Struggling Back from the Abyss

photog Current Events, Trump ,

Anyone over the age of fifty knows that things are devolving in the western world.  European societies (including places like the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) are degenerating from the competent, affluent and intelligent places they were even twenty years ago into mediocre (at best) struggling third world backwaters.  The reasons are manifold but essentially the powers that be have intentionally worked to undermine the institutions and practices (merit-based career advancement, standards based educational advancement and preferential employment of American workers) that made an advanced civilization possible.

It seems that the damage is pretty severe.  In many areas of the country young people educated under the lax standards are functionally illiterate and without skills that would make them useful employees.  But at the present there are attempts to bring manufacturing back to the United States and efforts to deport illegal aliens and curtail legal immigration.  But it leaves us with the question as to whether this degeneration of society will be reversed and how?

The way I see this is that improvements will be a local phenomenon and will be tied into state policies to arrest and reverse these problems.  And in order for improvement to grow it will require a two-pronged effort.  State government will have to enforce educational reform that verifies progress through standardized testing and state and federal agencies must work to ensure that qualified Americans can find good jobs in their state.  Places like Florida, Texas and Tennessee are taking the first steps to attract jobs to their states.  Low tax rates are encouraging businesses to leave places like the West Coast and the northeast and provide job opportunities for Americans.  Florida has made a start at reining in the woke madness that has descended on public schools and colleges and restore them to their proper mission of providing learning for Americans who want to work in a modern nation.  And right now, the Trump administration is deporting illegals from red states without the battles that occur in places like Minnesota and California.  Put these conditions together and what I expect to see is normalcy begin to return to red states first.

I read somewhere recently that Mississippi has shown marked improvement in the test scores of public-school children and I wonder if the conservative nature of that state’s population in comparison with other parts of the country might be part of the reason.  But in general, I expect that what will eventually happen is states that encourage merit-based rewards and have an America first policy to job creation and cooperate with immigration control will eventually become noticeably better places to live than the woke areas that have already become hellholes like New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland.

Of course, if the Democrats get back into power in Washington, they will do all they can to degrade these other locations by reopening the borders and preventing red states from targeting illegals.  But I still think we may already be witnessing a bifurcation in the kind of society that will be seen in America.

08MAR2026 – This’N’That

photog Life in Dunwich, My Fiction, photog's Corner , ,

Today I spent a chunk of time with a roof rake pulling snow off the lower roofs.  These roofs have heavy plastic cleats glued to the metal to keep the snow from sliding into the gutters but there was so much snow that the weight cracked the glue and so these enormously heavy blocks of ice and snow were falling down onto the upper and lower driveways and blocking the routes we use to reach the road.  So, I forced the issue and pulled down all (most) of the snow with the rake and then spent a few hours moving the snow away with a shovel and wheelbarrow.  I was planning to use the snowblower to move the snow but all those plastic cleats would be bad for the rotating parts and it would have taken me so long to separate them out using a garden rake that I said, “to hell with it” and just used the wheelbarrow and shovel.  Well, they say work develops character and Camera Girl says I’m a character so it must be working.

I’ve had some interesting conversations on X with another author and he seemed genuinely interested in how my characters would advance in a sequel so I told him I should send him the e-book and then he could see the challenges I’m going to face deciding how I’ll clean up the mess I’ve created in the first book.  Also, I’m hoping to get a review out of him.  Of course, he’s not a genre fiction author so it may not be his cup of tea so I may not get a highly positive review but honest feedback is valuable so I’m interested.

Tomorrow, third grandson is coming over to spend time with us and absorb mass quantities of spaghetti and meatballs followed by mint chocolate chip ice cream.  He’s starting high school next year so I’ll have to try and up my game.  I wonder what form of entertainment he’ll favor.  I know this year his whole family has been on a hockey kick.  While hockey is far from my favorite form of entertainment, I feel I must try to adapt myself to the grandkids as best I can.  After all they’re the future and I’m practically extinct.

I got in touch with my marketer and said I wanted to discuss strategies to maximize numbers of readers by minimizing cost to the reader (up to and including giveaways).  She said I should make a point to collect e-mail addresses to allow for follow up advertising for sequels.  I will study her message and formulate some specific questions to facilitate getting answers at the meeting.  I’ve found marketing a book is an onerous task that’s far from fun.  At this point I want a strategy that sustains itself with minimal demands on my time.  But I may not get the answers I’m hoping for.

Alright, that’s enough for now.  I’m trying to stay away from the news of wars and scandals and elections and other tawdry concerns.  The world is certainly a messy place.

Arrival (2016) – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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

What is it with YouTube lists of science fiction movies.  Every other choice is some incredibly unwatchable movie!

Already you can tell I didn’t like this movie.  And that is an understatement.  I despised it.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The movie starts out with us meeting the protagonist Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams).  We see her with her daughter Hannah starting with her as a newborn and progressing with her as an adolescent dying of what appears to be cancer.

Switch scenes and Amy is teaching a class in Portuguese language at a university but just then the world finds out that twelve alien spacecraft have landed in different areas of the Earth and Amy is needed by the US government to figure out the aliens’ language and find out what they want.  Her contact is Colonel Weber (played by Forest Whitaker).  Louise is teamed with a scientist, Ian Donnelly (played by Jeremy Renner) to solve the mystery of why the aliens are on Earth.

There’s a lot of hand-waving (literally) but eventually Louise takes off her quarantine suit so they can see her pretty hair and slowly but surely, she translates the language of the aliens; heptapods which are represented as some kind of hyperintelligent cephalopods that spell out words with their ink (seriously!).

Through misunderstanding the difference between the words for tool and weapon, all of the major military powers come to believe that the aliens are attempting to start a war by providing some kind of advanced weapons to all of them separately.  Rogue American soldiers even try to blow up the heptapods and Louise is almost killed.

But just as the world is about to attack the heptapods and cause an interstellar incident Louise reenters the ship and has a magical epiphany and can understand everything the heptapods are saying.  She finds out the tool they are giving humanity is their language which if studied allows the user to see the future and experience time as “non-linear.”

Louise then is able to see into the future and know something that will convince the Chinese leader not to attack the heptapods and save the day.  Then we find out that Louise’s daughter Hannah didn’t die in the past but is going to be born to Louise and Ian in the future.  And apparently Louise is accepting of this future tragedy including the fact that Ian will leave her when he finds out she conceived Hannah regardless of knowing she will be doomed to an early death.  The End.

How do I hate this movie?  Let me count the ways.  This movie epitomizes the “girl boss” stereotype.  Louise is the omnicompetent protagonist who can do seemingly anything needed without any rational explanation for her abilities.  Everyone else is always stumped but she always finds a way.  And it’s always ridiculous.  The military are always arrogant, murderously enraged and completely incompetent.  And the action of the movie is non-existent.  The highlight of the film is Louise writing the word “LOUISE” on a white board and holding it up for the heptapods to see.  I’m not kidding.  And then in the last five minutes of the movie Louise figures out all of that stuff and we live happily ever after (except for her daughter dying of cancer).  This movie sucks.