My Brain: Okay, it’s time to write this week’s Top Ten Tuesday entry now. What should we talk about in our freebie post?
My Stomach: Food!
Brain: Well, it’s supposed to be a bookish topic and, ideally, at least tangentially related to winter or the holiday season in general.
Stomach: We will be surrounded by more delicious food than usual until at least the first week of January. It’s the only thing I want to talk about, so there must be a way to blog about it while still technically following Jana’s rules.
Brain: What if we decide to use this prompt to discuss cookbooks? Will that work for you?
Stomach: Yes, I’ll agree to that deal.
Now that you all know how I came up with today’s topic, let’s talk about cookbooks. All of the winter holidays I’m aware of share one delicious and important thing in common: special dishes and meals. Every culture has them, and this is a very common time of the year for people from all walks of life to start making that famous family recipe that everyone expects during the holidays.
If my apartment were large enough for me to host holiday get-togethers, I’d want to browse through these books to plan the perfect meals for all of my guests.
Last spring I blogged about my plans to walk to Mordor, and I updated my progress at the end of August when I was a third of the way through with it. Now that I’ve reached the two-thirds mark, I thought it was time for another update!
For anyone who needs a refresher or wasn’t following me six months ago, Walk to Mordor is a free app that lets you chart your miles walked every day and gives you updates on where Frodo and Sam were when they’d travelled the same distance in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I am not being compensated in any way for blogging about this. It’s simply something I thought would be a fun way to track my walking and help me stay active, and I was right about that.
Last summer I was logging 9 to 10 kilometres per day. When the weather is nice here, I take advantage of it! Now that I’m spending less time outdoors due to winter deciding to make an early appearance, I’m getting about 7 or 8 kilometres a day on average instead.
My dad is still logging his miles walked into this game as well. There’s nothing competitive about how far we walk or anything like that. It’s simply nice to have that companionship.
I’m logged in on that app under my name, Lydia Schoch, if any new readers want to sign up and be friends there.
It’s interesting to read about the various plot twists that happened when Sam and Frodo were on their journey. Sometimes you’ll go 80 kilometres (50 miles) without reaching any new milestones, and then you’ll suddenly have several of them in a row. There have also been certain days when I reached multiple milestones depending on how close they were together and how far I walked that day.
This uneven progress makes it interesting to log my distance every night. Yes, you can guess how far you’ll go, but I find it more entertaining not to look at what’s coming so I can be surprised by the latest plot twist. Honestly, it makes me want to watch the Lord of the Rings movies again after I’ve gained full appreciation for just how far these characters walked! Their feet must have been so sore by the end of it.
My progress so far.
There isn’t much else to say in this update, so I’ll wrap things up here after a few more sentences. This has been a fun experience so far, and I’m looking forward to finishing the last third of it through the winter and early spring.
I will write one more post in this series once I reach the end of the 3109 kilometres (1932 mile) journey that Frodo and Sam took.
Back in August I estimated this would happen in March of 2020. That still seems like a reasonable goal, although we’ll have to see how the next few months go.
Hopefully, I’ll stay healthy through cold and flu season and continue to log the same number of kilometres each day.
Content warning: needles, substance abuse, and dental work. I will make a brief reference to the substance abuse but will otherwise steer clear of these topics in my review.
Downsizing is a 2017 science fiction film about a suburban couple who decided to undergo a new medical procedure in order to shrink their bodies to about five inches tall each in order to help the environment and live a more luxurious lifestyle on whatever savings they’d accumulated before being downsized.
Global Solutions was the research institute they turn to in order to make this procedure possible. It was founded in order to use science to make life better for humanity, and the director of this organization was certain he’d found the perfect way to solve human overpopulation and climate change simultaneously.
As always, I will be discussing every character in the past tense in order to avoid spoilers about what their fates may be. Some of the other films I’ve reviewed here have included character deaths. I stick to this rule in all of my reviews so that I’ll never inadvertently give away any spoilers other than the potentially triggering material I share in my content warnings.
Characters
Matt Damon as Paul Norris Safranek
Paul worked as an occupational therapist for a meat packing plant when this film began. He was committed to helping everyone he met feel as mobile and healthy as possible, although he also worried about falling behind financially speaking when compared to other households.
