Category: Current Events

Fear and Loathing in Dunwich

photog Current Events , ,

Every week I spend several hours with someone whose politics are almost diametrically opposed to mine.  And I mean that literally.  Left, right.  Up, down.  You name it.  And interestingly we get along fine.  Now, we never talk politics, never.  Because we know that all we could possibly do is disagree.  So, we stick to business and to things that are universally human.  We love our families and we want our town to win the soccer games against the neighboring towns.  Nothing more controversial than that.

But even when all we are talking about is work, other things creep in.  And even when we are avoiding “current events” it’s hard not to let anxiety about the state of things surface.  Neither of us want to say much because we’re both avoiding putting a spin on what is fueling this anxiety.  But I think there was an “unspoken agreement” that we both feel that things are very, very not good.  And then she said something kind of odd, “Do you think that we’re reaching the end of one or both of the major parties?”  I tried to finish off this almost non-conversation by saying, “Well, maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.  Maybe every generation is like this and it’s not as bad as we think and things will just muddle along as they are now.”  And that was the end of the talk.  We moved onto Dunwich trivia.

But this got me thinking.  I think I see signs that things are very not good in the Blue States.  When the true believers start to wonder if things can go on the way they’re going without a change of party there is something very, very wrong.  I don’t want to blow this out of proportion or start putting money on some collapse theory.  But I get the definite feeling that all is far from well within the Democrat Party.  If I were to guess I think the socialists and the populists on the Left are eroding the “center” of the Democrat party to such an extent that a lot of the old guard don’t recognize what their party has become and are very worried by this change.

Maybe a good example is what is happening in the Democrat Senate race in Maine.  Governor Janet Mills was the establishment favorite to be the Democrat candidate to run against the Republican incumbent Susan Collins.  Graham Platner who is an oyster farmer, a Marine veteran and Harbor Master of the town of Sullivan is the Bernie Sanders candidate.  Mills attacked him based on his comments on Reddit about rape and violence and because he has a tattoo on his chest that resembles a nazi symbol (a Totenkopf).  But just last week she dropped out of the race and Platner is now the leading Democrat candidate.  Platner is a socialist and a populist and typifies the new Democrat direction.  Now someone like Platner would frighten a lot of old Democrats, especially the women.  The violent rhetoric, the adoption of a pro-Gaza, anti-Semitic stance, the pro-gun talk are frightening and confusing to a lot of these Democrats.  So, I think the question I heard was an honest one and means there is a lot of fear about what is going on in their party.

Of course, that’s not that different from what is going on with the Republicans.  Populist candidates are primarying establishment hacks like John Cornyn in Texas.  So maybe this is all just part of the increasing polarization of the country.  But maybe saying “just” the polarization is minimizing just how dire the situation really is.

Let me end this by saying there is fear and confusion throughout our country and we’re going to have to let it all play out before we know just how bad the crack-up will be.

Of Pyramids and Pitchforks

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner , ,

Like the Pharaoh Cheops I know the pain and exultation inherent in an enormous engineering project.  Yes, he built the Great Pyramid of Giza.  But I built the Great Pond of Camera Girl.  So, let’s just look at the stats:

 

Project Name Great Pyramid of Giza Great Pond of Camera Girl
Length of project 27 years (total) 27 hours (active time)
Scope 2.6 million 2.5-ton blocks 270 gallons of dirt
Volume of project 92 million cubic feet 36 cubic feet
Size of Crew 40,000 1
Total manhours 1,752,000,000 27
Significance of project Final resting place of pharaoh Husband making wife happy
Projected lifetime of structure millennia until roots from cherry tree puncture liner
Tools copper tools, ropes, levers, sledges shovel, pitchfork, rake, wrecking bar, wheelbarrow, 4″ level (plastic), good old American grit and determination

 

Based on scope I guess I’ll have to hand it to Cheops.  27 years is a pretty good effort.  Of course, if we count the fact that I’ve been throwing out the garbage and repairing stuff around the house for almost 50 years all of a sudden Cheops is coming up kind of short.  Isn’t he!

