In the doldrums

If you're a sailor (or if you've watched the Pirates of the Caribbean movies), you know that the doldrums are places in the oceans where the prevailing winds are calm or even non-existent, sometimes trapped sail-powered boats for days or weeks on end.  If you're a landlubber, you know that the doldrums have come to refer to a period of listlessness or mild depression.  Well, I'm not a sailor.  Ever since the election but especially since the inauguration, I have been fighting to compartmentalize my sadness and horror at what this country is becoming.  I'm not succeeding particularly well - although while I walk around feeling like crying all time, I am not actually crying all the time.  So there's that.  To be able to sleep at night, I have been severely restricting my online presence after making my phone calls/sending my emails to try to fight the power. 

And my entertainment has been focused as well.  I'm trying Tom Hardy's FX show, Taboo, although I am finding it slow (and since when are you allowed to say "fuck" on that level of cable?  I'm all for it, of course.  I was just surprised by it.). I plowed through Netflix's The O.A. and am almost done with their A Series of Unfortunate Events as well.  Both shows are pretty well done and continue Netflix's strong streak of original programming.  (For books I just plowed through my collection of old Bloom County and Outland books - dated 1980s through early 1990s - and it is amazing that so much of the stuff Berkeley Breathed was poking at back in those days - environmental damage/change, corrupt politics and Donald fucking Trump - are still issues today.)

Things will pick up here on the blog in a couple of weeks when The Walking Dead comes back.  I'm even looking forward to watching that damn show again, where I can say, "Well, things are going to shit in the U.S. now but at least we aren't overrun with zombies."  Yet, anyway.