SHŌGUNATION

— पाँच हजार पाँच सौ तिहत्तर — The highlight since I last updated was that Shobhit and I watched the first two episodes of the FX series Shogun on Hulu, and it was great. I already have a favorite line: "I've had enough of your Christian nonsense." Ha! I only knew about this series because podcasters I listen to talked about how excited they were about it. I knew absolutely nothing about the story's legacy: first published as a novel in 1975 by an Australian author baned James Clavell, apparently a huge bestseller; then adapted into a 1980 NBC miniseries, apparently a giant cultural event, nearly on par with Roots (that one I have heard of). I must say, though, that I am perfectly happy for this new iteration to be the first I have been exposed to, particularly considering the novel and original minieries were presented from the point of view of John Blackthorne, the English navigator whose ship runs ashore in 1600 Japan. In this version, although Blackthorne remains a major and key figure, the story is contextualized almost exclusively from the point of view of the Japanese people. This makes the current show very much an Asian-majority cast, who actually speak Japanese most of the time—apparently this also happened with the 1980 miniseries, but without subtitles (because in that version we are meant to experience it from Blackthorne's eyes)—and we get nearly all of what they say translated in subtitles. The one kind of weird thing is that, among the White characters, there are English and Portuguese people, their status as enemies to each other another key plot point. For some reason, when we are meant to understand the White characters are actually speaking Portuguese, the actors speak in English. I was telling Noah about that this morning, and I'm kind of on the same page with him when his basic reaction was: why? We've got tons of subtitles for real Japanese being spoken, what reason is there not to have actors actually speaking Portuguese? I can think of two reasons, neither of which are great reasons in my opinion. One of them is: with Portuguese actually spoken as such by the White actors, very little actual English would be spoken onscreen, because the English characters speak Portuguese, but the Portguguese characters do not speak English. (So what?) The other is: perhaps the idea is that keeping all the White people equally understandable draws a stronger delineation between Western and Eastern characters. (Why is that so important?) That quibble aside, the way it handles language somewhat illogically still works, and the show is very compelling so far. I'm really looking forward to having a new episode to see every week for the next eight weeks. — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ तिहत्तर — — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ तिहत्तर — Shobhit and I decided to make pasta for dinner last night, choosing angel hair noodles and adding chopped eggplant that might have otherwise gone bad to the pasta sauce. Those noodles really absorbed the pasta sauce and it could have taken a whole second jar, really. Nonetheless, it was super tasty and we both had too much of it, resulting in a slight increase in weight for both of us this morning. Shobhit wanted to get our tax filing done last night and thus resisted turning the show on at first. But, we were obviously not going to do the taxes while eating, so I turned on the first episode when we sat down to eat. We broke between episodes to take care of the taxes, which Shobhit needed to have done by tomorrow before apparently the filing fee goes up (this was why he wasn't waiting until the filing deadline of April 15). We got through it surprisingly quickly, though, and then moved right on to the second episode of Shogun. This new show's creators are a married couple, by the way: Rachel Kondo, who (thankfully) is of Japanese descent, and Justin Marks, who is White. Marks also wrote the screenplay for the wonderful 2016 live action version of The Jungle Book, and was co-writer on Top Gun Maverick. This new Shogun is getting nearly universal critical acclaim and, so far, I'd say it's deserved. That is, in spite of what I found to be a bit of variance when it comes to actor performances; I like some better than others. But the storytelling is really fantastic, as is the production value. — पाँच हजार पाँच सौ तिहत्तर — [posted 12:31 pm]

