Agent of Change

What I am thinking about today, 4/5/2022

My daughter-in-law posted that she gets to enjoy their vacation more because The Boy has planned everything for them. I am incredibly happy about this for a lot of reasons, but the big one is that my marriage fell apart because I was so worried about us not having enough money to get by that I worked so many hours between the two jobs, I didn’t have anything of myself left to give anyone. He has learned from my mistakes while taking my propensity for planning. I have a lot of reason to be proud of him, but this one is what I am thinking about today.

I cannot stop thinking that the Professor who oversaw the college newspaper when I wrote for them would be pleased that I FINALLY am doing journalism. And then when he found out it was writing about Professional Wrestling, he’d put his head in in hands. He kept pushing me to go into journalism, but everything I wrote was opinion based, so I knew there was no way to jump directly into that. And now, newspapers are pretty much dead.

The group home clients like watching the old shows on things like Antenna TV and MeTV, so I saw the old show “It’s A Living” being shown, and I didn’t think it lasted long enough to be syndicated. THE SHOW LASTED 6 SEASONS!!!

The Super Console X I purchased is a bit quirky, but I love that I can fire it up and play old arcade games, old NES games, and I am starting to branch out into games I never got to play “back in the day”. I tend to fire it up 2 – 3 times a week, and wallow in video game nostalgia.

Be kind, be courageous, and be cool.

What I am thinking about today: 4/4/2022

I took a few days off from the office job to cover wrestling shows over Wrestlemania week, and thankfully, I didn’t draw any Death Match shows. The Indy shows I watched were fun, many of which had people who did their best to entertain a crowd they normally wouldn’t have (since they have the shows in the same city as Mania to get those people). The New Japan Pro Wrestling show I covered was head and shoulders about all of them since New Japan is a full time company with excellent management. I know a show is great when I quit writing what I see and just enjoy it, and isn’t that why I started watching Wrestling?

Go check out the coverage at PWInsider.com. They did an incredible job covering shows over Mania week, and I don’t just say that because I was a part of it.

Trump’s “Truth Social” alternative to Twitter and Facebook for conservatives is crashing and burning, and the funding is under investigation by the SEC since he did it through issuing stock. What they (and all of the other conservative social media attempts) is that Conservatives don’t’ want to talk to each other. They want to troll other people. Even in interviews about why people aren’t using it, they talk about how liberals aren’t signing up, so it’s not as much fun as “pwning the libs”, which is all Conservatism is since Living YouTube Comment Section Trump took over the party. Until they figure out how to put that into their social media, they will continue to crash as hard as Reaganbook did.

By the way, this is your reminder than I am little to the left of Bernie Sanders. The US version fo left and right have become utterly skewed. Clinton, Obama, and Biden are a bit right of center in how they govern, and anyone who calls them “Socialists” can be ignored as clueless.

I took a LOT of time over the last week to sort, box and put away comics/books/graphic novels/omnibuses and my living room is as cleared as it is going to get while I live by myself. I also took the time to get other things under control (fridge was completely cleaned, etc…). Kind of proud of myself on that front. Working two jobs, freelance writing, recording podcasts, and sleeping takes so much time that I often wave my hands at things and say “I’ll get to it later.” Having three days off was later.

Comics I have read lately that made me happy:

The Big Spider-Man “Beyond” storyline

Jason Aaron’s “Wolverine and the X-Men
Asterix Omnibus 6
Batman: Penguin (a trade paperback with a sampling of Penguin stories over the years)

Judge Dredd Complete Case Files 35
Avengers: The Initiative Volume 1

Inkblot Volume 2

Much love to friends old and new.

Be kind, be courageous, and be cool.

What I am thinking about today 3/18/2022

-I am amused by my silly post about complaining about going back to the office got a few “care” icons. I was giggling to myself the whole time I wrote it, thinking how privileged it was. I have two jobs I am good at, they pay well enough I have a roof, a car, more comics, movies, books, and video games that I have time for. Working from home has been wonderful for me, but I do understand that in some jobs you need that collaboration. I just go through reports and take phone calls and can do that anywhere it’s quiet and has an internet connection. Hopefully, I get to keep working from home for my office job.

