The Art of the Perfect Day

Lately, I've been writing a lot of long-winded rants about the ways of the world, making it out to seem a lot more wicked than it might potentially be. While the world is still trying to kill all of us with the threat of COVID looming over us like the sword of Damocles, embodying the very nature of pure fear and danger. It's been rough. But I think I've finally hit that sweet spot where I'm not going to bitch about how bad COVID is, and cry about how I can't hang out at Starbucks or hang out with girls at the bar. 

Consider the alternative. Positive energy, good vibes, hippie energy, essentially. This is where the Beatles come in for me. With the godlike good vibes of the Beatles, there are no limits to what you can, imagine. 

Consider how difficult it would be for you to have a perfect day. Well, I had a perfect day today. Nothing got to me and it was just lovely. I want to live every day in a positive way like this. It's like a superpower. But it isn't easy. Nothing you can do if you want to sing the blues but you know it don't easy. Every day is a constant uphill battle. But you can't let the fuckers get you down. 

Here are some tips and tricks that help me practice The Art of the Perfect Day.    

1) Read books, not articles. 

A lot of people wake up in the morning and they read the news and then follow it up with either more news articles or other articles about various subjects they're interested in. While I think reading the news is essential, I don't think you should solely only read the news, nor solely read articles. If you do, you're reading potential is sorely wasted. In fact, I would say that reading the news isn't even reading, it's just politics and keeping up to date. The sheer intellectual stimulation you get from reading a great book or even a mediocre book that interests you is so powerful that there's almost no other source like it aside from maybe something like LSD. Again, no limits to what you can, imagine. 

2) Talk to people, really talk and understand.

When you talk to people, are you really listening? Are you giving them your full attention and respect? One of the things in life that is hard to get in this day and age is a good, sentimental education. With this, you will learn to treat people with dignity and respect. You will learn to treat the janitor with the same respect as the CEO. People that don't understand this don't make it far in life; their wives leave them and take the kids, they lose their top pay CEO positions, they even fail their careers and end up unemployed or worse. You don't learn this from college and sometimes even parents don't understand or know how to teach this. It comes with wisdom, age, and experience. 

3) Relax, don't try to control everything.

Take a chill pill and mellow out sometimes. Remember that you can't control everything, especially people, their actions, and their thoughts. I've worked with a lot of managers who stress out to the point of exhaustion. This is very common. This is a big no-no in life and it holds them back, as well as making them stand out like a sore thumb. While you can't be a complete hippie freak and let your freak flag fly high all the time, you should at least know how to play it cool, so cool that nobody sees you freaking out under pressure, no matter how much pressure it is. Take your time. Do things at a reasonable pace. Don't make mistakes. But if you do, don't freak out about it, just fix it, but again, be reasonable about it. If it's a serious mistake, admit to your faults, and move on. 

4) Get a little help from your friends.

Use all your friends and family to your advantage. They're there to be there for you. Feel free to lean on them in times of trouble. Likewise, always help them whenever they need you. With a little help from your friends, you can really get by.   

5) Realize that things are getting better all the time. Sometimes you have to learn to see the sunny side of the street. People really hate being around negative people all the time. It's a fact that they are the worst. Likewise, people who are always overly positive can be annoying. But consider the fact that the overly positive person is much more likable than the negative person. The positive person has a better personality and probably has an easier time getting through their day, and consequently, through much practice in good mindsets, even has a better life.

One day doesn't change all the other days. But's it good practice. Life's a bitch, and then you die. Better make the best of it and enjoy it to the fullest. 

"The teachers that taught me weren't cool, holding me down, turning me round, filling me up with your rules. I've got to admit it's getting better, a little better all the time." 

Disenchantment, A Riff on Fantasy

Disenchantment is a new comedy animated show written by Matt Groening (Futurama, The Simpsons) and Josh Weinstein (The Simpsons). The show is about a princess who's friends with an elf who loves her and a demon who's possessed her for life. Its a fantasy inspired show with Futurama artwork. Not only do we get the characteristic Futurama style artwork, we also get the humor, albeit much dryer in the first couple episodes. 

