Of course I ended up working on Labor Day. It's tradition, after all.

But it gets worse! I knew I would be very busy this week, so I wrote a series of entries over the weekend following up on how I've been buying picture frames every payday to start hanging up my various collectibles and prints and such. I took a photo of what got hung up, wrote about how, when, where, and why I ended up with the piece, then moved on to the next entry.

And then lost everything.

Except the photos.

So now I guess I've got something to blog about (again) sometime in the future.

I guess I'm on a blogcation until Saturday then.

Since I frickin' lost all the entries I had written for this week and am having to go back and remember what I must have been doing during this incredibly busy week.

Work, mostly.

And while I work? The many adaptations of Agatha Christie's fantastic murder mystery sleuth, Miss Marple. My mom was a huge Christie fan and I'd read the books she got from the library after she finished them. It was a natural progression from the Encyclopedia Brown books of my youth.

But anyway, back to adaptations...

My most favorite adaptation of Marple is the two TV movies starring Helen Hayes... A Caribbean Mystery and Murder with Mirrors. To this day I remain gutted that we didn't get another movie or six from her, because she added such a flawless and effortless air of mischief to the character.

Before Helen Hayes we got a different take on Marple by Angela Lansbury in The Mirror Crack'd. The movie was a good one, but Lansbury was much better suited to playing Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote (which my mom also loved). Alas, the movie didn't do well at the box office, killing a planned trilogy.

Joan Hickson is widely seen as the "definitive" Miss Marple by many, and her adaptations of the 12 novels are legend. What's bizarre is that Agatha Christie herself wanted Hickson to eventually play the character after seeing her in a play in the 1940's. It's bizarre because this series didn't start filming until 1984. Which means Christie was seeing the actor 40 years before she would play the role, and died before she saw Hickson realize her dream casting choice. Of all the adaptations made, this series is probably the most faithful (or, as faithful as it could be given that so much time had passed since the books were written).

And then we come to Marple... the adaptation which wasn't much of an adaptation which ran from 2004-2009. Granted, it's been so long since I read the books that I'm a bit fuzzy on details, but this series plopped Marple into stories she wasn't actually in and changed some major plot points of the books in which she did. As if that weren't enough, they invented details of Marple's life which don't remotely fit the character (she's always been a spinster, but this show gave her the back-story of having had an affair with a married man in the second episode?!?). Geraldine McEwan starred in the first three series and was fine... but the entire appeal of Marple is that she's a sweet old lady. Instead they wrote her as slightly more aggressive in this series, so the charm just wasn't there. When she retired and the role was taken by Julia Mckenzie, they kinda realized the error of their ways and reverted her personality back to the sweet old lady from the novels. Which is to say that I liked the final three series quite a bit more than the first three, and there were some excellent episodes. Even so, the Hickson series still manages to top anything we got here.

And now we're in 2025 where apparently we're getting new Miss Marple movie adaptations after the success of the Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot films. I'll watch them, of course, but I didn't think any of the three modern Poirot adaptations were as good as what came before. Albert Finney (Murder on the Orient Express) and Peter Ustinov (Death on the Nile) were sublime in their respective film adaptations, and David Suchet's take on Hallowe'en Party (which became A Haunting in Venice) is also my preferred adaptation. But still... I'll hope for the best.

No matter what happens, the books still exist*

   
*Albeit with the racism, antisemitism, and other bits edited out for modern audiences.

It's gotten to the point where I'm afraid to read the news.

I keep adding key words to automatically delete the horrors of the day from my feed reader but, with new horrors arriving daily, it's a never-ending battle. Just when I think I've filtered out everything that sends my anxiety skyrocketing, heeeeeeere comes dread and despair!

The sad thing is that I usually pride myself on being up on current events and well-informed about what's going on in the world... but this? This?!??

Where is that world-ending giant meteor when you really need it?

I am at such a loss as to understand how our toxic society became "anti-science" that I feel like I must be insane.

But then I saw something which put it in clear perspective for me...

And there it is.

Science has been such a huge fucking miracle in our lives that we can't conceive of what life was like before the discoveries we've been blessed with. And so kids are dying from preventable diseases and laws are in process to deny people from even having the option to get vaccinated.

Welcome to the death cult mentality which is fucking up the entire world.

And... fire season has arrived.

I honestly thought that we'd somehow get away without a local fire filling the valley with smoke. Fires were around us all Summer, they always are this time of year, but we never had such bad air quality that I ended up sick. Until today when I could barely function at work and had to leave for part of the day.

Allergies suck bad enough when it's pollen... but smoke? That goes past being uncomfortable to debilitating shades of misery and suffering. I feel my lungs itching from inside and there's nothing that can fix it. Breathing is tough. And eating anything more than crackers is impossible.

So here I sit confined to my house with air purifiers on full-blast and every entry sealed... eating soda crackers and drinking 7-Up Zero while trying to ignore the fact that I wish I could pass out from having been outside.

Hopefully things will clear up over the weekend so I won't have to go through this all over again on Monday.

After taking yet another massive allergy pill so I could get a whole four hours sleep last night, I'm exhausted but recovering. My lungs don't feel itchy and I can eat real food.

But it's a different matter entirely for my cats. Who want to go out in the catio. Bad.