-Have felt out of sorts this week, upset stomach, headache, general unease, and the like. Probably didn’t help that I ate something that disagreed with me on Tuesday. Thankfully, this is the first Friday I have had off from the group home in a LONG time, so when I am done with work, I’ll hit the treadmill, cover the AEW Wrestling show, and try to finally get my living room under control.

-The Kray Z Comics and Stories podcast I do with Kray is being moved to Wednesdays, same day as new comics come in! This gives me some extra breathing room, since it’s been late the last few weeks due to work stuff. As I put together the episodes, I like how easy going the show is, and it’s what I always wanted it to be: Two old friends talking geeky stuff, helping people navigate a market filled to the brim with new material, stuff about the history of comics, but never becoming a “Everything new sucks!” show, and enough silliness to give a chuckle as you listen.

-I am not a big horror fan, but I will say that the online fandom for horror movies is 150% less filled with jerks than the big SF movie franchise fandoms.

-I watched a Marvel online event where they interviewed Spider-Man creators where they gave away an NFT. I mentioned that I had watched it on Twitter and have been inundated with Cypto-bros wanting to ask me about the blockchain. So, I did just that. Blocked them.

-I’d like if Marvel scanned and put their western comics up on Marvel Unlimited in full. After the hero books took over, they (and the romance comics) were used for new talent to try out and get their chops before going onto the superhero books. Plus, I haven’t read a lot of them, and they ones I have read are decent enough fun.

Much love to friends old and new. Be kind, be courageous, and be cool.

What I am thinking about today 3/15/2022

-Wrestler Scott Hall passed away yesterday. He was part of the biggest wrestling story fo all time that created the biggest wrestling boom of all time while doing an imitation of Al Pacino’s “Scarface” accent. He had a rough life filled with psychological trauma and substance abuse because of it. Dallas Page helped him turn his life around, and to me, that is more important that the fame, the matches, and the career. I wish peace and love to his friends, family, and fans.

-Super vivid dreams lately about paths not taken. Weird in many ways. I did like the dream last night where I was in a small grocery story that was mostly stocked with “healthy” cereals and I explained to people that if I were a kid, I would have lost my mind. IT’S NOT JUST A GIMMICK, EVERYONE!!

-According to the forecast, we are about to get our spring warm up here in Minnesota. For once, I am kind of looking forward to it because I felt cooped up more than normal. Not just for me, but the people at the group homes I work at. Many of them have been in the house with only car rides to get out since it got chilly. I just hope we don’t go from cold to UNBEARABLY HUMID AND TERRIBLE like we did last year.

-I see we in the US are looking to make Daylight Saving Permanent, mostly because people are tired of changing their clocks. I wonder why we haven’t tried that before. Oh wait. We did. In 1974. And everyone hated it. A LOT. https://www.washingtonian.com/2022/03/15/the-us-tried-permanent-daylight-saving-time-in-the-70s-people-hated-it/

-I am not at the group home at much, so I agreed to OT at the office job. Oddly, my supervisor sent me a message “Why do you have 2 hours of overtime today? What task do you need extra time for?” I sent back one of the 20 emails requesting people to work, many with a sense of desperation, with a note that said, “I don’t know why, but they have requested people for overtime every day for the last three months.” Left hand, please talk to the right hand.

Much love to friends old and new!

What I am thinking about today

Today is National Cereal day, but there are no special cereals this year. There are cereal based cookie kits, but it’s not the same, dammit.