Characters
Bean is an alcoholic bad girl princess to a terrible King who beheads and kills his subjects all the time. She's no saint herself, accidentally sending people to their deaths and such. She is a bad egg, a misfit, which might be because her mother was turned to stone when she was a kid and she's longed for her ever since. Likewise, her father is hell bent on getting the Elixir of Life, in order to restore his ex-wife, even though he remarried and even has a son with the new wife, an heir to the throne. 

Elfo is an elf who's completely ignorant of most things. He left his elf kingdom and almost died before he met Bean. Bean's father, King Krog keeps him alive because he believes he needs elf's blood in order make the Elixir of Life. 

Lucy
Lucy is a demon that possessed Bean when she opened up this bottle in the castle. He's the devil's advocate in every way, causing Bean to make horrible mistakes, ruining her relationships even more. Everyone thinks he's a talking cat. Despite being a terrible person, he's one of the more likable characters, joke-wise. 

The early episodes are slow and have almost rocky starts. This isn't a show that immediately envelops you in laughs. Rather, it makes you work for it, like a art-style science fiction novel, I'm thinking of Neal Stephenson, that kind of thing. Where you might enjoy the writing style, but its so dense that it takes you a long time before you get to the meat and potatoes of the story or what the writer intends to say. Same thing with Disenchantment. 

Slow early episodes
Things don't really start to become interesting until episode four, with each episode being 30 minutes that means you have to sit through almost two hours before things get rolling into a comfortable drama with jokes. In a way I've come to expect this, especially as a modern literary device, where writers can spend forever building up one idea, only for it to come to fruition and finish in two seconds. 

There are certain episodes where Bean does just this. She's put into a confrontational situation and she panics and we are wondering what she will do. Instead of something interesting or grandiose, she instead comes to a conclusion in two seconds, the plot is finished, episode done, fin. 

Now, I can certainly be critical here and say this is a result of lazy writing. It could be for all we know, we weren't there when they wrote it in their work room. However, it might not be lazy writing, perhaps they saw the easy way out and just went with the easiest solutions. Either way, I don't see it as entirely bad. Its just a cartoon after all. 

One of my favorite episodes was this one where Bean gets exorcised by a creepy guy who imprisons Lucy, and plans to throw him in a volcano at the top of a mountain, think Mordor. Turns out he had tons of Lucy's demon race people and he was throwing them all to their deaths! Bean almost falls into the volcano in order to save Lucy from death. Quite the surprise because we are given an understanding that none of these characters care about anything. When the old creepy priest is throwing demons to the fire, a female demon shouts out,"I possessed your aunt and she loved every second of it!"

End of season thoughts
The show takes a surprising twist near the end of the series when they get the actual Elixir of Life, and Bean uses it on her mother's stone corpse, which reanimates her to life. What will begin in season 2 will be a much different altogether piece of work, where Bean isn't at the beck and whim of her father, where she will be able to drink with her mother, and who knows, go on a quest and become a real warrior? They've been nudging Bean unto the warrior path a little bit. Which brings me to my next point. 

Is this real Fantasy? 
Have any of the writers of this show every read any real fantasy novels? Perhaps they have, and perhaps they haven't. I certainly haven't read any comedy fantasy novels, although I'm certain they exist. This isn't your high fantasy like Ursula K LeGuin or even low pop fantasy like Game of Thrones. In a way its just a fantasy skin, other than the fact that the time period is like the Middle Ages, albeit with swords and sorcery, this isn't like CS Lewis or Tolkien come to cartoon. Its video-gamish at times. There's a scene where the gang is flying atop a griffin, which is stereotypical of World of Warcraft fast traveling.

