Read in 2021

Back in 2020, I lamented that the year hadn't been great for reading, given the distractions of covid. I read nearly 8,000 words and hoped 2021 would be better.

Well, 2021 was different, that's for sure.

Re-reads are in bold. I don't feel bad re-reading, as I always find something new, or something old affects me in a new way.

Al Capone Shines my Shoes, by Gennifer Choldenko. 274 pages.

Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapsons Program in the World, by Ken Alibek and Stephen Handelman. 319 pages.

Design of Everyday Things, The; by Donald A. Norman. 257 pages.

Diary of A Wimpy Kid: The Deep End, by Jeff Kinney. 217 pages.

Diary of A Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, by Jeff Kinney. 217 pages.

Diary of A Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown, by Jeff Kinney. 217 pages.

Diary of A Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, by Jeff Kinney. 217 pages.

Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett. 249 pages.

Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank, The; by Erma Bombeck. 256 pages.

Gulliver of Mars, by Edwin L. Arnold. 224 pages.

House of Dies Drear, The; by Virginia Hamilton. 279 pages.

Joachim a des Ennuis, by Sempe/Goscinny. 192 pages.

Le Petit Nicolas et les Copains, by Sempe/Goscinny. 192 pages.

Les Vacances du Petit Nicholas, by Sempe/Goscinny. 186 pages.

Matthew Looney's Voyage to the Earth, by Jerome Beatty Jr. 133 pages.

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster; by Adam Higginbotham. 538 pages.

Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett. 353 pages.

Mort, by Terry Pratchett. 181 pages.

Mystery of Drear House, The; by Virginia Hamilton. 217 pages.

No Time Like the Future, by Michael J. Fox. 238 pages.

Peanuts by the Decade, the 1950s; by Charles Schulz. 490 pages.

See Here, Private Hargrove, by Marion Hargrove. 214 pages.

Snuff, by Terry Pratchett. 400 pages.

Under the Black Flag, by David Cordingly. 296 pages.

Who Moved My Cheese, by Dr. Spencer Johnson. 94 pages.

Page Total: 6,430

Lights, Please: 2021

 I can't say it any better than Charles Schulz, Lee Mendelson, and Bill Melendez said back in the 1960s.

YouTube Free Movies: Rockets Galore!

Rockets Galore!

Since I watched "Inn for Trouble" earlier this week YouTube has helpfully tossed a number of contemporary British films my way. For once, an algorithm is doing something right.

Today's is Rockets Galore from 1958. It's done in the style of "The Mouse that Roared" in that it's based on a comic novel about a small place, in this case the Scottish island of Todday, outsmarting the big guns (literally the British government, which wants to use Todday as a missile base). It's got the cast of eccentrics including a few who prattle on in idecipherable Gaelic.

It's a bit light on the comedy, I have to admit. Though it was fun to see as they panned through the island's inhabitants for reactions to a missile circling loudly over the island, the cutaways included a sheep dog, a sheep, and an incredibly wooly horse.

There is something fundamentally funny about watching a collection of rustic bumpkins pulling the wool over the bluebloods' eyes, however. Though making the crashed missile part of a bonfire seems ill advised.

I also love that it's filmed on location -- in this case on the island of Barra. These days, it would all be CGI. And I'm weary of that. Done right, CGI is wonderful. But in many, many cases it's done lazily because it's easier than doing the real thing.

Now they're dropping paratroopers on the clam-diggers.

There's some good anti-war conversation in the movie, coming from a nation only a decade removed from World War II and probably anxious to see the demilitarization, not re-militarization. Maybe that's where the humor -- and the hope -- comes through. And it's all resolved in a way that was probably clever back then, but old hat now: Conservation. I won't spoil the ending. Just go watch the movie.

There's that Cold War weariness, poked in the eyeballs.

But oops: I just spoiled the ending. Sorry.

YouTube Free Movies: "Inn for Trouble" and "Furry Vengeance"

Inn for Trouble

The one review I read on this film at IMDB decried it as a tired vessel for worn-out stars from The Larkins, a British situation comedy of the same 1960 vintage. Or something.

It could be since I'd never seen the show, I wasn't tainted by its worn-out premise, but I thought the film was a hoot.

I mean, it is pretty typical -- A man-boy married to a straightforward, harradin-ish wife, with other man-children in the family getting up to hijinx while the wife tries to keep everything together.

What I enjoyed the most was from the youngest man-child, Eddie Larkin, still living out his Boy-Scout days. He's forced to leave his post as Assistant Scoutmaster as his family runs off from London to run a pub as a reward for a long career in a brewery.

He camps, gets run over by a group fox-hunting, fails to start a fire by using a fire drill and recruits a local youth of indeterminate age as the nucleus of a new troop. They end up water-dowsing and, well, I won't spoil the film. But it was a fun look at Scouting in 1960s Britain, if even then at least the leaders were played as sissies.

I wish I knew more British character actors, because I'm sure this film is packed with them.

I cannot find a trailer for the film, so the YouTube link I used to watch it is here instead.

And technically I didn't find it on the "YouTube Free Movies" thread, but nevertheless, it caught my attention.

Furry Vengeance

This is a 2010 Brendan Frasier vehicle, which should have been a warning.

I'm not sure what this film was, or what its intended audience is. Is it a kids' film? A preaching on the continued human invasion of the natural world? Or a gigantic mistake that I would regret for the rest of the day?

It was sort of all three.

There were enough smashes and crotch shots to entertain the boy kiddies, and maybe enough cute animals to entertain the girls. And there was a rather weak love sub-plot involving two teenagers where the eco-conscious message could be brought in.

But the film, at the end, is utterly forgettable.

Except for Brendan Frasier. I'm pretty sure he had fun making it. Maybe he ought to go Full Rambo more often. So if you want to watch someone having fun while making a really stupid movie, this one's for you.

Also, it should be noted that while the film did not use animals in sunglasses in their promotional material, this did show up in the movie:

The environmentalist message is a bit wearisome at points, particularly at the beginning when the clearly conservative and smarmy land developer representative is driven off the road by an animal-produced Rube Goldberg machine, which sends him and his Porche off a cliff but not before a raccoon is able to hand him back the cigar butt he flicked out the window.

There's also a poorly-built plot point where they try to show the land being developed has long been cursed by animals willing to go to extreme means to shove humanity out, including cavemen, a Puritain, and a hippie, all played by Frasier.

