Dune Comes to New Jersey

Good Thursday, Stroock's Books Jihadi. Last day of school!

So, we subscribed to Steve Sailer's new Substack page. Sailer sent us a note, and we totally geeked out. 

The heat wave continues. Yesterday we were teasing our Syrian-American friend that this heat makes us recall our ancient desert homeland. Our people wondered the desert for 40 years, after all. We yearn for the desert. It calls to us. Right now, we're fighting the urge to stick a thumper into the ground, call a worm and start a holy crusade. 

Notes on a middle school graduation...this gym is hot, all those tax dollars and they couldn't install AC?...We're not saying the temps were scorching, but there were a bunch of guys in the gym wearing funny outfits, brandish knives and yelling about the Lisan al Gaib...the actual ceremony is being run with ruthless precision. You will be called, you will take your diploma, you will stand for picture, you will move on...Perhaps a quarter of the 600 + 8th graders don't have black hair...Just look for the little blonde girl.

Dune Part 2, Part Fem, Part IV: It's time to talk about Zendaya's Chani. We did not mind this character as much as some reviewers. In fact, after half a dozen viewings, we think Zendaya plays her just about right. Chani is a Fremin girl, who knows her way around the desert. She's tough and world weary yet oddly vulnerable. She skeptical of this whole prophesy thing. While Zendaya's performance is a touch uneven, it can't be worse than anything in Star Wars: the Acolyte's menstrual musings. Zendaya is not perfect, not by far and we'll save our critique of the roll for a post about all the flaws we see in Dune Part-2. Overall Zendaya's is a unique performance which we enjoyed. 

You didn't know we used to have another blog? We did, way back in the summer/fall of 2009. Actually, we were invited to start blogging there by the site owner after inquiring about buying ad space for A Line Through the Desert. Those are just a handful of the posts we wrote. These seem to be the only posts that have survived. The links still work, remarkably. 

We've read through World War 1990: Norway. We've done the edits. We checked the edits. We've dealt with the night/day problem in the summer arctic (twilight, dim twilight, arctic twilight, dim light...). We still don't want to hit the submit button as we can't quite shake the feeling something is wrong. We're being a weenie and acting like an indecisive middleaged woman. 

Our research for World War 1990: Thatcher's War continues apace. Our perception of the ancient conflict is changing, and we won't be writing with quite the contempt we had for 'the cause' as originally planned. We also had a good idea in those bleachers last night. Two brothers, one in the IRA, one in the Irish army.