Goodbye 2023: Tell us something pretty

It's been another fucking weird year, right? It's been great and terrible in so many ways, for so many people in so many places, in so many tragic ways. 

With so much horribly needless suffering, I do feel constant guilt that I don't use this blog to take more of a stand on these issues, and rage against the injustices of the world with the loudest of them. Especially when I have the incredible privilege of being a full-time Dad for most of the week, and am insulated from some of the worst of the world.

But I do have places to do that kind of raging, and this isn't really one of them. This is for stupid reminiscences about the day I bought a lot of Alpha Flights comics in Dunedin in 1991, or how cool Doctor Who or Love and rockets are. 

The entertainments I consume can make me think about the world in a different way, or they can thrill me or inspire me, but they're just pretty things, there to make life just a bit more bearable.

I remain, as ever, completely fucking befuddled by people who get genuinely angry about a Star Wars film, when there is so much else to be righteous about in the world. On this interconnected planet, we're all stained by the blood on the floor that our leaders cause and encourage, and it all good and proper to rage against it. But you have to turn off, and read a comic book, or go to a movie, or just whatever you need to do, to make life a little easier.

Anyway, I'm going home for 2024. I don't know how that will go, but I'll try to keep talking about pretty things, even if that stain is never coming out.