Was utterly wiped when I got off work at the group home yesterday, and was asked to come back and work a sleeping overnight. I slept when I got home, went in and took a while to get back to sleep. Had dreams that would be best called annoying, including one where my son had changed up my computer. The keyboard had a new one with 4 times the keys, the operating system was a weird version of Microsoft BOB with wood paneling, to get to the internet, you had to simulate driving a car (and I accidentally turned onto a plane runway and ran into a landing jetliner so I couldn’t get on the internet), and I couldn’t figure out how to access anything on the hard drive. AND I JUST WANTED TO LISTEN TO A SONG. I kept telling everyone around me that this new system was terrible and I wanted the old one back. It wasn’t a nightmare, but the feeling of utter frustration carried over to my morning.

Heh. Microsoft BOB. I never ran it, but I am just fascinated by that massive failure. I still remember seeing a computer running it in a store and kept thinking, “This would just annoy me if it was on my computer.”

At the group home yesterday, all of the clients hung out in their own spaces, didn’t interact much, and did their own thing. I let them enjoy that for a Sunday because I know there would be times I don’t want to hang out with people either. However, at one point, there were three TVs playing “Match Game.”

The 10 day forecast says that 10 days from now, Chaska, MN will have a high of 61 degrees. I am not an outdoorsy kind of guy, but I will be happy to have time to read on the deck, hike and get the group home clients OUT OF THE HOUSE.

Be kind, be courageous, and be cool.

What I am thinking about today: 2/24/2022

-Sorry, lots of political thoughts today. I try not to do it, but it’s preoccupying me.

-No, the invasion of Ukraine is not the start of WW III any more than the invasion of the Crimean Peninsula was. It is Putin knowing that the stakes are too great for NATO to start a war over a county that isn’t part of NATO, expanding Russia for economic reasons, and drumming up nationalism when his popularity in Russia is wavering. The scary part is that our Trumpian right wing is cheering him on. I swear at this point if Russia bombed a blue state, the red states would cheer.

-The Texas Governor’s new executive order that declares trans medical care child abuse & orders investigations of supportive parents is a terrible thing, one of the worst things I have seen in the US in a while, and is a pretense for the rules to go in front of the highly right wing Supreme Court. They tried to get this as a law before but the courts struck it down, so they are, predictably, going around the rules to enact it. As long as I live, I will never understand the hate for LGBTQ people and will do what I can to oppose it. I have been around LGBTQ people as long as I have lived, and they are people. As deserving of respect, love, and protection as any other human being. When someone singles out a group for persecution, they show themselves to be less than human, IMHO.

– On a nonpolitical note, the show Girl Meets Farm has been giving me a lot of comfort and joy. It’s a cooking show, filled with fun cooking ideas, and the host projects a feeling of warmth and fun that makes the show a nice half hour of comfort. It’s stress free watching, and I need that at times. Although, she could stop saying the word “cozy” 20 times an episode and I would be fine with that.

-Speaking of comfort, now that the Star Trek novels aren’t all interconnected and are back to mostly one offs, they are a comfort as well. Professionally written, engaging plots with familiar characters. I am not one for rewatching things, so it gives me the familiar vibes of rewatching a show with my annoyance that I know where each scene is going.

-The current Spider-Man storyline in the comics is well done, and for a story put together by a four person writing team, remarkably consistent. There is a place for “corporate” comics as well as more individual comics just like there’s a place for a TV series with a writing team as well as a singular vision.

-In a dream last night, I was arrested for murder. I didn’t know who had been killed, and thought, when I was questioned, I was just giving information on someone dangerous. What got me was the level of detail in the dream of the entire world Dream Me was living in. I knew things in this alternate life going back to childhood, the town I was living in, and the rest. When I woke up, I kept thinkign about it, and both in the dream and awake I was trying to think of how I could prove my innocence. It wasn’t until I got out of bed that I realized that the GSR test not only showed only GSR on my hand (not clothing or the rest, meaning I was given a gun to hold covered in GSR), but that I showed I had held the gun in my left hand, when I am right handed. So, Dream Me, I just figured out how to prove your innocence.

Much love to friends old and new. Be kind, be courageous, and be cool.

