Sunday, April 12, 2020

What I Have Been Watching; Keeping a Low Profile; Watching The Passion of the Christ; Good Friday WeChat Moments; Tony Back to School; A Challenge for Me; What to Do about the Chicoms?

  • I watched the Making of a Murderer Season One. Very Interesting. I found myself sympathizing with the Avery family as I watch it. I had watched a Series about Ted Bundy called Falling for a Killer that made a strange attempt to deal with the Bundy story by looking at it from a feminist angle. When I saw this was to be its approach, I was tempted to not bothering watching it, but the Bundy story is interesting and gradually the attempts at making it a feminist account floundered. This account of the Bundy story (I have watched a few now) featured interviews with Bundy's girl friend, associates of Bundy and Bundy's brother. (The feminist account of the Bundy killings ultimately flounders on the realization that women, even empowered women, need the protection of good men.)

  • Even though things seem to be getting back to normal where I am with the lockdown minimized, with people congregating without concern for social distancing, and with traffic getting heavier and more annoying, I have made no contact with anyone other than my wife and my son. When I walk pass others, I avert my gaze, or look down at the ground so that the brim of the cap I always wear covers my face. I feel it is better to keep a low profile as I can.

  • Maundy Thursday evening, I watched Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. My son Tony watched the end of it with me. When they nailed Jesus to the Cross, Tony had to cover his eyes. "Why did they do that to him? What did Jesus do wrong?" he asked. I told him that there were not easy questions to answer and that hopefully he would learn through his life what happened and why. At the film's closing moments, where Jesus dies and there are earthquakes, Tony said that God was mad.

  • Good Friday, I posted the fourteen stations of the Cross to WeChat moments. What effect did it have? Probably none, but it had to be done. I have decided that the only thing worth declaring allegiance to is Christ.

  • At McDonalds, later that Friday, I had to enter information on a form to get Chicken Nuggets. I had to because I wanted to pay cash for the Nuggets. If I had used my phone to pay, the tracking information that, I assume, was wanted by the authorities would have been easily had. So, I had to write down my name, my phone number and my ID number (passport in my case) on a register list. So, things aren't quite back to normal.

  • "Myself, find it challenging to make friends, my rather poor social skills, as well as my taste in people, narrow things down a lot." I have copied this sentence from a comment made on a blog that I peruse on a regular basis. It would seem to encapsulate my experience in my friendships. Only aspect on which I have to differ with it is that the taste of others in friends makes it a challenge for me as well – I am not to the taste of others I have discovered over the years. And thus I have always felt held back in my relations with others.

  • Tony is officially back to school. I drove him in Monday morning. There was a temperature tent at the school entrance.

  • Speaking of challenging things. I find it a challenge to rid myself of the desire to wring the necks of the local drivers. What's with these unthinking locals who decide to change lanes after cars have bunched together? Why didn't they get in the proper lane earlier? What's with these selfish locals who instead of yielding, honk their horns at pedestrians trying to cross at actual crosswalks? What with these impatient idiots who impatiently honk their horns the instance a light turns green? What with these inconsiderate locals who cut off cyclists when turning? (I saw a particularly grievous example of this on Monday. A driver making a right turn instead of waiting for an e-biker to go on his way (which was straight ahead) decided to instead honk her horn at the e-biker and then proceed to cut him off, thereby forcing him to come to a very quick stop. The e-biker did seem a little put out by this. A westerner would have said something colorfully profane.)

  • What to do about the Chinese Communists? As I read in a blog entry by a Catholic, I say we have to pray for their conversion. (And I have said this before, myself, but it is good to see that wiser people than me are also saying it.) As long as it never happens, there is no hope for the Chinese.


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