{"id":14516,"date":"2021-12-19T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-19T14:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2021\/12\/19\/mental-space-invaders\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:50:58","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:50:58","slug":"mental-space-invaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2021\/12\/19\/mental-space-invaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental Space Invaders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p>I skipped my usual caf\u00e9 breakfast yesterday because the COVID infection rate here in PEI is multiplying. So I didn&#8217;t have time for my usual breakfast and drawing session, but I did quickly thumbnail a diary comic. Things are busy in the lead-up to Christmas, both at work and at home, so I don&#8217;t see myself getting &#8217;round to doing a proper version of this.<\/p>\n<p>\n<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>I did think it was a pretty obvious metaphor for what&#8217;s going on&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\n<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><figure class=\"wp-image-2544\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-content\/uploads\/posts\/1811\/Comix_6.jpg.webp\" alt=\"\"><\/figure><\/figure>\n<p>\n<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>So for one, there&#8217;s this sudden exponential spike in cases here on PEI, and some restrictions are being put back into place. As Craig and I dashed around town yesterday running errands, though, it didn&#8217;t really look like anything had changed. We are completely vulnerable to this thing, because we refuse to give up our usual consumer Christmas stuff.<\/p>\n<p>\n<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d also read an article in the Manchester <em>Guardian<\/em> about Boris Johnson, and the sneering contempt and corruption of the ruling class he belongs to. It&#8217;s no better here in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>\n<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Plus we&#8217;d watched <em>Tick, Tick&#8230; Boom!<\/em> on Friday, Jonathan Larson&#8217;s musical about his panicked attempt to become a success before his thirtieth birthday &#8212; which was tinged, of course, with the knowledge that he died the night before his eventual breakthrough hit, <em>Rent<\/em>, opened on Broadway. It was a powerful show, and I could really relate to both that panicked feeling and the general &#8220;theatre-kid energy&#8221; of the piece.<\/p>\n<p>\n<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>All of this added up to&#8230; well, <em>aliens<\/em>, according to my head. I guess that&#8217;s the easiest, ready-to-hand metaphor for feeling pessimistic about the state of the world, and being affected by external forces outwith one&#8217;s control.<\/p>\n<p>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I skipped my usual caf\u00e9 breakfast yesterday because the COVID infection rate here in PEI is multiplying. So I didn&#8217;t have time for my usual breakfast and drawing session, but I did quickly thumbnail a diary comic. Things are busy in the lead-up to Christmas, both at work and at home, so I don&#8217;t see [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}