This is the Validation of Science Fiction in Its Best and Truest Form

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This truly is magic.  Even the booster rocket is precisely controlled by the remarkable technology of Musk’s SpaceX.  This is science fiction come to life.

Science fiction was looking at the world and imagining how humans could use science to push the boundaries of what we could know and do.  This is the fruition of that imagining.  Jules Verne and H G Wells and Robert Heinlein and all the other visionaries led up to this.  And Elon Musk is the one who decided to make it happen.

Well done.

One Small Step in the Right Direction

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As all of the regular readers here probably know from my recent incessant whining, I’ve been horrendously bogged down with work.  Even on weekends, there is stuff I have to get done and it will only get worse for the next month or so.

Woe is me; woe is me!

But at the same time, I’ve been wanting to go see Matt Walsh’s movie “Am I Racist.”  I asked Camera Girl if she wanted to go with me and she rolled her eyes and shook her head.  So that complicated things because just abandoning her on a weekend to trek across state lines and eat up half a day seemed a little selfish to me.  So, I was shocked when on Thursday she asked me if I wanted to go see the movie.  Apparently, she figured it might cheer me up ahead of my marathon work schedule to go to this movie over the weekend.  I guess she really does like me.  So, I went on line to see what hours it was playing.  Well, it wasn’t.  The movie had gone from about a thousand theaters, down to something like four-hundred.  And since Dunwich really is in the middle of nowhere, there wasn’t a single theater within a hundred miles of me.

Woe is me; woe is me!

When I stopped shaking my fist at the sky, I looked up the box office history for the movie.  The movie was only banking twenty- or thirty-thousand dollars a day at that point but it had earned over twelve million dollars over the course of its run.  And when you consider that the movie only cost a quarter of that to make, I was quite impressed by Walsh’s accomplishment.

Last year Walsh made a documentary called “What is a Woman” that was very effective at highlighting the insane and dangerous transgender movement that has convinced most of the medical establishment that it’s okay to treat children with puberty blockers and sex hormone therapy as a precursor to amputation of their genitalia.  And this documentary was watched by many millions of people on-line.  But this new movie was different.

This was something that people had to go to a movie theater to watch.  They had to plunk down cold hard cash.  And for that money they expected to be entertained.  And they were!  The reviews and rating by the people who actually went to the movie were extremely high.  It was a hit with the people who went to see it.  But the mainstream media boycotted reviewing it.  And this was after it opened in the top four box office spot.  And not against other documentaries.  This was against all the movies in theaters.  It was a financial success, but they refused to review it.

So, I didn’t get to see it.  Well, eventually I’ll see it online.  So that’s okay.  But the bigger story here is that finally, finally, someone is making movies for our side of the street.  And I hope the Daily Wire makes a ton of money doing it and I hope that gives ideas to a bunch of other “creative” people who want to make money but can’t seem to get people to go to the stuff Hollywood has been putting out lately.  Who knows maybe it’ll inspire Disney to make the imaginative leap and think, “Didn’t we used to make money hand over fist with that traditional stuff back in the stone age?  It looks like people still like that racist, sexist stuff.  Maybe we could do that again and make money for a change.”

Well, calm down!  Small steps, small steps.  Okay, now I’ve got a grip again.

But I have to confess I am encouraged.  This is the sort of stuff I’ve been waiting years for.  With the entry cost for making professional-looking motion pictures at historic lows and good writers, directors, actors and other movie trades unemployed because of DEI it doesn’t seem that it should be that difficult to make a profit if you give people a good story and stick to entertainment instead of hectoring them.

It’s a start.

Turning the Page

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The countdown continues.  As I write this there are twenty-four days until the election.  From my point of view, I am desperate for this thing to be over.  After November Fifth I hope never to see Joe Scarborough, Rachel Maddow or any other poisonous talking head for the rest of my natural life.  My intent is to occupy my time with things that can have a positive impact on me and my local world.

Now it may be that from time to time I may have some reason to consider what the two national parties are doing as it impacts me.  That’s only reasonable.  But all of my efforts will be directed toward avoiding the policies of the federal and state governments that negatively impact my life.  I don’t delude myself that I can completely negate these deleterious influences.  But I intend to use whatever resources and logical analysis I can bring to bear to improve the way I and my friends and family live inside this place.

I look at this as a shift from a passive strategy to an active approach.  Instead of stressing over an election that I have absolutely no control over and which may be completely rigged from the get go, I can concentrate on my own actions and how they will impact the things I identify as in some sense controllable.  And that shift from passive to active I find very exciting.  For way too many years I have been fixated on reliving the experience of Ronald Reagan capturing the imagination of the majority of Americans and trying to change the course America was on.  Probably the closest we ever came to that was when George W. Bush was given a mandate in 2004 by the American people.  And he squandered it.  Well, time is growing short.  I can’t wait for the country to return to a consensus.  That may take decades or maybe never happen at all.  For me direct action is the solution.

