Finally, an actual weekend, full of weekend-y things — exercise, reading, shopping, day-drinking. Also: “Black Mirror,” of which I knew nothing before reading something good about the new season (the third) in the NYT recently. Although the show isn’t episodic, I figured it’s best to start with Season 1, Episode 1, which was…
The U.K. prime minister gets a pre-dawn call that summons him to his office, where a grim-faced cadre of aides plays a video for him. Princess Susannah, a mashup of Diana and Kate Middleton, has been kidnapped. The ransom demand: That the P.M. have sex with a pig on live television at 4 p.m. that afternoon.
Now that’s what you call a shirt-grabber, I’d say. This episode is five years old, and came to the U.S. three years ago, and this is the first I’m hearing of it.
Well, it’s impossible to keep up.
The hip-pocket description of the show would be this: A creepier, more disturbing “Twilight Zone,” with the underlying theme of technology, and how we interact with it. So far — we’re in the second season — it’s fantastic. Hour-long episodes. British. And everyone who’s known about it, and hasn’t sent a telegram to me insisting that I watch the whole thing in a mad stretch, is dead to me.
So I guess you know what we did Saturday night. There was a vegetarian meal involved, too.
Now it’s Sunday, and time for the week-ahead prep. In addition to the (vague) meal ideas and (hopeful) workout plans, there’s the Halloween-season (also vague) plans to get the holiday season edging toward front-of-mind. In other words: Shopping, or at least some ideas for it. Ergh. Another year, at least approaching the final turn.
In the meantime? Bloggage:
Yes, late-term abortions are done for the health of the mother. Here’s one story. Foul-mouthed, but effective.
The Republicans are eating their own, particularly in Michigan:
“[I]t won’t be just Trump that drives me from this party. I’m disgusted with the male leaders of the Republican party,” Texas right-wing activist Brittany Pounders wrote on Oct. 18. “They may not be sexual predators; they may not be sexist or misogynist—but they are clearly okay with others in our party who are.” On Oct. 21, Nancy French, a conservative who has co-authored books with Sarah Palin and Bristol Palin, wrote in the Washington Post about her own childhood history of sexual assault; her essay implied that the GOP itself has become a sort of sleazy predator in the age of Trump. “My party—which should’ve been a place of a certain set of values—now shelters an abuser,” she writes. “I’m thinking of this when the GOP presses against me and asks me to close my eyes just one more time.”
Time for “Westworld.” Enjoy the week ahead.