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— पांच हजार पांच सौ बहत्तर — Not much to report on today . . . if things had gone as planned, I'd have told you about Happy Hour with Laney last night. Right now I don't even know for certain whether our Double Feature we had rescheduled from this coming Saturday to the following Monday will go on as planned. If she's testing negative by then, then it likely will be. Current CDC guidelines say to self-isolate for 5 days after onset of symptoms, and next Monday will be well beyond that. Curiously, that page doesn't even say anything about testing negative as a part of protocol for ending self-isolation—only if your symptoms are improving and have been fever-free for 24 hours. So far she seems to be experiencing something akin to nothing more than a cold, which is great news; she has said nothing about shortness of breath or having had a fever at all. It does still recommend wearing a mask until day 11, which takes us beyond Monday next week, but we'd both be fine with masking; we've done that for certain movie watches before. —Oh, wait. It does mention testing after all. You just have to scroll down to the bottom of the page. It says you may remove your mask sooner than day 10 with two sequential negative tests 48 hours apart. I know she still has lots of tests; maybe she can test on Saturday and then on Monday and we can go from there. I do not have lots of tests, although I did for a very long time. I took every advantage of every government offer of free delivery of covid tests, of which I have one test left in my last two-page box of free tests currently. I ordered another two-pack from Amazon, my first time actually purchasing tests, and it's taking an annoyingly long time to get to me. Some time ago I saw a huge stack of them for sale at Costco, but they were like twenty bucks a box (those may have been 5-packs) and I had a lot of my backlog left at the time. I probably should have bought some; they were nowhere to be found the last time I was at Costco. I need to find a better, more immediate source to buy them from now. Even before Laney tested positive, because I had proactively tested myself on Sunday, I was going to tell her how it's kind of ironic these days, how much less sick people get sick with covid anymore, while other viruses are spreading that make people sicker on average than many do with covid. And yet, covid still being potentially far more transmissible notwithstanding (depending on the immunity levels involved, as that varies widely), we don't have tests for the other shit that's making people sicker. Laney caught a bad cold a few months ago that resulted in like four different plans we had getting canceled, she tested multiple times and it was never covid. And so far at least, that bout of sickness seems to have been notably worse than what she's got going on right now. As for me, I remain insanely lucky. I did catch two different colds in 2023, my first sickness of any kind outside of my own bout with covid in 2022 since before the pandemic, and both of them were incredibly mild. I'm tempted to say I must be doing something right, but that would be wrong-minded. I still employ layers of mitigation, but Laney serves as a shining example that nothing is 100% effective, and a lot of it really comes down to random luck. Somewhere in the past week or so, Laney was exposed to a viral load that her immunity could not fight off completely. It happens to all of us. I am suddenly thinking about when Shobhit and I had a telemedicine appointment with a doctor the time we both got covid, in April 2022. Our primary doctor was unavailable so we got this other guy that neither of us liked very much. I'll never forget him telling us to expect we'd probably catch it a second time before the end of the year. He was very nonchalant about it, an attitude that really irritated me—I didn't (and don't) think it's good to suggest, however indirectly, that mitigation measures are pointless. And: I suppose I should knock on wood. Neither Shobhit nor I got covid again in 2022, or in 2023 for that matter. To date, we have still only had it once. It may still be only a matter of time before one or both of us gets it again, although I would be surprised if we got as sick the second time. That doesn't mean I want it. — पांच हजार पांच सौ बहत्तर — — पांच हजार पांच सौ बहत्तर — Well, there I go again, writing way more than I expected to, especially when there's not really anything to update you on. I walked home from work yesterday, detouring to the Central Library to pick up a DVD that I'll watch at home tomorrow night while Shobhit's working. I spent some time working on a video project in iMovie. Shobhit and I had leftovers for dinner, with fresh made rotis Shobhit prepared. We watched a couple of episodes of season six of Night Court while we ate. The show clearly wasn't as great, that far into its run. But, I have long had an affection for that show, which had been my favorite sitcom when it originally aired, I'll probably eventually power through to the end. We did only just start watching episodes again this month, after not watching any since before the holidays. We're nearing the end of season 6 and there were a total of nine. I later went back to the bedroom, got as far as I could get (for now) with the iMovie project, and then watched the first half of the new Rory Scovel standup special on HBO before going to bed. — पांच हजार पांच सौ बहत्तर — [posted 12:28 pm]