Duned

Yesterday we hit the treadmill and did a nice easy hour in which we didn't check the time till the 59th minute. As we suspected running through the soreness cleared out the knee. Some residual soreness remains. We did some good book thinkin' too. Things are coming together, mentally speaking, for the Australian scene. 

We haven't talked about our QAnon contacts lately because they've demanded silence from this blog. However, Qbi Wan has given us permission to break our  silence. He says the parents vs school board conflict was partially stoked by QAnon assets and observers should expect to see more direct actions. Qbi Wan also claims that the Justice Department is designating parents as domestic terrorists so they can redirect Federal resources against Q. Qbi Wan says, 'The plan unfolds'.

Reviews  of Dune are coming in. The Critical Drinker says Dune is (mostly) brilliant. The Critical Drinker is mostly right. Ben Shapiro reviews Dune here and agrees with Will. Ben's 'biggest issue' is the musical score. The brilliant Steve Sailer notices something we noticed: 'Spaniard Javier Bardem (best known as Anton Chigurh) is amusing as Fremen chieftain Stilgar, doing a grumpy riff on Mexican Anthony Quinn’s wonderful Auda Abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia.' Does this mean we are also brilliant? It does.

We've been unable to watch Dune, and we've watched it twice now, without thinking of the previous two versions. We just know all the rhythms and beats. It's like we're listening to another version of a song we love. Shapiro says one hasn't seen Dune till one has seen Dune in the theatre. That's our plan. 

A lot of people talk about author Frank Herbert's amazing world building. But is the world really all that amazing? The Dune universe is eerily familiar to those of us who lived in the 20th century. Herbert wrote about a great-power conflict over a must have natural resource found only in the desert. The Atriedes are the west. The Harkonnen are the Ruskis. The Fremin are the Arabs from Lawrence of Arabia. This template also works for Medieval and Renaissance Europe. That said, Herbert's work on Fremin culture is impressive.

Will in 19, 19 19FortyFive

Our very latest at 19FortyFive:  It was embarrassing, really. A few days after internet provocateur Matt Drudge broke the news of the Clinton/Lewinsky Scandal, the President took the rostrum, wagged a finger at the cameras and declared, ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky…’ It was Drudge again who noticed that Clinton’s left eye seemed a bit darker than the right. Drudge posted blowup photographs of the president and indeed one could see just a bit of purple under makeup foundation. Hours later, beneath a red siren, Drudge proclaimed: “Source Confirms, Hillary’s Bullseye!”. The headline writers at the New York Post couldn’t help themselves, “Hillary Threw the Book at Bill!”. The President could deny the allegations but he could not withstand mockery and ridicule. Bill Clinton submitted his resignation three days later and, on Saturday, January 24th, 1998, Albert Gore Jr. became the 43rd President of the United States.

The Critical Drinker asks, 'What happened to our villains?' Reader(s) should watch the Drinker compares classic villains with modern Woke villains. The Critical Drinker is always right. In the World War 1990 universe we don't really respect the Politburo, we added a wheezing octogenarian to get that point across. And we admit to see the USSR as a big slab of beef which NATO slices up. We've portrayed a desiccated, collapsing system throughout but for the most part have avoided NPCing the commies.  We shall keep The Drinker's point in mind for next time. 

The Z Man writes about what the ruling class has in store for us and describes the current state of things perfectly. An old regime, an occupied capitol, a radicalized elite: 'The bottom line is, while the ruling class is partying behind their barricades this week, the problems facing them grow worse. It is more than a bit ironic that they have picked now to embrace a siege mentality and bunkerize the Imperial Capital. They have broken the country so thoroughly that the only thing that could possibly unite the people is the shared hatred for the people on the other side of those barricades.' As we've said before, the Capitol Hill riot was an accelerant. First slowly then all at once. 

Chalk this one up to Jewish mysticism, Top Rabbi: America is Collapsing, Israel must step up as new world superpower. There's tons of religious references for the biblically inclined. Remember, we taught in an Orthodox Yeshiva. Those people take that stuff seriously. Israel has a high tech economy, a massive pool of  specialists (doctors, researchers, scientists, tech guys etc etc), a huge R&D sector, a growing population and a fantastic military that would kick the ever living crap out of any European military west of the Vistuala - including the Brits. Israel is the number one regional power, with only Iran as a rival. Indeed the Imam's are right, the Jew is clever.