Of course, my actions will be small, limited in scope and based on my interests and talents.  I intend to spend my time writing.  I think I might be able to produce some entertaining stories.  I want them to reach a sizable audience so I have a lot to learn about marketing and other aspects of book selling.  Some of the things I’ve heard about how you have to write ten novels ahead of time so that you can release them, one a month, in order to trigger the Amazon algorithm that notices such things.  That seems insane.  You have to write a million words before finding out if your story will be seen by anyone.  There’s got to be a better way than that.  But anyway, that’s one of the things I have to find out about.

So, come on November Sixth.  Get here already.  Put an end to polls, debates, pundits, special reports, psychopathic snipers, CNN, MSNBC, 60 Minutes, Joe Biden’s presidency and every other scrap of this long stupid ordeal that has eaten up years of my life but hasn’t improved it one iota.  Let me move on with my life.

Update:

War Pig commented:

I voted yesterday. Early voting in person at the board of elections. A strange process this time. After validating my identity via military ID card, I signed in and watched as a ballot was printed off for me. I don’t like that. I voted and left. Now I can see how easily electronic-counted ballots can be faked. It goes into a reader machine and I have no way of knowing if it is read correctly. I use ink to fill in the bubble beside the candidate. But when read does the machine record my actual vote or is it set up to record the wrong candidate one out of, say, fifty times?

Hmmmm. Since the Clintons are related by marriage to Soros and a relative of Soros owns the company that makes and supplies software for the majority of voting machines, it gives me furiously to wonder.

Photog responds:

Since the debacle of 2020 I plugged into the local electoral process where I lived.  And what has changed surprised me.  Even in New England there has been an upswell of monitoring of such things as voter registration lists and fraud.  Will it make a difference?  Hard to say but there has been some scrutiny.

Culinary Justice

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Recently there have been multiple stories in the news about citizens that are in revolt against leftist incompetence and ideologically driven lunacy by the very leftist mayors and city councils that they themselves recently elected.  Chicago and Portland are the prime examples that have been in the news.  And that doesn’t even count New York where the FBI has finked on Mayor Eric Adams and has set him up to be convicted of bribery in the near future.  In fact, in his case, it seems that he’s being persecuted for not going along with federal leftist incompetence and ideologically driven lunacy (understand, flooding New York City with illegal alien felons).

Someone might think I’d be happy to see these citizens awakening from their stupor and embracing moderation and practical solutions to their problems.

Hah!

Places like Chicago, Portland, San Francisco and New York haven’t learned anything.  They will take a tiny step back from the abyss of leftist madness and then double down on it shortly after.  They’ll hire a left-wing moderate and then harangue this victim day in and out every time he tries to solve a problem.  They’ll discover racism, sexism and transphobia anytime realism intrudes on their make-believe vision of their city and its problems.

No, I’m not seeing their pain as a wake-up call for a return to sanity.  They can’t possibly return to something they’ve never experienced in their lives.  It would be like expecting Massachusetts to respond to an enormous Democrat produced state budget deficit by electing an actual conservative.  No, what they do is elect a RINO like Mitt Romney who works at producing fiscal restraint while being endlessly attacked for his “heartless” cuts in human services.  And as soon as the budget is back in decent order, they’ll kick him to the curb and find some blue haired wack-job to come in and start the whole cycle all over again.

No, I don’t care a bit what halfway measures the Leftists take to stave off bankruptcy and prevent their cities from being literally sacked and burned down by barbarians.  Truth be told I want them to be sacked.  My favorite fantasy is imagining Portland burned to the ground and all of its hipsters eaten by Haitian gangs who run out of dogs and cats.

That would be poetic justice.  More than that, I think it might be the only thing that could make the rest of the American leftists really sit back and think about their devotion to “the cause.”  I mean, there’s nothing like seeing your brethren char-broiled over an oil drum full of scrap lumber and munched on by the local gang lord to give someone a new perspective on what the reality of decolonization might look like personally.  Of course, to different people there could be a nuanced range of reactions.  After all there are urbanites that thrive on discovering new cuisine choices.  Afghan, Ethiopian, even Mongolian cuisines have each made a stir on the foodie scene.  Well, pulled long pork or blackened hipster just might be the next chic menu item.  Who knows.  For the well-heeled diner one day it might be possible to get Kim Kardashian Ham and Eggs.  Or Nancy Pelosi Jambalaya.  The mind boggles at the culinary possibilities.