I spent a day with…students!

It was strange. I’ve got to get used to this again. Today was another day for registering incoming first-year students, so I was guiding newbies through the process and making sure they were taking the right courses (for biology majors, it’s easy: take general chemistry. We can fix just about any other omission in your schedule in this first year, but if you don’t take that chemistry prerequisite for just about everything else in the curriculum, you’re screwed.) Once the required courses were set up, we wedge in a few other things, and voila, they’re on track. Then we let them toddle on home until August.

I also spent some time with the spiders, since I’ve finally got a male. I encouraged a mating, but he was shy, so I had to leave them overnight together, with a swarm of fruit flies, which I hope will dissuade her from munching on her lover. I’ll be in tomorrow morning, hoping I don’t find a corpse in the bridal bower.

Game of Thrones was a metaphor for the Democratic Party!

It’s all clear now. The series came to a slow, awkward close, by having all the complex story lines that had been building for years wrapped up by having a band-aid slapped on them. I’ll say that for it — it did end.

Then, to resolve who finally is going to sit on the throne of the seven kingdoms — you know, the whole core premise of the conflicts in the show — all the surviving noble leaders sit down and talk it out instead of murdering each other, which was weird and out of character. To decide who would be king, they then announce that stories are important, which I can agree with, and that the person who should be king is the one who has the most compelling, interesting life story, an idea only a writer could come up with. They think about it.

Would it be Arya, who fled the execution of her father, wandered up and down the country having adventures, trained in an exotic land to be a magical assassin, and who killed all of the zombies?

Would it be Sansa, the woman who went from a fawning child mooning over kings and queens, through a series of dynastic marriages and rapes and abuses to emerge a hardened, cynical queen of the North?

No, don’t be silly. They’re women.

Instead, they picked the most boring, mediocre guy in the whole show, the guy who spends most of his time staring vacantly into space, who just followed along in the wake of all the heroes in the series, who did nothing but pretended to know everything. He gets the throne for showing up. It seems “interesting story” is defined as “safe, harmless story”.

Obviously, the council of aristocrats who decided who is to be king is the DNC, and the show is prophesying that they’ll nominate Joe Biden, because he is the most mediocre white man they can find.

Only in this real world no one bothered to eradicate the zombie horde with Valyrian steel, so that pat decision isn’t going to end the conflict.

Winter is coming, we’re screwed.

Not a good day

Fresh off my horrible afternoon of bad entertainment, I’m going to have to watch another shitty piece of garbage in about an hour: the very last episode of Game of Thrones. This show has aggravated me for 8 years, and now they’re going to blow it up awkwardly in about an hour.

There are only two endings that I will find satisfying: 1) Benioff & Weiss are publicly beheaded, or 2) the peasants rise up and slaughter all the Lannisters and Starks and Whatevers and establish a democratic republic with no aristocrats. Both of these endings are fully compatible, and the best ending would combine the two.

I doubt I will be satisfied, and I very much doubt that Weiss & Benioff have the talent to come up with a better alternative.

Unplanned

Holy shit, that was bad. As I mentioned before, several local church groups booked the Morris Theater to show the Pure Flix piece of crap, Unplanned, so I attended today to have an informed perspective on the movie. It was worse than I expected. It’s pure nonstop defamation of Planned Parenthood from beginning to end, and doesn’t really address any of the issues behind abortion at all — the whole goal is to demonize abortion and family planning.

Unfortunately, the theater was packed. They had clearly brought in several churchloads of people to see this thing, and it was intensely religious. They had 4 pastors and the director of Options for Women, one of those bogus nothingburger outfits that claims to provide alternatives for women who find themselves pregnant, but really, as the director announced, only provides a “passion and love for Jesus”. There was an opening prayer, of course, and they announced that there were offering baskets in the lobby for donations on the way out.

I did not make a donation.

Then the movie began. (Warning: Spoilers Ahead. Not that you should care.) It was the story of Abby Johnson, supposedly, from her book, which we know to be full of lies. It starts with the earth-shaking abortion that never happened, in which Johnson is called to assist with the ultrasound in an abortion, and watches the little fetus struggle and squirm and claw at the sides of the uterus as it is sucked into a vacuum tube in extreme detail. They spent some money on this fake animation. You can see in exquisite focus its little fingers clutching vainly to prevent being aspirated to its doom, and then its head goes pop as it gets sucked in, and then we cut to the outlet tube, which is about an inch in diameter and quarts of blood, with lumps, are being pumped into a big bucket. It was gory and exaggerated to the point of absurdity.

