Ramble on...

December 20.  Peter Criss' birthday - the guy that first introduced the idea that I should play drums, after listening to my brother Rick's 'KISS Alive!' 8 track on my sister Cindy's stereo.  

That's neither here nor there as far as this post is concerned, I just recognize that date as such.  It's 6:40 in the morning on this chilly Tuesday, and once again I've been up all night, save for maybe an hour and a half.  I'm having a hell of a time snapping out of this miserable sleep cycle of being up during the night and asleep during daylight.  Not that there's much daylight this time of year around these parts.

I thought what I''d do is one of my random thoughts-type posts, or start one anyway.  With these particular entries with the somewhat flippant subject matter, I often start it, then get back to it as more of it comes to me.  Where I don't know whether people read these much or not, it at least acts as a diary or journal of sorts for me to look back on in the future - a time stamp, so to speak.

So let's begin!

Ah, Chris Cuomo... I was going to start with "let's get after it!"  But I've kind of soured on CC as of late. He's returned to news media in the U.S. on a station called News Nation, anchoring a show there like he did with his popular "Cuomo Prime Time" on CNN, before they canned him for nefarious reasons.  CNN has dive-bombed in the ratings since - and is almost unrecognizable to a lot of us, since now it's being run by devout republicans.  There are clips available of Cuomo's new show at NN, which I saw some of, and I was quite puzzled when one of his interviewees was republican congressman Jim Jordan, who staunchly defends soon-to-be-indicted Donald Trump and his coup attempt a couple of years ago.  Cuomo soft-balled the interview and let Jordan off easy, which I found shocking, because CC was known to me for his hard-hitting style of interviews.  It drew the line for me, and I stopped following CC promptly; hoping that maybe one day he'll return to form.  But right now, he's far from it.  See...the fact is, Fox News is a corrupt organization that leans heavily toward the far, far right, so a station like MSNBC, to me, is justified in its outright liberalism, as the far right Fox needs to be countered, especially where Fox is so vitriolic and hateful.  In fact, in the spring, Fox News founder and owner Rupert Murdoch will have to answer in court for the lies he and his network perpetuated in the media when they face Dominion in court, a company that builds voting machines that were used to tabulate the 2020 election, which saw Biden and the Democrats win by over seven million votes.  Dominion was dragged through the media by Murdoch and his empire for falsifying the election, without any shred of proof whatsoever.  In fact, recounts suggested that it was the Democrats that were short-shrifted in the final tallies when there actually was a difference.  Many republicans have a lot to answer for in court in the coming months.

Why am I so concerned about American politics over Canadian, you might wonder.  It's simple.  Whatever happens there tends to eventually happen up here.  When Reaganomics took over in the 80s, it spread to Canada via the Mulroney government - exit the middle class.  In the 90s, Bill Clinton took over, erased their deficit and brought prosperity back for the working class; while in Canada, Jean Chretien took the reigns and did exactly the same for Canada.  Thank God Chretien was in power when GW Bush took power in the early 00s, or we would have lost innumerable troops in the facade that was the Iraq war.  Obama took over in 08, but Canada slunk to historic lows on the world stage via Stephen Harper through his austerity measures when he failed to see the oil crash in the teens.  When Trudeau came up in '15, Canada's reputation was somewhat cleaned up, but he had absolutely no experience, nor a clue, how to handle himself or a government, installing a pretty much 'woke' cabinet that didn't seem to know their asses from their elbows.  And it's worse today and keeps getting worse.  When Trump came to power in '16, Trudeau hid behind deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland's skirt at every turn when it came to dealing with the Trump regime.  I would have loved to see how Chretien would have handled Trump, as he reviled GW Bush for his botching of the Iraq war and ballooning deficit; and in fact, the deficit in the States always goes nuts when any republican government is in power.  Anyway, with Trump installed in '16, it heralded a new wave of hate-borne politics and populism not unlike Nazi culture, while he hid under the false guise of being a champion for God and abolishing abortion.  The name-calling and lying was so pervasive from Trump and his ilk that he infected nearly the entire republican party to a point of no return, leaving former colleague and republican Liz Cheney to call him out and take him down, which is happening as I type this.  Flip over to Canada... we have Pierre Polievre, or as I call him Trump Lite, who actually hired Trump's publicist to use the same tactics to gain power of his own.  Now the hatred spewed by republicans in the south has infected Canada, and is spreading; which is bad on a number of levels.  For one, PP supported what looked to be a copycat insurrection bid when a small minority of conservative truckers hijacked Parliament Hill, with one of its leaders gesturing a bullet to the head of the prime minister.  As inept as I find this current Liberal government, violence and hateful rhetoric is scary to see, as we've been primed for it by our neighbours down south.  We actually need a functioning Conservative Party in Canada to keep Liberals in check, but not in the style of Harperites like PP.  So... that is why I watch the U.S. political scene so closely.  It's too often a harbinger of what's to come for us in Canada.  The Biden regime in the U.S. is on a path to pave the way for a green energy revolution, literally while our proposed Keystone XL pipeline expansion is bursting with dirty oil and contaminating land in the States.  But, but, they insisted the pipeline was safe, did they not?  Of course it's safe!  Until it isn't.  Here's the thing... it never was.  If it doesn't contaminate the ground, it will contaminate the air, and poison the world.  With Biden's green energy initiative, it will force Canada to do the same, whether we want it or not.  The customer base for the tar sands' filthy bitumen product is shrinking, and the U.S. was our biggest customer.  Canada only owns a minority of what the tar sands produces.  The time to change and look forward is now, lest we just rely on supplying all of it to China.  And Canada teaming up with China makes for terrible optics.

