Carol the Dabbler

I find their point of view simplistic and counterproductive myself, but I kinda try to understand why they might be that way. Many people have great difficulty understanding why anyone would disagree with them, because their point of view seems so obviously correct to them. I suspect that's because they've always looked at things from a certain angle, so it doesn't occur to them that the other person might be a very nice person who simply looks at things from a different angle -- or that someone might agree with them on most things, even though they look different, etc. Besides, it's probably human nature to distrust anyone who's not a member of your in-group. (That distrust would have had real survival value back when members of the neighboring tribe might be out to kill you.) Our parents may have encouraged us to ignore that feeling, or may have encouraged us to pay special attention to it. Some people can later overcome the training they had as a child, but it's neither automatic nor easy. If your mother's niece has seemed like a reasonable person in the past, you might try giving her another chance. Try to understand her point of view (which doesn't mean you have to agree), and explain your point of view to her.

I'm sorry your back is causing you such pain today, FL! (Please see the Moderator Comment that I added to your post.)

From that article: Have never had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Gatiss on stage, but I'm impressed!

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny There are a couple of interesting new characters, one being the now-adult daughter of an old colleague of Jones's. She's one of those basically good but not immune to money types that tend to crop up in Indy's universe. Also there's a cheeky mid-teens kid with amazing mechanical skills. This allows Jones (now around 80, albeit fit and healthy) to specialize in being the brains of the operation, at least when he can get the others to listen. Of course there's a powerful historical artifact being sought by evil forces, requiring intervention by Indy and crew on the side of (mostly) righteousness. The movie is set in the 1960s, consistent with how long it's been between the earlier Jones movies and this one. But a number of scenes are set years earlier, with a younger Jones. I thought boy they sure have good makeup, but it turns out they used a younger actor with a CGI face -- very convincingly done! The cast includes John Rhys-Davies (Gimli in LotR), Toby Jones (Culverton Smith in "The Lying Detective" and Dobby the house elf in the Harry Potter movies), and Mads Mikkelsen (brother of Lars Mikkelsen, who played Charles Augustus Magnussen in Sherlock's 3rd series). All in all, I enjoyed it, but being a recently made movie, it has the requisite amount of loud noise (including music) that often made the dialog hard for me to hear, so I had trouble following the plot at times. Hoping the DVD will have subtitles!

Actually it's the aphid larvae that eat leaves, and the ladybug larvae that eat the aphid larvae. I've seen it happen on my nasturtiums -- though not quite as soon as I was hoping.

I hadn't actually thought much about it before, but it suddenly occurred to me a while back that roughly half of what I'd been calling lady bugs all my life were actually gentleman bugs! I suspect, though, that the "lady" part of "lady bug" and "lady bird" refers not to the beetle's supposed sex, but rather to the Virgin Mary, who seems to have some connection with those beetles in Scandinavian and Germanic countries as well. Added: the internet seems to agree. Apparently aphids had been destroying crops, and after the farmer prayed to Mary for help, the little spotted beetles came and ate the aphids.

Sounds like a good premise for an entertaining show. Maybe I'll spring for the DVDs one of these days. Amazon (US) has them, so I assume they're also available in the UK for people like me who A] don't have high-speed internet service, and/or B] want a copy that they can rely on re-watching years and years from now.

Thanks -- interesting interview, and nice photo of Moffat (credited to Louis Oliver, his son). This quote caught my attention: "People are always going on at me about out of sequence narrative, but what is the right order to tell a story?" The only time that habit of his actually bothered me was in "The Empty Hearse," with Sherlock filling Anderson in on "how he did it" between bits of Sherlock's scene with John in the bomb train. I'm tentatively agreeing with Anderson there -- why would Sherlock tell Anderson, of all people? So perhaps being "out of sequence" is our clue that the tell-all actually took place in Anderson's imagination. He's no dummy, though, so he probably got pretty close to the truth. I was about to say that they put Sherlock's "high-functioning sociopath" line in the wrong episode -- but they were right, and I was merely thinking about the time he repeated it in "Sign of Three." "Dr Watson always kind of has been the person to whom the story happens." That's obvious in the original stories, what with Watson being the narrator. But Martin Freeman does a marvelous job of being the more-or-less normal guy in the story, reacting much as we might in his shoes, and thereby providing a good deal of the humor, as well as keeping Sherlock (more or less) in line.

