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No Disney

I have to admit I have enjoyed some of the Star Wars stuff that has come out over the last few years. A lot of the Marvel movies have been pretty horrible, as have the TV shows, since Disney bought Marvel.

I’ve cancelled Disney over the Kimmel thing and really don’t care that they are bringing him back.

​They are a scumbag capitalist company that just purchases creative franchises, extracts as much value from them as possible, and ruins them in the process. Cultural strip-miners.

I will not be watching any of their movies in the future. Seriously, I just don’t need any more Star Wars in my life, or Avengers.

The public library has DVDs. The public library has more great science fiction novels than I can possibly read in my remaining years of life, and their almost all better that Disney’s movies. I have tabletop roleplaying games with which my friends and I create our own entertainment together. I have skateboarding and Aikido. I have a beautiful intelligent wife to enjoy my Disney-free life with. We take our sweet little dog for long walks. We talk. We listen to music on the Big Stereo.

Sorry Disney, you are just one more slimy corporate whore at the consumerist orgy, and I just don’t need you.

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Keeping our money from bad people

WARNING. RAMBLING POST

Things in this country just keep getting crazier. Y’all all know what I’m talking about. It’s really exhausting to think about, and yet we must think about it at least a bit. When to allow the crazy into your personal sensorium is a question we must all answer for ourselves, as well as how to react to the crazy. It is easy to feel helpless to affect any real change, and yet collectively we can. This week we told Hulu and Disney both to go fuck themselves by cancelling our subscriptions. Both are capitulating to the crazy so they don’t get our money. None of it.

In the meantime, I am finding the things that give me some peace and joy and peacefully enjoying them. Listening to music with my wife. Walking our dog. Chilling with our cat. Playing D&D and Traveller. Reading science fiction novels. Blogging.

Back a few years ago when my wife was diagnosed with cancer I increased our cable TV package to their maximum package I wanted to make sure she had any entertainment she wanted. Now, several years later, it is about $200 a month and we never use it. At most we watch the local and national news. We watch no shows. No series. Nothing. We have hundreds of channels and there is NOTHING on that I have any desire to watch. The stuff I might watch if the TV is on would be the original Star Trek and a few other things, but I don’t. So we are getting rid of it all. GONE. No cable TV. With the internet, the public library, our stereo, and our games, we have more than enough to have fun. That is $2400 a fucking year! Insane. That is a good portion of our yearly property taxes. Obviously I should have cancelled it years ago.

Basically we are cancelling a lot of subscription services that have been bleeding us dry. I got rid of Apple TV last week when they emailed to tell me it was going up from $9 a month to $12. I only had it to watch Foundation, and I will survive quite well without it. I just saw that they fucked over Jon Stewart, so I ‘m head of the curve.  Also cancelling Amazon Prime. I can’t say I’ll stop using Amazon. The damned Kindle is just too nice. I love my Kindle eBooks, and theirs is the only eBook system that doesn’t suck. Sorry, that is not one of the hills I’m willing to die on. Yet.

It is really impossible, unless you go live in a hollow tree in the woods, to avoid doing business with evil, or at best amoral, people and corporations. Most of the time the chains of ownership of the big companies is very convoluted, and when you get to the end they are owned by some scumbag “investment company” run by the worst tech and biz bros that can be grown in whatever evil labs they come from. So my point isn’t to be perfect in cancelling or simply not buying things, or to even be consistent, but to be better. All these  money grubbing rats care about is more money. So deny them as much as I can.

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A good article

My wife pointed out this article today…

https://jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/the-threat-no-one-wants-to-talk-about

It’s a really good article. Over the last few years I’ve really struggled with my participation in social media. Frankly, I’ve hit delete on many posts here on this blog, often before every publishing them, because I don’t want to be part of the problem.

In this article, Sexton really crystalizes some of the feelings I’ve been having about the internet, tech bros and the influence of so-called “big tech”, and my own role in it (even if mine is an infinitesimally tiny role).

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Negative

Well, I tested negative for Covid this morning. Still have a lot of snot, but I went to work for the first time in over a week. I did OK. About 2pm I was feeling pretty tired, but not as bad as the day before.

One more day of work this week and then the weekend. I’m going to lay off exercise for at least a month. That sucks because I have an aikido seminar I’m going to miss and I want to do some skateboarding, but I also don’t want to over-tax my body and end up with long Covid.

By the way, a message to whoever brought this fucking virus into our world. Go fuck yourself. Whether you are a lazy researcher who spilled a bottle of virus somewhere or some monkey-eating asshole buying bushmeat in a dirty market, please please please go fuck yourself.

Seriously. I have stuff to do, and now we’ve gotta live the rest of our lives dealing with this bullshit.

Dear Unknown Reader – you may have noticed a lot of cursing on this blog lately. I’m just annoyed and grumpy.

I have about 15 months until I retire. That’s a secret. Don’t tell anyone. Once I retire I am going to seriously reduce my contact with the germ-carrying unwashed masses.

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Aikido, Covid, Cons, Etc

As a follow-up to the Covid post, I am supposed to participate in an Aikido seminar in 3 weekends. I question whether I will really be up to it. In Aikido, once you are of the “dan” ranks (black belts) you are expected to attend two seminars per year. This is a big thing in the art. You go somewhere, usually another dojo, and a high-ranking teacher from somewhere else leads class for a weekend. Usually it is a full day of practice on Saturday and then Sunday morning. It is exhausting but fun. It is important to expose yourself to other ideas in the art, as well as create and maintain relationships as part of the greater Aikido community.

The last few years there have been very few seminars, due mostly to dojo closings resulting from the pandemic.

Anyway, I honestly don’t know if I will have enough fuel in the tank to do this. It seems like a lot of time, but it will be here before I know it. Right now I am about 55% well. I did not have any of the drastic respiratory problems that can come with Covid, but the fatigue is real. I’d say the same if I was recovering from the flu.

I had been feeling almost…normal…about going to events. For example, gaming conventions. Cons are well known as great places to get sick. I have a badge for the next North Texas RPG Con. Now I am rethinking whether I even want to go. I will have lost a week of health and fun activity do this particular illness. I don’t know that I really want to roll the dice a gaming con. Or, if I go to this Aikido seminar, what am I likely to pick up there? Flu? Some other Covid variant? Who knows.

Now, I can’t live my life in fear of getting sick. I understand that. But it is something to consider.