Yes, by the look of me, the army pants, the leather jewelry, the tactical watch, the belt knife, the jungle-ready canvas bag and the dark glasses, you may think I am just coming from securing a prehistoric archaeological dig and on my way to fight a zombie outbreak, I frown and walk like I mean business. I mean, you can tell I can assemble an AK47 with my eyes tied. 

I also carry a plushie octopus in the bag and hide behind books when perfectly polite people approach me to shake my hand. 

Like, seriously, don't talk to me. I prefer aloneness. 

Little pleasures (Just saying, lining sticky paint is not as easy as it looks :D )

 

Army of the Dead, 2021

So, as fuckable villains go, this movie certainly has one, albeit he looks a bit Uruk Hai-ish in some scenes and it would not be the first deranged zombie I find romantically interesting, but for a change, there is at least a sense of character to him - how rarely do you go into a zombie movie and expect to root for the villains? With the exception of a crappy dull romance comedy from a few years ago, warm Bodies, I think it was, zombies rarely have anything to say. Even there, the guy eventually reverted. I would have loved to see a lot more of their hierarchy and stories.

So, the first rule for this flick is, do not, and I stress again, do NOT use your brain to watch it. It spoils the mood. The story makes absolutely no sense. I agree when people say that Snyder gets shit for not being Milosh Forman or some such, because if you go into this movie aware it's a retarded parody, it's one of the more enjoyable ones. The budget was impressive, the cast is lovely, (also re-cast is one of the cooler characters), the kills are awesome and the drama is peppered in, just enough to make you invested. You hate the slimy rapist guard, you feel bad about the dead baby alien zombie and you feel like shit when Dave Bautista dies. That man is HUGE, by the way. Holy fucking cow, those biceps. 

Plus, you know, you get to see Vegas all fucked up, complete with zombie tigresses, ravaging strippers and explosions and there's Wagner and time paradoxes and architecture models with little helicopters on them and YouTubers being YouTubers and LOTS of shooting big fat guns. And there's a lot of negative commentary on the subject of slo-mo and depth-of-field, but I love that! I always loved a good death-of-field shit, COMBINED with slo-mo! Whoo! The glitter on the queen's dress, when she is going out of focus, or the scene where Zeus comes in from behind the plastic curtains. Come on. That's majestic. Anyone can make a depressing gloomy crappy dystopian wasteland zombie movie. But this is a Vegas zombie movie. there's sequins and Liberace and shit. 

Since they mentioned it, everyone was hoping for that rain, right? :D

 LOL, I feel like I'm turning into a cat - I just received a monthly dose of vintage stickers, but you should see the adorable sleeve folder it arrived into! The packaging was almost more exciting than the goodies! :D

In other news, I am almost done with the Summer batch (I think it's 12. No idea. Too overwhelmed with work.) and it was a doozy. Over 100 original paints, three huge sets, several granulating extras, three sets of trinkets and that's just the first output - sets and adventure sets will come much later! Plus, of course, a lot of old primaries, and I have some more pigment to make them, but I'm running out of stamina. I have to make the final fillings on these, several freaking huge trays of 'em, and then make their swatches. I hope I don't run out of paper. I bought all of the paper of that fav sort in the land. Not to mention we are almost out of money. I've taken a month longer than I thought I would. But at least for now, I should be well set until August. Oooh, the yummy paints!!

Oh, did I mention, I had another tick the size of a labrador - it burrowed into the front calf and it felt like someone is pinching the bone. I made the mistake of googling what tick jaws actually look like. Between that and zombie movies with fuckable antagonists, this was another unpleasant parasite encounter. namely, the second time the damage done literally turns into a bruise. Okay, the first one was on my tummy and tummy skin is thin. Fine. But lower leg?? It HURT having it pulled, it took a while and the damn thing caused freaking vascular damage. What happened to all those ticks you barely noticed and left but a mosquito bite? I had thousands, they were but a nuisance as one worries about deseases. But these are getting freaking ridiculous. 