Here's the trailer, so you know what you're in for:

YouTube Free Movies: "The Italian Job," and "Jingle All the Way"

The Italian Job

On the heels of watching The Muppet Christmas Carol with the family last night, I decided I was still in a Michael Caine mood, so I chose 1969's The Italian Job from the list today.

It is, shall we say, a muddle.

For me, what makes heist movies work are the characters. Introduce the characters to me well, and then do an incredible heist, and you've got me hooked.

The heist in this film is pretty good, with a lot of action, some fun cinematography, and what you'd expect from a car chase.

The characterizations, not so much. We get to see Michael Caine's character developed a bit. And you get a little bit of Benny Hill's character -- enough to know he likes the ladies chubby. But that's about it. All the rest of the characters, you could swap them in and out of roles and the movie would be about the same. There's quite a bit going on in the first half of the film, but little of it has to do with establishing characters.

Also, the editing is really choppy. In once scene, they're all shown leaving their mansion hideout. Then one's at the airport, getting his moll out of the action. Another's getting arrested -- Benny Hill, for feeling up a lady. Then they're back at the mansion hideout leaving again, or so I assume. Maybe I don't really know who's coming and going. But the film does a pretty poor job of maintaining continuity.

One of the plot points has to do with changing a reel-t-reel tape at a power plant, or something, as part of the heist. They show the exchange. Then the keep cutting to some kind of control center to show monitors going off or something, but all of the dialogue -- except for one scene -- is done in Italian. It's hard to know what's going on.

Apparently, there's a Mark Wahlberg remake, which might be worth looking at, but based on the trailer, I'm a bit dubious.

I wanted to like this film. But at the end, it was just too muddled to like.

It also has what might be the most annoying rallying movie theme song I've ever heard. And, given it's the '60s, some really questionable hair:

Jingle All the Way

This is a throwback to 1996, and it shows. There were THREE phone calls placed from public payphones in this film. THREE. And as a Christmas movie, it does hit all the Hollywood holiday buttons:

1. No mention of Jesus or Christianity; it's secular all the way ho ho ho.

2. Dad, played by Ahnold Schwarzenneger, is an incompetent workaholic.

3. The town -- which at one point feels smallish, then has a small downtown skyline, then a HUGE downtown skyline -- drips with holiday trimmings with EVERY house decorated to the hilt and lots of piles of snow but nobody has frosty breath and there's a threatened ice storm and it's night and then it's day and there are people caroling in FULL DICKENSIAN REGALIA.

Oh, folks, it was bad. They were going through the motions of making a Christmas movie and they really wanted it to have a heart, but the heart was that the kid gave away the toy he wanted because Dad became a full-fledge copy of the toy, and will probably go back to his incompetence after the New Year.

Do not watch.

Leave Schulz Out of It

 

I culled this from Facebook earlier this week, just to talk about it.

I've loved Peanuts since I was a very young child. I saw myself in Charlie Brown, sometimes in Linus. But everywhere I looked, I saw a creation that understood some of the anxieties children faced, even if I didn't know I was facing anxieties at all.

So it kinda makes me mad, seeing stuff like this.

Linus never said this. Don't put words in his mouth. Leave Charles Schulz out of whatever it is you're talking about.

Because this isn't the comics page. This is using a beloved (by some) comic strip character in propaganda. And we all know how I feel about using things as propaganda.

NEW FEATURE: YouTube Free Movies. "Shattered Glass" and "Kangaroo Jack"

Starting a new and exciting feature here at Mister Fweem's blog. Or retreading something I've done here before and just not branded all that well. Or something.

Here's the premise: YouTube is offering free movies with ads. Probably trying to compete with Netflix and other streaming services for eyeballs, particularly as they're offering questionable movies in their free category to bait you into renting more quality content from their paid service.

Because I'm cheap, I go for the free. But, you know, I pay for it in other ways.

So this installment features two films:

Shattered Glass

This 2003 film tells the story of Stephen Glass, a writer for The New Republic who fabricated the majority of the stories he wrote for the magazine. It stars Hayden Christensen, who apparently is making a career of playing whiny, unlikable characters. (Seriously, if I had a co-worker who said "Are you mad at me" as often and as pathetically as Christensen plays Glass, I'd want to die.)

I'll admit to watching YouTube highlights of the film many times. When I watched the full film, I realized I hadn't missed much by watching just the highlight reels.

The film tries to tell a story or something about honesty and integrity, but as the flashback moments come almost exclusively through the eyes of Glass, it's more a tale of hubris and regret. And maybe that's the real message of the film.

So, my recommendation: Skip the film, watch the highlights. Unless you don't know the story, then watch the film.

Kangaroo Jack

This film, also from 2003, carries a warning in the trailer: The kangaroo wears sunglasses.

I have long had a rule that says if an animal is featured in a film's promotional material and at any time that animal is shown wearing sunglasses, it's best to avoid that movie as they are universally bad. I remember seeing previews for the film and thinking, "Yeah, this might work. But SUNGLASSES ON THE KANGAROO."

Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try.

And stinkerino.

First of all, the premise that these two mooks have valid passports enabling them to travel to Australia at a moment's notice is laughable.

And then there's the traveling to Australia montage: Koalas, check. Kangaroos, check. Ayers Rock, check, Men at Work (and you know what song I'm taking about because in Americans' view, they only ever wrote one song), check. Drinking game at an Outback bar, check. Trouble with Aussie slang, check. Finding an American who can help them bridge the two worlds, check. This move hit all the pre-packaged Australian cultural hot buttons, right down to worrying if the dingoes they see ate someone's baby.

I couldn't finish, once the juvenile humor in a PG-rated film got too crass. I mean, I didn't have high expectations to begin with, and I was not wrong. And Christopher Walken was in this. Did he owe somebody a favor? I mean, there might have been other big-name actors in the film, but as an officially out-of-it Gen X fud, I didn't recognize any of them.

And I didn't care. Because what I saw was bad.

Also, I don't recall watching a single ad in this film, even though it was on YouTube's free with ads channel. Apparently, no brand wanted to besmirch itself with an animal-in-sunglasses movie either.

So, my recommendation: Stick with the sunglasses rule; it will never steer you wrong.

Addendum: Just discovered this film won the "Favorite Fart in A Movie" category in the 2004 Kids' Choice Awards. Just to let you know what caliber of film you'd be watching if you choose to break the Sunglasses Rule.

Blog Posting: Historically, in the Toilet

So I have been on this blog since December 2007.

