Dave's Journal, Apr2020
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projects between 41,000 and 177,000 total deaths from the current wave of COVID-19 in the U.S. The model does not account for a potential second wave of cases.
Today is April 1, daily deaths are expected to peak on April 16 at 2,607 deaths that day in the USA.
Note that the current guidelines are to keep shelter-in-place and social distancing active only through Apr30, but I hope that will be extended through May.
Confinement is pretty boring, I'll tell you. Not terrible, but still boring. We are staying in, as advised. Mike and Chris are food shopping for us (and others) and keeping the packages in quarantine for 2 days before delivering to us. (The COVID-19 virus on surfaces can stay dangerous - it is not alive, so it doesn't "die", it just becomes not deadly - in 24 to 48 hours.)
Good that we have TV's, computers, cell phones, DVD's, CD's, and books.
Here's what Luka thinks.
It is funny and tragic to listen to elected officials ranting about how misinformed and delusional "other" elected officials are in how to fight this virus. They can't even decide if we should wear masks in public places.
Anyway, if all goes perfectly, they say the peak death week in the USA is one, two or three weeks away.
Last night I watched "For a Few Dollars More" ..... still hokey and fun after all these years.
Honey & peanut butter on whole wheat toast, taken with a straight shot of Nespresso Dharkan. Helped to cheer up this isolated morning.
The more I know of this Lady, the more I am impressed. This is her recent speech to the Brits regarding the virus pandemic sweeping the globe.
I even have a poster in the basement, showing my admiration for Her Majesty (are those trumpets I hear?).
(NYC 1934, 5th Ave, Easter Sunday)
After struggling to convert (from the original movie) each single frame in the animation above, I dug into the scripting possibilities of the GMIC toolkit for the GIMP (image manipulation program). Happily I did find a method before running out of patience. I did glue together a terminal window script that will apply some special GMIC effects to a series of images (not just one.)
I am happy now, if mentally wiped out.
One of my favorite scenes in moviedom, converted to a sketchy GIF .....
"Why?", you ask.
Because, just because.
Video clip from a DVD, processed frame-by-frame through GIMP/GMIC "paint daub" effects.
On My Bottom 10 List of all Time
And . . . I watched it. It has so many wonderfully awful scenes, I couldn't turn it off !!!
Mickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield (the acting was as bad as you just imagined - the directing was *worse* than that !)
Seriously, one of the very best (entertaining fun) monster movies in the Godzilla universe. Every Japanese monster is in this one, slugging it out like a cage wrestling match (with baby Godzilla looking on).
Here's a clip ....
You can watch the whole movie here (free !!!) :
https://tubitv.com/movies/463490/destroy_all_monsters?start=true
The problem with democracy is that every moron has a legal right to an opinion ...
Here's a classic scene that is hard to find these days. But I got a very nice DVD of the whole movie. If you can stand a 11Mb video clip, just click this image and enjoy !!
I watched the whole movie last night. Overall, it was not so great. In fact, the very best scene, by far, is the one I showed here; and the only good acting (and it was very good acting) was James Baskett, who played Uncle Remus. The rest of the acting ranged from really awful to poor.
The backdrop is the South in the slavery age, and it shows in every scene. Black folks clearly behave subservient to white folks and white folks are unfeeling, unattached to themselves, their kids, and black folks (not cruel in this movie, but unfeeling).
The cartoon (animated) characters were absolutely adorable !!! Br'er Rabbit was a pisser, the Fox was a very funny moron, the Bear was " duh ....".
Also, recognize that the storyline is literally a conglomeration of Southern folktales from the age of slavery, re-written (1881) by a slave-age journalist and produced (right after WW2) as a children's movie theater musical by Walt Disney. It would be unfair to judge it as a modern piece of work created last week.
If Disney re-released the movie on DVD today, I expect it would ignite a firestorm of resentment on the sociological issues, which, I guess, is why they are not going to release it. Sadly though - I think every movie buff with an open mind should watch it, at least to say "Yeh, I watched it, and ......." to give their opinion some credibility.
The shed doesn't look too bad with the snowblower, spreader and dolly out in the garage. Time to organize and think of Spring yard work.
Outstanding movie (1993 vintage) =>
A very young Leonardo DiCaprio puts in a fabulous performance.