It's still raining all the time. We have no opportunity to mow the vineyard and the bees have nothing to eat. We have to feed them all the time. Other than that they are adorable. Busy bees. All but one hive are really pleasant to inspect. The satanic one is as satanic as ever. I have to make sure G doesn't make duplicates out of that one. They have a temper like a kicked wasps nest. 

Stupid heat almost killed me ...

Mum realised I wasn't kidding when I mentioned four or five times the vineyard needs to be strayed, but we were running out of time in between rainy weeks and the General was at work, so I figured, what the heck, the grapes are just budding, I can do that by myself in a couple of hours... 

Well, yes. In theory. First, I almost always, always need to buy a new spray pump, as the old ones simply fall apart - and I can only use a 5 liter one, because I am not strong enough to carry 10 liters up and down the hill all day. Having forgotten my wallet, mum had to drive me to the Home Depo and mum's a terrible driver. Next, when it's two people spraying, one keeps bringing the material to the one with the pump - in my case, it was just me. And our hill is freaking steep. 

Then it got hot. It was already around noon, windy and clouds were to bring rain in the eve, but mum asked to start at nine - as I usually prefer to start at dawn. It got SO hot. I didn't think it will take me that long, so I didn't bring any water. This resulted in me sobbing, gasping in a shadow of a forest edge, being stung by flies and feeling like a bunch of ticks are crawling all over me. I was purple, shaking all over (keep in mind one needs to be dressed head to toe while using those chemicals.) Fuck it was hot. I almost considered drinking from a rainwater tank, but managed to drag myself back to the house. Had to take a pill for the horrid headache dehydration invited, and slept a little, while the General got back from work, caressing my hair like I was a decrepit field donkey. Later, when it got cloudy and I've rested, it was fun to work again. It just took six hours longer than I anticipated. 

Where will I hide from the summer heat if the theatres are all closed? 

A delicious bike ride up the valley, to get myself some coffee and a crumpet of cake...

 ... and I thought of the perfect first line for my book. 

Gods I miss Sabriel ... (Tried to watch another awful YA Netflix snooze fest ... why do I do this to myself?)

 

I cannot get over how dumb these shows are. Like they’re made for eleven-year-olds with a learning disability. (Despite overwhelming evidence against it, there ARE good YA books out there …) The characters are sooooo cliché it’s painful to watch. The arch of the underwear-models-early-twenties super-capable multiracial extra-woke villains who aren’t really (I know! I was so shocked! It’s like I’m watching Firefly for children!) is so predictable, it can be skipped entirely and you’ll still know exactly what happened. (They’re not really greedy villains?! Friendship is better than money?!?) There’s a grown woman obsessed with waffles. No, I didn’t write that wrong. Not opals. Or sables. Or Russo-Baltique. Waffles. Grown woman, not a small boy. Which, by the way, are shown Belgian in the show, zero to do with fake tsar Russia, a land where neither uniforms nor weapons involve in hundreds of years and they need a whole wagon of child cartographers to chart a fully populated, fully known region, for some reason. There’s a woman with no issue spying on her son’s sex life and, yes, you might have guessed it, the protagonists are orphans. Who manage to find their inner power due to goodness of their hearts and dire straits. It is sooooo… freaking boring. I just cannot get over how ret*rded the Fold is. Like … three hundred years later? They haven’t built a mountain pass or negotiated a route with the northern-convenient-plot-barrier folk? They HAVE to try and SAIL through the WIDEST part on OPEN sailboats, with zero bars or cages or armor, standing, looking around stupid, shocked, with NO weaponry, ballistic countermeasure (a little net? No? Not even a small with two stones on it?) or even slightly bigger crossbows? Seriously? They’re just … sliding buffets in winter costume, screaming in the fog for 300 years? I’ll give points for Ben Barnes’s effort, but the rest … Come ON show. You’re forcing me to read a YA book to see whose fault this is and I have so many more important things to do …

"If you played a song on your flute, there would be a lot more people crying..."

