All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
I’ll bet you thought the quote was by Conan the Barbarian
“The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.”
Genghis Khan
When I was grade school kid every English teacher made you read Jack London’s “To Build a Fire.” But unlike most of the stuff given to us that story spoke to me. And after a lifetime of doing stupid things it’s all the more resonant.
Following at the man’s heels was a big native dog. It was a wolf dog, gray-coated and not noticeably different from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was worried by the great cold. It knew that this was no time for traveling. Its own feeling was closer to the truth than the man’s judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than 50 below zero; it was colder than 60 below, than 70 below. It was 75 below zero. Because the freezing point is 32 above zero, it meant that there were 107 degrees of frost.The dog did not know anything about temperatures. Possibly in its brain there was no understanding of a condition of very cold, such as was in the man’s brain. But the animal sensed the danger. Its fear made it question eagerly every movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned about fire, and it wanted fire. Otherwise, it would dig itself into the snow and find shelter from the cold air.
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With all the items in the news about Silicon Valley de-platforming anyone that doesn’t parrot the Progressive Talking Points it is becoming crystal clear that we are no longer one nation, indivisible. We are demonstrably two nations. And what is also becoming clear is that we don’t like each other at all. Of course most of us don’t react the way the YouTube shooter reacted to her demonetization. But she was a vegan so that may be an extenuating circumstance. Regardless, we are seeing a sea change in the way Americans react to each other. And nothing makes this point more than who we elected President. And Trump was a direct result of Obama. Obama was the moment when the Left took off the mask and went for broke. The Democrats used up all their political capital to get Obamacare over the finish line. It cost them the House and the Senate and a bunch of state legislatures and governorships. And once he lost the legislative option he started using Executive Orders and the Justice Department to start punishing the country for rejecting his agenda. He supported BLM thuggery and punished the police any chance he got.
So now it’s our turn. President Trump is a gigantic thumb in the eye to all the Obama Administration personnel hanging onto their executive branch jobs. He cancels all the programs they favor and prunes away the excess jobs that they dole out to their various sychophants. And he always adds insult to injury. He mocks them on Twitter and names names. He continues to provide help to the normal people. He goes after the illegal immigrants and the criminals and he calls them names while doing it. It’s like having George Costanza as President. Spite is almost the highest policy imperative there is.
And where does this all go? Damned if I know. I expect the program to continue as long as Trump is President. I hope he makes a second term. Eight years with him in charge may be enough to break down the Deep State. And if he manages to tutor Pence or some other hopeful republican in the nuances of Trumpian politics maybe we can get a total of sixteen years under a non-leftist regime. And that should be enough to find out if there are enough Americans left in America to take back the country from the lunatics. I’m pretty sure it’s a long shot. We’ve never been able to string together enough luck to do more than slow down the long march down the slippery slope to Hell but at least we have a shot.
But, enough daydreaming. Let’s look at what we have to look forward to in the next couple of years. Google and Facebook and Microsoft and Amazon and all the other thought-police are going to demonetize anyone they don’t like (which is us) and try to completely de-platform the right wing. And for the most part they will succeed. Will the right-wing manage to build its own platforms? Maybe. Will it happen smoothly? No. But I have a feeling that the Silicon Valley Grandees will have plenty of their own problems. President Trump doesn’t particularly like them. And he has a funny way of making trouble for the folks he doesn’t like. So I think it will be an interesting world we’ll live in and I think it’ll be bumpy but I think we are going to see the landscape begin to tilt in our direction. Hopefully I don’t sound too optimistic but I think those who are discouraged should be patient. Do your part. Support the stuff you like and support Trump. He’s our last best hope.
Let’s switch it up to something more topical
The Three Laws of Social Justice Warriors by Vox Day
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(I should just have a Kipling Corner but, anyway, here is a poem he wrote for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. And you could tell that he knew that sitting at the summit of the British Empire’s power the coming fall would be calamitous. Looking at where things are now it is just as timely today as it was in 1897).
Recessional
By Rudyard Kipling (1897)
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
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Another Kipling gem that shouldn’t be excerpted.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
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Sonyalpharumors.com has a photo of this new pro sports lens discovered out in the wild (https://www.sonyalpharumors.com/sony-400mm-f-2-8-versus-canon-lens/) . At over $10,000 each probably the only buyers will be pro sports shooters (and a few old rich guys, of course). Looks like Sony is serious about the sports market. I’m guessing at some point if the market materializes for them they’ll put out a 600mm f/4. Of course, they might get some competition from sigma. They’ve got some telephotos and unlike with wide angles the long lenses would easily adapt onto the e-mount with no need to change the lens formula. Should be an interesting situation for the Canon and Nikon pros. I’m sure being able to use the no-blackout, 20 frames per second A9 for football or soccer would be a very tempting choice for the guys who do that for a living. Good work Sony. Now let them come out with the A7 III. I hope it has the same good autofocus as the A9.
Vox Day is an intriguing figure. He is literally putting his money where his mouth is. His right-wing entrepreneurial activities include (among other things) commercial endeavors in book publishing, video games and now comic books. In just a few years he has impacted the cloistered and SJW infested world of the Hugo awards and spread the gospel of confronting social justice thugs with his books on SJWs.
