RIFLE RANGE BOY

Looks like the generation that enjoyed the “are we there yet?” clip from Shrek 2! are all grown up. Now that they are cooped up in lockdown, they complain that they are bored. They keep whining when the movement control order will end. This is the generation that could not be left to themselves to interact and create games among themselves. Their parents had to arrange party games to keep them occupied. Some caregivers kept their kids glued to the TV for babysitting or kept them busy nibbling on junk food and gulping soda. As if that the whole Universe was conspiring against them, in rolled the gaming devices and the world wide web network to quench the desire for instant gratification. Their wants, desires or any kind of squirms were met with a wave of fingers which almost looked like a sleight of hand. The opposing forces of Nature, it seems, are fighting back. They want to impress upon the millennials that not everything can be fixed by their soccer mums. It is what it is...

Dracula (2020) Miniseries (Season1, Ep 1-3) Bram Stoker was a business manager at Lyceum Theatre where he used to write short stories to supplement his income. The book 'Dracula' (Son of a Dragon) is by no means a pioneer work. Stories of that genre had been around since the 1880s. His book came out in 1897, but it was not a bestseller. In fact, in the last years of his life, Bram was so immersed in poverty that he had to live on charity. For sustenance, his widow had to auction off his notes of the novel for a little over £2. Then came an authorised silent German movie 'Nosferatu' based on the story. Stoker's widow sued the film company, after which this book gained popularity. 'The year without a summer', 1816, is often attributed to the genesis of the science fiction genre and Mary Shelley for writing "Frankenstein' when Lake Geneva froze over in summer, one of the party in Shelley's group, John Polidori, started writing a short story n...

Chichester Canal by J. M. W. Turner (1828) [Wiki]  In 1816, whilst Reverend Hutchings was busy organising things in his selfless deed to set up facilities for English education, free from encumbrances of religion, race, creed and socioeconomic statuses, for natives on a small idyllic island of Penang, Europe and the rest of the 'civilised' world including North America were undergoing turmoils of their own kind. In April the year before, the volcanic mountain, Mount Tambora in Sumbawa, Indonesia after building up energy over the years, decided enough was enough. It spewed lava, magma, shock waves and dust of such devastation estimated to have had volcanic eruption scale of 7. It is said to be the most massive volcanic eruption in human history and is dubbed 'Pompeii of the East'. The devastation that it left can also be described as callosal. Not only was the immediate human and property loss was immense, but the ash from the outburst also lingered on in the strat...