Kristen Wiig as Audrey Lustig Safranek
Audrey was Paul’s wife. She was a little nervous about being downsized and moving to Leisureland Estates, a community built specifically for five inch tall humans.
Yes, there are reasons why the descriptions of most of the female characters in this post are so sparse. I will discuss that in detail in my review below.
Christoph Waltz as Dušan Mirković
Dušan was an outgoing, friendly, and exuberant upstairs neighbour in Leisureland Estates who fully embraced his life as a small person. That is, he was well-known for his late-night loud parties, substance abuse, and loud music.
Hong Chau as Ngoc Lan Tran
Ngoc Lan was one of the workers who cleaned the houses of the wealthy people in Leisureland. She had an assertive and sometimes blunt personality that was well explained by her backstory.
Rolf Lassgård as Dr. Jorgen Asbjørnsen
Dr. Asbjørnsen worked for Global Solutions. He was the first scientist to discover how to safely and effectively shrink humans to a fraction of their former size. His wife, Anne-Helene, joined him and 34 other volunteers to be the first humans to undergo this process long before Paul and Audrey signed up for it.
Ingjerd Egeberg as Anne-Helene Asbjørnsen
Anne-Helene was Dr. Asbjørnsen’s wife.
Udo Kier (centre) as Joris Konrad
Joris was Dušan’s companion. Like Dušan, he’d spent many years partying hard and sucking every last moment of joy out of life. There was nothing more important to him than having a good time with likeminded people.
Søren Pilmark as Dr. Andreas Jacobsen
Dr. Jacobsen was the director of Global Solutions. He excelled at putting on presentations for investors and the media in order to bring in more money and hopefully attract new people to the downsizing movement.
Neil Patrick Harris as Jeff Lonowski
Jeff was the Senior Product Specialist at Leisureland Estates. He and his wife, Laura, did live demonstrations about their lifestyle to convince big people to sign up for the downsizing procedure.
My Review
It took a while to gather my thoughts about this film. There were parts of it I loved and parts of it that made me want to stop watching it altogether.
The trailer for it will make it sound like a comedy. While there were some humorous moments, this was a pretty serious story in general. Climate change is no laughing matter, and the creators hammered that point home clearly. This was actually something I really liked about the plot. It didn’t hesitate to shy away from the serious repercussions humans are going to face as the polar ice caps melt and our weather becomes even more unpredictable.
Shrinking humans to a fraction of their original size was a creative response to this crisis. A human who is less than six inches tall is obviously to need much less food, fuel, clothing, and other supplies to stay alive than one that is six feet tall. While the science behind shrinking someone to such a small size was never really explained, I enjoyed seeing as much of that process as the characters were aware of.
There were a few details about the downsizing procedure and how it worked that never occurred to me. It’s effect on the environment – and the environment’s potential effect on humans that are essentially the size of hamsters – was another part of the storytelling that I thought was really well done. The repercussions of both of those things spread further than I ever would have imagined.
I also liked the fact that the plot spent so much time exploring why downsizing will be the only way humans can hope to survive in the longterm. The scientists had excellent reasons for believing that big humans will die out as a result of climate change. While I was originally expecting something with a faster pace, it was nice to dig so deeply into all of the ways the planet will become uninhabitable for so many different species in coming generations.
What bothered me about this film was the way it treated the female characters. Despite having backstories that were just as, and in some cases far more, interesting than the male characters, the vast majority of them were given much less screen time than their male costars. I still don’t know what Audrey, Anne-Helene, or Laura’s professions, interests, hobbies were. Everything the audience learned about them was somehow connected to the men who married them.
Ngoc Lan’s personality and backstory were developed better, but even she was framed as a love interest despite everything else that was happening in her life that would have made for great storytelling. She had a lot of responsibilities to juggle for reasons I can’t disclose here without wandering into spoiler territory.
It is very odd to take someone whose life is filled with serious problems that have no easy solutions only to reduce all of that beautiful complexity to wondering whether she’s going to fall in love when and with whom the audience wants her to.
If this had happened to one female character who had been longing for a life partner, it wouldn’t have been an issue. The fact that the writers did it with the only woman who had an identity outside of being someone’s wife really rubbed me the wrong way, especially since she didn’t show any interest in romance when we first met her. Her life was so full already that I shuddered at the thought of her having to fall in love in order to live happily ever after.
