A bed of roses

Started the day with a bath. Such a luxury.

Got in an hour on Stray Blade, defeated part 2 of the boss, and found an out-of-the-way trophy. Next time I play, I find a way to track down part 3... or give up and watch a LP :D

I've also managed to make 2k words - now just under 8k. If I had written the minimum number of words per day, I'd be at 10,002; if I'd written my own target, I'd be at 12k. But the important thing is that the words just flowed, today.

And I've binged on The Lincoln Lawyer. I love the judge :D

My very left-wing fb friend had this to say this morning:
Too Big To Rig. Apparently, Harris won't concede any time soon, but there's no plausible steal here. The forward march of totalitarian-liberalism has hit a major bump in the road. Good. Hopefully, Tulsi and RFK will hold Trump's feet to the fire over Ukraine, Big Food, Big Pharma and he will put himself on the side of righteousness in the Middle East by demanding Netanyahu stops his carnage in Gaza and the Lebanon. Anyway, it's an amazing political comeback and only the truly joyless will begrudge him his victory. It's always nice when the People, anywhere, don't vote the way the Establishment tell them to, as with Trump and Brexit in 2016. Whatever happens now, we should celebrate and thank our Ameican cousins, especially Trump's overwhelmingly working class base.

I have zero faith that their 'hopes' will come to pass, but... well, if nothing else, Trump is a force of chaos, so you never know... And if he DOES engineer peace in the Middle East... Well, it would count for a lot, right...?

I keep this person on my friend list so I can avoid living in an echo chamber. I have to say, they DO live in an echo chamber but there has only been one 'like' on this post and no comments. I avoid challenging them - I tried with Brexit (they voted 'leave') but, whilst I agreed with their very socialist reasons, I was hugely sceptical that the Tories would deliver on them. And I am yet to find a positive outcome of THAT event.

This morning, I had a very similar feeling to the morning after the Brexit vote. And this is all I am going to say about American politics for the next four years.

So, I learned that three members of the new cabinet are actual EXPERTS! The Attorney General is a well respected lawyer, the Science Minister was the senior science expert during Covid, and the Prisons Minister employs ex-cons. Of course, none of them are MPs, so Starmer has had to make them Lords... But it also means they are independent because they have no party loyalty and will, therefore, do a better job. I find this an encouraging direction of travel. It's also an indictment of the current state of British politics that it's a surprise to see Cabinet roles occupied by people with experience in that area...

On the other hand, Labour's front benchers were schmoozed in all sorts of ways by businesses of all sorts (including arms manufacturers) whilst they were in opposition - and according to British rules, the non-ruling parties don't have to declare those kinds of interests. Who knows what information was given out, what promises were made. Politicians are supposed to represent the people - it's in their bloody title! But will the new government work for the ordinary person on the street? Or continue the recent trend of working to make the obscenely rich even richer?

I was looking at my borrowed gown earlier and realised it has a label stitched inside that says 'Essex PhD' - I checked the Uni of Essex's website and it is indeed their PhD gown. I am very pleased by this.

Managed to make some progress with BG&ER but I've left the PS5 on pause because I'm stuck. I'm in a section that combines stealth with shooting and there are a couple of guards and... I've just looked it up and I see how it's done, now. But that's tomorrow's problem.

And an interesting episode of Psych. And Despereux is in the next one :D

More graduation tomorrow, then some prep for my training course next week.

Hoping for a good night's sleep because I lost a couple of hours last night :(

ONE - GAMING
So, FF fans will be aware that there used to be debate over how to pronounce 'Seifer'.  I know a lot of people went with 'See-fer' - personally I always said 'Say-fer'.  Kingdom Hearts revealed that it's actually 'Sy-fer'.  So, I still struggle sometimes but I have a definitive answer from Square.

Yesterday, I saw a fb post that said 'Quistis' should be pronounced 'Kaystis' not 'Kwistis'.  I mean... WHAT?!  Since when does 'qui' equal 'kay'?!  I'm not even sure it wasn't someone messing with our heads because I have literally never come across any controversy about Quistis' name before.  And I shall continue to say 'Kwistis'!

However, it has underlined the importance to me of writing names in a way that makes it clear how I want them to be pronounced!