Bill Maher may not always be right but when he's right he's really right. News Busters reports: "Every now and then, Bill Maher shocks his fellow liberals with some common sense. Friday night was one of those days as the HBO host closed Real Time with a commentary lecturing them to not equate the violent thugs who stormed the Capitol with 74 million Americans who may have voted for Donald Trump because of policy. He also eviscerated left-wing California as a red tape-filled bureaucratic mess." This blog will always defend Bill Maher. Younger readers should have seen him back in the post 9/11 days, the way he took no excuses for radical Islam. Oh how he shredded the apologists. He was magnificent. Click on over and watch Maher. Who better a defender of free speech? Nobody. We'll revisit Maher tomorrow.

Wednesday Russian et al

Good Morning! Our latest bit of Russian collusion with Inforos is out:  'A wave of leftist rioting and looting followed the police murder of George Floyd. The Establishment and the media stoked the riots, encouraged them, and made excuses. Biden campaign staffers contributed to rioter bail funds. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler tried to de-escalate the situation there, only to see Antifa in the streets every night. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry tried to address a BLM rally and was turned away by a crowd shouting ‘shame’ after him. They’re not gonna let up and they should not,’ Vice President-Elect Kamal Harris said of the George Floyd rioters. They were ‘mostly peaceful’, the Dems and the media said. On January 6th, the day Congress met to certify the Electoral College vote, more than 200,000 Trump supporters gathered on the Washington Mall....' There's nothing quite like turning in an article before bed and seeing it published upon waking.

The Critical Drinker is always right. Here's a great vid on the war at Lucas Films between John Favreau and Kathleen Kennedy. May the Force be with you, Star Wars is so simple. A restless young man on the farm, a rogue, a princess, a villain who serves an evil god...Whoever wrote The Epic of Gilgamesh would totally get it. Walk into Shakespeare's office with this outline, he'd look it over, make a note and say, 'Come back on Thursday.' It's so simple.

Did we mention that The Critical Drinker is always right? Here's his review of The Expanse. Season-1 was the best season of TV scifi since season-4 of TNG. Speaking of, The Expanse's season-4 just sucked balls, but we're halfway through season-5 and it's almost all the way back.

Gab is slow as heck with all the refugees from Twitter. Be patient. Parler has found a new hosting service, the same folks who host Gab. This blog is wondering when it will get cancelled and how far it will go. A few friends have left FB, and to be honest, we'd leave it as well were it not for the familial, personal and professional contacts we've made.  

Apropos of having just popped by the Times of Israel, here's the latest polling data for March's elections: 'The Channel 12 survey gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party the most seats (29), followed by Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope (16), Naftali Bennett’s Yamina (13), Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid (13), the Joint List (10), Shas (8), United Torah Judaism (8), Yisrael Beytenu (7), Ron Huldai’s The Israelis (6), Meretz (5), and Blue and White (5).' That's three rightwing parties at the top followed by a centrist party. Labour doesn't even make the top ten. Were the top three parties to combine with Yisrael Beytenu they'd have a government. But at this point Israeli elections are about one thing, Bibi and they all hate his guts.

The last News Wrap of 2020

We don't do the New Years thing. We have no resolutions to make and we're not in the mood for predictions. In 2016 we predicted Rubio/Haley would win. Also we thought Hillary! would be dead by now. So that's what those are worth. Ok, we have one resolution: consume less news.

Colonel Schlichter predicts pain. We see nothing with which to disagree. Our best guess on Georgia is that the GOP loses. The party down there is a mess and neither candidate inspires. Some are hammering Jew hater Rafael Warnock's Jew hatred. That will just help turn out the black vote. It's a weird relationship, people. 

Over in Israel, the Blue and Whites are dying as six MK's have now left. Damn. We wanted a center-ish party that would hammer the palestinians and hammer the Haredi. Not next year. Benny Gantz thought he could make a deal with Bibi. Fool. Worse, Gantz thought he could stab the other two wings of the Blue and Whites in the back and command their loyalty afterwards. Idiot. Some strategy. This guy was the chief of staff? We shudder. Polls show an electorate that is center right and more right.  Peacenik Meretz is a fringe party and Ben Gurion's Labour, once Israel's natural governing party, is almost dead. Good. The other two major rightwing parties really hate Bibi. It's personal. We suspect Israel will have another deadlock after the March elections. 