What I am thinking about today: 2/8/2022

What I am thinking about today:

-I was once told that “whatever foods you are craving is what your body needs to be healthy.” The person who told me that has obviously never craved Honeycomb cereal, Goldfish crackers by the handful, bourbon, or caramel syrup.

-I have three days off from the office job starting tomorrow. I will be using it to try to catch up on things in the house, reset my busy schedule, and run every errand I haven’t had time to run for the last three months. Saturday will be for rest, and Sunday is a group home shift where things will be quiet and calm. My Sundays with the clients are nice in that I don’t have to rush things. They are more laid back and I don’t have to worry about getting them fed, their meds and into bed before they get too tired to do anything.

-I will also see about getting out and doing something a few times while I am off. Working from home and then over to the group hoem means I am really only spending time either alone or with developmentally disabled folks. I love the people I work with, but it’s hard to have a conversation of some heft with them. And, even if I don’t talk to anyone, getting to a coffee house for some reading and people watching, or going to a place to shoot pool would be a welcome change.

-The Oscars were announced today. I haven’t seen most of them, but then I haven’t seen most movies due to the insane schedule I seem to be on. I did laugh at Bill Mahar last year when he had a long whine that the Oscar movies were sad. Dude, have you EVER PAID ATTENTION TO WHAT WINS? It’s well known that comedies never win, and Oscar voters prefer tragedies because they are more “serious” and therefor more important to the people who vote for them.

-At this point in my life, I only pay attention to award nominations to see them as suggestions for things to try. There is so much art/media being produced you can’t possibly keep up on it if you have any sort of life. I am behind on everything (Just finished Squid Game last weekend) that I have a list I am working through without trying to keep up.

Much love to friends old and new. Be kind, be courageous, and be cool.

What I am thinking about today: 2/3/2022

What I am thinking about today:

-The reason why Maus being banned as a text on the Holocaust by a school district is a big deal for a few reasons. First, it is another in a wave of book bannings that shows how the right wing are going to try to win back the suburbs after losing them under Trump. The second is that it is one of the few books about the Holocaust that does not have a “kind white person” as a savior.

-”The Diary of Anne Frank” is about a family being hidden by Kind White People. MOST of the Holocaust narratives is about someone saving people (and in Anne Frank, her time in a camp is not in the book) Maus is about what it was like in the camps without a savior. It shows the evil of that happened with no saving graces. That is why it is important, and why removing it removes an aspect of the horror of what happened that is so hard for people removed from it be history to wrap their minds around.

-”Hey Cory!!, what do you think about the Whoopi Goldberg situation?” I don’t.

-I am at level of burnout at my office job, and thankfully, I have scheduled a few days off next week. It comes off as me not giving much of a damn about anything. I’ll be happy to actually give a damn in a couple of weeks.

-I am reading a mystery where the subplot is the lead character trying to figure out the password to a thumb drive. The author has said the owner of the thumb drive had a bunch of stuff written on the business card that doesn’t make any sense and had given it to the lead character with a note about the thumb drive existing. Let’s hope the writer is trying to make the point that the lead character is the dumbest human being alive.

-Moviemaker Roland Emmerich is complaining that super-hero movies are killing the movie business and aren’t real cinema. So, the guy who gave us the 1998 Godzilla movie, Independence Day: Resurgence, 10,000 BC, and the upcoming Moonfall (a movie about the Moon being an alien bent on destroying the Earth) thinks Avengers: Endgame isn’t up to his standards of quality. Roland, I can call you Roland, right? Go pound sand, Roland.

Much love to friends old and new. Be kind, be courageous, and be cool.

What I am thinking about today: 1/9/2022

What I am thinking about today:

The group home job is super easy today, thankfully since I am the only staff here, as we only have two clients in the house, and both are wheelchair bound and nap a lot. We’ve been watching old TV shows and they are nodding off. Relaxed, getting all of their stuff done, and the like. Low stress, high contact and caring, the kind of day I like.