I keep showing Jake the air quality reading on my phone and telling him "It's too smokey for little kitty lungs outside!" But he sits there looking outside and crying because I've blocked the door to the catio...

It's particularly upsetting at night, because he sits there and howls because he can't get out. While I'm trying to wind down and rest. Fortunately I can call down to him and he'll come up and fall asleep next to me, because... yikes.

Jenny was upset at first, but resigned herself to the fact that she can't go out.

Which is good, because there's so much smoke out that you wouldn't know it's Summer. If not for the heat, you'd swear it was an overcast Winter day. And I really, really don't need my cats going in and out and brining smoke in with them.

In July they don't want to be outside in the heat very often any way. But September? Prime catio season...

Reeeeeeally hoping that this fire gets under control soon... but at over 9,000 acres and counting, it's not likely. Which means come Monday I'm going to have to leave my house for work and get sick, sick, sick again.

Which is nothing compared to the suffering by my cats not being able to go outside, of course (just ask them!).

The wildfire smoke may have me cowering in my home, but life goes on... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Imperial Forces! Well this is epic...

When I was sent this TikTok, I marveled at the fact that this cat even allows the helmet to be put on his head. My cats would run off the second I even got the helmet near their heads.

   
• Gadget Time! Speaking of 3D printing...

It's enough to make me want to buy a 3D printer, except I know I'd never be this clever. Here's another video by the same guy...

I mean, come on. All of these are genius.

   
• DIYphone! Speaking of 3D printing... this right here is one of the coolest things you'll see all day. Guy made his own phone with clicky keyboard. The patience required to work through all this is mind-boggling...

Brah. The fact that the result is so killer is just icing on the cake. Instant subscribe to Marcin Plaza's YouTube Channel, which is brilliant, clever, and funny. And worth your valuable time.

   
• Pi Times Two! Speaking of 3D printing... and now... this...

Now, I know this is nothing compared to the earliest days of computing where the components of the computers themselves had to be built... but, still... this kind of thing is pretty amazing. 3D printing is making it possible to do all kinds of cool stuff.

   
• Neat! I was given a link to this article: Obscure But Badass Folks You Should Know About, which is exactly what it claims to be. AND THEN... I fell down the very large rabbit hole that is Neatorama. You've been warned.

   
• More Mitchell! A while ago I shared a video of David Mitchell's rants from the brilliant Would I Lie To You. Well, here's more laugh out loud moments...

I swear, the Royal Wedding statement, which I've watched multiple times now... always, always gets me.

   
And now back to being a hermit.

What's worse than having a smoke allergy during wildfires? Vomiting so hard that you throw your back into spasm, so now you have two things to torment you.*

On Saturday morning I was feeling so much better. But then nausea returned with a vengeance that night. I had anti-nausea pills left from something, which helped... but they were gone before I knew it and I had to wait until today for that plus some muscle relaxers for the stabbing pain in my back when I move. Or, Lord help me, cough.

Or, you know, violently throw up because you thought pasta salad was a good move.

Fortunately, laying on a heating pad got me through Sunday and the pills got me through my work day today (and I was able to keep dry toast down) so it was more of the same, I suppose.

There was a good thing that happened though.

While laying on the heating pad all day yesterday, I ran across an Australian show on Hulu which is one of the best things I've seen in a minute. I was going to take a pass because it deals with self-harm, but the trailer looked so good...

And I'm ever so glad I watched it.

It tackles a difficult, sensitive, and painful subject with wit, charm, and compassion... and is entertaining on top of it all. Exactly the diversion I needed, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I'm probably going to watch it again very soon.

There is one lingering question I have about the series that I won't say here because it could spoil things. Maybe it will be answered in the second season. Or maybe it never will because it's supposed to be up to the viewer. It doesn't matter. What does matter is how much I loved In Limbo.

Highest recommendation.

   
   
*Aside from the usual torments of daily life, of course.

When you're having to lay on a heating pad from the time you get back from work to the time you wake up because you don't want to have to dig into the muscle relaxer pills for your back, you end up watching a lot of television.

Or, as in my case, YouTube videos.

Here's what occupied my time laying around last night...

First of all, this video right here is everything I love about YouTube. Clever, funny people doing clever, funny things. I've seen Isaac Carlton videos before (and probably shared them), but this one is a great example of what he does so well...

Next up... As much as I loved the original The Matrix, I loathed the sequels. They were outright shitty excuses for stories because they were so far up their asses trying to be esoteric and cerebral and "smart" between the action that they forgot to be entertaining (then we got The Matrix Resurrections, which was somehow even worse). But every once in a while I run across a sequence from the sequels that almost makes me want to watch them again. The highway chase from Reloaded being at the top of the list. Sure, some of the effects are badly dated (the Agent jumping on cars is hilariously bad), but it doesn't change what a cool action sequence it was. Especially for the day. It's just such a shame that it was sandwiched between such shit...

And lastly (because I've got stuff I need to get to, not because I only watched three videos)... I honestly do not understand how Josh Johnson can be this brilliant every time. He never seems to run out of material. Most comics would recycle the same routines over and over and over. With Josh he's just on to the next hilarious bit...

And there you have it. Hope you didn't fall into and Isaac Carlton or The Matrix or Josh Johnson rabbit hole from this post.

But there are certainly worse ways to spend your time.