On a lighter note, the wife and me are looking for some new TV to watch these days, now that baseball season is over for a few months.  We've given a couple of shows in particular a try:  HBO's "Euphoria" and Netflix's "Manifest".  "Euphoria" season 1 was a shocking head-turner; at times glaringly ugly as a car crash, but necessarily so, as it examines the lives of modern teenagers in the big city suburbs while they attempt to come to grips with drug use and sexuality.  I can see it being too much for many.  It's pretty much HBO Shock that they're much known for, not pulling any punches on the subject matter - but the result leaves you feeling exposed to a world you never really knew existed, but that you should know, especially if you're a parent.  It shows us how difficult it really is to grow up in this age of judgemental darkness, especially when kids don't have the support system that a lot of us Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers had, though Gen X'ers saw their support system begin to slip away gradually to what exists today.  We're in the midst of season 2 now, and though it's the season that won so many awards, I find it so far inferior to the first.  It's got a kind of rap music video quality to it that not everyone would find appealing, I don't think, but this show is catering to a specific audience.  Which is a bit of a shame, because as hard and tough as the subject matter is, it can be informative and eye opening to a world that a lot of us would rather turn a blind eye to.  Season 2 up to this halfway point that we're at could be argued as being soft-core porn at times.  Envelope-pushing can be good, but it can also be detrimental if it turns off people that it should be exposed to.

"Manifest" on Netflix, on the other hand, in comparison is a squeaky clean show.  I'd read about it here and there on some entertainment sites where it's been hyped, and thought we'd check it out.  The premise of the show is, what would happen if people got on a plane on a trip somewhere, only to land five and a half years in the future, where everyone thought they were dead because they thought the plane vanished?  It's a fascinating hypothesis.  The passengers from the plane land to find out that over five years on, some of their lovers have moved on to other relationships, while others died during that time, and in one instance, a pair of twins, a boy and girl, were separated with the plane trip, where one of them aged five years while the other did not.  The boy on the plane in this case is central to the story, as he gets vivid "callings", as they're noted as, where he attains some degree of clairvoyancy.  Other passengers also experience these callings more as the show goes on.  The show has a finite future to it, because many passengers claim to have seen their "death date", a time in the future in 2024 when they perish.  They strive to figure out how they can change this future, running into several hurdles along the way, the main one of which seems to be top-secret government oriented as to why their plane vanished to begin with.  Sounds good, right?  Well, the story more or less is.  The drawback to this show is the acting, which is just horrid at times.  It appears to be a somewhat low-budgeted show, with various plot holes, and some allusions that it might be a faith-based program.  If that's how it winds up, I'll be pretty disappointed, even angry that I wasted any time on a show that winds up being preachy instead of entertaining.  But I'll hold out hope.  The wife loves it, even though I tune out when I find it gets a little too silly.  The stars are soap-opera calibre actors at best, and even the story seems as much at times.  But the idea that they're hurtling towards the "death date" is a promise that's too enticing to give up on.  We're two seasons in out of the four currently available.  It's worthy to note that Robert Zemeckis has a hand in this show as producer - he who brought us "The Silence of the Lambs" and Jodie Foster's "Contact", among lots of others.

