This one’s a bit scattered today. Much like my brain these past few years, ha ha.
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On Thursday I had my second and final follow-up appointment with the ENT for my nose surgery. It is pretty much fully healed and my septum is remarkably undeviated now, which pleased both the doctor and me. I can generally breathe through both nostrils now, or at least as well as I can expect to during beautiful Ohio’s allergy season.
To anyone who may be on the fence about having surgery to correct a deviated septum, I would say it was totally worth it. As previously noted, the first week is rough, but things improve a lot once the splints are removed. I only wish I would have done the surgery years ago.
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I’ve been rewatching the ROBOCOP movies over the last couple of weeks. Paul Verhoeven’s original remains a dark and brilliant film. The dystopian corporate culture that ROBOCOP satirized in 1987 doesn’t seem too far removed from our present reality, here in the year of our lord, 2022. I can only imagine how it hit when it came out during the Reagan “Morning in America” era. ROBOCOP doesn’t quite rise to the level of some of Verhoeven’s other sci-fi efforts like TOTAL RECALL or my beloved STARSHIP TROOPERS. But nonetheless — it’s quite good.
ROBOCOP 2 is a hot, uber-serious, boring mess, made even worse by the fact that when the cops go on strike, Robocop crosses the picket line, ultimately putting to rest the question of, “can a robot be a scab?”
I have a fondness for ROBOCOP 3 that I really can’t explain. It’s much goofier than the first two — a 9-year-old hacker girl reprogramming an ED-209 on the fly to be “loyal as a puppy”? — and Peter Weller is replaced by some other poor bastard who has to wear the Robocop suit, plus there is the addition of a ridiculous gang of dorks who go by the name of the Splatterpunks. But the story is treated with a humanity that absolutely works for me, and probably only me. OCP, the villainous corporation throughout the trilogy, has been bought by a Japanese corporation, but they’re still trying to raze Detroit to build their for-rich-people-only Delta City. In this one, though, they’re now actively forcing people out of their homes, putting them on buses to relocation centers, and some other really fascist shit. This has resulted in the creation of a resistance movement, which Robocop, his scabbing days now behind him, eventually joins, as do all the cops. A bit cheesy? Yes. But who doesn’t love a good resistance story? Gods know we can use them these days.
Also, this piece of anti-OCP graffiti is really great:
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In case you missed it earlier in the week, I linked to this wonderful story about a journalist who accidentally discovered his wife was the world’s best Tetris player. As someone who is both a cynic and an idealist, it’s good for my soul to read a sweet story like this from time-to-time.
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And now I am signing off so we can go to a baby welcoming for some dear friends.
Keep your head down and your chin up, and have a good week.
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