There is nothing wrong with showing characters falling in love. What bothers me is when films shoehorn characters into that subplot or only show the parts of their lives that have to do with who they’re in a relationship with when none of their male counterparts were treated the same way.
To contrast this complaint, Paul had great character development during the course of this film. He started off as someone who had good intentions but who could be a little oblivious to other people’s perspectives at times. Seeing how he changed as a result of his decision to be downsized was a thrill. He took his experiences to heart and genuinely grew and changed as a result of the things he learned.
While the secondary male characters didn’t show as much development due to the smaller amounts of time they had on stage, they did have some of it. And they were also shown having interests, hobbies, and dreams that had nothing to do with whether or not they were married or had fallen in love.
If only the women in Leisureland Estates had been given the same opportunity.
I didn’t like Noah (the male love interest) at all in this story because of how unwilling he was to respect Allie’s boundaries when they first met, but I thought she was a sweet and lovely person. She deserved a partner who listened to her the first time she spoke her mind.
I would have dated either of these characters in a heartbeat if they were real people! Clare’s artistic occupation would have given us a lot to talk about on dates. Henry seemed like the sort of person who would have tons of interesting stories on date night…assuming he didn’t zap back to a different timeline in the middle of it.
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question. The image below is the list of upcoming prompts for this blog hop.
While I don’t really celebrate any winter holidays with anything other than a nice meal, I still enjoy reading books about or set in this part of the year.
I’ve never seen such a diverse assortment of stories related to Christmas. The references to the horror genre in the blurb are particularly interesting.
I was obsessed with Mr. Andersen’s stories when I was a child. He was the person who introduced me to many of my favourite classic fairytales and legends!
This is a topic I thought would make a great introduction to the beginning of December and the holiday season that looms before us, but the information in it is timeless.
I’m using the phrase difficult people as a shorthand term for anyone you find challenging to socialize with because of their behaviour.
Labels are useful but can’t possibly explain every nuance in a relationship. Your relationship with a friend will probably have features that aren’t present with a coworker, romantic partner, in-law, neighbour, or acquaintance. It was my intention to cast a wide, friendly net for this post and try to offer advice that can be used for as many different scenarios as possible.
With those caveats out of the way, let’s talk about how mindfulness can help before, during, and after the moments when you’re spending time with someone who you are not sure how to relate to.
Beforehand
I’ll admit to being the sort of person who sometimes plays conversations out in my head before they happen.
The problem with this is that no one can predict the future.
That conversation might not ever actually happen. If it does happen, there’s no way to know in advance when it will pop up or if it will end the way you expect.
Spending as much time in the present moment as possible is a great way to avoid borrowing trouble.
One of the biggest benefits of mindfulness I’ve discovered for days like these is that it helps me to prepare for them without making assumptions about how they will go.
All you know for sure is that a certain event is on the horizon and that specific people are probably going to be there. Start with that.
During
Slow Down
There is something beautiful about intentionally moving slowly through these sorts of interactions.
Not every question or remark deserves an answer. If it does need to be answered, that could happen five minutes, or a week, or a month from now after you’ve had time to think it over.
Observe
I like looking at designs on silverware or counting lightbulbs in a room. There is always something to pay attention to that you might have otherwise ignored.
Reading body language is also a fascinating thing to do. You can learn so much about someone by quietly watching their posture, facial expressions, and gestures.
Breathe Deeply
The beautiful thing about breathing deeply is how it encourages your mind to remain in the moment and what a calming influence it can be.
Focus on every breath as it enters and exits your body. Sometimes I’ll even count them silently in my mind.
Choose Your Words Carefully
It can be so relaxing to sit there and make small talk about the weather or some other innocuous subject when a tricky topic comes up.
There’s also the option of saying nothing at all. Silence is truly golden sometimes. As I mentioned earlier, not everything requires a response now or ever.
A well-placed dose of silence can give you a moment to think of how you want your words to come out before you say them.
This is a technique I’ve found especially helpful for people who have the urge to swoop in and fix the lives of those around them regardless of whether or not you actually wanted those things to be fixed. If they don’t know you adopted a new dog from the local animal shelter, chances are very good they’ll never tell you all of the things you’re doing wrong with that pet or why the breed you chose is the worst one ever.
Afterwards
Be honest with yourself.