His latest venture is the comic book kickstarter that garnered a quarter of a million dollars and has allowed him to hire some of the best talent from the pre-SJW converged past of DC Comics. (Chuck Dixon, the creator of Bane and Frank Fosco, a talented artist who has worked for DC and Marvel). The effort will involve several separate imprints. One imprint is called Alt-Hero and is explicitly aimed at combatting the politically correct conventions of modern SJW converged Marvel Comics with in-your-face right-wing heroes. In addition, there is an imprint called Avalon which will be an entirely original work of Chuck Dixon chronicling the super heroes in his imagined city Avalon. Dixon has said that Vox has given him free rein to create the Avalon universe according to his own creative vision. And that is why I am very excited about this venture.
As I have stated previously, I’m in no way, shape or form a comic book enthusiast. But I recognize how employing talented creators to work without the disabling effects of politically motivated orthodoxies has the potential of attracting the customers who have walked away from comics because of these very problems. That is exactly what needs to be tried. If it succeeds even on a limited basis it can act as a template for other areas of the culture that are currently strangulating under leftist control. Vox’s Castalia House publishing business produces fiction and non-fiction that is unaffected by politically correct ideology. I’ve enjoyed a number of these books. And even though I don’t follow comics I did enjoy the Bane character in the third Batman movie (Dark Knight Rising). He was wonderfully evil and an amazing agent of chaos. I have to assume that Mr. Dixon has some amusing things to share in this Avalon story line so I intend to try it out when it becomes available.
My larger point is that Vox is demonstrating what needs to be done. Look at the niches the converged industries provide for a right-wing alternative and give it a try. The internet is the great leveler of all things entrepreneurial. If you can imagine a thing that has a market you can market it there. I’ll add Alt-Hero and Avalon to my list of Right-Wing Businesses.
Vox is an enormously polarizing figure. But he is a trailblazer for anyone on the right who wants to be part of the solution to the vacuum that is all that’s left of right-wing cultural institutions. Don’t like left wing news, then blog. Don’t like the left-wing NYT Best Seller’s List, then patronize right wing publishers and authors. Don’t want your kids to have to read about or go see a movie about gay Spiderman or transsexual Thor, then maybe buy a few of Vox’s comics for them instead. To be consistent, I guess I’ll have to put my money where my mouth is. Comic books? Who woulda thunk it?
The results have been announced and just as with last year, the Hugos have been shown once again to be way outside the mainstream. Of course, not everything I voted for won. But enough did and enough other stuff that did win was at least recognizable as SF&F. Sure, there’s some stuff written by SJW allies but at least it was stuff people actually buy so the really egregious stuff was passed over completely. Here’s the complete list:
http://awards.dragoncon.org/2017_winners/
Kudos to the winners and especially to Larry and the other puppies, sad and rabid, for starting the fire in that dumpster known as the Hugos. Like anything that’s been shown defective the Hugos have been replaced with something that actually works.
What do most of the Twilight Zone episodes, the third season of Star Trek and Transformers VI (or whatever number they’re up to this year) have in common? They were no good, nobody wanted to see them and they were written by hacks. Sure, there were a few good Zone episodes and also a few of the Trek episodes were fun or interesting. What I think you’ll notice with these is that the episode was written by somebody creative. The rest of the dreck in these categories was ground out by talentless hacks who couldn’t even spell the word plot let alone write one. And that brings us back to Transformers XX or whatever it is. Great Caesar’s Ghost!
Is the business really that bad? Is there no other way to fund and produce movies than to pile sequel onto sequel? How many times can Sylvester Stallone climb into the ring or jump out of a crashing helicopter? How many times can that stupid alien ravage human colonies before somebody gets around to inventing industrial strength Raid for aliens and drop it on their ugly butts?
As even Deadpool himself said (before his upcoming sequel of course), and I paraphrase, how many times can Liam Neeson let his daughter be Taken before we assume he’s just a not a very good father. Wasn’t Godfather III enough to prove that even the best stories can’t be endlessly resuscitated without being turned into crap?
But you notice, TV is able to make some pretty good stuff. I’ve just finished Justified and I’d put that up against anything I’ve seen in the theater in the last five years. Why the disparity? First of all, Justified was adapted from the works of Elmore Leonard whose stories have time and again translated well into movies. Whereas with these endless sequel franchises, I assume they are assembled from some formula that is somehow supposed to capture the original flavor of the first episode but without the high price of the original screenwriter. Apparently, they’ll pay tens of millions to get Bruce Willis or Jamie Foxx and millions more to CGI the explosions but they’ll settle for the story line to be written by the corporate lawyers who put the financial deal together for the studios.
I think I read that because of the cable fees TV is actually able to monetize their quality shows pretty successfully whereas on the big screen only a giant blockbuster success is lucrative enough to even attract sufficient funding to get made. And that means Terminator 30 gets made before something well written and entertaining like possibly a faithful version of one of Heinlein’s juveniles. I imagine that Citizen of the Galaxy or Farmer in the Sky in the hands of a good screenwriter and director would be very entertaining and very commercial.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking, “Focus Photog, focus. What’s your point? Bring this back around to the title. Bring it home.”
Fine, I will. Hollywood is dead. Long live TV. Except for some extraordinary slam dunks like “The Lord of the Rings” or “Harry Potter” Hollywood is too paralyzed by the fear of losing gobs of money to try and put a quality product together from quality components. And that’s why I don’t feel deprived when I skip whole decades at the theater. There’s nothing there. Even the occasional stand out ends up being barely acceptable. I remember hearing raves about Gravity. When I finally rented it, I was puzzled what all the fuss was about. Okay would be a generous appraisal. The same with “The Martian.” Adequate would cover it.
And it couldn’t happen to a nicer set of people. If DiCaprio and Depp start only making seven figures instead of eight I certainly won’t cry. When they’re replaced by AI – CGI maybe the stories won’t be as insulting to the dirt people. What a concept!