Some of it has gone well. Some has not. If I exclude 2007, which I definitely should, 2021 marks the year with the fewest blog posts, viz:

(I learned how to make this graph, by the way, by listening to a YouTube video narrated by Emo Phillips.

The numbers here will be a bit off, seeing as the count for 2021 doesn't include this post or any subsequent posts, but it's not likely I'm going to have a blogging explosion in the last few weeks of the year.

I don't even know why I'm writing this except:

1. I like graphs.

2. Hey, one more blog post for 2021.

So do with this information what you will.

Joke Goes Unappreciated

So I saw this ad on Facebook earlier today. Since it was targeted at East Idaho, I figured it deserved an East Idaho response:

Went back to the ad a little later and saw:

1. My comment had been deleted.

2. The ad had been changed to not permit comments.

Cut the Twaddle

 

There's a lot of twaddle out there.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone who is even the slightest bit aware of the mess of thought that's out there.

Yet . . .

What bugs me the most are the usurpings.

In my church, we have a nice message called "The Family -- A Proclamation to the World." Not everyone likes it, of course, but it's something I generally agree with.

There's a Facebook group under the same name that's passing a lot of twaddle in the name of the proclamation. And I don't like it.

They seem to pass on a lot of right-wing twaddle. And it embarrasses me. They're usurping the family proclamation to try to score political points. It's not a good look. If you want to preach your politics -- and I don't care what stripe it is -- do it on your own dime, under your own name, without turning something good into political propaganda.

And I'm here on my blog saying it, because we live in an archipelago of thought now online. Saying this on Facebook wouldn't do any good, because of the pilers-on coming in to naysay and attack what you're saying. Which is their right. But should we be quiet just because it's the loud that win the arguments just by being loud?

I guess it's not a fight I'm willing to pick. But it still embarrasses me.

Boring Stories About Pirates, 'Just Drank A Glass of Water' Edition

It shouldn’t be possible to write a boring book about pirates, but I found one.

And maybe it’s me. But to stave off the boredom, I began reading another non-fiction book, and it’s much more compelling.

The book in question is “Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates,” by David Cordingly, who apparently has a long history with maritime history and has written several books.

I think a lot of the problem is the telling, not the showing. There’s lots of third-person telling in this book, and that removes the reader from the story, or the action, or what have you. When Cordingly does quote from records, things get more vivid, or at least a lot more peppered with the word “ye.” I can imagine a battle going on in the historian’s brain, not wanting to embellish or assume anything. But it is the historians who write more like novelists that capture my interest and bring me closer to the history they love, and I think for the most part they do it with an eye on accuracy.

I’m not disputing that Cordingly’s book has no value – I’m certain it’s quite a valuable bit of research for anyone wanting to know more about pirates, wanting to write about pirates and the like. I do know that for general reading, it’s a bit on the dull side.

Citizenship in Society Merit Badge -- A Few Thoughts

As I read the material the Boy Scouts of America has prepared for would-be counselors of its new Citizenship in Society merit badge, the biggest thing that struck me is that this merit badge above all others encourages the counselors to shut up.

And those calling it the Woke Merit Badge had better shut up and listen as well – unless they believe the tenets of the Scout Oath and Scout Law are “woke” as well.

“The counselor is to serve as a facilitator,” says the second point of the Key Considerations as the Citizenship in the Society Merit Badge Counselor instructions.

The key words are serve and facilitator. This is going to come hard to many in the BSA’s merit badge counseling world, where most are used to teaching, not listening. The instructions go on to say the counselor “draws out from the Scout what they have discovered and learned, and how they plan to put it into action.”

Again, a shift. This implies much learning and introspection on the part of the Scout before meeting with the counselor – thus the BSA’s desire that this merit badge not be taught in large groups or at merit badge events, where there’s little preparation or introspection beforehand.

And more: “The counselor is not to interject their own opinions and beliefs but instead should consider the Scout’s experience and journey into these topics. The role of the counselor is that of a skilled listener and discussion leader.”

Adding to that, from the third point: “The intent is for the true learning to be experienced through the Scout’s own research.” Not from listening to a counselor lecture.

This will be a challenging merit badge, but mostly a challenge for Scout leaders, who are used to the lecture model.

For those who regard the badge as the Woke Merit Badge, another challenge. Contineue din the guidelines, the BSA says it wants to promote “a sense of belonging and [to build] communities where every person feels respected and valued. Leading by example and encouraging each other to live by the values expressed by the Scout Oath and Scout Law.”

So if this is the Woke Merit Badge, which parts of the Scout Oath and Law are woke?

The secret to teaching this one is going to lie in the listening and in preparing the scouts to think and decide for themselves what the concepts in the badge mean to them. It’s probably the most metaphysical badge the BSA offers. Should be an interesting one to watch.

From the Best Books, or at Least from the Mouth of Bob

We all know people who have friends everywhere.

When I was Scoutmaster, for example, my assistant scoutmaster knew all sorts of people. That became cemented in my mind when on two occasions, on hikes out in the middle of nowhere, we met other hikers and he knew them. He's a natural for making friends, though. Has the kind of personality that's always interested in people.

My Dad also knew people from all over the place. But the older I get, the more I suspect that wasn't a skill that came naturally to him. It's something he had to learn to cultivate.

I do not have those skills.

Enter Bob's Burgers.

I recently re-watched the "Driving Big Dummy" episode, and this exchange near the end really hit me:

BONNIE: Oh Teddy, you like asking people about themselves, don’t you?

TEDDY: Well, yeah. People are interesting.

MR. ESTOCK:  Teddy fixed the porch for me. He wasn’t here half the day and he got me talking about my late wife’s cornbread recipe. How was it, by the way?

TEDDY: It was really something.

MR ESTOCK: I ran out of corn. 

TEDDY: That explains it. Well, we better get going. Why are you staring, Bob?

BOB: Hey, Teddy, I . . . I wanna say something. I guess maybe I thought you were lonely. But you’re really not. At all. You make friends wherever you go, and you’re so interested in people. All the time. I, um, am never interested in people. I don’t like people that much. Not you guys; you seem great. But I don’t really like that about myself and I guess I really admire that about you.

TEDDY: Oh, thanks. And hey, don’t beat yourself up, Bob. You are like that, kind of, with the six people you already know. But yeah, maybe you could branch out a bit.

BOB: I’ll try. Thank you again, Connie.

