DramatistDreamer

ICYMI, this is an ongoing situation in Sri Lanka for quite some time and the volatility level has ratcheted up that much higher. Hunger will do that to people.

Okay, so it’s not just me who found this year’s women’s final a bit anti-climactic? The level of play started out decent in the first few games of the opening set but proceeded to taper off from there. I expected nerves and bouts of sloppy play to factor into the match but it never ended. There were moments where Ons played well and there were moments when Rybakina hit some powerful shots but never the ‘twain met. Considering how poor Rybakina’s volleys are, it really is a credit to her ball striking and Ons’ sense of panic that Rybakina could manage to win a tournament where properly executed volleys used to be a must in order to win. Rybakina has a subpar net game and little to no good volleys and still won the title. That must give Karolina Pliskova some hope. And yes, a Russian did manage to win the tournament as Rybakina is one of those players who changed nationality for expediency and money. I mean, it’s something that athletes often do in sports, not just tennis but I never expect there to be much introspection about it, nevermind an honest conversation about it.

Apparently Twitter has ordered its employees not to tweet about the deal anymore. This sip of tea was tweeted before that mandate though.

I have fallen behind on my viewing of these uploads but I saw Caroline’s story arc in real time when it originally aired so it won’t be a spoiler to me. Even as a kid, I found Johnson really impressive, right up to her final scenes. I do think that there was an enormous amount of competition in what would have been her category back then and Joanna Johnson gave understated performances (beautifully understated) and I have given my thoughts on how Daytime Emmy awards committee/academy seemed to be biased against understated performances, seemingly in favor of performances that veered toward being more melodramatic. No knock against those performances that can come off as more exciting in clips, but an understated performance reveals its depth and power over time, not necessarily in a 10 second clip, which is how most voters are judging (do we really believe that the voters are taking the time to watch entire episodes of these shows?) Another aspect that I wonder about is whether people in nominating process of the Daytime Emmys had doubts about the sustainability of B&B and opted to “invest” nominations in the series that they believed had assured longevity. As a 30 minute serial, it may have caused a bit of doubt as to how long it could last on air. Capitol and even Ryan’s Hope ending before the end of the 1980s may have planted seeds of doubt.

It would be very interesting to hear the thoughts of your friends and former colleagues in future when they’ve had the chance to process this all and after they have been able to collect themselves but now they are plunged into this tragedy, my condolences go out to them right now. Hi @Cat, my friend’s piece was very poignant, it was a theatrical piece, as we were in a multidisciplinary graduate writing program for the dramatic arts. I was fortunate to been in a very diverse program (which changed years down the road for a number of years unfortunately) and I learned a lot from a number of my colleagues who drew from many theatrical and film traditions worldwide. but I digress. It is good to see the Biden administration take action, but they have been engaging with the public on this issue, the media has been paying almost no attention to this. VP Harris was speaking on this issue and others at talks at the Essence Fest a couple weekends ago. Stacey Abrams was also in attendance. Harris and Biden have likely been having some in depth discussions about the matter.

A few weeks ago, one of my brothers who works at an international shipping company, told me that the shipping containers that had been held up for several months, were being released and were coming in and it was a constant barrage of deliveries. Recently, I am reading that inflation could be abating and the concern is that the Fed won’t adapt, opting instead to continue to raise rates, causing an overreaction, which would not be good. Also recently read that house sales have been declining, causing the market to cool. This morning, I am seeing that there will be a glut of merchandise in stores and that there will be price drops because retailers will need to move merchandise. Now, the prognostications that gas prices will soon fall, but suspiciously, no prognosis on when drivers will see it reflected at the pump. Now, seeing the jobs report. Maybe it’s just the suspicious way my mind works but I have suspected for some months, that many of the price increases have been manipulated and that it is part of a lot of manipulation going on to benefit a relative few, especially seeing the midterm elections are coming up. Hopefully these issues can get sorted for the better soon.

Years ago, I recommended NHK World news and PBS NewHour as viable alternatives to the mainstream news media here in the U.S. NHK has evolved from the late night news programs that I used to watch, on occasion when I would keep some late nights during grad school in the early ‘00s to the extensive coverage they provided during the Indian Ocean tsunami a few years later. By the time of the 3/11 earthquake and tsunami/Fukushima Daiichi tragedy, I was already a daily viewer. Yes their other programming is also very interesting (you could easily find yourself watching Somewhere Street or a special on the famous Tsujiki fish market (which moved to a new location). I actually requested that they get back on the Roku to increase their accessibility. They politely responded that it wasn’t a priority but they would keep it under consideration. To my surprise, a couple years ago, they returned with their own channel on Roku. Of course, now I mainly watch them on tablet and mobile devices. It is very odd to hear U.S. news media refer to Abe as a right-winger, since right-winger has an entirely different connotation here in the U.S. Anyone confused about what I refer to only need look at video of that infamous handshake between Abe and Trump from years ago and the expression on Abe’s face afterward. In terms of the Comfort Women issue, a fellow writer/friend of mine who is a Korean woman wrote a piece while we were in Grad school in the early’00s when almost no one outside of the southern Korean Peninsula was talking about this (she educated me on the issue) and yes, the anger is and remains very real. My experience in England, as alarming as it was, apparently is not uncommon, particularly for other Black women in Europe. In England specifically though, I talked to other people, students, artists of South Asian and West Indian and a few African people and even among those who were born and raised in London, the sentiment often was that, even if you were born in England, if you were of color and stood out as not being of English identity, you were treated as a guest in the country, no matter how long you lived there. The big joke was they’d always say “I’m British but…” the but was always a mitigating factor in othering someone’s identity. I suspect, similar to the U.S., people have become more assertive about hyphenated identities.