But I don’t want to overreach.  People have been travelling to Egypt for millennia to gawk at the pyramids and so far, Camera Girl is the only one who has praised my great engineering project.  And even though she has been quite generous with the superlatives I must admit that 92 million cubic feet of limestone blocks isn’t anything to sneeze at.  I mean I dropped one of the rocks I dug out on my foot and that damn thing hurt but a five-thousand-pound rock is a little bit more of a big deal if it ends up on your foot.  So, okay.  Cheops wins.  He’s big man on campus.

But let’s look at this from a different perspective.  What did Mrs. Cheops have to say about the whole thing?  Based on my research after watching “Land of the Pharaohs (1955)” she must have been buried alive with Cheops.

Now maybe she was down with this.  Who knows?  But my knowledge of Camera Girl leads me to believe that this would not be to her liking.  Now as a charter member of the He-Man Woman Haters Club you might think I would be an advocate for this kind of wife entombing.  But you’d be wrong.  By any objective measure she is very high in the ranks of women and hardly ever uses her feminine wiles and never takes advantage of the modern anti-male legal or social mechanisms to make my life miserable.  By my reckoning she is a good egg and fully worthy of this amazing civil engineering marvel.

Next, we’ll fill it with water and put in a bunch of water lilies and other plants and then buy some goldfish and sit around in the afternoon and watch these aquatic vertebrates do their thing.  And then one day the local Great Blue Heron will discover this little water hole and eat all of the fish in one meal.  But as Camera Girl always says, “Everybody’s gotta eat.”

Movies, Taxes and World-Building

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

Well, what’s to say today?  I was talking to some family and we were discussing this and that and I said that I wanted to see “Project Hail Mary.”  And some knew about it and some had heard a little bit.  Well, I think I talked them into getting together and going to see it.  Now I plan to see it this week with Camera Girl.  She’s not the biggest sff fan by any stretch of the imagination.  When I brough her to see the original Star Wars film she was not particularly impressed.  And come to think of it, she’s never been impressed by any sci fi or fantasy movie (or book) I ever gave her.  Well, I take that back.  She read “The Hobbit” back in 1975 and liked it.  But that was it.  When I told her to read the “Lord of the Rings,” she laughed in my face.  So, she may not be the most willing audience for this movie.  But since one of the characters is a puppet I’m guessing there may be an appeal there to her love of animals.  So, I’m going to see the same movie in the theater twice?  I think this may be the first time I’ve ever done that.  Well, I’m sure it won’t kill me.

The other thing I’m doing next week is go see an accountant about how to pay my taxes on the royalties from my book.  I have an inordinate fear of the Infernal Revenue Service.  I think they’re a malevolent force causing pain and suffering for ordinary people at every turn.  So, I’m going to find out what the process is for this kind of capital gain.  I don’t think I have to pay quarterly but you never know so I’m not taking any chances.  Also, I think there is a way to write off expenses like advertising and marketing so if I can find out whether it’s worth it I may even break even on this whole experiment (maybe!!!).

A friend was asking me about the sequel to the “The Sniper.”  He had particular questions about the back story for some of the characters like Connors and Cutter.  I said I’d love to tell him some of the details of their back stories but I still haven’t made them up yet.  I think he was a little shocked that these important facts didn’t actually exist yet.  Maybe even betrayed for investing in a story that was sort of a Potemkin Village.  But I feel justified in pushing out the corners of my little universe as the spirit moves me.  Although I will admit I’ve decided to do some outlining of the world, at least from a 35,000-foot height.  I need to decide what stories will grow out of the eucatastrophe I set off in the first book.  I mean, you don’t sink the White House, Capitol and Pentagon into the Earth’s crust without taking advantage of the elbow room that provides for political and social upheaval on a grand scale.

