A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2020 Del Rey Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Hi there, Constant Reader! Welcome to another edition of Bloggin' On, the no-reviews, no-politics section of my original blog, A Certain Point of View. Today is Sunday, April 12, 2020, and as I start this, morning is ending, and noon is not that far away. (By the time I'm done writing this, it'll be afternoon here in my corner of Florida.) Before I get to the main topic of this post ﹘ my reading list for April 2020 ﹘  I need to update you on what's going on with my blog and why I'm not posting here as often as I was before late March. I have had to slow my pace of one-post-per-diem on Blogger for one reason: Facebook has blocked this blog from its site. I have two theories as to why this was done, though I'm more inclined to put more weight on one of them above the other theory. Theory No. 1: Someone on Facebook, more than likely a Trump supporter, reported one or more of my posts to Facebook's Comm...

Our last family photo was taken on July 11, 2015. Mom passed away eight days later  As much as I enjoy having a Facebook account , and even taking into account that for the time being it is my main link to my friends and family, sometimes I get emotional curveballs tossed at me via its Memories feature. If you don't have a Facebook account (and I can think of at least one individual who does not have one), all you need to know is that every day, the social network re-publishes posts one created on the same date x years ago. The Memories posts are, of course, highly dependent on the content you create daily on Facebook. If, for instance, I share a post from this blog on my timeline today, the Memories feature will repost it on my timeline on April 25, 2020 (unless, of course, I turn off the feature). Over the past few days (not today, mercifully), I have seen a couple of re-posts that have made me relive the beginning of the darkest period of my life: the decline and e...

Hi, there, Constant Reader. It's now 3:29 p.m. EST in Miami, Florida. The current temperature is a summery 86 degrees Fahrenheit under cloudy skies. With humidity at 54% and a south-southwesterly breeze blowing at 10 mph (with gusts of up to 30 mph), the feels-like temperature is 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Even though I don't particularly want to, I have the air conditioner on, It's that hot. Worse still, a cold front is on its way to South Florida. It passed through Tampa earlier today and caused heavy rains and high winds, and we can expect at least some showers and stiff breezes here tonight. Hopefully that's all we'll get; last night WPLG, the local ABC affiliate, posted a weather forecast on Facebook that included the possibility of strong thunderstorms and even tornadoes. Luckily, the front is still dozens of miles away from here and my computer's AccuWeather app says no precipitation is expected within the next two hours. Late yesterday evening I went fo...

A few weeks ago - not sure of the exact date now but it wasn't more than a few weeks - I received a Facebook (FB) invite from my friend Leigh to play the FB version of The Sims. Now, unless you have been living under a rock for the past 15 years or so, you probably know that The Sims is a popular series of computer/console games published by Electronic Arts that allows you to create little human-like avatars and be responsible for their happiness, career, health and even (PG or PG-13) sex lives. (I have never owned or played the full version of this series, but I understand that in it, your Sims age, get sick and even pass on after a while.) Because I like interacting with Leigh on Facebook, and because I don't really want to spend $39.99 on the REAL game, I accepted the invite, thinking (logically) that I'd be able to choose my Sim's gender, personality, physical attributes and clothing. And since I'm a straight man in my late 40s, I figured my avatar woul...