RIP

Oh no!  But 80's a reasonable age.  She brought poetry and moral complexity to the vampire motif.  Everyone interpreted her sensual descriptions of the vampire's experience of drinking blood as sexual, but she said that wasn't it at all: it was an alcoholic's experience of having a drink.  In fact she wrote the first book in part to keep her mind off her battle with alcohol.

I tried to read her non-vampire books, but could never get into it.  Without the titillation of hunting humans and drinking blood it's easy to get bogged down in her prose.  But with the titillation it's an absolute page-turner.

It was a James Bond film for kids. It had gadgets, a suggestively named woman, over the top bad guys. I don't understand how rotten tomatoes has a 67% rating for it.

Ooo - can you imagine the child catcher commanding a flock of flying monkeys?  

btw, Ian Fleming did not create the character, he was an insertion by Roald Dahl that was rewritten by the director (who claims HE created him). I'd like to see Roald Dahl's original script.

Oh no! Is she gone?! Never saw her on anything except game shows and interviews, but still miss her.

Desmond Tutu is gone since the day after Christmas. He and Nelson Mendela defined the soul of South Africa: how could this not have made a bigger splash and I'm only learning about it today?

I'm not a big fan of the country duo The Judds, but it turns out Naomi Judd (the mother) just died by suicide.  What makes this especially pertinent is she wrote something very revealing just 3 years ago:

"To understand this issue better, we have to bring the study of suicide into mainstream neuroscience and treat the condition like every other brain disorder," she wrote. "People who commit suicide are experiencing problems with mood, impulse control and aggression, all of which involve discrete circuits in the brain that regulate these aspects of human experience, but we still don't understand how these circuits go haywire in the brains of suicide victims."

This is someone who is so self aware that she can speak on the causes of her upcoming suicide in starkly clinical terms.  To me this is nothing less than awe inspiring.  I'm always greatly distressed by suicide among the young, who haven't developed the self awareness to understand what's happening to them;  we need more of these fully mature people speaking out and clarifying the problem.  Too many of them use their mature coping skills to hide it, but what's needed is the opposite.

https://people.com/country/naomi-judd-depression-suicide-letter-mental-illness-awareness-week/

EDIT: turns out a doctor/coauthor may have written the above quote, not Judd.  But she could have, for she did say the following:

“I’m still recovering myself,” said Judd. “I’m still trying desperately trying to help myself. There’s never going to be a pill for it all. I read up on all the scientific literature, I go to courses. I try so hard to stay up on everything that I possibly can to get rid of this horrible curse.”

“Those thoughts of suicide don’t come anymore. But I’m vulnerable. I know I can backslide,” she added.

She was very self aware and analytical about it.