"Avatar - The Way of Water" is out in theatres now.  We've yet to see it, but we will I think next week when the initial release wears off slightly.  If it even does.  Because James Cameron's movies tend to have a long, long life at the box office.  "Avatar" itself made nearly $3 billion in theatres, after all, and popular word is that this instalment is even better.  I love how everyone underestimates Cameron's shows, as I've heard through the past number of years how nobody wants an "Avatar" sequel.  Well, after this one, there's at least three more on the way, coming out every two years.  "Avatar 3" is pretty much ready to go, just waiting for release.  Its success will determine whether there will be a pivotal "4" and "5".  Then there's "Oppenheimer", Chris Nolan's next crowning achievement.  I wasn't nuts about his "Tenet" film initially, but wow... upon repeated viewing (and subtitles), it leaves me wanting a sequel - not that Nolan is much for sequels.  He did the Dark Knight trilogy, but you could tell by the end of "The Dark Knight Rises" that he'd had enough of that franchise.  Then there's Henry Cavill, the Man of Steel himself, whose namesake movie was written by Nolan.  The DC film universe is upended these days because of new ownership and management, and Cavill has been let go of his Superman role as a result.  Even "Wonder Woman 3" was shelved.  And The Rock's "Black Adam" bombed so bad that it's been permanently canned, too.  We'll see what comes of this mess, but it's leaving a lot of us fans pretty upset.

Something I have that's really, really annoying is a fear of travelling.  Yes, travelling.  Not driving by car to go somewhere, that's the easy thing, although I won't do that without a GPS.  Ah, GPS's... maybe that should stand for Great Profiting Scheme.  I think most newer cars these days come with those installed already, but for those of us with older models - ours is a 2010 Elantra, fully paid for - we have to buy the old GPS units that used to be all the rage.  Here's the problem... we own, it must be four or five of those damned things.  And we keep having to buy new ones because the software becomes outdated, and when you go to connect it to the web to update them, they say you can't because, well, you can't.  It's maddening.  Those things become obsolete before you know it.  So I'm loathe to buy a new one, knowing I'll get shitcanned by the company that makes it in a year or two.  Nowadays, they're kind of rare, so they're way more expensive when you do find them.  Buying them second hand is risky, because a lot of people try to unload them on unsuspecting buyers who think they work like a charm.  Anyway, this makes me having to use Google Maps that I have to print out on the computer.  I refuse to buy data for my cell phone, so I won't get a GPS that way.  Hell, I hate even carrying a cell phone.  I rarely do.  Anyone who's tried to get a hold of me on it does so at their own despair, because I hate the idea of being tethered to technology everywhere I go.  That's just one thing about travelling... the next thing is hotels.  I have no friggin' idea about hotel etiquette, like tipping bellhops - that's probably my biggest anxiety about them right there.  We tend to get motels when we do travel because there's less interaction with people.  There's a place called Red Roof Inn in Mansfield, Mass., that we stay at whenever we go see Red Sox games.  There's considerably low fuss and not much to deal with, but the tradeoff there is that it's not exactly a high-end place.  A few years ago, the wife and me went with our friends Tim and Marley to Toronto to see a show on his dime - it was an extremely generous gift on his part.  I got more and more uncomfortable when I sensed the price tag increasing.  Of course, we were thankful beyond description, but I imagined me handling dealing with it all, and it triggered my anxiety slightly.  We all did it again later, travelling to Portland, Maine to see King's X, and it was a little different I think because it wasn't the big city thing, plus we paid for ourselves.  Tim's a globetrotter, he knows his way around that stuff, so if there's a next time I'm going to have to get him to 'train' me on handling that stuff.  Plus, with the big cities, driving and transit is pretty intimidating to me.  It never used to be when I went to Toronto a lot when I was younger, but I was always with friends who knew their way around.  Janice is considerably smarter than I am, so I feel a lot better when she's with me.  We often combine what we both know to get things done.  Still, when the prospect of travelling comes up, knots form in my stomach because of all the above issues.  That's not good, because I actually like going places.  Maybe the anticipation of going is worse than actually going.  But with my high intolerance for anxiety in the mix, it kind of compromises my wits.  Perhaps familiarity is key here, but also, we can't really afford to travel a lot anyway.  The last time we actually paid for a flight was back in the early 90s when we saw Madonna's Girly Show tour at the Big O.  Flights were fairly affordable then.  Now, post 9/11, it's a huge pain in the ass to fly, and crazy expensive, at least to folks like us.  Last time we flew was when Tim took us to Toronto, and when we went to check in, I couldn't get through the scanner because it kept detecting something on me.  The only thing that kept me from getting my anxiety triggered was imagining myself as David St. Hubbins in Spinal Tap when he stuffed a cucumber wrapped in foil down his pants!  For me, it turned out that I had a foil-lined lens wipe for my glasses in my pocket.  I giggled through the whole thing with that in my mind.  Anyway, I doubt we'll be getting on a plane anytime again soon, if ever.  We love flying, though.