Project Hail Mary Box Office Update: $616,588,738

photog Current Events, Movie Reviews, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Movie Reviews , , ,

Well, it’s official, Project Hail Mary is a moneymaker for Amazon.  The info says it cost $200 million to produce.  Even if they spent another $100 million to advertise (which they wouldn’t have to because, of course, they’re Amazon!) that still puts them in the black.  And this is all in advance of what they’ll make streaming the movie on their own platform after the end of the theatrical run.

Box Office Data

Well, well, well.  So people will go to the movies if you give them something that isn’t woke slop.  If you give them entertaining story telling they’ll pay you money to watch it.  Shocking.  Wake up Disney.  Amazon is eating your lunch, you fools.

A Big Win by the Supreme Court

photog Current Events , , ,

The big news this week is the Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.  A racially gerrymandered district in Louisiana was challenged on the basis that creating a black district for racial reasons was unconstitutional.  The Court agreed and found that district’s creation unconstitutional.

This ruling is quite important because it has the potential of eliminating something like twelve districts in the Deep South that in addition to being majority black are also exclusively Democrat in their choice of elected officials.  That is an enormous switch in the balance of power in the House of Representatives.  The question remains to be seen how quickly can these states redraw the districts.  If they can do this in time for the 2026 federal elections it would massively increase the Republicans’ chances of retaining a majority in the House.

In addition, going into the 2028 presidential election it would allow other states to adjust their districts strictly by partisan advantage and so the number of seats nationwide would be even larger.  Some estimates of as many as twenty-four Democrat controlled seats disappearing are out there.

The severity of this problem has the Democrats in an uproar and they have been talking about getting the government back in their hands as soon as possible and eliminating the filibuster rule to increase the number of seats in the Supreme Court to overturn this decision.  Now, that is going to have to wait at least until 2028 since Trump wouldn’t sign such a bill and overriding his veto would require many more senate seats than anyone imagines them to get in 2026.

In the short term this situation is something of a game changer.  This has the potential of eliminating a whole industry centered around finding racial inequity around every redistricting action across the country and forcing jurisdictions to prove they are not disenfranchising every racial and ethnic minority under the sun.

On a personal note, I find this decision incredibly encouraging.  The present Supreme Court despite Chief Justice Roberts’ social justice leanings has done amazing work in dismantling the unconstitutional decisions that have come down over the last half century.  Eliminating reverse discrimination and knocking out the Roe v. Wade decision are huge wins for conservatives and constitutionalists alike.  And, God willing, they’ll continue on in this vein and eliminate the Gay Marriage decision and several other overreaches that past courts have unjustly burdened this country with.

The next two things that I’m hoping for is the reversal of Oglethorpe (gay marriage) and the reestablishment of unfettered freedom of association for Americans.  As a charter member of the He-Man Woman Hater’s Club, I’m hoping to see the day when a men’s club will not have to admit women just because girls’ feelings are hurt when men get to escape from them for a few hours of screech-free relaxation.  If the Bill of Rights still exists as part of the Constitution, then the First Amendment protects our rights to assemble and express our preferences by associating and not associating with people according to our commonalities and differences.  Let’s hope these gains continue.

A Quaint Dunwich Custom

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner , ,

In Dunwich the end of April is both an important time of the year agriculturally but also a time of great stress.  It is at this time that the great skunk cabbage harvest occurs.  Dunwich keeps ten thousand acres in skunk cabbage cultivation.  And depending on the phase of the moon sometime between the middle of April and the middle of May all of it must be harvested and processed for First Selectman Cthulhu’s Vernal Feast.  All of the cabbage is sent through an homogenizer and then mixed 1:1 with liquified cow manure and then pumped through a high-pressure hose directly into the First Selectman’s maw.  At one hundred gallons a minute this takes about six hours to transfer.

