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2010-11-25T23:10:00.001-08:00

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Anti-Capitalist Film Makes Cameron a Billionaire

2010-03-31T09:28:00.000-07:00

I finally -- reluctantly -- gave Jim Cameron, Regal Entertainment, and Imax my $16.50 to see Avatar in Imax 3D the last week before it got booted out by Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland so that I could knowledgeably explain why I knew I wouldn’t like the film before I saw it.

Let me state that I am a big fan of Cameron’s films. I love the Terminator series and think Aliens is the best of the four in that series. Whenever True Lies is on, I have to stop and watch it. And, yes, I cried at Titanic. But then again I cry at Muppet movies, so take it for what it’s worth. The man’s a brilliant master of visual storytelling. And that is the big reason why I am so upset with Avatar. I knew that I would dislike the film as soon as I learned bits of storyline as the hype began last year. Aliens are the beleaguered good guys enduring invasion. Check. Earth people (specifically, American Earth people) are the venal, rapacious invaders. Check. One man defies his people to save the aborigines. Check. Scientists always seek Truth and never twist their research for grant money or to please the government. Check. And businessmen will always opt to exterminate potential trading partners, have no respect for life or property, and are bereft of morality. Check.

Other reviewers have already made the more-than-obvious parallels with Dances With Wolves, Disney’s Pocahontas, Ferngully, and a bunch of others. And I’m probably writing this late enough that most of my coming points have already been made by others, but I think the problem with Avatar is endemic in American culture, and highly damaging.

George Lucas understood the importance of removal from reality in writing fantastic fiction. Star Wars originally took place “in the year 3000”, but moved to “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” not merely to make it sound more like the opening of a fairy tale, but to remove it from any connection with 20^th Century Earth. In that way, the elements of the story become a template that can apply to any viewer’s outlook. What was the Empire? To one, it might be an analogy for the British Empire versus the Rebel Alliance of the 13 colonies. To another, it might be evil Corporate America vs. heroic union organizers. Roman Empire vs. Christianity. In other words, you can’t pin Lucas down to a particular current political viewpoint. He’s merely for liberty and against tyranny -- it’s up to the viewer to choose the analogues.

Cameron’s mistake (and I use the word advisedly, since Avatar is one of the highest-grossing films of all time) is an artistic one: making a fantasy film too specific. Star Wars and Lord of the Rings will be timeless because they are not bound to any specific historical matrix. James Cameron has chosen to plant Avatar squarely in a specifically 21^st-Century American matrix. In other words, the ex-Marine mercenaries we see are obviously American ex-Marines; the corporate weasel is obviously an American corporate weasel; the native-loving scientist is portrayed by Sigourney Weaver, the same actress who played ape-loving Dian Fossey. This allows viewers only one template: the film is only an analogy to American corporate rapacity, American military brutality, and 21^st-century environmental insensitivity.

In Lord of the Rings, one could look at the destruction of Isengard’s forest to build Sauron’s war machine as a critique of Nazi, Soviet, or American war economies (or insert your own government) having a deleterious effect on the environment. The choice was up to the viewer. It did not alienate anyone watching it (except maybe for foresters and arms dealers). Avatar alienates, making it less universal or lasting in its appeal (said, again, with a grain of salt, since it’s made a billion bucks plus my $16.50).

Cameron protests that his film is not anti-military. Why, he purposely made his hero a Marine to show how the finest attributes of honor and defense of the weak enabled him to defy orders and slaughter his own people. In this, though, Cameron engages in several liberal conceits.

Liberal conceit #1: The highest form of patriotism is treason. This is the theme, too, of Dances With Wolves. The liberal creed seems to be “My country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, join the other side and kill as many of your countrymen as you can.” For all the horror we are supposed to feel at the callous way the Americans kill Na’vi without any awareness of their individual sovereignty (and certainly no discussion of their property rights), Cameron’s “Good Marine” Sully (and Costner’s “Good Cavalryman” Dunbar) had no compunctions about slaying his former comrades en masse. Are we supposed to cheer that massacre? I’m reminded of the brilliant deleted scene in Goldmember where the wife of the beheaded henchman receives The Call and has to tell her son that his father has died at the hands of super-spy Austin Powers. “No one ever thinks about the henchman’s family!” she wails. Similarly, we are not supposed to feel anything but satisfaction at the mass slaughter of all those other Marines. (OK, ex-Marine mercenaries, but Sully himself says there are no ex-Marines, so he’s killing fellow Marines, Q.E.D.) (Semper fi indeed.)

