Messages

Weston 5 - Hicklenton 0. I can appreciate Hicklenton's art, but the development of Chris Weston's art is astonishing. He must be one of the top artists working in comics today and we're very lucky to have him regularly in the prog.

It does look fun. The shipping makes it a very expensive purchase, unfortunately. I've noticed shipping rates have seemed very high on a few North American Kickstarters recently.

Zavvi are selling the hardback third volume of Mark Waid's Daredevil run (issues 22-36) for £4.99, which seems like a bargain:
https://www.zavvi.com/books/marvel-daredevil-by-mark-waid-hardcover-vol-03/11111495.html

Yeowell 5 - Irving 0. I mean.... Zenith.

[Dating Amber]

Dating Amber (2020, on Amazon Prime). An Irish coming of age film set in the mid-90s in a barracks town outside Dublin. The two teenage protagonists are coming to terms with their homosexuality and dealing with the prejudice and lack of understanding in their community. Tonaly, this seems a bit all over the shop. There are comedy elements that verge on the fantastical, but they're isolated and seem out of step with the rest of the film. The first and second acts are promising, developing the leads (Amber and Eddie) and their struggle. Amber's development is pretty much abandoned for the final act, though. Her relationship with her late father is alluded to, but not explored beyond the surface. [spoiler]She also sacrifices her dream for Eddie in the end. This seems like a betrayal of her character and didn't sit well with me.[/spoiler] Interesting, but a flawed film.

And I am aware that I am now a "centrist Dad".

There's no "true" communism, I don't think. Every implementation has been flawed and partial.

There's also no "true" capitalism for the same reason.

Personally, I just look around the world at countries who have systems that seem the most humane and liveable. By that metric Scandi/NZ style Social Democracy seems like the best compromise (to me at least) in a difficult world.

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes", as the great philosopher once said.

You're not wrong.

I was looking at the Scottish results last week and I think that both the SNP and Conservatives are at the absolute peak of what they can expect in terms of votes or representation. The party that has the biggest opportunity to grow is Labour. To me, that comes from embracing devolution (which Labour introduced FFS) and supporting the growth in powers of the Scottish Parliament, even if that means backing the SNP on bills. I genuinely think that would be a good offering to many Scots and would get them having a realistic chance of being next government in Holyrood.

The elephant in the room is that the UK Labour party has no prospect of holding the government in Westminster to account or forcing their hand.

I don't see much of a future for the Lib Dems in Scotland. Once the older generation in their island and border heartlands goes, they'll have no base, no policies and no prospects.

And that's all before you get to the nats, with their own problems.

I don't know about Plaid Cymru, but the SNP minority government has had a support agreement with the Scottish Greens. It's the Lib Dems and Labour that threw their hands up in horror at working with the SNP. This resulted in the ridiculous and depressing sight of Scottish Labour voting to oppose SNP bills, even when the same policy was on the UK Labour manifesto.

I genuinely think many in the Labour party are completely detached from the reality of their situation.

Back in the 90s I remember reading about the "End of History", as various academics and analysts believed that the post-cold-war centrist liberal consensus would continue indefinitely and lead to the end of conflict. There was no longer any major ideological battles to be fought.

The one thing that is certain about the future is that our ideas are wildly wrong.

He lived there up until a few years ago. He's originally from Scotland, but lives in London now (I think).

[Amazing Spider-Man]

And thankfully Amazing Spider-Man #60 returns to the earlier storylines of Boomerang as Parker's room-mate, Kingpin searching for a magical MacGuffin (do the Daredevil and Spider-Man editors talk to each other?) and Jamieson's new venture in a social media/junk website. It's decent stuff... but I wish Nick Spencer would stop using the same opening trope of "Spidey in unrecognisable situation, flashback to how he got there". Its tired.

The King in Yellow and I

Is that a Chimpsky solo story?

When I had my first haircut for months between lockdowns 1 and 2 I said to my barber that I'd considered getting some clippers to do it myself, but it probably would've looked shit. "Oh mate" he replied " you want to see some of the haircuts I've had through the door this last week"

My barber said "When did you last get this cut?!?" with an expression of horror when I went in. I was a bit confused. There was a lockdown. It was on the telly and everything.