Hi there, Dear Reader. It’s a chilly late morning here in New Hometown, Florida on Friday, January 29, 2021. The current temperature is 57˚F (14˚C) under sunny skies. With humidity at 51% and the wind blowing from the northeast at 6 MPH (9 KM/H), the feels-like temperature is also 57˚F (14˚C). Today’s forecast calls for a high of 68˚F (20˚C) and sunny conditions; tonight, the skies will be clear and the low will be 45˚F (7˚C).

If you are a regular reader of A Certain Point of View, Too or its Blogger forerunner, A Certain Point of View, you know that I usually like to write posts about one topic or, at the very least, a particular theme – sometimes I’ll write about music, for instance, and at other times I’ll focus, laser-like, on politics or the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today…well, my mind is all over the place, veering from the ridiculous – Jenna Ryan’s sudden (but predictable) disappearance from most of social media – to the mundane (I added another movie to my Blu-ray collection) this week. And since I don’t want to waste any more time trying to figure what the hell I’m going to cover today, I think I’ll just do a piece called A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That and write about all those things, So, without further ado, let’s get started!

The Jenna Ryan Show Ends

Remember Jennifer Leigh Ryan, aka “Jenna Ryan”, the 50-year-old real estate agent-turned-“Stop the Steal” Capitol stormer? You know, the ditzy conservative Trump supporter who got slapped with four federal charges for participating in the January 6 attack on the Capitol in a bid to stop certifying President Joe Biden’s election victory in the 2020 election?

Well, it seems that after 22 straight days of receiving mostly critical feedback on social media – especially on Twitter – and trying to defend her extreme political views (which include undying support for ex-President Donald Trump, a belief that Christians are persecuted in America, and the debunked conspiracy that the 2020 elections were “rigged”) in the face of massive public opprobrium, the Jenna Ryan Show self-canceled itself early last night.

At some point after 8 PM Eastern (my time zone)/7 PM Central (Ryan’s), Jenna’s Twitter, Gab, and Tik-Tok accounts were gone. On Twitter, only her business related account, @JennaRyanRealty remains, and that one has been quiet since January 4, one day before Ryan famously – or infamously – flew to Washington DC with four other Texans to participate in the right-wing mob attack incited by the former President of the United States. (There’s another Jenna Ryan account allegedly created for her life coaching activities, but it might be an impersonator’s Twitter page; it lacks Ryan’s over-the-top right-wing nonsense and consists mostly of quotes along the lines of Jenna Ryan @ dotJennaCoach

·Aug 3, 2013 “Success is buried on the other side of rejection.” ― Anthony Robbins.)

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On YouTube, Ryan’s “SelfLoveIU” channel is still up, although she has not posted any new content since January 3. According to YouTube, the channel has 64,400 subscribers and 183 videos, none of which – at least that I have noticed from my admittedly shallow dive of the channel – delve into politics.

Here is the channel’s description, written by Jihad Jenna herself:

SelfLoveU is a channel designed to help you love, value, affirm and validate yourself. Created by Jenna Ryan, this is a healing channel. Visit the blog at http://blogspot.self-love-u.com/[1]

I tried watching one of her videos, but her too-bubbly personality and too-vapid content enervated me well before I reached the five-minute mark, so I stopped it there and moved on to a wargaming video from The Historical Gamer’s channel instead. I’ll link one of Jihad Jenna’s videos so you can see for yourself just how vapid and faux-bubbly Jihad Jenna is.[2] 

Well, I think this will be the last post that I will write about Jenna Ryan unless she returns to Twitter and tries to grab some more of the Internet spotlight. Like the twice-impeached former President she adores, Jihad Jenna is a narcissist who loves being the center of attention, even if It is negative and replete with criticisms, insults, and sarcastic digs at her pleas for financial assistance and her ridiculous attempts to look like a victim.

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War is Hell, but War Gaming Can Be Fun

This week I started playing Strategic Command WWII: World at War again – which is why I was watching videos on The Historical Gamer in YouTube. Since I am still not good at playing any of the 1939-1945 (and beyond) campaigns as either the Axis or Allies, I chose – yet again – to play the Triumph and Tragedy 1944 scenario instead.

As I noted in my review of the game, I chose that scenario because it begins at the “end stage” of World War II (June 6, 1944, the day in which the Western Allies landed on the Normandy beaches to begin the liberation of France) and it’s the only one I’ve played where the Allied player moves first. I am probably a poor gameplayer because I don’t like turn-based war games where others – be they human players or an artificial intelligence (AI) opponent – moves first. I’m too impatient, and – especially in war games – I don’t enjoy being on the defensive during my first turn.[3]

I started my latest session of Strategic Command WWII: World at War (WAW) on Wednesday; I decided beforehand to play the game in short chunks of time (one or two turns per session, with only one or two sessions a day) rather than in a marathon game session. I love the game, mind you, and no one prevents me from spending my time playing it. But I take my writing – whether it involves writing a script or creating new content for A Certain Point of View, Too – seriously, and I feel guilty as hell when I spend too much time playing Cold Waters, Sid Meier’s Civilization V, or WAW and not working on my blog or other projects.

So, as of today, I am playing as the Soviet Union and delegating command of the other Allied nations (the US and Minors, the UK and Minors, France, India, and China) to the game’s AI. It’s October 24, 1944, and although the Allies have not made as much progress as their historical counterparts, the war is going well for us; the Western Allies have landed in France and liberated Paris (a major Victory Points objective). In Italy, the Allies are making their way up toward the top of the Italian “boot,” while partisans are making trouble for the Germans in the Balkans.

