Extenuating circumstances

Enfant Terrible and I haven't gone running since last Thursday because of the haze. This year's might be the worst I've ever seen since 1996. I was still in secondary school then, and I remember how dim and smoky the field looked from my classroom.

So, we've been watching The Strain and Fear of the Walking Dead. What I've seen so far of FotWD is good. It's intense but less nerve-shredding than The Walking Dead, if that makes sense.

As I've read The Strain trilogy (the quality of which sadly declined from book 2 onwards), I have mixed feelings about the TV series. Sometimes it feels like the only things they kept from the books are the character names. Everyone, including The Master, looks different from how I imagined them (doesn't that always happen), and don't get me started on the new characters.

On the other hand, the series should be judged on its own merits because you don't compare apples to oranges. So, as a TV series, it's quite good, though some of the medical talk, which was probably expositioned for the benefit of a layman audience, did make me twitch.

Anyway, watching monster apocalypse productions during this weather is probably not the best idea. In both FotWD and The Strain, the powers-that-be are either hiding information from the public, or are somehow responsible for the events and are hiding information from the public.

If you've read The Strain trilogy, it's not difficult to imagine that our current (real-life) weather conditions are a literal smokescreen for something more ominous.

Maybe there's some serious terraforming shit happening at ground level. Maybe law enforcement outposts are quietly being put into place under the cover of smog for nefarious purposes. MAYBE the vampires ARE involved in this and are enjoying free rein right now in the diminished sunlight (we know that the older the bloodsucker, the more tolerant it is of sunlight... or is it the other way round?).

Maybe I have cabin fever.

Or MAYBE that is what they want me to think.