After that there is an eight-hour fermentation stage within the First Selectman’s alimentary canal after which this process produces a gaseous effluvium that exits at a very high flow rate at about a thousand standard cubic feet a second under considerable pressure.  Now this gas not only smells disgusting but it is as poisonous as phosgene so it must be mixed with air and immediately sent through a combustion nozzle.  The outlet gas still smells unbelievably bad but it is thus rendered non-lethal.

The combustion goes on for ten hours during which time the First Selectman likes to read an improving book or watch classic movies as entertainment.  It takes a crew of two hundred of the stoutest Dunwich men to complete the full process.  And it is an exhausting and psychologically scarring ordeal to say the least.  During this time most of the inhabitants of Dunwich vacate the town for about a week until the odor abates to a significant degree.

Over the years there have been attempts at Board of Selectmen Meetings to change the town bylaws to eliminate the “feast.”  Usually, the first Selectman eats whoever adds the motion to the agenda and the motion fails unanimously.  Usually this is some newcomer to town who doesn’t understand the nuance of having a Great Old One as a town official.

But there are some “advantages” to this process.  Rodents flee the town for at least two months after the ceremony and flies are so confused by the smell that they forget to eat and just weaken and die.  So, things are pretty vermin-free around town until autumn.  So, we’ve got that going for us.

There was a funny incident last year when a state environmental officer showed up and demanded that the skunk cabbage harvest be stopped because it was a native plant that was protected against commercial harvest.  He barged into the First Selectman’s office and threatened him with arrest.  Cthulhu seemed impressed with the officer’s courage and asked if he’d like to see the skunk cabbage field.  They walked over to the farm and then he planted the officer head first into the ground and applied a couple of gentle pats of his right hand to firmly smooth out his resting place.  And that was that.  Have a happy skunk cabbage feast everybody!

 

Farmer Cthulhu in His Fields

Industrial Strength Crazy

photog Current Events, Trump , ,

So, another leftist tried to shoot Trump.  Well, we can stop making believe that the Democrats aren’t murderous sociopaths.  Of course, they all make the same perfunctory “Political violence is totally unacceptable” statement in front of the cameras but what they mean is, “Better luck next time.”

Well, things are going to get uglier from here on in.  So, this clarifies what the whole “No Kings” thing is about.  You see Caesar was assassinated because he was toying with the idea of wearing a crown and the Romans had fought a war against the Etruscans to put an end to the monarchy.  So, Trump is Caesar and that makes it logical that an assassin will step forward to “free” this country from its dictator.

To my mind this confirms the theory that the Left has weaponized their radical fringe.  In addition to the three Trump shooters there is recently the Charlie Kirk assassin and the various transgender school shooters that have plagued us in the last few years.  This will be a very dangerous time for people on the Right and strategies to deal with this environment should be planned.

I think one of the better actions would be to continue eliminating as much federal money from reaching NGOs and other avenues that allow abnormal people to exist at the fringes of society.  Also, the crackdown on Antifa and Antifa-adjacent organizations is absolutely essential.  These organizations are where the most dangerous ideologues are concentrated and provided with support and direction for their malice.

I think the Justice Department should publicize the fact that left-wing radicals are the most dangerous criminals currently operating in the United States and that a concentrated effort will be made to identify the leaders of this movement and hunt down the foot soldiers that have been radicalized based on their social media statements.  That will rile them up and should be a good way to get a few of them to pop their heads up out of the sand.

But as I said, cutting off their funding is key.  This latest psycho was from California.  And California is hemorrhaging money at a phenomenal rate.  The Silicon Valley tech bros are scattering to Texas and Tennessee as fast as they can and the next governor may turn out to be a Republican just because the budget has become unworkable and they need a villain to take the blame when the state union pension plans have to be raided.  So, if the federal funds are effectively shut off the crazies will have no one to pay for their cross-gender hormones and intersectional studies tuition payments.

