Happy Thanksgiving, to everyone who celebrates it! And a very merry Thursday to everyone who doesn’t.
Because I haven’t provided a health update in a while (outside of the comments) I just wanted to reassure everyone that I am still here, and still trying to sort through a bunch of medical issues with the help of assorted doctors, some very competent and others not so much.
The issues I’m facing aren’t lifethreatening, but they are still debilitating enough to keep me from regular posting here. Sorry to be so vague; I’ll offer more details once some of these issues are sorted out a bit more. I’ll return to posting as soon as I am able but I cannot predict when that will be.
I appreciate everyone’s patience and continued support. Thanks!
In other news, today is Finnish Independence Day – specifically the 100th anniversary.
Usually, Finns celebrate this day by chilling at home with their family and/or watching some state ceremonies on TV, while the weather is predictably miserable. This year, some people are throwing actual parties.
I defaulted to sitting alone today, because I always do that on petty state holidays, because I’m not sociable and don’t really have close people at hand, because I’m generally too depressed this time of the year to plan anything or to get out, because I predictably postponed some work that needs to be done tomorrow.
Now, I feel mildly lonely and failing to achieve some reasonably patriotic appreciation of my fellow people who constitute this country. I tried calling one family member, who was too busy starting a party. Other friends and family are likely busy too, my jerkbrain tells me.
I did go out for a walk. The weather isn’t actually bad today. There’s a light dusting of new snow, and the sun peeked out a few times.
Bugger. Wouldn’t post.
Happy 100th, Finland.
Edit – odd. Worked this time.
Yup, toxic masculinity was definitely part of Sawchuk’s self-destructive brew.
Speaking of toxic masculinity and its deadly effects, as my clock radio reminded me and Montreal Simon notes that it’s the 28th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre: http://montrealsimon.blogspot.ca/2017/12/remembering-murdered-women-of-ecole.html
(TW: Awful comments from YouTube included)
Well, if anybody wants to know how to push Katamount’s buttons, it’s praising this hideous murderer. I take it personally because the majority of the victims were not only engineering students, but in metallurgy, which is what I specialized in. I wear my Iron Ring every day; these women were taken away before they were Obligated and received theirs. A man too insecure and too consumed by toxic masculinity stole the lives of these women from the world for no other reason than they were learning a profession. My profession. To this monster, it made them “feminists” and they had to die.
And people with that same mindset continue to injure and kill women all over the world, and some punk commenters have the gall to offer praise to the perpetrator?!
Nah, this Kat ain’t having none of that!
…and it’s also the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Harbour explosion. Yay, more death….
Well, I’ll raise a glass to an independent Finland at the very least! Cheers!
@ Katamount;
Also ratification of 13th Amendment, 1865, establishment of Irish Free State, 1921, and Altamont Music Festival (one day of not-peace, not-love… and music), 1969
@Weird Eddie
Didn’t know the 13th Amendment was ratified today. Cool!
In the “what stupid thing that could start Armaggeddon that Trump did today”, he recognized Jerusalem as the Israel capital.
Is his plan to start several wars before going down ? Because it sure look like it.
Ohlmann,
As a friend reminded me, “Chaos is a ladder.”
Yes, his plan is to cause as much damage as possible globally.
Canadian Pro Hockey [although four of the six teams were in the US, when I was in college in Boston 1965-68 and actually going to Bruins games there was only one US-born player in the NHL, plus one born in England and one in Czechoslovakia who had grown up in Canada] was pretty much a game for poor tough farm kids from central Canada. The style of play evolved from a system where you had to fight your way into the league — there are some parallels with pro boxing. The common joke, in fact, was “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.” The Soviet game, on the other hand, was supported by the State and the most promising players were employed by the State, and they emphasized skill and precision passing. Players didn’t have to prove themselves by fighting. The Soviet style was much better to watch, but of course you couldn’t say that in the Cold War Times.
The Bruins had a “Uke Line” — made up of three players (Johnny Bucyk, Vic Stasiuk, and Bronco Horvath) who were Ukrainian Canadians. The “Little Ukraine” in western Manitoba was to sort of place that produced a lot of hockey players.
Regarding the uber-clusterfuck called Brexit, it seems that the Tories are being hoist by the same petard as the Establishment Republicans in the US. They have spent decades winning elections by nurturing the worst impulses of their base, and now the base has taken control and screwed everything up. The Tories thought they could get their base to support them on Brexit, but they had merely set things up for Farage and his ilk — just as the GOP meant to set things up for a willing oligarchic tool like JEB? or Marco Rubio, but found they had instead created the conditions for Trump’s misrule.
Would it be violating the comments policy to say that if Trump is going to live like Littlefinger, I hope he meets the same fate as him.
Probably.
Sorry.