Having spent some time in London in the mid 1990s as a student, I have mixed views about the UK. There were some things I enjoyed about the people that I found myself in the company of and some events that were profound to my education and development, but there were also some disturbing cultural and socio-political attitudes that I encountered there as well. And way too much of a sanitized WWII and post-war mentality. And even then, a barely concealed hostility toward immigrants and children, even grandchildren of immigrants, particularly those from former colonies. One of my housemates at the time, a Bangladeshi student, experienced a very scary incident. I myself was accosted by some weird guy (who was white) and was fortunately scared off by another one of my housemates and the incident left me in shock to this day (so much so that I had blocked out the incident until a few years ago). It is sort of scary to realize that it has apparently gotten worse since then.

The NHK news broadcaster has had an excellent livestream and is really the best source for news coverage. I have watched them for years. According to NHK, the perpetrator is a former navy member who has arms training, so it is not outside of the realm of possibility that he would have acquired some skills or at least cultivated an interest in making weapons, especially since acquiring guns in Japan is so difficult (for good reason). The perpetrator also claims that his grievance with Abe was personal, not political. Abe left a huge imprint on Japanese politics but he was also a divisive figure. He wanted to shed Japan of its pacifist status, a status that he felt had been forced on the nation as a result of a sort of punishment for the aggression Japan exhibited during WWII and in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which still fuels a very active anti-nuclear weapons movement in the country, which often found itself at odds with Abe’s insistence that Japan have a militant that be fully trained and ready to act at a moment’s notice. In the wake of skirmishes with the Chinese government, not least of which surfaces often in the South China Sea, Abe was ever more insistent that his stance was the correct one. I don’t know whether there is any connection between the perpetrator having been in the military and Abe’s stance. I guess we will have to wait and see as more information unfolds.

OMG.

OMG, at Yakety Sax blaring in the background.🥴😂

There will be a brand new Wimbledon ladies singles champion this year. And we don’t have to be subjected to looking at Patrick Mouratoglu’s smug expression in the player’s box. Anytime I see Sinner, what immediately springs to mind is “Richie Cunningham’s younger and much taller brother”. And also, “Where’s the Fonz?”

Wasn’t Truss showing herself as loyal to Johnson, at least publicly? Probably a calculated move on her part, but doesn’t that make her look less than competent? Also, what a bloody mess! Totally on brand for Boris Johnson though.

Another front page for tomorrow.

I saw bits and pieces, and a chunk of the final set when I was simultaneously having a discussion via phone and happened to blurt out to a casual tennis fan that if Fritz, at 5-4 in the 5th set can’t find a way to break Nadal, he’d likely lose the match. At 6-5, I thought the same, although I might have given Taylor Fritz more credit than he deserved because I thought he would have gone on longer in the tiebreak, which he surrendered fairly quickly. Malik has more of an oval face and Anisimova has more of a heart-shaped face. Look at them when they’re not smiling.

My Aunt was part of the Windrush generation. A nurse who worked for the NHS for decades before deciding that she’d had enough of England. The Windrush scandal mainly affected the children of those who came on the Windrush, most migrated on a parent’s documents, while the U.K. never bothered to grant most of these children their own documents giving them legal status. My Aunt’s views toward England had pretty much hardened in the last decades of her life. Once she left England, she never bothered to return, though her children still live there. I doubt my Aunt would have been surprised at what England has (re)turned out to be. She lived there during Enoch Powell and the Brixton riots. She likely would have viewed England as being exactly what she thought it was all along.

Perhaps if you blended some of Molik’s features with Vera Zvonareva’s features together? With more of an emphasis on Zvonareva though.

As much as I like Anisimova, so far these SF matches ‘ain’t it’.

My Aunt (God rest her soul) lived in London for 32 years before she became disillusioned with England and repatriated back to the West Indies but since her children still live there, had she been alive today, I think she would be unsurprised yet disgusted by where the U.K. is today. No better than what it was socially and politically than what it was before. Shame.

Ever since Johnson was mayor of London, I always thought he was an oaf. I am surprised he has lasted this long but the Brexiteers were desperate for him to “get Brexit done”, I guess.🙃 In terms of the abortion issue, I think we are at the beginning of a wave of lawsuits that will challenge the ruling by the Supreme Court. And if I were to guess, I think the cavalcade of lawsuits will be a sustained wave.

McEnroe was once defaulted for destroying a television camera at the Australian Open, he physically turned over and smashed a piece of equipment worth thousands of dollars. He also once called an official “an abortion”.

Ons bested her own QFs result from last year, which means she definitely will gain points- Oh wait. Well, the money will still be good at least.

The turmoil continues.

Nick has probably observed from the top players on the ATP tour that winning has allowed them to cover a “multitude of sins” and decided to do ‘in kind’. John McEnroe hasn’t been on my particular feed but those who do hear his commentary have claimed that he was speaking about Nick’s behavior, which McEnroe should probably not do. Also given his alleged turbulent behavior with his ex-wife Tatum O’Neal, he should really sit out any further comment on Nick’s behavior, or alleged behavior.

Noooo, I love Ms. Mona Hammond! She was also very memorable in the sitcom Desmond’s Place. R.I.P. Queen!