Liberal conceit #2: Native populations live in wise, eternal harmony with the land; White Americans relentlessly destroy nature for short-term profit. Right. Would someone like to explain why -- shortly after the arrival of humans in North America -- all the megafauna vanished? Chinese dudes cross land bridge, look at mastodons, mammoths, giant sloths, and saber-tooth cats, and say “Get in my belly!” (pace, Fat Bastard). You could argue that they learned from their errors, I guess, but why aren’t Americans given the same indulgence? It took 10,000 years for Indians to learn to live with the land. Europeans have only been here 500 years or so (900 years for Vikings). What Cameron portrays as a Na’vi prayer acknowledging the Circle of Life (when killing an animal for food or self-defense) could just as easily be interpreted as the Na’vi version of liberal hypocrisy: acting all apologetic and spiritual (and believing it, of course, with all your heart), but still getting what one wants by killing. Hey, I didn’t hear any prayers to Eyah (meant to sound similar to Gaea or YHVH?) when the Na’vi were dispatching fighter pilots by the score with armor-piercing arrows. If the Americans prayed to Eyah while bulldozing the Tree of Souls, would that have made it better?

Liberal conceit #3: Only a white male newly minted liberal convert can get these disorganized, unfocused, superstitious ethnics to recognize the threat they face and only a white male neo-liberal possesses the wisdom and savvy to guide them into victorious battle (isn’t that how we lost the Vietnam War--a bunch of liberals telling the military how to fight?). This is the same conceit displayed by Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves and (forgive me, Sarah Jessica) Matthew Broderick in Glory (the story had to have a white guy as the lead character to make it more “accessible”) (Hollywood code for “we want more than 12% of the population to see it”). This is the same messianic complex that leads liberals to think that they are the only ones wise enough and smart enough and pure enough to prevent destruction of the entire planet by car exhaust, the only ones who can end the business cycle by dragging us into socialism/fascism, the only ones who can tell us what to eat/drink/drive/smoke/read/think, and the only ones who can mobilize the masses to push for social change (which is why they don’t think the Tea Party people are really a grass-roots people’s movement and must be an evil corporate plot).

At least in Return of the Jedi it was the Ewoks’ own idea to run off and attack the stormtroopers, and they did it with their own skills, tactics, and weapons. They didn’t need Luke telling them what to do.

Was the decision to bash American business, slander the American military, and ignore the American conservationist tradition intentional on Cameron’s part, or is such self-loathing so endemic that it didn’t even occur to him that he was attacking the very corporate structure that made him a mega-millionaire, the military that has kept him safe both from communists who delight in slaying the wealthy and the intelligentsia after they have served their purpose and from Islamic jihadists who delight in killing everyone, and the American inclusiveness that made Hawaii a state, preserving vast swaths of its natural beauty for location filming on Avatar?

I said sympathy for your enemies was dangerous. It’s everywhere, even in children’s films. When I saw the trailer for How to Train Your Dragon, in which the young hero discovers that dragons aren’t the monsters his elders made them out to be (because naïve youngsters full of Hope and Change always know better than their elders, who actually may have experienced a few dragon attacks), I thought Yes... that’s just what the dragons want you to believe... Islamic terrorists love Americans who think that their jihad on the West is merely a reaction to American imperialism -- they are the current version of the “useful idiots” Lenin used so well to drag Russia into a tyranny worse than that of any tsarist.

I didn’t dislike the film per se. Artistically, it was superb. Pandora looks like a fun world (if you can survive the Deathworld-like fauna). The plot is tried-and-true (some might say clichéd and worn-out). And Zoë Saldana’s left breast stole every scene it was in. But the anti-American, anti-business, anti-military, anti-reason sub-text turned me off completely. It was superfluous to the basic storyline; the villains could have been anyone. They did not have to be from Earth at all. (I recall the super-hit Independence Day made the rapacious invaders non-humans and the heroes the US military.) They did not have to be capitalists at all. Didn’t fascists and communists invade the lands of native people and rape and pillage them? And wasn’t it, oh, I dunno, American military men and women who fought and died to liberate those lands? Who’s leaving Haiti after weeks of sweltering work keeping quake victims from dying, only to sail down to Chile to conduct more rescue and relief work? Would that maybe be the Marines? Hmm. Odd thing for them to do. From watching Avatar, I’d swear they’re supposed to go in there and murder everyone.