BONNIE: It’s Bonnie.

I'm the Bob in this situation. And I need to branch out a bit. And I need to remember that when I'm around other people who do know a lot of others and spend time with them, I should be learning how to do it. Or at least learn to tolerate it better.

Enema Addendum

So explain me this.

Yesterday, put into Facebook jail for three days for "inciting violence."

Not that I want my friends to get into trouble, but somehow their comments stand. I guess "I wanted to run them over" is more promotional of violence than machine guns or cattle prods. Is there a difference between promoting violence and engineering potential violence?

I don't understand it, Facebook. Not that I want to promote violence, or push boundaries. But there's absolutely no transparency here. Why is what I said pushing violence, but these comments are not? AGAIN, DON'T WANT TO RAT THESE GUYS OUT. Just trying to understand.

This is why people hate your tiny guts.

Facebook Needs an Enema

This time because I posted a comment wherein I expressed the desire to run over two dudebros who stopped in front of an open parking spot where I had hoped to park because they wanted me to pass because they were walking in the middle of the parking lot aisle.

A friend's comment on hood-mounted machine guns still stands, however.

My sinful thought:

I am PROMOTING VIOLENCE, they say.

Or maybe restraint, you know, because while I said I wanted to run them over, I didn't actually do it. And no reasonable person would look at this and think I advocate running over Walmart parking lot morons. At least not yet.

And of course Facebook's filters are known to be humorless.

Meta Company or Meat Planet: Only One Is Real

There's a letter circulating in Facebook purporting to be from a company named "The Meta Company" in which the company founder outlines bullying tactics used by Facebook lawyers to try to buy their [whatever] because [reasons]. With no sale agreed to, Facebook simply bullied its way into a rather boring company name that isn't really all that unique except in its blandness.

It has the appearance of the typical American story of the underdog planning to soldier on despite enormous odds and the oodles of cash the big bully corporation has to make the problem go  away.

It also has another typically American thing about it: It smells like horse doots.

Cursory Internet searches on The Meta Company and Chicago - clues from the widely-circulating letter - and the name of the founder of this "bullied" company, also found in the letter, bring up news stories about the letter, but nothing else.

This is the most thorough story I can find on the controversey.

Equally vague is the company's own website. If there's any livelihood being taken away, it's not clear what that livelihood looks like from the company's own mouth. (Letter presented below in case it disappears.)

I'm not saying Facebook isn't a bully or worse, just that this particular story doesn't really pass the smell test.

Back to the Meat Planet . . . 

Pythagoras

Pythagoras and the humble bean,

The oddest pair I’ve ever seen.

With the bean he says we sprung up

Then he fills your tricky wine cup.

He claims he found hypotenuse,

Not Baudhayan, the silly goose.

Hungarians call him Petergorus

With his stunts he’ll always bore us.

Want It/Need It

This weekend, I watched three ladies I admire a great deal accomplish a difficult thing.

My wife Michelle and two of our scouts finished the Hiking Merit Badge by completing a 20-mile hike along the Yellowstone Railroad rail bed trail in Island Park, hiking from the Johnny Sack Cabin to near the Polebridge Campground.

One of the scouts is a rancher and avid hiker and wanted to complete the badge for fun. The other has some physical disabilities that make swimming and cycling difficult tasks, so to get her Eagle rank, she needed Hiking.

So both were highly motivated, and Michelle, bless her, was along for the ride. Or walk, as the case may be.

This is a good metaphor for life. We can often accomplish challenging things if we want them badly enough. And these three ladies did, if for different reasons.

There are also metaphors for preparation and adaptability.

I was driving the "rescue vehicle," in case there were difficulties along the route. I picked the route I wanted to follow by looking at Google Maps, planning out where to meet the group along the trail to provide assistance and a potty break when needed. At one point, however, the intended path was flooded -- literally. We were in water up to the axles and the next lake/puddle was even deeper. So we had to back up for about 1/4 of a mile to get out of the muck and then had to race to try to catch up to the hikers. We missed them at one stop, meaning they had to walk an extra distance before the bathroom break could take place. They were intrepid. And I was cautious enough that the only bad thing that happened was a missed potty break, not a flooded-out rescue vehicle.

Best part of the day was hearing their whoops and hollers when they tried to call us but the call didn't get through -- so we went to the trail and saw them coming at the end.

Fake News, but No Underpants

Hey, let’s MAKE some fake news.

So today on Facebook, this image – or rather the concealment thereof – gained a lot of traction:

The image revealed shows a pair of glasses bringing a flower growing up through a cobblestone street into focus, with blurred images of people milling about in the background.

There’s also an unattributed quote on the image: “Stand up for what you believe in even if you are standing alone.”

Outrage on the ‘book, of course, is rampant. Or at least there in some form, let’s not exaggerate.

Nefarious mischief of Facebook’s ban-happy algorithm is presented, without evidence, as the main culprit. Many people are begging the question: Why is Facebook banning this image? They don’t want us to stand up for what we believe in?”

My theory: This is a fake news banning fueled by someone or someone wanting to fuel anti-Facebook sentiment by using Facebook’s own tools against it.

Let’s break things down, first of all. Understanding what’s in the image might be helpful. I doubt it, but I’s fun figuring it out.

Let’s start with the quote. As far as I can tell, the quote is attributed to Sophie Scholl, an anti-Nazi activist who was executed in 1943 for passing out anti-war pamphlets in Munich. Whether or not she actually said it is up for debate. 

It’s quite possible she said something similar to this in German – her Wikipedia page includes the quote “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did,” which expresses a parallel sentiment. 

This direct quote is attributed to Andy Biersack, singer for the Black Veil Pirates.

And Suzy Kassem, who is not stuck on herself at all.

And Mikasa Ackerman, an anime character.

It’s also associated in many ways with Atticus Finch, protagonist of the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

So clearly going to the Internets to find out who said this and why the sentiment might draw the ire of the Facebook censors is a dry well.

And the image?

Hard to tell. It has echoes of a few things I’m familiar with.

The glasses evoke this scene from the Battleship Potempkin, a Russian silent film from 1925.

(pertinent scene at 6:37)

The flower evokes this scene from Joe Versus the Volcano, a contemporary American film.

But images of flowers and glasses in similar contexts abound; certainly others could find instances familiar to them as well.

So let’s revisit that theory: Posting the image, well, that’s good and all, but it’s easily ignored. Get it banned, however, and it circulates due to the outrage machine Facebook is famous for.