Meanwhile, my Red Army has liberated huge swaths of the Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Belorussia, and some units have crossed the border with Romania at two different points. We have suffered heavy losses – even at the easiest settings, WAW does not let human players win easily, especially when you choose to add “fog of war” (you don’t see any enemy units that are beyond the detection range of yours) and weather effects. And we are nowhere near the deep penetrations of German-occupied Eastern Europe made by the real Soviet Union by October 1944.

In the Pacific – the game simulates the entire conflict, not just the war in Europe – the American navy has nearly annihilated the Japanese fleet in several battles, so there is not going to be a Battle of Leyte Gulf in this version of World War II. China is still a quagmire for the Japanese Army, and since the Allies control the seas, there’s no way the Japanese can reinforce their island holdings out in the Pacific. The war will probably drag on until 1947, although by then I’ll probably take manual command of the Americans and come up with my own strategy to win the war in the Pacific rather than let the AI run everything except the Soviets.

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My Movie Collection Grows (Yet Again)

Earlier this week I ordered the recent (December 2020) reissue of William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives, a 1946 drama about three World War II veterans who come home to their (fictional) hometown of Boone (in the Midwest) shortly after the war. Starring Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Myrna Loy, and Virginia Mayo, this film won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and two for Harold Russell, one for Best Supporting Actor (which few people expected Russell to win since he wasn’t a professional actor) and an honorary Oscar for being an inspiration for his fellow disabled veterans (Russell, who served in the Army in the war, lost both hands in a training exercise in 1944).

It’s a long film (with a running time of nearly three hours), and it arrived yesterday evening at our house (around 6 PM), so I only watched some of The Best Years of Our Lives before calling it a night and going to bed. It is pretty good, though. Maybe I’ll watch the whole movie this weekend.

Well, this purchase increased my overall Blu-ray collection to 370: 320 feature films (though many are Star Wars reissues I have bought as insurance in case a disc gets damaged or lost) and 50 TV seasons. And this is only my “regular’ high-definition Blu-ray disc (BD) collection!  I now own 28 4K UHD titles (most of them “upgrades” of existing BD titles, though I did get the Bourne series as “new to me” purchases) and 237 DVDs (158 films, 79 TV seasons).

I suppose I have more Blu-rays than I do DVDs because many of my BDs come in box sets, and because I’ve focused on Blu-rays more since I bought my first player/HD TV set back in 2009. I don’t have as many 4K UHD films because even though I bought my first 4K TV in 2017, the Caregiver waited so long to set up the master bedroom while we were still a couple that the set was only mounted on the wall of that room shortly before we broke up. In a just world, I would have moved that set into my new bedroom, but that set (a 50-inch one) is much too big, so I had to buy another, smaller set to watch my new 4K UHD discs in my room.

Luckily, I was able to pay for that new set with part of the COVID-19 stimulus check I received in November 2020, so at least I can watch TV in my room and enjoy my 4K UHD collection, modest as it is right now. Gotta look at the bright side of things, right?

Blogger’s Note: All of the game elements seen in the screenshots of Strategic Command WWII: World at War are (C) 2017 Fury Software, Slitherine Games, and Matrix Games.

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[1] Don’t bother trying to get a peek at that blog; the link is dead, and whatever blog was there is no longer there.

[2] I wonder, though, how much longer those videos are going to remain on YouTube. Sure, they seem to have no political content, but Ryan turned off commenting on most of them – gee, I wonder why – except for those in the channel’s Community Page.

Here’s a sampling of the feedback Jenna Ryan has received since 1/6:

ponderbeth

1 week ago

Life coaching on how to ruin your life like Ryan has done by becoming a traitor to the USA.   Also this was canceled by the publisher because she got herself arrested for trying to overthrow the government.  LOLL  She ruined her own life, don’t let her advise you on how to ruin yours!!!!

Nikki E.

5 days ago (edited)

You know, I knew when I saw her on the news that I remembered her from this channel. What blows my mind probably more than anything else is that after years of giving people some pretty good advice about narcissistic abuse, that this woman who wanted people to trust their well-being to her, who wanted to make money off of those of us who have been abused by narcissists trusting her to train us on how to get over it, this person has emerged from her narcissistic abuse experiences with absolutely no clue as to how to spot a narcissist when she sees one. With absolutely no way to feel in her body when somebody represents just a repeat of the experiences she’s already had. I too have had experiences in which I thought I had that licked and then another one came in, but she’s going down defiant to the end.

Jenna Ryan, how do you not see that Donald Trump is a prototypical malignant narcissist? You fall for them because they get to you through your ideology.  Maybe the universe is calling on you to take a look at that ideology. You have not done the work on why you are attracted to them! Note, he said he would be with you at the capital and he went home to the White House and watched you on TV.  He denied responsibility for your actions in public. You asked for a pardon and he didn’t give you one because he’s saving his own ass. You got it wrong again. And you’re standing behind this schmuck to the very end, sacrificing everything you built in your own life for this. Dark night of the soul coming up I hope!

[3] This is why, whenever I played the original edition of 1980s board game Axis & Allies, I preferred to play as the Allies; the USSR always moved first, as the game is set in the Spring of 1942 and the Allies – which included the Soviet Union at the time – are beginning to strike back at the Axis (Germany and Japan in the game). The USSR always moved first in Axis & Allies…at least in the original Milton Bradley version.