And I don’t like seeing movies disingenuously engineered to give me that utterly false impression.

Science Quibbles With Avatar

2010-03-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

Science quibbles: I’ll skip the bogus flying mountains except to say that if you grant the premise, you still have to explain how such small rocks can have huge waterfalls cascading off of them. Even if they were made of sponge, they’d drain in a few minutes at that rate.

As someone who still owns every piece of glow-in-the-dark plastic from when I was a kid, I loved the phosphorescent night life. However... I think that the only time you would have “night” on a moon orbiting a gas giant would be when the planet is between Pandora and its star. Think about how bright our own moon is at night: when it’s full, you can read by it. And it only fills half a degree of the sky. From the look of it, Pandora’s gas giant covers about 60 degrees. Imagine that much starlight being reflected from a high-albedo cloud world -- it would be as bright as day.

In the film, it’s stated that Pandora has lower gravity than Earth, and that would explain how the banshees can fly by flapping instead of soaring, but then one should be consistent: everything that falls would have to fall at a much slower rate of acceleration, yet it seems that everyone and everything falls at an earthly rate on Pandora (to be fair, it would be a much slower-paced film if they did that...). I did like the zero-G in the opening scene, though.

One thing I expected to see but didn’t: after all the talk about how all the life on Pandora was electrically connected in a gigantic neural net, I was expecting the white male neo-liberal to be the one to figure out how to harness that power into a directed-energy weapon, with plasma bolts shooting from the Tree of Souls.

An Agorist Primer Now In Paperback!

2009-11-15T08:37:00.000-08:00

Just in time for ChristmaSolstiChannuKwanzEid, the paperback edition of An Agorist Primer is now available from KoPubCo! The book is the same size as the hardcover keepsake edition, but is a third of the cover price (less, actually, because of our 20%-off Christmas Sale price). If you have wanted to read or give this amazing book but could not afford the price of the hardback, now is the time to order. Copies are at the printer and should arrive this coming week and will be shipped as soon as in hand. Give the perfect gift this season — the gift of liberty!

The book is not yet available on Amazon.com, but you can order it now from the publisher. And don't forget our Christmas With an Attitude shop on CafePress! We have bumper stickers, t-shirts, and tote bags with snarky, in-your-face (well, in-everyone-else's-face) slogans. Check it out!

Mere Americans

2009-11-10T11:03:00.000-08:00

I don't recall that, during World War II, any Christians in the U.S. Army agonized about being forced to fight other Christians in the armies of Mussolini or Hitler, or of occupying Christian land where they were not welcome. I don't remember any Japanese in the 442nd worrying that they were fighting the Axis, of which Japan was a part. We were all mere Americans fighting enemies of America.

In fact, I don't recall any Shiite Muslims having any compunctions about killing Sunni Muslims (and vice versa) during the Iran-Iraq War (the "impossible" war among Muslims). So why would anyone in the press try to excuse the mass-murderer/traitor's actions by pointing to his fear that he would be forced to fight fellow Muslims? First, as a Major and a psychiatrist, he would never be fighting anyone, and second, he was a native-born American assisting American warriors in their battle against sworn and declared enemies of America. That should be enough for anyone in the Army. What he did was treason — pure, simple, and inexcusable. Motivation is irrelevant.

Dr. K's Videobook -- Part One!

2009-10-24T23:13:00.000-07:00

Working right up to the weekend before I went in for my knee surgery, I recorded my videobook of Dr. K's Sure-Fire Instant Weight-Loss Secrets in High Definition. During my rehab and recovery, I managed to edit it in iMovie and upload it to YouTube (in three parts). The book is humorous (in case the title didn't tip you off) and I hope I've captured that in my role as "Dr. K." Here's Part One:

Goin' Cyborg -- Martin Caidin Would Be Proud

2009-10-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

Call it the advent of the .04 Million Dollar Man. This October (when Friday the 13th fell on a Tuesday), I was rendered unconscious with a Michael Jackson Propofol cocktail, taken into a darkened room, and masked men sliced my right knee open like a hock of mutton. Joints split, ligaments sundered, bone sawn, they implanted a titanium device inside my living flesh, making me 6% less human and beginning my slow assimilation into the Borg.

Heck of a body piercing!

Physical therapy is daunting, but there's no way I'm going to fail to gain the total range of motion allowed by this thing. I still want to hike the John Muir Trail one of these days!