The Critical Drinker really doesn't like Wonder Woman 1984. The film is a Woke mess, he says. Which is fine. But WW84 was written and directed by Patty Jenkins, who is doing Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. Can't you see it? A fresh, spunky female X-wing pilot shows all the jocks how it's done. Will it be Woke? Is this a Kennedy project or a Favreau project? Favreau is running the TV side of things so....

We're re-reading Jerry Pournelle's Janissaries trilogy. After 34+ years we can still recall reading Janissaries on the way home from the book store and reading the Roman battle in SSR at school, which certainly  says something for Pournelle. We've finished the first book and it's a tight, well written masterpiece. We're shocked at how much we like Janissaries and how easy it was to read. Well done Mr. Pournelle, and thank you. Can't wait to get to the fourth and final volume, Mamelukes.

We're writing what we believe is the final chapter for the main narrative of The Great Nuclear War of 1975. This chapter deals with election and congressional issues. The last shows Rockefeller giving the State of the Union at The Greenbrier. It's a wish list of what needs to be done. Overall 40 states returned electors, congressman and senators. Bobby Byrd survived and he's undisputed master of the senate. We still only got Matt to the Indiana border and still don't know if he finds Stacey and the boys. What do you guys think? 

Comics Fall...and Rise

We haven't been a big comic book fan since we were a kid. Back in the 80's we liked Sgt. Rock, GI Joe, later The 'Nam, Robotech and finally Elf Quest, which was a rather ahem, interesting introduction to human or elven nature. Those who know, know. This was before the internet, people.* We were also really into the underground comic book press. We knew about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before they were cool. And who can forget Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters?

Mock them all you want, but comics are an important art form. These are what we seek to be, to what we aspire. These are our heroic tales, as The Critical Drinker* has so passionately argued. In fact, comics are high art combining the visual with written words in a unique aesthetic. Comics are just as important to 20th century art as film and music. Skeptical? Ask yourself this. Who is more likely to be recalled in a century, Superman or Tom Cruise? Now that comics are often printed on heavy duty gloss paper, these will survive for centuries.

The Critical Drinker has chronicled the left's takeover of the comic book industry. That is, as the Star Wars sequels were made by people who didn't like Star Wars, comics are now being made by people who don't like comics. And so another institution falls.

Fortunately there are still people who like comics making comics. Vox Day, an interesting and very able man, has started a comic imprint, Arkhaven Comics. He's got his own publishing company, and info alternative, to which alert readers may have noticed we link.

What's next, we wonder? What are the Woke coming for next? When do they turn their sites on the Amazon self publishing industry? When do they come after us?

*After 35 years we still remember, Elf Quest Book 4, pg 46. It's an all out orgy.

**The Critical Drinker is always right.

What Will's Watching

The Critical Drinker: A Scottish movie reviewer who loves movies and hates Social Justice Warriors who ruin the movies he loves. The man's been extremely unkind to the new Star Trek franchises, and he's right. We'd like to pick up where The Drinker left off. 

Discovery and Picard are cynical and dark and jaded....oh my....
Some Kathleen Kennedy acolyte (the SJW who wrecked Star Wars) decided they needed to break with Star Trek's glorious past and make a dark Star Trek. Seriously this is how Goth/Emo teenagers see the world, it's also how CBS see's Star Trek.

Star Trek is supposed to be a future utopia. That's the whole point. Picard says it again and again in TNG. Man has evolved. We've put aside our petty differences, our envy, our glut. Star Trek was escapist. Set aside your worries for an hour, viewer, look at what we could be. Star Trek was aspirational.

As hard to watch as some of those original Trek episodes are now, they were trying to advance the cause of equality.  Nichelle Nichols was going to leave Star Trek, but you know who asked her to stay? Martin Luther King. It was important, he said, for the nation to see a black woman on TV equal to the white (and alien) characters. She and Kirk had the first interracial TV kiss. That was a big deal in the mid-60s.

So now they've crapped all over Star Trek too.

Go watch The Drinker. Go watch The Drinker and get mad. We know we are.