But there may not be a cure for what’s going on.  The Left has a lot of lunatics and if they try very hard, they will kill some of their enemies.  The question seems to be will American voters punish the Left for allowing its crazies to become assassins.  That is the real question that will be answered in the mid-terms.  If I were Trump, I’d play this thing out in the public square and tar the whole Democrat party with the psycho label.

A Man, a Plan, Camera Girl’s Pond Project

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner , , ,

The things a man will do for his wife!  This is going to be a very long week.  Monday and Tuesday will be completely consumed in the service of Dunwich.  By late Tuesday night I will be moaning and groaning and repeating that law of nature “No good deed ever goes unpunished.”  And in Dunwich the punishment is always cruel and extremely unusual.

Be that as it may I had promised Camera Girl that I would build her a goldfish pond and so I have been working at it since it arrived off the third-party delivery truck that Home Depot contracted for the job.  Between Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I got to work with pitch fork, shovel, wrecking bar, rake and wheelbarrow.    I measured off the perimeter, removed the turf and started to dig.  And because this is New England (at least the parts of Dunwich which are tethered to our space-time) the ratio of rock to soil is something like 3/1.  This makes the whole procedure slow and exceedingly painful.  The good news was that the temperature was in the fifties and sixties which made the earth moving tolerable but it was still strenuous enough to prove to me that digging ditches is strictly for prison chain gangs and other equally motivated people.  It brought to mind those scenes in Cool Hand Luke.  When Camera Girl brought me out some refreshments I said in a southern accent, “Taking it off, boss!”  I don’t think she got the reference.

But finally, yesterday as the sun was getting low in the western sky, it looked like the whole hole was deep enough.  So, I lowered the liner into the hole and voila!  In fact, it’s slightly too deep and also it will need a slight adjustment to make it perfectly level.  But the fine tuning will have to wait until Wednesday.  After that I’ll start the back filling that’s needed under the parts of the liner that are raised into steps for the placement of water plants and any goofy ornaments that women feel are needed to amuse the fish and frogs.  That will probably take a day or two.  And then we’ll fill the thing up and buy some water lilies and those other little sea-weedy plants that pond supply stores hand out and then onto the fish store to get goldfish or carp or whatever hardy species are available.  Camera Girl doesn’t want koi which is probably a good idea since they’re expensive and the Great Blue Herons around here like those better.

Truth be told I’m interested in seeing if in addition to the numerous and varied frog and toad species around the yard we manage to attract other cold-blooded critters.  Since I’ve seen them in the yard, I’m guessing garter and water snakes will show up.  And the painted turtles don’t have far to go from the real pond.  But what I’m not sure about is whether any salamanders will migrate over to this new water habitat.  There are several species in the area and I’ve always wanted to attract them to the yard.

Before we moved to Dunwich, I had built a smaller pond for Camera Girl in the yard where we lived.  It always made her happy to sit and watch the various wild animals and insects that gather around water.  I’ll have this up and running before summer and she’ll be able to enjoy it the way she used to.  Ah, the things we do for love.

Wheelbarrows and Ogres

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family , , ,

We had Princess Sack of Potatoes over today.  She’s finishing off her Spring vacation from school.  And we haven’t had much of her time in a while.  Sure, she was here for Easter but her cousins were also here so I didn’t get much chance to spend time.  But today we had fun.  I’m installing a 270-gallon pond liner for Camera Girl, so I’m digging a big hole in the ground and working with a shovel, rake, pitch fork and a wheelbarrow so it’s like incredibly exciting for a little kid.  She wants to help and I have to find something that isn’t dangerous or too hard for a little girl but seems useful to her.  So, I told her to rescue earthworms from the pile of grass turf that I stacked up.  Perfect!  She can get her hands covered with dirt and give Camera Girl some worms for her hideous African Clawed Frog and I’m free to move some rocks and dirt.  After about an hour she had enough and went inside to bake chocolate chip cookies with Camera Girl and I continued on until lunchtime when I finished for the day and took a shower.  So, after lunch she wanted to watch the “Minions” movie which I’ve had enough of.  So, we went our separate ways.  But after that she wanted more movie time so Camera Girl suggested “The Princess Bride.”  The little girl agreed to watch it and I decided to join her to see how she reacted to this time capsule of a movie.

