By Roy Mathur, on 2022-07-01, at 23:02:33--23:46:27 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show, Listen
I said last time that I've been stressed lately and it's been a struggle to do anything, including podcasting and writing.
It's become bad enough that I can no longer guarantee two podcasts per week, but I will still try.
Home life is still tense. Like I said, I can't let loose and risk going to things (oh, how I miss going to things) because Mum and Dad are clinically vulnerable.
And I'm tired, so, so tired. I hear that's a symptom of Covid, but how would I know now that lateral flow tests are not free and cost how much?! Still, I'd guess the weariness is more likely a symptom of my neverending To Do list.
I desperately need a holiday, not like Bilbo's final holiday (though...), but one to recover.
Forget Mars Bars hit by shrinkflation, our broken green bin was replaced with one half the size. Is this an attempt to get people to compost more? (Though what the flying fudge biscuits I would do with that much compost is beyond me? Build a mountain?)
Or is this an attempt by the council to pay Serco less for fleecing us?
Okay, it sounds like I'm knocking private companies that replaced council services, and you are right. But the other side of the coin is I remember how utterly crap, lazy, and incompetent councils used to be when they did everything in-house. The solution? I'm not here to offer one, I'm here to vent.
This is a recap of something I've talked about before in the quest to fix my aged father's hearing after the total fiasco and hideous expense of private care.
Got hearing loss? You can pay vastly inflated prices to Boots or Specavers, or a bit less from Hearing Direct, or... you can get it for free.
That's right, despite successive government's attempts to destroy the NHS, hearing is covered by the NHS. Ask your GP. (If you actually manage to secure an appointment to see one).
By the way, this information should be shouted from the rooftops, but if you look into hearing loss on Google, you really have to dig to figure out that it's free in the UK. Why is that? Crap search engines? Or an effort to stop you using the services you pay for, which is sometimes the impression I get browsing the NHS website.
Even if you do access the treatment or benefits, or whatever you are perfectly entitled to as a citizen, from personal, bitter, and long experience, be prepared to grovel and be ingratiatingly grateful for whatever pittance is handed to you. For example, someone in the chain of people I spoke to on the phone, when arranging my father's hearing appointment, bristling at the sheer temerity of my asking whether the NHS hearing services were as good as private, snidely told me I could always go private and pay thousands. To be totally unambiguous, this was said in an aggressive tone, meant clearly to belittle me. This is typically the additional neck-high layer of excrement you will be forced to wade through.
If you're in the USA and worried about gas prices, earlier today I spotted a local UK petrol station charging USD 2.34 per litre.
Electric cars would be great if they, let alone normal ICE cars thanks to the shortage, were affordable. Yes, that tired old, but true, saw.
In the UK, thanks to the Russians, the home-grown far-right, and Brexit, we exported far-right popularism to the world. You're welcome, rest of the world.
Now you've almost outdone us, USA. Trump, locking up children, a near coup d'etat, the total cock up in Afghanistan, and now rolling back the rights of women in a large swath of states with your bullshit repeal of Roe versus Wade.
So called "right to life" dick heads in the UK shouldn't get too excited about importing this. Luckily, there seems little political will to cater to this regressive repressive stupidity here. This isn't bloody Gilhead.
I always wanted to go to Glastonbury, but I have clinically vulnerable parents living with me and infections are spiking after the Jubilee, and probably Glastonbury, and probably Notting Hill too in August. I feel a little resentment to those whooping it up without masks, while others like me are virtual prisoners. Thanks a lot.
Also, being a podcaster, watching some of my favourite artists at Glastonbury, after a lifetime of popstardom still p-popping and cupping their mics when they should damn well know better, has also dampened my enthusiasm. I'm starting to wish I knew a lot less about audio.
And why did Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys have a tuning fork attached to his face at Glastonbury?
Curmudgeon circuit disengaged.
I said recently that Homelander is not insane on the TV show. However, the comic, some of which I've read, he is. In the show, though, he isn't deranged; he's a megalomanic, but are all megalomaniacs insane? Alexander the Great, Genghiz Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc. Where any of them psychotic, or just plain evil.
In fact, it's far too easy to blame mental illness as the cause of every inconvenient atrocity. It's certainly a popular explanation when an American homegrown rightist terrorist is white. But the facts are, generally speaking, the majority of those with mental health issues do not commit violent crime.
Being a nasty bastard is hardly a medical condition.
Talking of nasty bastards, was GoT good, or was it violence porn?
And budgets. The mud and grime and not exactly movie level FX does not make it look expensive, but it was the fourth most expensive TV show ever made.
It was must-see event television while it happened, I like some of the characters, the action, and the storytelling, but not the excessive and casual murder, rape, and torture, which left a nasty taste in my mouth.
While I'm keen to continue revisiting classic Doctor Who, it's unlikely I will ever rewatch GoT.
I recently rewatched the Millennium thriller series adapted from Stieg Larsson's novels.
The original 2009 Swedish series centring on abused hacker, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is good whodunnit, but politically naive. This seems surprising, given that the far from naive leftist journo, the late Stieg Larson, once trained guerillas, but maybe there's a cultural difference that leads me to that conclusion. You see, corrupt officials, bent coppers and dodgy security services are hardly a surprise within the rich annals of UK history. But perhaps it had more shock value in the relatively less politically messy Scandinavian countries.
If you're late to the game, as a primer to Nordic noir, you could do worse than follow the adventures of Lisbeth Salander.
The alternate history space race is back for season three.
By the time this pod is uploaded, I thought I would have watched exactly one episode, just so that I can report back to you. Instead I watched four and it is great.
Hotels in space, The Poseidon Adventure in space, Mars! It's all go go go! Did I tell you how much I love space?
The next few days will be busy as I produced one show a day in our run up to the 10th anniversary of CRRRRS. Forget the jubilee and Summer festivals, this is the place to be! Well, it is if you have nothing better to do!
And changes are coming again, so enjoy the last few days of old-look CRRRRS.