How did it go? What parts of this gathering did you enjoy? Which ones were not so helpful?
Release
I know it’s tempting, but mentally going over what anyone said or did at tricky events like these probably won’t be helpful.
As Elsa sang, let it go. Find something to take your mind off of what just happened. Taking a long, brisk walk through the park is a nice distraction for me when the weather is nice. Sometimes I even use that trick on stormy days! It’s hard to ruminate when you’re also trying to avoid slipping on a patch of ice or stepping into a large puddle.
Think Longterm.
The strategies I mentioned today have been helpful for me in the short term, but it’s also important to think about what you want your life to look like months, years, or decades from now in my opinion.
I believe in meeting people where they’re at and being understanding, compassionate, and supportive when they’re going through a difficult time.
But I also believe in natural consequences and in putting emotional energy into relationships that are healthy and reciprocal. The only person I can control is myself, so there have been times in my life when I’ve reduced or eliminated the time I spent with someone based on their behaviours and current level of introspection.
There’s a huge difference between using mindfulness to get through a difficult conversation that must happen and repeatedly agreeing to spend time with someone who chooses to be unkind… or worse.
It’s not my place to tell anyone how to arrange their lives, but I think there’s something to be said for finding both short-term and long-term strategies for dealing with these things.
This month I’m participating in the Scifi Month challenge that was created by the bloggers at One More.
“Science the shit out of this” is today’s theme for Scifi Month.
Old reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation were my first introduction to technologies and scientific advancements that weren’t yet possible in our world. There were so many parts of that universe I desperately wanted to experience, from the holodecks to the replicators that would make you anything your heart desired for dinner. (It’s possible that 8-year-old me planned to eat nothing but replicated ice cream sundaes for dinner for a whole week if I ever got my hands on that technology!)
I’m still waiting for machines that are capable of these things. In the meantime, though, there are plenty of other science fiction advancements that have been or are becoming real in our world. Let’s talk about a few of them today.
Hyposprays
As someone who has been known to faint after getting a vaccination, I thought hyposprays would be less scary. Alas, my body is just as afraid of needle-less vaccines as it is of the other kind. This is still a cool development for making the workplace safer for doctors and nurses, though!
Medical Tricorders
Star Trek tricorders were used to almost instantly diagnose patients in their medical bay. With a quick scan, medical personnel could have vital scans as well as reports on anything that might be out of order in someone’s body.
Our tricorders aren’t quite as thorough yet, but some ER docs did invent a device a couple of years ago that can give readings on lung function, blood glucose, white blood cell count, and heart function. This device can diagnose about 30 different conditions with a few quick and painless readings.
Tractor Beams
The device these physicists came up with can reel in tiny particles for distances as long as eight inches. This technology is still in its infancy, but I’m excited to see how it develops in the future.
Artificial Wombs
No, I’m not talking about incubators. As life-saving as they are, they still aren’t capable of doing everything a uterus can do.
This is something that could change in the future. A couple of years ago, scientists put a premature lamb into an artificial womb. It had a pumpless circulatory system which is much easier on the lungs of an undeveloped fetus. They even created an amniotic fluid replacement so that the lamb would be in conditions as close to a normal ewe pregnancy as possible.
The lamb seemed to develop normally, so scientists are now working on creating an artificial womb that could bring premature human babies to full term with far fewer complications than they can experience with today’s methods.
What other items can you think of to add to this list?
Doesn’t this photo feel like it came from a scene in a fantasy novel? I will be talking about a fantasy series today so it does fit the theme of this post.
I don’t know if this is the right Corrie ten Boom book, but my parents owned a book written by her that talked about her childhood, experiences in concentration camps, and journey to forgiveness after the end of World War II. It was a heartbreaking read at times, but her stories about surviving those years made me a more empathetic person.
I was a few years older than the target age group for Harry Potter, but I loved them anyways. They were a wonderful distraction and a much-needed source of hope from a long struggle with childhood depression I dealt with shortly before the first book came out.
Reading this book helped me begin to sort out my thoughts when I worried about stuff that was either out of my control or not as serious as my brain was making it out to be.
This week’s prompt was a Thanksgiving freebie. Since I’ve already written a few different posts about the Canadian and American Thanksgivings over the last month, I decided to use this prompt to share books written by Native American and First Nations authors that I’ve already read or am I’m hoping to read soon.