Critics of the show say it isn't fantasy enough, it doesn't satisfy fantasy fans. I say its okay, but that it needs to supercharge it fantasy credentials into high gear for season 2, otherwise I would say its pandering to the nerdy, intellectual, female, fantasy crowd. 

Female Lead
I've talked to friends about the show and some of them can't get into the female protagonist perspective. He said,"I don't find her funny." I think that's sexist, but perhaps this is a trend. By making progressive shows about female lead characters, TV shows are having an influence on gender politics and such. I think its great. In fact, I can relate to Bean in many ways, not because she's a girl but because of her alienation, which could be a symptom of being a woman in this universe. If the female protagonist is going to become a trend, I think its a good one because women aren't main characters much on TV (I mean this loosely, as the show is a Netflix exclusive). Its a nice touch. 

The verdict 
Although this show isn't as great as Futurama or The Simpsons I'm sold. I found it so good that I finished season 1 in three days, which is pretty fast for me because I don't watch TV shows too much. I see the entire first season as a slow buildup for more hip and happening fantasy-driven plot in season 2. I think that will be what brings in even more fans, and we'll see if the writers can 1) write better 2) write real fantasy 3) do more interesting things with the characters. I think if they do these things the show will not only become more popular, but develop into a cult classic, a new part of the geek culture, although in some ways it already is. Check out the show now, its on Netflix. 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a drama movie written, directed, and produced by Martin Mcdonagh. The film follows a mother who puts up three billboards outside her town after the police fail to find out who raped and killed her daughter. Its been seven months and no arrest. These billboards say "RAPED WHILE DYING", "AND STILL NO ARRESTS?", and "HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?" Needless to say this polarizes the community.

Actress Frances McDormand plays such a fantastic grieving mother and we feel so much sympathy for her despite her doing some terrible and illegal things like setting the police building on fire and insulting the dignity of a midget (Peter Dinklage) that wanted to take her out to dinner and be there for her in a trying time.

The movie mostly revolves around a white town (in Missouri) that is pretty damn racist, where most of the cops are country hicks, real redneck types. The movie is about the characters and emotional seriousness that isn't seen too often in Hollywood blockbusters. This one is a little sad. In the end we don't know what emotions to have, other than the ones we initially had at the beginning of the film when she first puts up the bill boards.

The movie did very well at the box office. At the 75th Golden Globe Awards, the film won the awards for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Actress – Drama (McDormand), Best Supporting Actor (Rockwell), and Best Screenplay-wow! So the masses (regular johns) really loved this movie. I can see why, its quite effective at what it does, intrigue and inquiry, we want to keep learning more and more until the end where we get a non-ending. 

The film ends with a stupid cop and McDormand (playing Mildred, the grieving mother) going to the state of Idaho to find this guy who is supposedly a rapist, and even though the police commissioner told him that his dna didn't match the murdered girl's killer, they still want to go to his place and kill him. But they're not quite sure if they want to go on with the murder, so they agree that they will decide on the way there. That's how the movie ends, essentially a non-ending to which my friend said, "They're just going to end it like that." "Guess so." Its a pretty good ending for what I consider to be a non-linear movie.

The movie doesn't have any particular linear direction where it hits a climax and then things fizzle out, and then climax again, nothing really like that. Instead, a ton of different things happen throughout the film and all of it works in an effective way, everything has a lasting effect in the movie, its very well done. This movie is a more effective movie than The Shape of Water, which I also saw today. I would say this is the better movie but that I liked The Shape of Water better because fundamentally this movie is so serious and goes into the realm of losing a child in such a violent, brutal way, that in many respects I just can't understand that. I can, but only up to a point. The movie is quite transgressive, but again, in a effective way. You should definitely see it if you haven't yet.

Mildred Hayes: So how's it all going in the nigger- torturing business, Dixon?
Dixon: It's 'Persons of color'-torturing business, these days, if you want to know. And I didn't torture nobody.