
It’s like someone started to take down the sign, got almost to the end, and said, “F this, I’m going home.”

It’s like someone started to take down the sign, got almost to the end, and said, “F this, I’m going home.”
The kid watched the Snorlax episode of the original Pokémon cartoon around the same time I managed to catch one in Pokémon Go, and we had a conversation about text-to-speech on GPS navigation getting tripped up and telling me to take an exit “toward Lax Airport.”
Oh, and something I didn’t mention when I posted this on Pixelfed earlier: The sign is a Pokémon Go gym. So of course I claimed it!
For about an hour. 🤷♂️

Christmas already? Spotted at the mall last night, a full week before Halloween.

Oh, come on. It’s still September. Holiday Creep is getting ridiculous.
Sorry, I mean more ridiculous.
I’ve joked about how iNaturalist is like Pokemon Go for real animals. Well, since I started playing the game, I’ve been combining walks for both. And on yesterday’s hike in the local botanical gardens, I took some photos with a few Pokemon in their, um, natural habitats?
(Still not sure why I found so many Electabuzzes in the botanical gardens, though.)
Doom and gloom alone aren’t enough to help us deal with climate change, or any of the other problems we face. Fear sustained turns to despair, and to inaction – because why bother?
We have to celebrate successes to keep hope alive so we can keep going.
We do need to know what we’re up against. We need to understand how serious the stakes are. But we also have to believe that what we do will – or at least can – make a difference.
I keep thinking of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The first time through was grueling, watching the relentless assault of the First Order as it tried to snuff out every last bit of hope. The scenes with Rey and Luke were a relief because he was “only” depressed, not doomed.
But Luke eventually regains enough hope to take action. And enough of the Resistance is able to survive, keeping the spark of hope alive. And their legend survives, passed from Rose and Finn to a stable boy on Canto Bight, who’s already fanning that spark.
The whole movie is about hope: whether you’ve lost it or someone is actively trying to stomp it out, as long as it exists, you can hold onto it. That hope that, to quote another trilogy, “There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”