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sat posted: Sat 2017-05-20 13:13:51 tags: counseling, healing
Stopped to check my po box and get gas en commute last night. 319.1mi/11.055gal=28.9mpg.

Bank for pocket cash and settle up tire and electric bills with Miss Cupcake
Chik-Fil-A
post office - waited in the car and cranked up the tuneage e.g. the 'Surfers "The O-men" and NiN remix of "Who Was In My Room"
Walmart. Looked for "Fifty Shades Darker" but it's not due til June 6.

Nap. I dreamed I was meeting up to see a new Star Wars movie with Klaus, Dave, maybe others. Parking the car, traffic was slow so I got out of the car and carried it up the hill to set it in aparking spot. This is a recurring dream feature, that cars can be picked up and set down anywhere if you're not too weak, lazy or stuck on mental autopilot. So I think it's an enduring symbol of something else. Anyway, when we met up, I handed him his cigarettes kind of sheepishly like suddenly realizing he hadn't asked me to grab them for him. The group walked away while I was trying to count money from my wallet or buy a ticket or soda or something.

This reminded me I had a dream during the week that I wanted to record - I was driving around upper NY state mountains, farm towns and camping areas, kind of like Howe Caverns neighborhood, going to a family reunion picnic sort of event? Mom and Dad were there, I approached Dad to ask if he intended to renounce the thing and Mom interposed to assure me it would be fine.

On our way to counseling Miss Cupcake spotted a good quality, fine condition armoire she felt was the perfect design, that someone had put out for trash. After counseling and a little discussion we agreed to rescue it. I knew it was more than 125# but I also knew the max load rating on my hand-truck was unnecessarily conservative. With a little kindness of strangers we got it back to our place and I didn't re-injure my back bearing the brunt of the physical labor.

Counseling itself - tackled sleep hygiene and conflict-negotiation impasses. Gottman's "7 Principles For Making Marriage Work" describes a communication-breakdown cycle ("the 4 horsemen") where stonewalling is the last stage, so this session brought into focus (for me at least) the urgency of working out some recognition and agreement about my recurring frustrations.

One of the pledges I made was to try snoring-prevention strips. One of hers was to track down sourcing info from a friend about some kind of hormone therapy lotion.

Five Guys. Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which was a much better origin story than 1 and of course I'm always intrigued by the graphic-novel universe's take on what it means to be a "god".

Ego The Living Planet first appeared in Thor comic books in 1966, recurring in '69 and '91-92, and crossed over to Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer stories in the 80s. In 2000-01, Ego's story crossed over through multiple Marvel properties, the major ones being Avengers (incl. Iron Man) and X-men.

GotG 2 is the extent of Kurt Russell's Marvel filmography, and considering his character Ego is introduced and presumably really most sincerely dead all in one movie, one may wonder what Marvel's plan is to connect the Avengers (Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man etc.) with GotG. Enter Thanos, introduced in GotG 1 as Gamora and Nebula's (adoptive) father, and not-subtly-hinted in teasers in the closing credits of the first (2012) and second (2015, Age of Ultron) Avengers movies.

Meanwhile, Paramount is getting firmer and more committal about shaping up its own "cinematic universe" to tie together Hasbro toy lines like G.I. Joe, ROM the SpaceKnight, Visionaries, M.A.S.K., and ... wait for it ... the Micronauts! I loved the toys but ... having read only one, I can't say I followed the comic books. I have mixed feelings about a Micronauts revival. I feel like, if you're not going to preserve the story, or at most re-envision it in a new way while leaving its characters fundamentally intact (ala Man of Steel), then take the last small step and be wholly original. But I suspect any story fidelity will take a back seat to toy sales, because even if Paramount wanted to translate the comics faithfully to film, I'm not sure how far they could go with that. The name "Micronauts" and associated terms like "Microverse" are part of the Paramount (a Viacom unit) movie-rights package, but I'm pretty sure Marvel (and thereby, Disney) retains IP rights to the comic-book stories. Presumably Paramount would have to either work out a story license deal with Marvel or (more likely) rewrite the canon distinctly enough to dodge infringement.

This is a tenuous position for a Micronauts movie franchise, because much of their comic-fan appeal lies in their relatively obscure crossover connections to more popular series. The hardcore segment of superhero fandom that even knows what a Micronaut is, is creaming their cosplay spandex tights over the Microverse implications of Ant-man's "quantum realm" and Dr. Strange's multiverse forays. They, and I, would rather see Disney beat Paramount to the punch, and distill the Micronauts stories from the MCU broth as the "Microns". I don't think that's going to happen, but I also don't see how a Paramount Micronauts movie that doesn't honor its backstory could garner enough acclaim to profit at the box office. And if Marvel can't get its X-Men, Fantastic Four and Hulk exclusive rights back from Fox, I don't foresee them getting spend-y to retrieve the Micronauts trademarks from Paramount either.