When I was a kid, I spent much of my time reading, science fiction mostly, but I also spent a lot of time watching movies and even tv. I find that now, many years later, I spend even more time reading but I spend very little time on film or television. The world is too much with me.

Looking back, I never really approved of any of our presidents...maybe Kennedy, but I was very young and he was glamorous and exciting. After that? Johnson had Vietnam. Nixon is obvious. I voted for Carter but his ideas were foolish. In retrospect, Reagan did good things for the economy and the world but I didn't see any of that at the time. Ford seemed an amiable dunce. And so on. The difference between then and now is that the world was not in our faces. The political situation was background, not foreground to my daily life. With the proliferation of channels and options, constantly plugged into the web, I'm always more than a bit aware, and at least a bit concerned. It's always fermenting in the back of my mind.

I find myself withdrawing, or trying to. And yet, each morning, I switch on the computer and with trepidation, there it all is. Will we nuke North Korea? Will North Korea nuke us? Will the EU finally collapse? Will the seas rise? Will my house in the Low Country soon be underwater? Will the Cumbre Viejo volcano on the island of Las Palmas collapse into the sea, sending a 1000 foot wave across the Atlantic to swamp the Eastern Seaboard? So much to worry about...

Anyway, I find that a good novel tends to ratchet down the tension. Movies, however, even the most fantastic, are just a bit too much like real life.

I will, however, see Alien: Covenant as soon as it comes out.