Well, that was that. We loaded mum, drove to cousin Dana's house (Only missed one exit on the highway, which is not bad, considering we had a printed map, car navigation and me on Google maps...), drove to the Funeral home, where two extremely casually dressed people handed us the bill and I asked about the identification chip for the ashes. The guy produced the broken lid of the original urn and a palm-fitting clay chip, actually truly pleasant to behold. He washed them first a little, they were dusty. 

          The undertaker gentleman conversed with dana and we Drove to the forest, spontaneously being joined by my sis, whose directions up until then were approximate, because her boyfriend recognised Dana's car from two harvests ago. He's a mechanic, so it's his thing, but well done! Sis and BF brought dogs, but only theirs opted to play around, mum's dog didn't want to get out. I guess the energy was way off. Speaking with the undertaker, I learned we could have tossed dad's ashes into the river at any time, because they do it all the time. Well, fuck. We know for the next time, I guess.

          Though I've blocked my rude brother for his relentless behaviour, we texted him the location and after a while, he and some other people he decided to bring along despite our request of keeping it intimate (plus, regulations still dictate an assembly of maximum ten individuals.), showed up. The undertaker poured the ground white little gravel around the woods a bit, and the whole thing lasted two minutes. We stood in silence, bit not wanting to be the first to leave, then I took the box I had and put it in the middle of the ashes. (I packed some home soil, a vine branch, a bee (already dead), his favourite garlic lard spread, some of his old wristwatches and a tiny letter ..) Mum asked if I can collect some of the ashen gravel. Technically we could have collected most of it and there was a lot, but there seemed no need - it was such a pretty forest, just outside his village and the ashes really didn't mean much to anyone, at least none of us. 

         To me, the entirety of the event was completely surreal. I even thought for a moment I am completely okay and over the whole grief and utterly soul-crushing helpless emptiness until I almost vomited. People were trying to talk to me, but I kept looking away and the General, having had his own private moment with the site and having marked the tree so we'll find it if we ever come by again, acted as my rottweiler, making sure people don't ask me any questions. 

         Dana and her sister - and I will never as long as I live know which one is which - asked us to come over for some coffee and cake and because they are some of the nicest, liveliest people I have ever known, nobody objected. I needed a moment away from everyone, to not really cry, just ... not vomit ... while my brother smoked his cigar-sized blunt and then proceeded to loudly explain to everyone how poorly his business is going. In the meanwhile, his retarded fucking son was telling mum how he doesn't really believe in precautions and how he refuses to wear a mask. He was telling this to a woman who just lost her husband of 50 years to Covid. 

           Don't vomit. Don't vomit. 

         Checking earlier, when we were first here, I noticed behind the mineral-water-filling station (the most famous one in the country), there is supposed to be a tiny petting zoo! They have porcupines and capibaras and whatnot! So I asked the General to let me out of his sight for 20 minutes, while I go look for it. I didn't get far, it was windy AF, nor did I really have much sense of where I was going; I just needed air. My niece, who's extremely rarely showed any interest in my company at all, came after me. Normally I'd be curious about that, but in truth, I had nothing to say. She said she hopes I'm not upset they came, as my brother said mum changed her mind and all are welcome (that never happened. He lied.) I said I don't really care either way. Her mother is nice, though, she has a really nice voice and seems genuine when expressing interest. I wouldn't mind seeing them again, though I am running out of relatives I wish to see again. I mean, they never visit us. 

           We drove back, pleasantly, mum having relaxed in the car - it's a comfy, safe car and the General knows how to drive jumpy ladies - except for a few sharp turns, which she explained were turns dad failed to stick to. Seems they had a tempestuous relationship with many sharp turns, mum and dad. Anyway, we got mum home, sis and BF having already brought up the dogs, and G and I went back to the city and I got us some burgers. Then we went to bed and it started to rain. 

I've not seen the stars for so long, they've since changed position ...

The days are still impossibly bad because of what's been happening, but to weather through, I've tasked myself with cleaning some of the family paintings, unearthing them from 40 years of nicotine in my parents' house. Some require a little warm water and a Q tip, others an iron scrubber and a flame thrower.