Dreamed that they replaced the entire supervisory staff at a job I worked and one of them let slip that I was going to be let go the next day. I spent the rest off the dream exploring the building and trying to figure out a way to let them know I knew so that I didn’t have to come all at way into the job just to go home. The rest of the dream was the building became more and more of a maze and me knowing I could get another job in a heartbeat.

My Saturdays off have a wonderful routine to them now, where I get up around 9 am, make a breakfast rather than jamming some cereal down my pie hole. I then decide on the One Big Thing I will do (yesterday was cleaning to the kitchen and fridge). I do that in between watching the stuff recorded during the week. I also had to cover the AEW Special on TNT for PWInsider.com, which was a solid hour of pro wrestling. There is something great about a wrestling show just being an hour where it feels fast, it ends while you still want more, and AEW’s product is enjoyable.

I don’t do goals, I do themes. A goal is something you can either meet or fail at, and I don’t think you should set yourself up for failure. Instead, I think I do best when I work small changes into my life. For people to change, it’s pretty hard. I have known people who actively WANT to change (or tell me that to get me to let them back into my life) but they always fall back into old patterns and behaviors. So, my theme this year si to be more present in what I do.

I have always felt that “multi-tasking” is bullshit created by employers who want more work out of you. Studies show that you don’t really multi-task, you switch from thing to thin, and it takes time to fully engage with the new thing you are doing. So, I actively fight against the idea of Multi-tasking.

As the year goes on, I want to me more fully engages in what I do. When I wash dishes, I won’t think about the next task, I’ll just think about what I am doing. When I read a book, I will not wonder about my schedule the next day. When I am at work, I will focus on one task at a time, rather than plan how I will get everything done before the end of the day. If some things needs to be delayed, they need to be delayed. When I am not working, I won’t allow it into my thoughts.

It’s simple. It’s hard. And it’s what I want to be doing.

Be kind, be courageous, and be cool.

What I am thinking about today 1/5/2022

The first of the year is usually insanely busy at my office job, and Monday was no exception. I was feeling miserable due to a physical issue I have from time to time and struggled to get through the day. Thankfully, by the time I got to the group home last night for a shift, it had mostly passed. They moved me to a home where most of the staff have “moved on” to other jobs, so I worked by myself. Thankfully, the ladies who live there are creatures of routine, so as long as we kept to their schedule, the night was quiet. The jobs FEEL very difference in that one job is time dependent and everything revolves around schedules, while the other is all about routine, but it’s more that the office job’s routine isn’t as apparent and more more stretched out.

At the office job, a woman who had called the wrong department started insulting me as I advised where she could get her answers, and actually called me a Peon. As in, “It’s clear you peons don’t know anything.” Meet the new year, same as the old year.

John Madden passed over the last few days, and when I started watching football in the 90’s, I went out of my way to watch the games he called because he spent time teaching viewers the game. If you were a new viewer, he’d cover the basics, but not in such a way that long time fans would roll their eyes. That’s a skill I don’t think anyone in football commentary has these days.

I have started a spreadsheet to track all of the things I have accomplished in the year because every year, I feel like “I haven’t done much of anything.” Since I am someone who starts a lot of stuff and then when I finish it, I just move on without pausing to let it sink in, this may help. Just a little boost since working from home and the group home job have made it so I am not out interacting with people all that much so I can’t answer “What have you been up to lately” since it feels like I work, I podcast, I sleep.

I also told my dearly beloved long time friend Shannyn G (who is smart, funny and easy on the eyes) “My bed is for sleeping, reading and yelling F@#%! when my alarm goes off. I made myself laugh with that one.

I have some group home stories that I’ll be writing up later this week, but the last two shifts I have worked have been surprise solo shifts, as the 2^nd staff didn’t show. I am incredibly glad I have years of experience at this point and keep things calm, on an even keel, and remember that at its core my job is: Get everyone fed, get everyone their meds, and get everyone to bed. Everything else is icing.

Much love to friends old and new. Be kind, be courageous, and be cool, daddy-o.