Who benefits?

Hard to tell. People who don’t like Facebook, I guess.

But there’s more text on the photo: a URL: fb.com/mywhisperoftheheart

Go there and KABLOOIE more evidence of FACEBOOK CENSORSHIP.

The page isn’t there anymore, just this:

So the circle of conspiracy is complete.

Facbook’s less-than-transparent censorshipping of stuff doesn’t help. The original poster of this image might know what “community standard” the image violated, but clearly they’re not telling. And Facebook would only tell them in vague or indefinite terms – this is someone who’s spent time in Facebook Jail talking.

So is it easier to assume:

1. Something in this image is so violent and sinister that innocent Facebookers individually reported it enough times that it was banned.

2. Something in this image is a trigger for the snowflakes who jumped on the bandwagon of bannination.

3. The original poster of the image reported it and got enough friends to report it the image was banninated.

But who benefits? There seem to be no profit in this situation.

Who Gets the Benefit of Peer Review?

Recently, my wife and I had a discussion about the effectiveness of peer review.

For context, the discussion took place in a chat room for English instructors at BYU-Idaho. Screencapped here:

Says my wife:

I've been thinking about the breakout groups we had during our meeting the other night. As English teachers, we seem to have such a love-hate relationship with peer reviews. Is the purpose really to have the students help each other? Or do they do more damage than good sometimes? I told my breakout group that I cringe when bad advice is given, such as the student who told another student they needed to "put more fluff" in their paper, in order to meet the word count. Ack! For my own students, when they express nervousness over just how well they'll be able to review someone else's paper, I tell them the real reason I like peer reviews is so that the reviewer gets experience by looking at someone else's paper and then thinking about what worked and what didn't, and how that may influence their own writing. I realize different teachers may see the purposes of a peer review differently, but I had this thought: what if everyone was required to offer a review to at least one classmate, but it's a review only the teacher ever sees? Then I can see that they are using their powers of observation to help them grow as a writer, and the student having his paper reviewed can't be damaged by less than helpful comments. Is the result worth the effort, or is this just busy work?

Says me:

Is the result worth the effort, or is this just busy work?

That's a tough question to answer because it's subjective. We all know our students arrive at different writing skill levels. Some really crave the feedback and are open to it, whether they're good writers or not. Some don't care what others have to say, no matter their own skill level -- we see this when we offer our own feedback.

From my perspective, peer reviews are more to the benefit of the person doing the review than the one receiving it. For example, I recently had a friend ask me to read a snippet from a novel she's editing to check if the French being used was accurate. I put on my wobbly French copy editing hat and went to work -- but then realized there's a lot more to the scene than just correct French.

One character was a native French speaker, but a child --- so their French was going to be more French, but also prone to the shortcuts one takes when learning a language. The other character was a native English speaker speaking in French, so their French needed to have a more "translated from English" feel.

But then that got me to thinking -- how long has this second character known French? Maybe she's better at it than I give her credit for. And as for the second character, do I know how a French child would speak?

So. Many. Questions. And questions that I take back to my own fiction writing as I develop my characters. Less flying by the seat of my pants, more planning things out.

Maybe the author I helped in this instance will appreciate my effort. But I learned a bit more about characterization in the peer review than I expected.

To sum up: I think both my wife and I agree that the one who gets the most out of peer review is the one who performs the review, not the one who receives it.

That is of course, subjective (see the above comment on adding fluff to meet the word count).

So to say the benefit goes mostly to the reviewer is problematic. The reviewer has to be advanced enough in his or her writing career to be self-aware enough to recognize when advice given to another writer is advice that could also be applied to himself or herself.

I think I might be at that point.

Not that I'm a genius. I am not. But when I spend time reading others' writing in peer review situations, I look at what I'm telling the author and think, "Yeah, that's something I need to work on as well."

So I need to do more peer reviews. But they're hard to find unless I want to review romances. Ew.

MY GOOD PILLOWS!

We have two couch pillows that have followed us through three houses. The collection has been added to over time, but these two. Perfect for napping.

One is rather flat, but firm. A foundation pillow, ready and willing to work in combination with the other to grant perfect head and neck placement.

That second pillow. Soft as the proverbial downy chick, yet resilient, able to maintain its shape and fluffiness to swaddle the head in a cloud. Cumulo-nimbus.

Over the years, they grew tatty. The flat one's blue faded from bright to grey. The white fluffy one fought valiantly to retain its color, but yellowed as the years passed like a wise man's tooth.

Both pillows were in the trash when we pulled it out to the curb last night. I wept like a child.

Mrs. Judson was right to be upset about the state of her pillows.

Really Good Sci-Fi: Star Trek Lower Decks

WARNING: Trek purists, I've noticed, REALLY hate this show. Probably because it's the only modern Trek that hasn't continued to stuff its bum with tweed. But I digress.

In just a few quick sentences, Ensign Beckett Mariner sums up what I find most appealing about Paramount+'s slightly seasoned (in its second season) Star Trek Lower Decks.

While cleaning up leftovers of senior officers' away missions and cultural explorations, Mariner tells Tendi the following: "Every day isn’t gonna be some pristine exploratory adventure. Sometimes it’s work, and it sucks. Get used to it." While the prime crew of the USS Cerritos muddles through second contact missions and comically being forced to deal with increasingly militant Pakleds, the lower decks crew gets assigned grunt work after grunt work. It's dull. It's boring. And it occasionally involves getting pooped out by strange space creatures.

It's also fun.

And while the wackiness does penetrate to the lower decks, this crew's adventure doesn't always end on some grand philosophical high note; bums are stuffed with crew members quickly expelled, not tweed.

And while I love the TNG era this series pokes fun at, it's fun to see Star Trek enjoying being Star Trek again, rather than everything else in the modern Trek world, being some gritty reboot and supposed moralistic reflection on our own troubled times. We can enjoy Rutherford being unable to stop his bloated barrel body because we can't ever see that happening to us. And it's fun to see writers and actors taking the rater stiff Trek tropes and flipping them on their heads.

That this crew isn't preaching moral superiority at every turn is probably why the Trek geeks don't like it all that much. Fine. More for me.

Really Bad Sci-Fi: Solar Attack and The Europa Report

 Today, I watched this: 

When the movie title is this ‘70s throwbacky – even with the modern font – you know it’s gonna be good.

And wow, it was good.

