Mima ended her advent calendar with a rant about 2022 and I feel the need to reflect also. However I keep banging my head against a wall over a few topics as they float around my head and I try to piece them together into a somewhat coherent, not too lengthy, and not too… blunt a topic, or at least one that might not upset too many people, but ho-hum, I shouldn’t try and please everyone I suppose.

Let’s begin with Ukraine and the so-called Cost of Living Crisis. I like how Mima put it in her post that “All the Russians have done is take some of the east of Ukraine and that's it.” And yet it all becomes a big thing affecting all our lives, and everything bad happening, like “the cost of living crisis” and fuel price hikes, and food shortages, are all to blame on Putin. In my opinion Zanlenskii has put many people in his own country through hell through being in bed with/a puppet of the West. Who benefits from this war? Who benefits from the blowing up of the Nord Stream Pipelines? The answer is “Who now offers to supply the energy instead?” Sadly we are all paying for this war because people are using our money to fund weapons for it... that's exactly what I do when there is a neighbourly dispute, hand out weapons...

Firstly, we were heading towards these issues since Covid was released/escaped from a lab two years prior, or whatever you want to believe. This resulted in the so-called, greatest transfer of wealth, with it all pretty much flowing into the pockets of the already top few %. Conversely this basically means a devaluing of the scrapings at the bottom of the barrel the rest of us squabble over. We can see evidence of this with the super profits the energy companies have been achieving vs. here in the UK the health service, postal workers, and train drivers are striking over pay. This irritates me because they all earn more than me...

For those of us that caught Covid early on (and understand a thing or two about how health and the immune system work) we were expected to play along with everyone else, or be confronted or shunned should we not, or speak out.

2022 has therefore seen first a prevalence of Meningitis, Strep-A, and a variety of other flu and other stuff. Only now are those employed in the mainstream media (aka narrative pushers) actually posing questions, “freely”, around points some of us were silenced for two years ago; that “perhaps Lockdowns actually harmed our immune systems, since we were kept away from others...” not to mention the stress of it and having to stay off beaches, out in parks, or limiting time outdoors (and thus our uptake of Vitamin D) to 1hr per day. I’m still encountering people who have just caught Covid for the first time and feared for their lives because (as I could see it) of how the media drilled the fear into them with all those daily death numbers and repeated images of people on hospital beds.

Something similar has been said also about repeated vaccinations/boosters, that rather than improving the immune system, leave it in tatters, and so I shake my head during rounds of “I’ve had my four boosters...” “Oh yes, me too.” [we’re such good citizens and very sensible...]

For all those parents who “kept their children safe” and away from other kids, made/encouraged/supported them (in their) wear(ing of) masks, and wouldn’t let them take part in such things as Halloween in 2020/1, or worse, pushed to have them “vaccinated against Covid” when they were least at risk, and whose children then went on to suffer with Strep A… well, there you go.

The harms don’t end there (and they wont) (besides from mentioning the continuing rise in obesity). With all the kids staying indoors these days and on their devices/tablets, watching endless TicToc, and playing Roblox (for example), well I hope you (dear parent) heard the news this week about the prevalence of "groomers" there, not to mention of the rise in self harm and “gender confusion”.

I’m not one for “attacking individuals”, whatever your choices are, and I am acquainted with a variety of people of all sorts of persuasions, and none of what I write ascribed to you unless you feel the hat fits, but all this pride stuff makes me cringe and wanting to change one’s gender (if that’s even completely possible) makes me quite concerned for people, more so this week with Scotland seeking to reduce the age in which someone can choose to change their gender as stipulated on their birth certificate. I'm not actually sure why this is even necessary; why are people trying to change a piece of paper that states whether they were born with a penis or a vagina?

I suddenly thought yesterday, what if there is a link between some who self-harm and want to “change their gender”? Both of these things are reportedly on the rise, there must be some overlap and perhaps relation? I also think a large part of this is born out of a fetish and thus everyone else is being forced to play along with it, that and the ever growing list of pronouns. I mean, which guy hasn’t thought at some point what it would be like to be be a girl? The thing is, thinking so doesn’t make it true; if I imagine I’m a girl (I’m male by the way), what I imagine as “being a girl” is not actually being a girl, it’s just how I imagine it. Overly thinking this (clearly) leads to an obsession for many people, like a fixation on getting the latest iPhone. (The shine is diminished once they go out of fashion). I come at this from the perspective of someone who has spent far too much time in the virtual world that is Second Life, where just yesterday I was chatting with someone about “how to spot someone who is being something they’re not.” The general agreement we had was that a guy being a girl in SL would often present an avatar that was overly sexualised. Weirdly, it seems whenever girl friends have tried being a guy avatar, for a bit of fun, they end up being too “soft” and “close”, but alas my experiences are limited.

“Pride”, on the face of it, is supposedly about inclusively, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be welcome. Which pretty much sums up some of the people that are all for it.

I do apologise for the overly ratty tone of this piece (some of it is meant to be light-hearted); I’m in somewhat of a ratty mood today, which is partly due to me spending most of the day trying to get this topic together! Sometimes I really need some time away from “world news”!

Feel free to share your views with me on these topics!