Hey, At Least He Didn't Throw His Shoes!

2009-09-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

Sure it was a breach of protocol to shout "You Lie!" at the President as he prevaricated in front of Congress, but I thought it was a great liberal trait to "speak truth to power". Is it no longer acceptable to Question Authority? And is it not rude of a guest of Congress to lie as boldly as Barack Hussein lied to their collective faces?

I say Joe Wilson has more guts in his larynx than the entire Republican minority has in its collective body.

This should have been the Republican response. It should be the response of the American People. Well said, Joe Wilson, well said.

Secrets of Weight-Loss Revealed!

2009-08-24T01:22:00.000-07:00

Just uploaded my latest book to KoPubCo. It's a parody -- a first for me -- of weight-loss books: Dr. K's Sure-Fire Instant Weight-Loss Secrets. Check it out at http://www.kopubco.com/secrets_pb.html. If it sells well, I plan to write and publish short humor books on other topical subjects. Remember, laughter burns 78 calories an hour!

An Agorist Primer Available in PDF!

2009-07-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

In response to numerous calls within the agorist movement to create a pirate Acrobat PDF edition of the KoPubCo hardback of Samuel Edward Konkin III's classic introduction to Counter-Economics, An Agorist Primer, KoPubCo has decided to undercut those attempts by releasing the free, authorized PDF of the complete book, available here. The PDF is created directly from the original InDesign proof of the hardback and is thus the authentic, correct, and complete electronic version. It looks great, prints out cleanly, and the primary link to use is below. Accept no substitutes!

Use this link and image source in your own blogs and web pages:

<div style="width: 96px">
<a href="http://www.kopubco.com/pdf/An_Agorist_Primer_by_SEK3.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><img style="border: 1px solid; border-color: black; width: 96px; height: 143px;" src="http://www.kopubco.com/images/aap_96.jpg" alt="An Agorist Primer cover" title="An Agorist Primer PDF" /><br>
<p style="text-align: center; font-size: 10px; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;">
<i>An Agorist Primer</i><br>
by SEK3 <br> <i>FREE PDF!</i></a>
</p>
</div>

An Argument for Glass Ceilings in Politics?

2009-05-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

The Weirz on Video!

2009-05-14T16:42:00.001-07:00

Just found -- the best song by the greatest band you've never heard of! From over 3 decades ago, playing Jupiter Moon, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: Estelle, Cathy, Pixie, Theresa, Maria, Joanie, Larry, Tom, and Mikey: The Weirz!

Is Bea Arthur also Jane Ross?

2009-05-02T20:19:00.000-07:00

Bea Arthur is dead. OK, I can accept that, though I hesitate to say that when I was 15 I had a slight thing for Maude. Can't explain it, but I recall that I responded to her regal self-confidence, snarky attitude, and... tallness. She'd have made a good Hera. So when other actors were interviewed about her death, Leonard Nimoy stated that he had met Bea when she had acted in an episode of Star Trek and that he remembered her as being a very nice person.

Huh? I didn't recall Maude traipsing around in the 23rd century! She was not listed in IMDB as having been on the series, so I searched the mighty Web and found an article by Joseph Stevenson at Answers.com that stated she'd acted as "Jane Ross" in Rocket Attack U.S.A. and Light Fantastic. Sure enough, IMDB states that Jane Ross was in both those movies and played Tamoon, Chekov's drill thrall, in Gamesters of Triskellion. Rushing to my complete set of pre-remastering Star Trek DVDs, I fast-forwarded to the scene where Tamoon enters Chekov's cell and talks to him.

Chekov's reaction was similar to mine (I remember the same feeling from 40 years ago: is that a chick or a dude?). Watching the scene, I noticed that her voice was even deeper, as if it had been processed or she was trying to sound weird. However, some words sounded distinctly Arthurian in their inflection. In addition, her chin and earlobes matched photos of Bea Arthur. Jane Ross's nose, though, seemed sharper in certain angles than Bea Arthur's, though I only had more recent photos of Bea by which to judge (age adds cartilage to the nose). Bea Arthur is 5'9" and Walter Koenig is 5'6", yet Tamoon appears to be shorter than Chekov in the scene (he might have been standing on an apple crate). In this photo, she appears to be shorter, but she's in flats and he's in boots and she's standing further back than he. Nichelle Nichols is 5'5" and seems to be about Tamoon's height in this phot o, but she's in her Starfleet uniform, which included very sexy high-heeled boots. (Now if you want to talk about major things, I definitely had one for Lt. Uhura!)