Plan? He has no plan, nor has he the capacity to plan. He’s a two-year-old in the throes of a major tantrum. He will almost certainly start a war, perhaps more than one, because of his ego and his out-of-control id. This latest bullshit of moving the U.S Embassy to Jerusalem will hijack any possible chance of a peaceful solution in Palestine, as Israel will use it as a further justification for controlling the city completely. Who knows what will happen in Korea, as the fool in charge of North Korea seems as derailed as the dumpster-fire-in-chief. Two two-year-olds throwing nukes at each other is a very disturbing prospect which seems as likely as any other outcome.
@Weird It might possibly be Bannon’s plan. Of one of the fundamentalists that think it’s their duty to bring on Armageddon.
@Grumpy
Gonna guess the Czechoslovakian player was Stan Mikita, but I couldn’t name the English-born or American-born player.
It’s weird that you think about how groundbreaking it was to have European players like Borje Salming in the NHL back in the 70s. You’re absolutely right that it was definitely the poor farm kid’s game… looking at where so many of the legendary greats were born, they’re all in Saskatchewan (Gordie Howe, Johnny Bower), Manitoba (Sawchuk, Turk Broda) and or in rural Ontario and Quebec. More hockey talent was coming out of Saguenay or Cochrane than out of Toronto or Montreal.
Trump may not be a towering intellectual, but it’s dangerous to underestimate his capacity for behaving in nefarious ways. From his behavior, it seems very clear to me that he’s trying to get us into a war. He knows his presidency is seen as a joke and like George W Bush before him, the only way he’s ever going to get admiration from anyone but his die hard fans and to have any kind of legacy is to become a war president. Just because his ego and shortsightedness gets in the way of thinking or caring about the long term implications of his actions doesn’t mean he can’t have an agenda.
I’m such a bad Minnesotan. We’re supposed to love hockey as much as Canadians do but I just can’t bring myself to care about it.
… and in other news….
Guys, calm down about the Jerusalem thing. Jared is going to sort out peace in the region, remember? Any day now.
@WWTH
Speaking as a Canadian, me either.
@Moggie : in a way, we *are* closer to peace in the region.
That peace is however much more likely from it being an unhabitable, irradiated wasteland. But we can’t have everything, after all. Plus, now that Europa havve had Syria to test how well it can welcome people, getting the saudi and israeli and what not here will be easy !
Might contain trace of cynism and irony.
@Katamount
I haven’t been able to tell whats trolling and whats a serious comment for a long time.. More violence against and hatred towards women, the more they’ll cheer and congratulate all the while harassing women on how they’re the most persecuted and victimized demographic. Linking this back to that Salon article about Lauren and Tara being harassed by their own unsurprisingly misogynistic communities. Somewhere there was that screencap of a comment on /pol/ from an anon trying to devise a plot to bully women off the internet via harassment. I kinda think its the same idea just different extremes. The men who want to memorialize a misogynistic killer is just a giant message. Evil biofemoids should stay in the kitchen or we’ll kill you. And they’re too transparent to claim ‘satire!’ when called out on.
@Weird Eddie
Trump wouldn’t deny to ignite war. It might boost his approval ratings among his supports who are bloodthirsty, radicalizing them even more. A civil war seems like the big thing the altright desperately wants but I actually doubt he’d favor it. It seems like he wants to have a slap fight with NK, bully and taunt China while bed Russia.
Of course, one of the interesting bits is that Wayne Gretzky played much more of a European style of hockey rather than a North American style: fast, mostly non-contact, and got away with it at least in part because he just seemed to have an intuitive grasp of the mechanics of the sport that let him be in the right place at the right time.
(I seem to recall Gretzky was listed on the Real Life section of the ‘Awesomeness by Analysis’ TVTropes page for that. No, I’m not going to link or go there to check for fear of getting sucked down that time sink again.)
Granted, it also helped that once he got to be well-known enough, a lot of the usual toughs got less willing to hit him because nobody wanted to be known as ‘the guy who ended Gretzky’s career’. In fact, I vaguely recall one of said toughs actively complaining about that.
@Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie
Shit. Now it’s going to be harder to remind people that B and O both belong in prison for torture when D shaming at careful moments.
@ Brony;
… ok, I’ve parsed your comment for several minutes, making liberal use of google for assistance… I still have no idea what you mean…. Can you give me the value of the variables “B”, “O” and “D”, please?
🙂 🙂 🙂
Another non-hockey fan Canadian here.
@Eddie:
Bush and Obama, of course.
@Sheila:
A set that includes VP Pence. Mueller better get him too or he’ll wind up with his finger on the fucking button.
I worry that though Mueller is very likely to bring this administration down and soon, the damage has been done. That whoever takes power, even if it’s Dems, will find convenient excuses to postpone undoing the worst things Trump did, and postpone, and postpone, and postpone, because it suits the rich that it be postponed. That norms won’t return to normal and the alt-right will martyrize Trump and Pence and go on the march. That there’ll be a thousand McVeighs and Bundy clans raising hell, and thousands of Heather Heyers killed as a result.