If I’ve read it, I’ll share a sentence or two about why I liked it.
Generally, survival and adventure stories are a tad too intense for my tastes. This one began when two old women were abandoned by their village during a terrible winter famine. Where the plot went from there is why this has become one of my all-time things to read when I do want to read about adventure and survival.
This was my first introduction to Mr. Wagamese’s work. I’ve been a fan of his writing style and storytelling ever since. He has a way of making every scene come alive no matter what is happening in it. That is, his ordinary scenes are just as unforgettable as the heartbreaking ones.
What books can you all recommend adding to this list?
This month I’m participating in the Scifi Month challenge that was created by the bloggers at One More. Click on the link in that last sentence for more information or to sign up yourself. There is still time to pick a few of their prompts and join in if you’re interested.
The prompt for today was “aim to misbehave.” Science fiction is filled to the brim with characters who excel at getting into trouble, so I’m narrowing it down to protagonists (or people close to them) who were mischievous in a positive, humorous way. That is, they never got into the scrapes they do with the intention of harming anyone! It was all done in good fun.
Bender was high-tech industrial metalworking robot. Specifically, he was created to bend structural steel without heating it up first.
Let’s just say that the plan for this robot’s life wasn’t necessarily all that related to who he turned out to be after he left the factory where he was assembled.
Yes, Bender was physically capable of bending just about any physical object you can imagine, but what he was really interested in was bending the rules. Often, he bent them until they broke not out of malice but because he enjoyed seeing how life played out when things don’t go according to schedule.
Humans fascinated and horrified him. He thought he hated them until he met a few special people who changed his mind. Even with his humans of choice, though, he always wanted to know just how far he could push the limits while still making his antics funny.
Disenchantment is one of those shows that straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy, so I’m including it in this list. Luci is one of those demons that is far more good than he’d ever care to admit.
Like a cat, he has a strong desire for napping, independence, and not necessarily doing what the humans want him to. When push comes to shove, he’s going to land on the side of the good guys even if it means avoiding that sunbeam and not having that afternoon nap after all.
Just don’t expect him to avoid every mischievous temptation along the way. If there’s a way to get into the amusing kind of trouble while also helping his buddies, he’s going to find it.
Bart Simpson
The only reasonable conclusion I can make about The Simpsons is that it’s set in a science fiction or fantasy world. How else could you explain all of the impossible things that happen in it?
Bart is one of the most mischievous characters I’ve ever met. There barely seems to be a single second of the day that passes by without him plotting his next funny trick.
Fred and George Weasley
If I’d written the Harry Potter series, I would have made Fred and George the protagonists of at least one of the books! They deserved more attention than they got, and I think it would have been hilarious to see all of the hijinks these brothers got into that they maybe never got around to telling Harry about.
For example, I would have loved to see the moment when they first discovered how the Marauders Map works.
Who are your favourite mischievous protagonists or other good guys?
Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl
My Brain: Okay, it’s time to write this week’s Top Ten Tuesday entry now. What should we talk about in our freebie post?
My dad is still logging his miles walked into this game as well. There’s nothing competitive about how far we walk or anything like that. It’s simply nice to have that companionship.
Since I’m bisexual, I’m going to be talking about book boyfriends and book girlfriends today.
While I don’t really celebrate any winter holidays with anything other than a nice meal, I still enjoy reading books about or set in this part of the year.
I’ll admit to being the sort of person who sometimes plays conversations out in my head before they happen.
Observe
But I also believe in natural consequences and in putting emotional energy into relationships that are healthy and reciprocal. The only person I can control is myself, so there have been times in my life when I’ve reduced or eliminated the time I spent with someone based on their behaviours and current level of introspection.
This month I’m participating in the Scifi Month challenge that was created by the bloggers at 
Doesn’t this photo feel like it came from a scene in a fantasy novel? I will be talking about a fantasy series today so it does fit the theme of this post.
This week’s prompt was a Thanksgiving freebie. Since I’ve already written a few different posts about the Canadian and American Thanksgivings over the last month, I decided to use this prompt to share books written by Native American and First Nations authors that I’ve already read or am I’m hoping to read soon.
This month I’m participating in the Scifi Month challenge that was created by the bloggers at 
