01JAN2019 – Photo of the Day
Month: December 2018
01JAN2019 – Quote of the Day
Big Government is erecting a panopticon state – one that sees everything, and regulates everything. It’s great “customer service,” except that you can never get out of the store.
Mark Steyn
31DEC2018 – Best of 2018 List
Here’s my retrospective on 2018, completely subjective of course and whenever I can’t make up my mind or I don’t want to leave something out I’ll cheat and provide more than one choice. And that’s one of the wonderful things about being the boss, you get to break the rules and do what you want.
Best Quotes of the Day
Some are political, some philosophical and some just human nature. The order is just chronological of their appearance on the site.
“In the many forms of government which have sprung up there has always been an acknowledgement of justice and proportionate equality, although mankind fail in attaining them, as indeed I have already explained. Democracy, for example, arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”
Aristotle
“No state will be well administered unless the middle class holds sway.”
Aristotle
“When there aren’t any smart decisions, I suppose you just have to pick the stupid decision you like best.”
Orson Scott Card
“No one likes the fellow who is all rogue, but we’ll forgive him almost anything if there is warmth of human sympathy underneath his rogueries. The immortal types of comedy are just such men.”
W. C. Fields
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
H.L. Mencken
Carpe diem! Seize the day! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.
Horace
“And this is the simple truth – that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.”
Soren Kierkegaard
If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.
Camille Paglia
Best Books Reviewed
Fiction
I’ll have to go with the Galaxy’s Edge series:
Over the course of 2018 I read and reviewed all eight of the volumes in the main series (first volume linked above) and they only got better as the series went along. It was good old mil-sci-fi space opera. I assume I won’t live long enough to see the end of the series but so far that isn’t a problem. I look forward to the next installment soon and am in no way tired of this particular universe. Kudos to Anspach and Cole. Long may they stoke their dumpster fire at the Edge of the Galaxy!
Fiction Runners Up:
“The Hidden Truth” by Hans G. Schantz
Schantz has also upped his game as his series progresses and the “The Brave and the Bold,” the third volume, is the best so far. Kudos to him.
“Southern Dust” by Caspar Vega
Vega is an acquired taste for me and as I’ve written about him, “It’s for those who like gritty crime dramas with a staccato, post-modern, minimalist writing style.” Even though my tastes are a little more conventional I appreciate that there is an audience for the more unusual so I look around for interesting stuff. As I’ve said before, your call.
Non-Fiction
The two books listed below provide two different takes on the way to interpret the results of ancient DNA analysis.
“The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution” by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending
“Who We Are and How We Got Here; Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Past” by David Reich
https://orionscoldfire.com/index.php/2018/05/24/the-10000-year-explosion-a-book-review/
David Reich being an academic embedded in the politically correct culture of the university system treads ever so gently around the edges of how the science of human genetic history should be interpreted. Cochran and Harpending are much more direct and sometimes possibly presumptuous in the conclusions they draw from the evidence. Both books together tell a fascinating story of how much we now know about the complex and diverse origins of the various human populations.
Best Movie
Science Fiction & Fantasy
The Incredibles 2
This is a kids’ movie but it far exceeds any of the other “superhero” movies for just plain entertainment value. I won’t say it was as original as the first installment but it mostly kept to the spirit of the original and provided a fun vehicle for parents (or grandparents) to enjoy a movie with their kids.
Older Movies
True Grit
This is a twofer. For younger folks I’ll only recommend the new version by the Coen Brothers. For people who grew up on the John Wayne movies of old I recommend they view both movies back to back in chronological order. They each have facets to its advantage. Each differs slightly from the source material. But each is a fine movie. And I’ll also recommend the novel that is the source for the movies. It also has facets that aren’t available in either movie.
Music
Country Music
Album of the Year
Colter Wall by Colter Wall
Song of the Year
Pan Bowl by Sturgill Simpson
My music choices are very idiosyncratic so I won’t try to justify them. To paraphrase a recent annoying politician, they just reflect who I am Pan Bowl is an older song from Simpson’s 2014 album.
TV
The only truly notable television I watched in 2018 was the State of the Union address by the president. Everything else was at best just okay.
On – Line Articles
Here are the articles that I thought were informative on our political situation. There were many others that were intersting but these seem to encapsulate the developments in the political thinking this year. Basically it’s the red-pilling of the normies.
https://orionscoldfire.com/index.php/2018/04/15/a-different-kind-of-red-shift/
Humor
Trump vs
These are of course the most subjective things to judge. I just kind of liked these a lot. I admit they are absurd but such is life.
Trump vs the Hell Storm (Part 1)
Trump vs the Hell Storm (Part 2)
Search hell Trump vs the Hell Storm (Part 3)
Photos
Here are my favorite photos of the year.
Landscape
Nature
31DEC2018 – OCF New Year’s Eve Update
I’ll put together an end of year retrospective of what I think are the important events and items in the various categories that I cover (politics, culture, books, movies, tv and photography). It’s a good day to reflect and plan for the new year. I’ve learned a lot about running the site and reaching people so I feel like 2019 will be an important year for the site and a fun year to be a reader here.
31DEC2018 – Movie Quote – True Grit – Mr. LeBoeuf Spills the Banks of English
In the Coen Brothers’ version of “True Grit,” there are several conversations between Rooster Cogburn and Texas Ranger LeBoeuf where Rooster made it clear he considered LeBeouf a blowhard. After the incident where LeBoeuf is dragged feet first behind a horse and shot through his shoulder he is recovering in the cabin they have occupied.