I thought it might be something like that -- thanks for confirming! I won't ask for more, even though I'm curious what they make of the interminable back story -- as you say, no spoilers!

The Guardian liked it, with reservations. I read their entire article looking for a synopsis, but apparently it's more of a "you had to be there" sort of play.

I continue to shake my head at what passes for information these days. These two items came up when I googled for "Martin Freeman news" recently: 1. Grace Freeman is apparently dating Beau Bunton-Jones, son of Spice Girls’ Emma Bunton, and this MSN article is touting them as "Hollywood's Next It-Couple." They're teenagers, for heaven's sake! And neither of them is any sort of performer so far. Give them a chance to grow up, OK? (In MSN's defense, at least they're not stalking the kids, they're just quoting from their social-media pages.) 2. There's yet another "Moffat would do another series of Sherlock if only Freeman and Cumberbatch would come back" patchwork article, this time from a professional news outlet in India. The only new angle here is this admission at the very end: "Several parts of the text in this article, including the title, were generated with the help of an AI tool." No kidding!

Fortunately a person doesn't have to be gay in order to supports gay rights or have gay friends. It'd be a sad world indeed if everyone was either gay or a homophobe!

I had a boyfriend like that, so you have my full sympathy! (But thank goodness that was before they invented the internet.)

Life can definitely be a bitch! But at least you now have some knowledge of what to be wary of, and you have a better idea of what you'd truly appreciate in a partner.

What is that, Martina -- a baby polar bear?

We had two litter mates, one tabby (I.e. striped) and the other all black (who was sometimes hard to locate till she opened her eyes). But even though the two of them spent a lot of time together, I don't recall Persea ever playing Camilla's shadow!

Sorry, just the Daily Mail link and some "event" photos of Martin & the kids. Good choice!

Good fix-it people are getting harder and harder to find, and if you can find a really good one, they're usually so busy that it's hard to get on their schedules. It's especially hard to find a plumber or electrician who will do fix-it jobs, because most of them want do the installation work on a whole new house. When I was looking for a plumber, a friend of mine (who is in the well-drilling business, so he knows a lot of plumbers) told me that a well-drilling friend of his has a brother who's a plumber. So I gave the guy a try. It took half a dozen appointments before he actually showed up and did the work, but he did a nice job and didn't charge a lot. I'm glad your mom finally found a pretty good one!

The problem is, the appropriate boxes (death of an animal, etc.) are already ticked -- yet the top-of-page count (which I take to be an automated function) is nevertheless zero.

OK, I found another reference. This time it's The Guardian (which according to Wikipedia is "a newspaper of record in the UK") quoting Amanda Abbington as saying, "My son played Jamie in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, and he was a wonderful drag queen." So not only was it indeed her Joe in that production, he had the lead. Odd that Daily Mail merely called him "a cast member" -- though as you say, the cast members may have taken turns playing Jamie. As I've said before, Daily Mail strikes me as a tabloid with generally good photos (though in this case, the photos are re-used from coverage of earlier events) and generally iffy writing.

Or could have been one of several "classmate" roles or something of that sort. Or maybe Daily Mail didn't know what role he had. I suppose it's even possible they saw there was a Joe Freeman in the class and just assumed it was Martin & Amanda's son. I'm not offhand seeing any other online references to his participation. Of course that was back in November, so some items may have been taken down by now.

You'd think if Daily Mail was "covering" Joe's acting premiere, though, they'd have at least sent a photographer to cover the play. Maybe the first time he has a major role, they'll do that -- this time they just said that he was a "member of the cast."

True! Just double-checked, and none of the photos in that article are new -- all are re-used from prior events. The only photo related to the play is the close-up photo of an actor in costume as Jamie, and it's from a West-End production some years back.

Good photos, which do seem to be Daily Mail's strong suit. I've thought in the past that their reporters don't necessarily go on location with the photographers -- some of their reports about location filming for Sherlock were pretty clearly just guessing from the photos (and sometimes guessing wrong). So (taking what they say with a tiny grain of salt) that's interesting -- Joe is starting out on stage like his father (and perhaps his mother) did. They say he's 17.

OK, I see now, ND -- when I mouse over the thread title, I get a pop-up wanting me to ask a question -- but way over at the right-hand end of the same pop-up there's an option to see what's already there. Thanks!