Agent of Change

A Blog by Cory!! Strode, who really should write something interesting here.

Archive for the month “April, 2022”

What I am thinking about today, 4/25/2022

When Elon Musk buys twitter, he will claim he invented it after a few months.

I was called in for a sleeping overnight late on Saturday because the overnight staff called in. When I got there, one of the supervisors asked what I was up to on a Saturday night when I got the call. “Watching a documentary on the sketchbooks of Orson Wells.” Because I am a party animal like that. And the other staff they had contacted were at the bars.

Sunday was super quiet at the group home. My Buddy was excited for the first half hour or so, and then settled into his chair to watch soccer. He sat in the chair like a teenager, slumped down and twisting his head a bit, and during commercials he would play the game where he would look at me until I noticed, then look away. I did the same thing, and he would clap until the game was back on, and then he was engrossed in that.

Oh, and the Orson Wells documentary was wonderful. I knew little about his art, but the documentary took the form of a letter to Orson asking about his drawing style connecting to his film style as well as his life. I know when a lot of people think of Wells, they think he peaked with Citizen Kane, but his other movies are incredible as well, he just either didn’t get to finish them himself, or they were so low budget they didn’t have the sheen of Kane.

When Cable started, they didn’t have ads because you were paying for it. Eventually they started adding ads because they weren’t meeting growth projections. The same thing is happening with streaming services now that every company seems to have a service. The other thing that is following cable’s growth is that when it started, they would do all sorts of crazy crap to see what would work and what wouldn’t. Old movies, weird comedies, concerts and the like. Streaming started by being experimental, but is pretty much coalescing around the same entertainment models as broadcast TV and cable. Let’s hope streaming can keep some of the experimentation and weirdness.

The election in France is concerning in that the Fascist candidate got 40% of the vote. We are dealing with a wave of fascism across the world as people seem to want totalitarian leaders. They call for absolute control, racial purity, military strength, and a promise that THOSE people won’t be allowed to have any political power. They want THOSE people to know their place, be invisible or just not exist. I don’t know what is bringing about these things, but it reminds me that as smart as we think we are, we are still the same scared hairless apes that are scared of anything different and break into angry tribes at the first chance.

“Generation Z is being told to come back to the office and are quitting instead.” Good for them. The last two years have proven that the idea of coming into an office is an outmoded idea, and young people don’t have the years of equity in those jobs to put up with things they think are stupid. If I would have had to go back to the office, I would seriously consider finding a different job, and I hate job hunting with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.

Be kind, be courageous, and be cool.

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What I am thinking about today, 4/14/2022

Every so often, I remember that the only person left from the original EC comics crew is Angelo Torres. The comics EC put out between 1950 and 1955 were the best drawn comics line in history. I love Kirby and Ditko, but the lineup they had was incredible:

Wally Wood

Jack David

Graham Ingles

Jack Kamen

Harvey Kurtzman

Bill Elder

Al Feldstein

Johnny Craig

Basil Wolverton

Al Williamson

Bernie Krigstein

Joe Orlando

And that’s just off the top of my head without looking. Angelo recently had a series of stories in the Dark Horse revival of Creepy and Eerie that were as good as his work on the Warren mags in the 60’s and 70’s.

There is a Russian professional cosplayer I follow on the internets. At first, it was because “Hey, she’s pretty when she’s dressed like Gwen Stacy”, and she also did a lot of shoots with anime and video game characters. She sells photos at conventions, have professional photo shoots and the like. Yes, I like looking at pretty women. About a year or so ago, she posted a bunch of videos and pics from a protest in Moscow she had attended. She does videos on Twitch and Instagram where she talked about what was going on in Russia, and I must admit I am a person who loves that sort of content so that I can see what people’s lives are like all over the world.

About two months ago she had to leave Russia quickly. No details, but lots of apologies that there wasn’t new content, and stuff about supporting Ukraine. Now that she is in Istanbul, she has gone pack to posting pictures of herself in costume and being at conventions in Europe, but she also posts about how most of her team is still in Russia, how to help people in Ukraine, and how sad she is that she can’t be home any more.

There are three things I think about this:

1) How gut wrenching it is that these sorts of things can happen so quickly.

2) Here is a young woman who makes a living being pretty and dressing up in costumes who is trying to help people by using her influence to push people to do something. THIS IS WHY CELEBRITIES TAKE UP CAUSES.

3) How, when used right, social media can bring us into other people’s lives and connect to help people we otherwise would know nothing about. To most people, the conflict in Ukraine is something in a country far away that we see on the news, but seeing the actual toll on the people affected makes it more tragic and compels us to take action more readily.

I have internet friends all over the world. Here on Facebook, many of the people I am “friends” with are comics fans or wrestling fans. But through that connection, I get the see into the lives of people all over the world so that I can understand their lives better. Through those connections, I can embrace our differences in culture, language, and thoughts. In doing so, I grow and learn. Thank you to ALL of my friends outside the US.

Be kind, be courageous and be cool.

Much love to friends old and new.

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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.

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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.

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