Had a meeting and have changed my work plans for the first half of this year to make them more reliable but also more restrictive. A bit of a hassle since we’re off to Egypt soon, but necessary if I’m to take a long break in the summer. What I’ll be working on is moderately interesting, but starts with a particularly tedious job, which I should try to get out of the way as quickly as possible, as significant deadlines and stakeholders are involved, a deadly combination.
We finished The Last of Us last night, the TV series based on the video game (spoilers follow). The first season, of course. It was ok, nothing to my beloved Andor, with some directorial missteps (particularly galling as the director had a Muslim name). The final two episodes particularly were almost good but not quite good enough. Where the game went into surreal over-the-top-ness with the cannibal preacher the series tried to follow but didn’t quite throw its heart into it, and the cliched bit about the demonstrably very bad man showing he was even badder by threatening rape just annoyed me. The final episode had well-executed mass murder but a tinny emotional relationship around it, some filmically stupid moments (do not tell a psychokiller you are about to suck the brains out of his child unless after you have done so and also make sure he is fully restrained). The episode everyone seemed to really enjoy, including the GF, left me fairly cold, and my favourite character died in the second episode. Also there was the usual populist infusion of sentimentality and far too much backstory; no one should rely on backstory.
Well I enjoyed it more than I make it sound, and it was still better than The White Lotus and Chernobyl, of which the former was virtually AI-generated, and the latter was offensive twaddle (not as offensive as Barbie of course) written by the same fellow who wrote this screenplay.
In other words, to conclude and sum up, bah hum bug.
(I think I’m hungry)