Johnson runs wailing to the bathroom, tears pouring down her face. Then we cut back in time 8 years, and we’re going to follow her life leading up to this moment.

She volunteers to work for Planned Parenthood after college. Her first day on the job as a volunteer clinic escort, she demonstrates great compassion…for the protesters outside the gate. The protesters are very nice. When Johnson mentions that the dismembered fetus pictures and the guy dressed up as the grim reaper aren’t actually that nice, they assure her that they tell those freaks to stay away. It’s not their fault. They’re just praying.

Johnson does this frequently, maybe once successfully ushering a patient into the building, but even then she has to have a little discussion with the protesters. If the movie wanted to portray her as incompetent at her job, they succeeded.

We meet Cheryl, the director of the clinic. She is an evil witch: never smiles, the other workers go silent when she steps into the room, she’s heartless and unsympathetic. When Johnson gets pregnant, Cheryl urges her to get an abortion and suggests that she won’t be suited for the job if she doesn’t. Everyone has to wait for her to leave the office before they can throw a baby shower for her, that’s how cruel she is.

Another day, a dramatic event: a father brings his teenaged daughter in for an abortion. After the procedure, she’s sitting there with blood dribbling down — the doctor, who is presented as an unfeeling machine, has perforated her uterus. Everyone panics. They rush her into one of the clinic rooms, the doctor starts cursing, they’re stuffing gauze in her crotch that an ungloved, unwashed Johnson is handing to him. The clinic workers want to call 911 and get an ambulance there…Cheryl coldly says no, the protesters would love that, it would hurt their business, so they spend 5 hours putting the girl back together again. Cheryl isn’t worried, they’ll dope her with some strong drugs so she won’t remember a thing.

If that were a true story, that’s when Johnson should have insta-quit. The whole tale is unlikely, unethical, and not at all fitting with the mission of Planned Parenthood. I also wanted to scream out that if safe abortions are banned, there will be a lot more perforated uteruses in America.

Later, Johnson goes out to chat with the protesters again, talking about all the good Planned Parenthood does. They completly stump her by comparing abortion to slavery and the Holocaust. No, really, she immediately clamps her mouth shut and leaves.

Abby Johnson is really, really bad at her job.

Next comes an order from the state office to double the number of abortions, because they need more money for an expanded clinic. This makes no sense, because abortions are only a few percent of Planned Parenthood’s business, but this movie only shows abortions being done. No mammograms, no STD testing and treatment, no contraceptives, no education programs, nothing — only brutal, bloody, buckets of blood-style abortions of miserable, weeping women. Johnson is told that abortion is what pays for her salary, and once again, Cheryl shows contempt for people who have babies.

The next big event: George Tiller is murdered. Johnson is terrified. Who does she talk to for reassurance? Why, those nice abortion protesters, who are all sympathetic and regretful. Her Planned Parenthood colleagues, though, tell her that they were only showing false sympathy. No, the movie makers are not going to use the Tiller murder to allow any criticisms of these friendly protesters to show through.

Abby Johnson is threatened with firing, because she dared to criticize her boss for promoting more abortions, a convenient but completely fictitious explanation. We also get to see a worker wheeling out two 55 gallon drums for disposal. The protesters ask, “Is that what I think is in there?” He says yes, ambiguously. What I’d think was in there was dirty gauze and pads and old syringes and discarded latex gloves, on their way to an incinerator, but they ask to pray over it, and then babble about hundreds of dead babies in those gigantic drums. Yeah, right.

We get a reprise of the gory baby-sucking event, which is the first time Johnson has ever attended any of the medical procedures at the clinic, because she is not qualified to do any of it, and is more of administrator/clerical person, but this time she’s brought in to do the ultrasound, which she does like a real pro, getting amazing high-resolution images of a baby. I rather doubt that this event happened at all. It’s also unlikely because we have the records of all the abortions done at the clinic that day, and there was only one, of a 6-week fetus.

She quits. First she runs once again to the protesters, her very favorite people, but she’s finally out.