It's important to note that IMDB is usually very good about attributing pseudonyms to actors. If Bea Arthur were widely known to be "Jane Ross", she would have been noted in her Bea Arthur listing as having been in that episode "(as Jane Ross)". However, the Bea Arthur and Jane Ross entries are not correlated in any way. In addition, there is a date of death for Jane Ross of 6/27/85. And she's listed as being born 10 years later than Bea. Interestingly, Golden Girls premiered in 1985, so Jane Ross's date of death could be an inside joke (i.e., no need for her now that Bea had a second hit series).

So what's the story? Was Leonard Nimoy misremembering Jane Ross as being Bea Arthur? Was Answers.com mistaken? Bea Arthur denied being in Star Trek in 2001. Was she lying to protect her opinion of her reputation? I haven't been able to locate the two old movies to see if Jane Ross (sans thrall makeup) looks and sounds like Bea Arthur circa 1960-ish. I found a copy of Rocket Attack U.S.A. on eBay, but the postage from Australia is prohibitive. So until a local copy is available, the mystery continues...

New Books from KoPubCo

2008-12-17T22:35:00.000-08:00

Narrowly in time for Christmas (and well ahead of Russian Christmas!), two new books from KoPubCo: the libertarian classic An Agorist Primer and the children's novelette The Legend of Anarcho Claus.

Told with clear and concise prose, An Agorist Primer is exactly that — a primer on all the important aspects of Agorism and Counter-Economics: how they work together to enable you to free yourself and expand freedom to your friends, family, and the world!

Samuel Edward Konkin III wrote An Agorist Primer in 1986. A small number of Xerox copies were circulated to investors in the hope that they would finance the publication of a high-quality, hardcover edition. Though some money was raised, it proved insufficient to produce the book. Even though the photocopies bore text reading “First Edition”, it was meant to refer to the proposed hardback edition. This, then — the book now available in hardcover from KoPubCo — is the true first edition as SEK3 intended it.

And just for fun, there's The Legend of Anarcho Claus. Sam always loved Christmas. In both Christmas issues of New Libertarian Weekly, he wrote installments of the secret story of Santa’s rebel agorist son, Anarcho, who brings counter-economic toys to non-coercive girls and boys. I expanded the story into a full-length children's book that I hope will become a Christmas classic.

Order copies now and get 20% off! More important, sales of these books will fund the publication of SEK3's unfinished magnum opus, the appropriately titled CounterEconomics. It will be quite an effort to take the book from typewritten manuscript to published book, first because it was indeed left undone at the time of Sam's death in 2004, and second because it contained very topical examinations of late 1970s/early 1980s events that supported his counter-economic theories. More on that as it develops.

Mr. Science Fiction

2008-12-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

Forry Ackerman died Thursday, having heroically made it to his 92nd birthday Nov. 24th, despite pneumonia and congestive heart failure for which he had been hospitalized a few weeks before. I'll miss him. One of the first magazines I'd ever purchased with my own money was Famous Monsters #27, March, 1964, the one with the Cyclops on the cover (yes, I still have it -- it's one of my prized possessions).

I met Forry many times over the years, beginning in the mid 1970s at science-fiction conventions in Los Angeles. He was always the most joyous and polite of men (and that's saying a lot in fandom!), and when my daughter Vanessa was old enough to show up with me, he doted upon her like a loving grandfather. In the 1980s, I found out that he hosted Saturday tours of his Ackermansion and Vanessa and I made several pilgrimages to that sacred place.

Forry has been disparaged by many fans for somehow sullying science fiction with his childlike enthusiasm and his coining of the term "sci-fi". I -- and anyone who ever leapt with joy at the arrival of a copy of FM or Spacemen -- declare otherwise. He did more to bring science-fiction to popularity than nearly anyone else. Without Forry, would there have been a Steven Spielberg or a George Lucas? Early influence is everything in human development, and Forry caught us all as kids, at our most malleable.

His influence on generations will not be adequately gauged until decades from now. He has inspired innumerable people to enter the arts and sciences. He helped to build the future he wanted to see.

As an atheist, he did not think he would "go" anywhere when he died. Many hope he's wrong, and that somewhere he and Wendy can hang out with Bela and Boris and all the citizens of the ImagiNation. Mi amas vin Kvari.

