Posts

Books: The Book of Joy - Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams

Image
I'm going to attempt an experiment here with this particular reading adventure. My nephew Shawn gave me this book a couple of years ago.  He knows the struggles I'm having with depression and anxiety and gifted it to me in hopes of trying to help tame the fire that singes my soul on a fairly regular basis.  Since I've been off work due to mental health issues for almost a year now, within my abundance of time I took up reading, of which I've always considered myself to be the slow, drifting type of reader.  But I granted myself patience, and upon picking up the first book a little while ago, just tasked myself to re-read passages that weren't quite 'connecting' with me.  My attention span is admittedly rather short.  This is not some kind of admission of stupidity or something silly like that on my part.  A lot of non-readers would claim this same trait too, I suspect. But as I languish in solitude often during these days in the age of Covid, upon tidying th
Post a Comment
Read more
  Sunday, June 6, 2021 Time Machines  I thought I'd try something fun for this blog entry.  I have time on my hands so I figured, why not? Music is something I haven't really been listening to a lot of lately.  Ultimately, nothing is really coming out that I've found interesting that's new, so I'm forced to kind of look back.  Maybe that's a good thing.  There's an endless supply of undiscovered (by me, anyway) greats out there for people like me. Plus, I went looking for old songs I completely forgot about.  So I made this playlist on YouTube which likely won't ever be finished.  I don't have the premium version of YouTube, so I endure the commercials, much like when you listen to the radio.  At least you get to hear the songs you want, right?  Also, the vast majority of the music on this playlist is stuff that I don't own, but have come to appreciate more and more over the years.  Some of these songs I didn't even like back in the day, but
Post a Comment
Read more
Thursday, June 17, 2021 Random Thoughts 6/17/21  My time off work has been extended six more weeks.  That's good and bad.  Good, because I definitely feel improvement and peace, although still experiencing anxiety attacks.  Bad, because I found out my hours will be cut and now I have to spend my time seeing if there's something else out there for me.  Scary times. But, one day at a time.  Random thoughts is a good diversion, eh? ************ The Tale End If you're watching 'The Handmaid's Tale', you're hopefully surprised by how good this season has been.  The parallels in this show to real life is frightening, disturbing, and actually enlightening.  Hard to watch at times because of that, but kind of necessary at the same time.  I don't think Elisabeth Moss has deserved an Emmy more than she does this season, and that's actually saying a lot.  If we let religion take over government, this is where we're all headed.  Church and State must  always
Post a Comment
Read more

Star Trek Into Darkness

Image
When the 'Star Trek' reboot movie came out, I was kind of skeptical as to how it would turn out and whether or not I'd like it, but I and lots of other Trek fans were pleasantly surprised at how well it turned out.  There were a lot of mistakes and timeline discrepancies regarding official 'Star Trek canon', but most of us could let that slide and just enjoy the show, and the characters that took over the original roles.  Most of the cast did a fine job in their portrayals. I waited a long time for 'Into Darkness' to come out, with sky high expectations, knowing what director JJ Abrams was capable of.  I do admire the guy's work.  He can knock it out of the park, like he did with 'Star Trek', or he can underwhelm with a show like 'Super 8'.  But like other directors, everyone's entitled to their wild swings at the plate.  Stephen Spielberg had his share of those.  God knows George Lucas did too.  Look at M Night Shyamalan.  Thre
Post a Comment
Read more

Iron Man 3

Image
This is the kind of movie summer movies ought to be chock full of. I've heard an awful lot about how bad "IM2" was.  Not personally from actual people, but online in reviews and what-have-you.  I loved "IM2".  It portrayed RJD's Tony Stark as an egotistical, way-too-proud-of-himself megalomaniac that would probably beset him had he actually done the things he did in the first "Iron Man".  He's one of the smartest, richest, most clever people on earth.  How else would you expect a guy to turn out?  That movie's main villain, Whiplash, played just fine by Mickey Rourke, along with Justin Hammer (played furiously good by Sam Rockwell), fit the bill for a followup for me.  The icing on that cake was in the form of Scarlett Johanssen's Black Widow.  The main annoyance of that movie for me was the shameless AC/DC plugs throughout.  I'm a traditionalist when it comes to movies for the most part.  I like a good score as opposed to a po
1 comment
Read more

Well good gravy...!

Welcome to what will become a nice little review spot to accompany Ragnar Station , with The Gravy Pot being where all things good and lumpy will be taken to task by yours truly.  I've been thinking of doing this for a long time now, but the itch to get it going just became unbearable and here I am now. I'll be giving my opinion on anything that I have an opinion about, which is a far array of things from movies to TV shows, food to drink, music to webpages, you name it.  There aren't really any rules on what to talk about.  The thing here to remember is that it's just an opinion and not anything personal. At the end of every thing to talk about that I pick at will be a rating system of two simple sides:  Good Gravy and Lumpy Gravy.  Like the late great Siskel and Ebert's thumbs up/thumbs down symbols, it's black and white in its recommendation.  I either endorse it or I don't.  But I will elaborate on whether my recommendations are marginal or not. T
Post a Comment
Read more

"The Wrestler"

Image
We've seen a few movies over the last little while that I'd like to talk about, in theatres, one on DVD.  We saw "Watchmen" in regular theaters and IMAX, "Coraline" in digital 3D, and "The Wrestler" on disc.   Seeing "The Wrestler" in theatres was tough to do, because it just wasn't there long.  It's a small budget movie, from auteur director Darren Aronofsky, and I was especially interested to see his work because he's doing the "RoboCop" reboot next.  "Robo", at least the first film, is one of my favorite all time movies.  I doubt it can be made as good as Paul Verhoeven's version, where he had his own stamp on satire and dialogue with ultra-violence blended in so seamlessly.   Mickey Rourke's Randy 'the Ram' Robinson is a mirroring of his own life, I don't know if it was intentional on the writer's part or not.  Rourke's had a tough life after some modest success i
Post a Comment
Read more