This film, 2006's "Solar Attack," had everything: Proto-Buck Rogers, a gormless, corn-fed Joe Johnson, blown out of the sky in a purchased Russian spacecraft that did not in any way look like a Salyut capsule by a corona mass ejection that momentarily set a pocket of dangerous greenhouse gas methane on fire.

The ship was purchased and launched by a proto Elon Musk, late of the national space agency, but also a multi-billionaire running his own company or something; I’m not sure if his fortune is ever fully explained and I don’t really care in the slightest.

The Sun fries a Sun-observing satellite, which squeals in pain as it’s cooked. And then cooks a US weather satellite which crashes in Detroit, BLOWING A KID CLEAN OFF AN URBAN PLAYGROUND. (Which was when I knew I was going to like this film.)

Add to this confusion is more CMEs, the Pentagon monitoring Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic, and the typical forgetting that massively fast CMEs will slow down when the plot requires it. And another CME demolishes a Russian military communication satellite, set to communicate with the Russian subs. A stunning sequence shows two F-16 jets blowing up the satellite before it can smash into downtown Buffalo, which would have been no great loss. Sadly, the Russian satellite doesn’t squeal as it dies, nor utter a cynical “billyat” as it expires. Just a sad little Sputnik beep.

Improbable moments:

1.       The Elon Musk prototype knows a commander on a Russian submarine which has the only nuclear weapons capable of turning the North Pole into a giant fire extinguisher to put out the fires the CMEs are going to cause in the atmosphere.

2.       The Elon Musk prototype does a Jack Ryan to get on the Russian sub, commanded by an old friend. He manages to convince the Soviet Premier to authorize a nuclear strike on Santa Claus.

3.       The ex – or whatever, I assume it’s the ex – works at an observatory in Albany, New York, studying the CMEs and expects that once Musk gets to the submarine and despite the great distances, massive power outages caused by the CMEs and other variables, will be able to make a phone call to her.

4.       He does.

5.       By calling an observatory that’s just been hit by some random space debris.

At least it’s the American sub commander who is being the buckaroo.

This is really a mix of your typical end of the world with a fan drubbing of scenes from Hunt for Red October.

THE SUB COMMANDER BASICALLY DID A CRAZY IVAN BUT STILL THE COMPUTER DISPLAYS IN THE SUB EXPLODED.

Proto Elon Musk is now communicating with the American sub. Apparently they have orders not to destroy submarines with celebrities on board.

YAY! The fires are out! No matter we have to deal with fallout from five nuclear missiles. The blast put the fires out but did NOT scatter the ordinary clouds above the destroyed observatory at Albany. And they’re celebrating in the nuclear-induced snow.

Now they’re all riding off in the presidential limousine, even the Elon Musk sidekick who should, by all rights, be standing there, disheveled, hollering “I want to go with them” as the Red Cross wraps him in a blanket and shuffles him off.

And another: Europa Report from 2013.

I tried to watch the film on its own merits. But I have to confess this: It wanted to be 2001 so bad. And it was not 2001. Nor even 2010, which might not have been as artistic as 2001 but was at least a film that created characters you cared about.

This film did not. It offered a bland palette of astronauts who were, frankly, interchangeable. Even those who were supposed to be Russian, I couldn't really tell them apart from the other astronauts. And they were all young and beautiful. Experts, Bob, experts in their fields, except everything they did ended in disaster. They bragged about going further than the Apollo astronauts. But these folks couldn't astronaut themselves out of a paper bag.

The premise was good -- exploring Europa in the hopes of finding life. And they do. But it was too Lee Gentrified -- the scientific discovery had to come at way too much loss of life. It wasn't good enough to leave us with a film that left us wondering, like 2001, or a film that left us crying and wondering, like 2010. It just had to kill everyone for the sake of cheap thrills.

And I didn't care. Because I couldn't tell one astronaut from another. Only one really got a backstory -- his kid would be six when he got home. And that was it. End of backstory. I guess you could clutter a film with backstory, but too many of it sci-fi predecessors put in way more backstory without cluttering, so it can be done.

L.H. Puttgrass and Facebook Jail

 

Facebook jail again.

This time for quoting Berkeley Breathed's L.H. Puttgrass on a random thread about eliminating the Electoral College.

I'd blame an ahumorous censor, but I'm about 99.9% certain this all comes down to an algorithm. I guess they have to err on the side of caution when anyone uses the word SHOOT.

But still, please.

Also, at first, this was a "warning." When I disagreed with their algorithm/ahumorous android's decision, it became a 24-hour bannination.

Recording it here because if I discuss it on Facebook tomorrow after the bannination is lifted, I'll get it all over again.

All I wanted was to be a pundit for the people.

Urge

First, came this letter.

Pretty simple, straightforward, right?

The key word is "urge."

Some people insist the "urge" is a suggestion, not a commandment. Some have gone as far as to say this isn't from God, but echoes of politicians and medical personnel. So they don't have to obey.

Nevermind that Russell M. Nelson, our current prophet and renowned heart surgeon, got the vaccine as early as they could, along with other church leaders.

Or that time and again, the church has urged members to take care of themselves physically and to get vaccinated, not just for covid but for other serious ailments.

People have latched on to the idea of free agency -- which is fine, it's been mentioned by the church public affairs office -- but in context with not being free of consequences of their choices.

And nevermind the scriptural precedents, either, viz:

So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.

10 And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and awash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.

But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper.

Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage.

And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said, My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith to thee, Wash, and be clean?

Let's look at the word urge again:

This is more than a suggestion, folks.

On Virginia Hamilton's "The House of Dies Drear"

 Like many of a certain age, I was first introduced to this story by PBS’ “WonderWorks” version of the tale, put out in 1984. A few clips of it are available on YouTube, but they’re of poor quality.

Nevermind that.

This story is excellent and has drawn me back over the years to read and re-read it.

On this, maybe my fifth reading, passages from Chapter Fifteen stuck with me:

“[L]et’s get back to the nice Sunday-morning church folks who never once cared whether my father lived or died. No, you can have them. They’re the reason I left town. Even when I was small, I always hated them for their stupid ways. I guess I hated you folks before I saw you because I figured you would be no better than the rest.”

Mr. Small glanced at Thomas, who stared at Mayhew Skinner with something close to awe. Thomas had never heard anyone talk the way Mayhew talked, at least not in front of his father.

“You shouldn’t hate,” Mr. Small said. “It will destroy you.”