And it was pretty funny how her initial reaction to the movie resembled the behavior of the “grandson” played by Fred Savage when his grandfather (Peter Falk) began narrating the story.  Both the real and fictitious grandchildren were annoyed by the story beginning with a love story introduction.  And her reaction also resembled the child character whenever it seemed that the “heroes” of the story were losing to the bad guys.  There was a sense of outrage and the desire to quit the story.  It was only with great persuasion that I convinced her to hang in there after Wesley had been killed by “the Machine.”  And so, I was immensely pleased when by the end of the movie she was very satisfied with the happily ever after ending.

And after the movie I discussed her opinions about the film and she declared that her favorite character was the “Ogre.”  I corrected her by saying that Fezzik wasn’t an ogre but a giant.  And that André the Giant who played the part was a professional wrestler.  She was very interested in how he did some of the stunts.  I explained to her that the “holocaust cloak” wasn’t real and he was never on fire.  And I said he didn’t really have to climb “The Cliffs of Insanity.”  And the reason she liked him best was because he seemed very jolly.

After that she joined her grandmother in several very competitive games of checkers and then it was time for her to go home with her mom.  After she left, I inspected several of the historical photos of the Princess festooning our refrigerator and looking at a noticeably younger me and a tiny little girl in one picture reminded me very powerfully that the clock is ticking at an alarming rate.  But it was a good day to be a grandfather.

The SPLC bankrolls the KKK

photog Current Events, Trump , , , ,

This week the Justice Department has indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center for fraud for paying white supremacist groups very large sums of money to play boogeyman for the Left.  Now, these weren’t undercover FBI agents they were real nazis and Klansmen who were among the leaders of these organizations.  And it was understood that they earned this money for providing the SPLC and other leftist organizations with talking points against conservatives and the Right in general.  And this has been going on for decades.  All the biggest outrages, like the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottsville, were included in the events that garnered funds from the SPLC for KKK and nazi groups.

Well, it’s official.  All the conspiracy theories that have been floating out there for years about false flag/color revolution operations by the Left and the Deep State were true.  If the SPLC was doing this just imagine what else is out there.  I imagine if the FBI could find the destroyed records, they would have proof that their own agents have done plenty of the same things for years.

But it is nice to see that while we still control the federal government some of the most outrageous frauds against the right will be exposed and punished.  The SPLC has one of the worst reputations for mischaracterizing conservative organizations as hate groups.  Last year they put Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA on their hate list and I’m sure that was one of the contributing factors in Kirk’s assassination.

I think it would be wonderful if the SPLC can be bankrupted and its leaders prosecuted both civilly and criminally to the fullest extent of the law.  People like this do untold damage and contribute to the degrading of freedom of speech and freedom of association.

It should be interesting as this develops to see what famous “nazis” turn out to have been on the payroll of the SPLC.  I’m sure many of us remember some of the more flamboyant “leaders” of far right from years gone by, that always seemed to cause more damage than progress for conservatives.  There may be a lot of answers to why every time a conservative moment arose some particularly idiotic leader seemed to surface and discredit the movement with a moronic statement or stunt.

This was something that I remember the ZMan used to speculate about.  For the most part he thought these people were just useful idiots who wanted the attention and gladly acted out the part of boogeyman de jour.  I’m sure this news would not have shocked him but it probably would have explained a number of specific characters and incidences from recent history that conveniently allowed the Left to use their Right-Wing White Supremacy narrative to demonize conservatives in all their favorite left-wing media sources.

Well, good work Kash Patel and the rest of Donald Trump’s Justice Department for exposing this organization for the fraudulent hate group they actually are.  I hope they get torpedoed this year and not later.