That’s kind of the story, except there’s a weird bit tacked on calculated to increase the perception of Evil Cheryl. They sue Abby Johnson (in real life, they only made a legal motion to prevent her from spreading confidential information, since she had had access to all those medical records). They hire a lawyer from a billboard, who is just played as smug, grossly over-confident, and smirking, which apparently the audience found hilarious. They laughed every time he announced that Planned Parenthood was going to get what they deserved.

This segment was really about making Cheryl a mouthpiece for their myths. She monologues evilly at Johnson, telling her that Planned Parenthood was “one of the most powerful organizations on the planet”, that they were a “billion dollar corporation”, that they were supported by “Soros, Gates, and Buffet” and nothing was going to stop their profits. When the motion to prevent Johnson from sharing confidential information was defeated, the audience cheered. Of course.

We’re finally done. Oh, that was painful. We also get the Breakfast Club Outro, in which we learn that Abby Johnson is currently on her 8th child.

It’s typical Pure Flix, unbelievable garbage in which they clearly have no knowledge of what clinic workers do or think, just as in God’s Not Dead they had negative knowledge of what philosophers teach. Their job is simply to represent the biases and stereotypes of their grossly ignorant audiences, and they do that well.

320 students dispatched

They’re off to join the workforce, or professional or grad school. We had UMM’s 56th commencement ceremony today. This is the view of a biology faculty member perched on the steps of the atrium, along with other bio faculty and bio grads, looking out at the sea of family members taking pictures of us all. It’s better than being on the red carpet at the Oscars, because we didn’t just churn out a few hours of entertainment, we created a small swarm of smarter, better educated humans.

Unfortunately, we all had to wear heavy medieval black robes rather than Givenchy and Versace. If we were to dress appropriately for the event, it ought to look more like the Met Gala. I wonder what the administration would think if we all agreed to go all out with fabulous outfits for commencement? The students would probably think it a fine idea.

The Buster Keaton Ballet

I don’t know how I can enjoy a movie where someone is shot in the head at close range every minute, but so help me, I do find the John Wick movies fun. I don’t know if it’s something wrong with me or with America, but they’re so over the top bonkers, while Keanu Reeves is so earnest, that you can’t take the murder sprees seriously. It also helps that it’s a fantasy world where there are avaricious assassins lurking everywhere, so when one of them leaps out at you with kung-fu or a big sword or a nasty looking gun, it’s perfectly excusable to shoot them in the head. What else could you do? Style points for executing them elegantly and brutally.

The movie is also self-conscious. I didn’t come up with the comparison in my title, the movie overtly references both Buster Keaton and ballet at several points. It combines the slapstick physicality of Keaton with the grace of a dance, although neither of those influences usually culminate in bloody violence. There is a kind of inevitability to the story, too. You know that when Reeves finds himself in a shop selling exotic knives, he will be breaking open every cabinet and throwing and stabbing and slashing with all of them. When he has a fight in a ritzy high end hotel with glass statuary lining the place, someone is going to get thrown into each and every one of them. It’s a thematic obligation, and it’s strangely satisfying when expectations are fulfilled.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum was predictably unpredictable, fun, and horrific, a nightmare where everything turns out OK. It also beautifully sets up John Wick: Chapter 4, so now I’m going to have to go see that as soon as it comes out.

Labor!

I am not used to this. I’m cleaning up the garage today, and it is a cluttered mess. My wife pointed out to me that there might be spiders in the debris, so of course I’m out there poking about and moving heavy objects and looking under old boards. I’ll probably be all worn out and sore tomorrow.

Tomorrow, by the way, is the UMM Commencement ceremony. I’ve got my strange medieval robes and funny hat all ready to go, and it’s going to be streamed live, so if you’re incredibly bored, you can watch me sweltering in the faculty stands somewhere in there.

Ugh. I just finished the major cleanup. I swept everything, turned over every box and mystery pile, went through it all with my acutely tuned eye for spiders…NOTHING. Not a one. I know they’re hiding somewhere in there, they’re just avoiding me.

Now we’re all sad and alone

We just got back from dropping Skatje and Iliana off at the airport — they’re on the way home. Now I have to go back to being my usual sour, cranky, black-hearted self.

I snapped that picture after telling Iliana, after a long, unpleasant drive, that now she gets to go home to her daddy. I think she only understood one word of that, but it was the important word.