“That’s a well-meaning lie,” said Mayhew. “Folks have hated other folks for centuries, and the same business is still with us.”

That business, of course, is hate itself, in all its forms. And while perhaps its cynical to believe hate will always be with us, I think that’s a realistic point of view. And we can’t change that with platitudes; we have to change it in ourselves. We all know those Sunday-morning folks. Chances are, in some ways and to some people, we *are* those Sunday-morning folks. Maybe learning about them is a good thing, so we can learn about ourselves.

Further:

“We left [the land] finally,” Mayhew said, “but my father wouldn’t leave. I blame him for that. I still blame him for forcing us to leave. He had grown obsessed with the tunnels, with the haunting figure of Dies Drear. He became fanatical about protecting the house and its history and even its legend. I would say he is like you, Mr. Small, in his taste for what he calls our heritage.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Small softly. “We always tend to belittle that heritage in our zeal to be free.”

“I’ll take freedom any day over all the romantic nonsense about slavery,” said Mayhew.

“I mean not to glorify it,” said Mr. Small. “I simply want people to know about it. It’s a part of our history, and yet no one tells the truth about it.”

Here, two voices on one subject, opposed. Where do we see that today? Where there is zeal and glory, there is also heritage and freedom. All fine on their own, often fine in combination. But any put on too aggressively – even freedom – can lead to ruin.

That’s neither here nor there with Virginia Hamilton’s book, which I love for its description and storytelling.

I may address a few nits:

Some reviewers wonder why Thomas is so suspicious of others. Were they never kids who had to move into a new place and fret that everyone they meet is silently laughing at them behind their backs? I come from a family where the streak of paranoia is wide, so I understand the suspicion.

A few have compared this to a Scooby Doo story. So what? This kind of costume-party trap has been around in literature far longer than Scooby Doo has existed. The ending makes for a much more satisfying tale than if this had turned from a mystery to a police and law procedural, where the Darrows were legally barred from farting around on the Drear property for fear they might find something. This is fiction, and fiction sometimes needs to be a pinch overdramatic. One way to tell the story makes more logical sense. The other way to tell the story makes it a far better story to be told. So pooh-pooh to those particular Whos.

On The Great Pretend Coin Shortage of 2020/21

Walmart, c'mere a minute.

You appear to be the only retail entity in the universe still participating in the Great Pretend Coin Shortage of 2020/21. We shop at a wide variety of stores, both colossal and mom and pop. Everyone else -- and I mean everyone else -- has coins to pass out as change.

If you want people to provide exact change, or shop with their cards, or whatever, just say so. Don't hide behind a pretend, nonexistent crisis to justify a change in policy.

Also, you appear to be taking in a lot of change from your customers. Are you not recirculating that, or are you storing it in some big Scrooge McDuck-like money bin in Arkansas?

I had a long conversation in my head with the clerk about the stupid coin shortage but only managed to sigh out a "that's fine" to her question of "Since you're a loser and don't have change, do you want to round up and donate to Childrens' whatsis so we can add a corporate tax deduction insult to the no-change-back injury?"

What you're accomplished, Walmart, is shifting the blame from corporate policy or some nonexistent national emergency to the customer.

I don't want to yell at the clerks, because they do not set policy, they merely have to apply it. But if I demand change or refuse to round up for a good cause or make any kind of comment on the policy, it is me being rude.

I understand this might be wise corporate policy and that you may have learned something from the world of politics. But that doesn't make it right.

Signed,

An increasingly dissatisfied customer.

Way Too Late at the Movies: YouTube Edition

Since streaming is becoming a bigger thing -- we were Disney+ subscribers for an entire MONTH last year -- YouTube has been ramping up its offering of movies.

And since I'm a cheap bastard, as with the other services I use (IMDB, Amazon Prime, etc) I'm only watching those things that are free (or in Prime's case, what comes free with the subscription we have). That means, of course, I don't get to see a lot of new movies, but I do get to see a lot of movies that I would never pay good money to see, as you'll see in just a moment.

First up, Space Raiders.

I'll confess, it took me a while to get past the, uh, rather female characteristics of the ship. Not that it really matters. Nor does it matter I can't remember what the ship is called. Or the names of any of the characters. Roger Corman made sure this film was completely forgettable.

We're supposed to cheer, I suppose for the crew of roughs that ends up kidnapping a kid from a "company" planet or station or whatever run by a woman in a Clintonesque pantsuit. Because the "company" is bad or something. It just IS; trust the movie. And trust the conglomeration of space aliens and hippies and others who live or whatever on some space station because they're actually the good guys. Or something.

Then there's  Earthquake: Nature Unleashed.

Two things let me know right away it was going to be a winner:

1. Ah, Tibor, how many times have you saved my butt?

2. The film's Wikipedia entry reads as follows: "The people arrives at the Russian Nuclear Power Plant called the Kasursk Nuclear Power Plant. When the most catastrophic earthquake of all time rips through Europe, it levels Russia and sends shockwaves through the lives of Russian people who live there. An earthquake destroys a Russian Nuclear Power Plant and people in Russia need to survive. The cinematics of the film rely on other films scenes to hash out the story. Most notably, scenes of collasping (sic) buildings and highways from 'Dante's Peak'."

This tells the believable tale of an American company brought in to refit a Russian nuclear power plant whose core shield blocks covered maybe 20 square feet and looked as if they were made from DUPLO blocks. There's much more on this Facebook thread I did live as I watched. Can't seem how to figure out how to embed it. So much the pity . . . 

Also, there was 2004's Fat Albert.

I very much enjoyed the cartoon from the 1970s.

The film, well, it's meh.

Typical fish out of water stuff, including a long trip to the mall where lots of comic hijinx and product placement can take place. I guess it's better than bringing them to now when malls are dying and all that shopping occurs in the basement thanks to Amazon and wifi.

And the characters -- popped out of the cartoon to help a real-world girl gain friends -- are worried they're "losing their color" or at least they were at one time. The color changes, to their trademark bold cartoon clothing, is subtle to say the least.

OH NO THEY'VE LOST COLOR SINCE THEY TOOK A PICTURE OF THEMSELVES AT THE MALL AND QUAINTLY PRINTED IT OUT BECAUSE THEY CLEARLY DIDN'T GET A CELL PHONE PROMO FOR THE MOVIE.

Also quaint: They popped out of a CRT to come into this world.

More to come.

