt-right,” even though I’ll defend your right to peaceably assemble and spew their brain dead dogma, please don’t confuse that with agreement. Any of you who raise a hand to my friends that you consider “subhuman” will quickly find yourself stopped with all legal and necessary force. And I really don’t give a damn if you survive the experience.

4. The “Ctrl-Left” / Antifa / Counterprotesters – They are not righteous heroes, but rather the flip-side of the alt-right. They have no problem with violence against those who disagree with them and also subscribe to discredited religions.(Seriously, the communist regimes made Hitler look like a piker when it came to state-sponsored mass murder.)

Your temper tantrums do not make you look like valiant, they make you look like thugs. If you want to be taken seriously, stop.

Same warning as above in regards to threats to my friends you don’t like.

5. The Media – Yes, you hate Trump. We get it. We also get that you have the attention span of a cocaine-infused ferret. Your breathless reporting of anything that can be remotely considered bad for the administration is tiring and unhelpful.

Fox, you’re the inverse, except just as tiring and unhelpful.