(Inside the Cabin)
As Mattie enters. We see LeBoeuf musing before the fire as he cleans his Sharp’s carbine —an awkward operation given the injury to his shoulder, now bandaged. All we see of Rooster, seated further from the fire, is a pair of boots, and legs stretching into darkness. Mattie goes to the pot of food on the fire.
LEBOEUF
“Azh I understand it, Chaney——or Chelmzhford, azh he called himshelf in Texas——shot the shenator’zh dog. When the shenator remonshtrated Chelmzhford shot him azh well. You could argue that the shooting of the dog wazh merely an inshtansh of malum prohibitum, but the shooting of a shenator izh indubitably an inshtansh of malum in shay.”
Rooster is a voice in the darkness:
ROOSTER
“Malla-men what?”
MATTIE
“Malum in se. The distinction is between an act that is wrong in itself, and an act that is wrong only according to our laws and mores. It is Latin.”
We hear the pthoonk of a bottle yielding its cork, followed by the pthwa of the cork’s being spit out.
ROOSTER
“I am struck that LeBoeuf is shot, trampled, and nearly severs his tongue and not only does not cease to talk but spills the banks of English.”
We hear liquid slosh as the bottle is tipped back.
True Grit: The Duke, The Dude and the Dutiful Daughter; Part I
31DEC2018 – Quote of the Day
Modern liberalism, for most liberals is not a consciously understood set of rational beliefs, but a bundle of unexamined prejudices and conjoined sentiments. The basic ideas and beliefs seem more satisfactory when they are not made fully explicit, when they merely lurk rather obscurely in the background, coloring the rhetoric and adding a certain emotive glow.
James Burnham
31DEC2018 – Photo of the Day
The Flash – A Science Fiction TV Review
Yesterday, as I mentioned in my review of Aquaman, I had the some of the grandsons over. After we got home from the movies we played some games and had dinner but later on they got bored and not having much in the way of TV that they were interested in we let them use their parents’ Netflix account to stream a show they liked, “The Flash.” Wow. Now, I know that the WB is one of the worst networks for quality and the low budgets they work with mean that things like special effects and scripts and acting skill are brought down to a sad minimum, but I wasn’t prepared for just how bad it would be. In retrospect I’m a little ashamed at how much ranting I did while they were watching the show. As much as they share my love of mockery, I’m sure I must have been annoying to them. But to some extent it was justified.
The plot, such as it was, revolved around the Flash character and his friends and relatives protecting the inhabitants of Central City from the depredations of various random metahumans of which the Flash is one. Apparently, they were formed by some kind of nuclear incident involving a particle accelerator mishap. The particular episode involved an unfortunate individual called King Shark. He has a shark’s head but wears pants. He’s also about twenty feet tall so it’s not apparent where he shops for pants. He’s a really bad guy and sometimes eats people he doesn’t like but does it in such a slow fashion it’s not clear why they can’t just walk away from him. And despite his obvious evil nature, by the end of the show he is captured alive and once again incarcerated in an Olympic sized containment pool apparently being fed chum and awaiting medical treatment to turn his head human again. Most of the interaction with King Shark is the Flash running around him in circles while the shark head heaps verbal abuse on him.
By the above description you have probably identified the limited dramatic value of the action adventure available in the Flash series. However, these limitations pale in comparison to the real problem with the series, namely, the personal problems of the characters. Probably eighty percent of the air time consists of the various actors whining about their emotional problems. One character is sad about some dead spouse, another about the alienation of not being able to reveal his secret identity, another has feelings of inferiority because he has no super powers, another is worried that a character that doesn’t have super powers might develop them and become evil. The cast behaves like a whole high school full of neurotic teenagers which I assume is their target audience. If I’m being objective, the plots are no worse than what passed for story lines in the old Superman tv show from the 1950s that I watched as a kid. But the emotional immaturity and obnoxious insecurity of all the “good guys” in the stories is appalling. It may be a generational problem but to me this isn’t science fiction it’s a soap opera.
Aquaman – A Science Fiction & Fantasy Movie Review
Today Camera Girl and I took grandsons Primus and Secundus to the local multiplex and watched a double feature of
- Ralph Breaks the Internet
- Aquaman
Between tickets and popcorn this went for about a hundred bucks. And it was horrible. Having to twice sit through the interminable coming attractions and other advertising video was pure torture. Ralph Breaks the Internet was mildly amusing but twice as long as it needed to be. Plus, at the end I found out that Sarah Silverman was one of the voice actors. By the time Aquaman began I was bored and queasy from eating greasy popcorn.
It wasn’t bad. There was a little too much girl power being pitched and of course none of it made any sense at all but taken as a whole it wasn’t bad. The plot was ridiculously contrived and the evil half brother motif might as well have had Thor and Loki’s names filed down to protect DC from being sued by Marvel.
The special effects are, of course, spectacular. Due to his human/Atlantean hybrid ancestry the title role is performed as a regular guy who just happens to be a super hero that can breath under water and control the denizens of the deep. The rest of the Atlanteans try to sound like some kind of quasi-medieval nobility, sort of like how the Asgardians in the Thor movies do. It’s a little silly but not terrible.
I’ve never followed the Aquaman character before. I figured he was just the DC version of Submariner who was the lamest of the Marvel superheroes. From the ending sequence and the way these superhero franchises are handled it’s certain that there will be sequels. Not that I think there need to be any.
Bottom line, the movie has plenty of action and drama. The main character is likable and fulfills the function of a superhero by being heroic. And finally, the grandsons thought it was very good. So it fulfills its primary role, it amuses kids.
30DEC2018 – Quote of the Day
There may be many things wrong with the United States but only a blind fool who hasn’t been paying attention for the last twenty years would hold up Europe as the alternative.
Mark Steyn