TWO - POLITICS
Next week, we are having the European elections because we failed to leave the EU in time to avoid them.  I don't believe I've ever received literature for them before, but this week we received four leaflets.  Three were for leave-supporting groups - Brexit Party, UKIP, and Tommy (WTSF?!) Robinson - and the other was for the Greens who, officially, support remain.  There is a leave group called Green Leaves.

I posted about this on fb and chose not to comment about leavers who claim to be socialist and non-racist but who would vote for a leave-supporting MEP.  Tommy Robinson?!  Really?!  Although, to be fair, I don't think any leftist leaver would vote for him.  Anyway, my far-left fb friend commented back saying he was surprised that the Greens supported an organisation that encouraged the transportation of live creatures across great distances adding to the environmental crisis.

And I thought, 'do they really support that?'

And my conclusion is that, of course, the Green Party don't support that.  But the UK leaving the EU is not going to stop that from happening.  In fact, it might well increase such activities but the UK wouldn't have any say in the human treatment of animals in the EU.  We are not going to tackle the GLOBAL environmental crisis by hiding away on our little island and pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist because, you know what, we NEED the rest of the world a lot more than they need us!

Also, as a socialist and a Christian, I believe in working together.  I get that there are many, many problems with the EU but we will still be impacted by them if/when we leave because we will still have to deal with the EU as a body.  My far-left friend would hate to hear this but I think it's an elitist position to say, 'we're so much better than you and we're going to do everything on our own' - which is quite obviously bullshit anyway.

And Brexit is such a huge distraction from the REAL issue of the day which is - we have less than 30 years of breathable air and drinkable water!!!  We really need to be working together at a global level, not squabbling over who holds the higher moral ground.  Because, you know what, none of us have ANY moral ground.

THREE - I FORGET STUFF
Last night, I watched the latest episode of 'Have I Got News For You', which was stored on my Tivo.  Underneath, I saw there was an episode of 'Victoria' taped.  (BTW - why do I still say 'taped' when this is a digital recording?  LOL)  I was puzzled by this because I thought I was up to date with it and the last episode was this Sunday.  Turns out it was on last Sunday and I didn't watch it.  And I have absolutely no idea what I was doing last Sunday evening to make me miss it.

FOUR - IT'S SATURDAY
This means some housework, some gaming, some time with my boys.

 Didn't get to HoS last night and I don't think I'll get to it again before Sunday. Still, I managed to clock up 4 hours on it last Sunday (in two sittings), so there's a good chance I'll make some progress this Sunday.

Watched the first part of The Trial on Channel 4's catch up service yesterday morning, which was a tortuous experience to say the least. It would play for 30 seconds, then buffer for 30 seconds, then play again. And, being on line, it also had ad breaks. Then it cut out completely about halfway through, so I restarted it and moved along to where I guessed it had gone off. And it made me sit through another 3 minutes of adverts! So, what should have taken 50 minutes took nearer 90. Not impressed. I do want to watch the other episodes, so I'll see if the catch up service on the telly works any better. But, again, it might be Sunday before that happens.

One of the victims of Monday's bombing was a girl who lived in the same area as my daughter and went to school with the sister of one of our grandson's friends. They have a real community spirit up there, so there's an event at the local pub on Friday night. Which means we're having the grandson on Friday as well as Saturday.

Still trying to process Monday night, I mean, it's a terrible thing that happened and, of course, I condemn anyone involved. To target a concert where most of the people are going to be young girls is... Well, there are all kinds of messages in such an act, aren't there? But it's the aftermath that I find really scary. My son and I saw armed police in town on Tuesday. I've only ever seen a real gun once before and that was a hand gun in a plastic bag in a cupboard. This was two automatic weapons being carried by police officers in my city centre. I felt sick. And now there's talk of soldiers on the streets and the paranoid part of me expects Theresa May to enact some emergency power that makes her a dictator and scraps the election altogether.

Because she's called for an indefinite suspension of election campaigning - but her face is still on the telly. She gets to campaign without campaigning - neat trick, eh? Margaret Thatcher must be turning in her grave from sheer envy!

So, yes, I'm more scared today than I was on Monday but not because of the actual suicide bombing of a concert. It's the actions of the Prime Minister that terrify me.