I'm reading this book, very slowly as I'm a slow reader, that was given to me by my nephew/friend/BFAM Shawn called The Book Of Joy, with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  He gave me this book years ago, and being the non-reader that I was, I dragged my ass on reading it until I finally retired from work and started picking up reading more.  What a great read this is.  I'm halfway through it, and it's already begun changing my mindset for the better.  If there's one thing I'm guilty of in the past more than anything, it's negative thinking, whether it's about myself or others.  This book is very inspirational in fixing that way of thinking, indeed.  I have another blog page called The Gravy Pot that I kind of gave up on where I was going to review it as I was reading it, but I saw that no one was visiting that page, so I just kind of let it go.  With this, Ragnar Station, it acts as kind of a record of my life, so it doesn't matter so much how many looks it gets, although I'm actually pleased to see that it gets a fair number of views and feedback.  One relative of mine even told me personally that me sharing my struggles with depression and anxiety actually helped him, so that just made me want to write more.  But anyway, this book makes me review how reactionary I can be at times.  Truly, everyone can be too reactionary in many instances, right?  But these two fellows converse throughout the book about how to handle these kinds of things.  I find it brings a lot of peace to the mind.  Janice wants to read it when I'm done, because I rave about it to her a lot.  If you're interested in it at all, you can find it at Amazon at this link.  I can promise you, you won't regret reading it.  Regardless of your faith.

So, right now it's Wednesday, December 21, and the days now start to get longer.  That's the best way to look at the winter ahead, to me anyway.  There's not a lot I like about winter at all.  I don't like the snow and ice and freezing rain, the cold, the illnesses that all go around, and especially when I worked in retail, I hated it.  On top of the shovelling at home I had to do, I had to do it at work too, as that was part of my job as a receiver, clearing the doorway and bay entry areas for trucks and their drivers.  Plus people are so much crankier in the winter!  I get it.  When the daylight is so sparse, and it's a pain in the ass sometimes just to get out the door, there's not a lot to be happy about unless you're one of those outdoorsy types who like skiing or sledding or skating or whatever.  Snow is involved in all of that, so that's a nope from me.  What's worse, is there's no baseball!  Damn it.  I have a grudge against winter particularly for that reason.  Oh, and if you're Canadian, hockey is constantly in your face everywhere, so you're a bit of an outcast if you're not into it.  I used to be, back in the 80s, but when a strike happened, I fell out of it altogether.  Then I kept noticing guys getting clobbered an concussed on a regular basis, fighting like junior high schoolers, while kids in the stands were cheering more for the fights, it seemed, than the actual game.  In baseball, you have the occasional brawl, but nothing in comparison to hockey.  We raised Alexandra in training her in taekwondo, and that's as violent as it gets, as the sport itself is about self defense, not fighting.  I don't even watch boxing anymore because my eyes opened to its brutality.  I think because of the awareness of head injuries and what I've gone through personally with it all, I fear for anyone who's in a sport where the object is to knock your opponent senseless to the floor.  Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy is something many athletes are left with when their careers are over, and I just don't think playing any sport where that's a possibility is worth it.  "What about wrestling?" you ask.  Pro wrestling is an exhibition, where the 'fighters' actually look out for one another and don't intentionally try to harm each other.  They're storytellers.  They're actually tougher than boxers or UFC fighters because they do it far more often, and head injuries in pro wrestling are taken extra seriously these days.  Although, granted, some wrestlers go overboard.  But none of the injuries are intentional.  It's a bit like Cirque du Soleil, where you have highwire acts for people's entertainment.  No one plans on getting injured.  I know a lot of folks will disagree with me on the whole hockey issue, but men's hockey could take cues from the women, who hardly fight at all.  In fact, I found the women's Olympic hockey often more exciting than the men's.  Less fighting and more actual gametime.

I guess that's enough rambling for now.  Thanks for reading this, if you've chosen to do so, and have a safe, happy holiday season!  Let love rule.