We Need MOAR Speilberg Preaching

It’s been a while since I watched Steven Speilberg’s “The Terminal,” so when I came across it on YouTube today, I thought I’d give it a whirl.

I saw it today in maybe the light Speilberg intended. Rather than a simple tale of a man without a country stuck in an airport, this is a tale of a compassionate society forming around a man stuck in an “unacceptable” situation.

That in microcosm comes when the characters played by Stanley Tucci and Tom Hanks confront the Russian man caught in a bureaucratic snafu not of his making. Simply because his plane from Toronto back to Russia had a stopover in the United States, he found himself – and the medicine he needed for his father – trapped in the bureaucracy. Tucci’s character, bound by the rules, wants the medicine confiscated, making this desperate man’s trip to Canada – likely only to buy the medicine his father needs – futile. Hanks’ character finds a loophole and urges the man to take it. Not because it’s his habit of taking loopholes, but because he can see that compassion, not strict adherence to the rules, is what is needed in this situation. Innocent ignorance of the rules should, in many times and cases, call for compassion, not a strict interpretation of the rules, and Viktor Navorsky knows it.

From there, a compassionate society builds, symbolized by Viktor’s photocopied palm, spread throughout the airport. Many people there begin to see Viktor – and each other – through a lens of compassion, of respect, that leads them to behave as humans ought to behave in a world so bound by rules they often rule humanity out of the equation.

Tucci’s character also shines through in this scene – but as a man who uses others as tools for his own advancement and means to an end that he wants. His boss advises him he ought to show more compassion, see the humans in the story that he’s watching, but that’s advice that is not heeded.

I’m sure that message was there all along, but it took a casual viewing years after the fact to notice it.

I know Speilberg gets chastised for being preachy. Maybe we need more preaching.

On Patriotism

Patriotism is the freedom to play John Phillip Sousa's "Washington Post March" in front of Richard Nixon.

Pandemic Over, Teleworking Continues

On June 28, I began full-time telework for Fluor Idaho.

And that’s different from the last year and a quarter, I can hear you asking. Truth be told, not really. It does mean that rather than remoting into my computer at the RWMC, that computer is now in the basement and I’m working via a virtual private network, which is pretty nifty. I had wondered, when I applied for teleworking, how they would handle the computer thing, since the cubicle I had at RWMC was now gone with the wind. But that concern was solved.

It did mean moving my cheese for a day, as on Monday I had to go in to work at SSF for the morning until they had my computer ready. In hindsight, I probably could have gone straight to IT to get it and then go home, but I’m a ninny who doesn’t like using the phone and I dragged the morning on a bit until I got up the guts to call (that’s a drawback on working from home; my social skills have atrophied a little bit. Not the nicest thing, but that’s how it goes).

Other than that little wrinkle, I don’t expect much change, at least on the short term. Fluor lost the contract but got an extension through the end of the year as yet another company contests losing the bid. We’re not sure at the moment how the new contractor may regard working from home, so we’ll see. North Wind is part of the small business consortium that won the new bid, and small businesses are the Department of Energy’s special children, so we’ll see how the contest goes. Working for North Wind again might feel a little weird. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the benefit department. Probably won’t get as sweet a 401k situation as with Fluor, which has treated us pretty well.

My only worry is there may be some resentment against those of us who choose to work from home. I know I’m going to do my best to keep up with my work so they don’t notice the physical absence. I figure as long as the work gets done in a timely fashion, they won’t have much to complain about.

I am still part of the Emergency Response Organization at work, though, which is something I figured would end when I started teleworking. But no. I am in a new position, moving from Notifications to Information Management – meaning I’m the one putting the messages up on the big board for everyone to see. It’s less stress, which is good. It does mean, however, when there are drills or heaven forbid a real emergency, I do have to rush out there to be part of the team. Hopefully, we keep those few and far between.

Getting ready to post on the big board. . . 

101 Demons, uh, Dalmatians

Apparently, there’s a stink going around social media that the new film “Cruella” glorifies the devil.

And while it’s true “Hollywood” might augment such traits for narrative reasons, you have to consider where the imagery comes from in the first place. And in this case, it’s not from devil-worshippers, but from Dodie Smith, who wrote “The Hundred and One Dalmatians,” the source material and inspiration for All Things Disney Dalmatian, way back in 1956.

I have a copy of the book on my shelf, published with Disney’s bright drawings on the cover. When I saw the social media stink about the film, I pulled the book off the shelf and thumbed through it, knowing I’d find what I was looking for pretty quickly.

First of all, the stink makes a stink about Cruella “de Ville” changing her name to “de Vil.” Because [thunderclaps] the DEVIL. Nevermind, of course, that the character’s first name is Cruella. Also nevermind, of course, that the first time we’re introduced to the character in the book, her name is de Vil. I've not seen the movie, so maybe they make a big deal of this. But the name change isn't in the source material; Cruella's name is clearly de Vil in the original story. (Don't let the "Dearly" name throw you -- Disney changed the last name to Darling for the movie.)

A bit later on, Smith, not subtly at all, makes the devil connection, right after having Cruella encourage her husband to make the fire “blaze for her,” and lamenting that “the flames never last long enough,” viz:

“What a strange name ‘deVil’ is’ said Mr. Dearly “If you put the two words together, they make ‘devil.’ Perhaps Cruella’s a lady-devil! Perhaps that’s why she likes things so hot!”

And then there’s the issue of “Hellman Hall” being changed to “Hell Hall” in the film. A little poetic license from the book there as the building was referred to as “Hill Hall” in the book, but Cruella’s house is referred to as “Hell Hall” by the local humans and the anthropomorphized animals, who tell the tale with more devilish imagery:

“The end came when the men from several villages arrived one night with lighted torches, prepared to break open the gates and burn the farmhouse down. But as they approached the gates a terrific thunderstorm began and put the torches out. Then the gates burst open – seeming of their own accord -- and out came de Vil [in this case, Cruella’s father], driving a coach and four. And the story is that lighting was coming not from the skies but from de Vil – blue forked lightning. All the men ran away screaming and never came back.”

That people are concerned about what they see as “devil worship” in the new film is their business, and if they want to be concerned about it and warn others, that’s also their business. All I’m doing is pointing out that the source novel in 1956, serialized as “The Great Dog Robbery” in Womans Day magazine, is where the devilish imagery comes from. Maybe it’s more innocent in the novel than in the film, but the film didn’t invent the imagery on its own.

Even the Disney film retains the reference to Hell Hall.