RINOs Lose Big -- Conservatives Poised to Regain GOP

2008-11-04T22:32:00.000-08:00

John McCain's people may try to blame their embarrassing loss on Sarah Palin, but her nomination is all that kept the GOP from losing every single electoral vote. The utter failure of McCain proves the futility of reaching across the aisle. Being a "low-tax liberal" didn't work Ed Crane and it didn't work for McCain. The RINOs are in full retreat and will no doubt now re-register as Democrats to be part of the winning team again.

Here's hoping that flint-hearted, uncompassionate conservatives regain control of the party and run someone who would rather win the war and win the presidency.

The good news is that now all talk of America being a racist country will and must cease. Barack Hussein Obama, President-elect, has put the lie to that century-old canard. We look forward to the disbanding of all race-focused organizations and all race-based quotas and criteria now that the final frontier has been conquered. Affirmative action has achieved the highest possible prize and is no longer needed -- America no longer sees color, and no longer needs to. Their considerable energies can now be focused on the most important goal for America -- a return to the Moon and the settlement of Mars and beyond (OK, that was my audacious hope talking).

Let's get behind our new President and keep him focused on America.

Remember -- if you voted, you can't complain!

Palin To Pursue Schwing Vote

2008-08-29T09:02:00.000-07:00

"Why, Madam Vice President, with your glasses off and your hair down, you're..."

I think Palin is a great choice for McCain. Can't be attacked for inexperience when the Democrats have the same problem with their presidential choice. Palin's solid conservative positions force feminists to admit that they don't support women in politics per se, and will vote for an all-male ticket over a male/female ticket if the woman is not a socialist.

McCain just made the race extremely interesting. Noses around the country are no doubt being un-pinched as we speak.

A Handshake Away from Clark Rockefeller?

2008-08-09T19:47:00.000-07:00

OK, so I'm watching Geraldo At Large and he's talking about how the erstwhile Christian Gerhartsreiter became Christopher Chichester and lived in San Marino with John and Linda Sohus. When they vanished, he told people that they were spies on a mission to Paris and even (allegedly) sent postcards in their names to people in the US from Paris as part of the coverup. Then he vanished to become Clark Rockefeller in Boston.

Geraldo waves around some postcards and we see images of them on the screen. One of them is clearly addressed to Lydia Marano at Dangerous Visions bookstore!

Apparently, according to the Boston Herald (Herald, Geraldo? Hmm...), Lydia said that Linda Sohus worked at DV for 3 years then just one day never showed up again. Linda allegedly sent the postcard to Lydia from Paris. Lydia turned it over to cops in the hope that perhaps Gerhartsreiter's DNA might be on the stamp.

Eerie. Seeing Lydia's name on TV felt like being told that an acquaintance of yours is embroiled in an tangled web of murder and false identities. Wait... she is!

Shameless Capitalistic Promotion, Pt. 1

2008-07-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

OK, I have to use this blog once in a while to tout what I've been doing. I've got a growing collection of really snarky, transgressional, anti-liberal bumper stickers, T-shirts, and miscellaneous stuff at Triplanetary Traders. To the left is an example. Click on it or on the link below and you'll be taken there at the speed of light!

Drill Our Way Out? Yes We Can! (Uses the positive attitude of liberals to attack one of their "No We Can't" rants.)

The Great Autograph Slaughter

2008-07-25T12:04:00.000-07:00

Autograph hunting can be a deadly business...

I was responsible for two deaths in the Tolkien family, which led to the rumor that refusing an autograph request from me can be fatal. I had a copy of Smith of Wooten Major that I thought I'd send to Tolkien for an autograph. This was in 1971. Months passed and I received the book back with a note from his agent saying that Mr. Tolkien was not signing anything right now because his wife had just passed away. I understood. So I waited a year or so, and then sent the book to him again. This time it came back with a note from his agent regretfully informing me that the book was being returned unsigned because Mr. Tolkien had, sadly, passed away.

Yikes! That's one book I'm wrapping in lead and never sending anywhere again.

Something similar happened to me and Rod Serling. I met him at a speech he gave at West Valley College in the 1973 or '74 (where I also first met Ray Bradbury, Buckminster Fuller, and Arthur C. Clarke!). I asked him for an autograph and he said in that great voice of his, "I'm sorry, I don't sign autographs."

A year or so later.... dead.

So it's unwise to refuse me an autograph or even to tarry in responding to the request....

The Plame Truth

2008-07-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

I just heard Bill Handel's interview with Valerie Plame in which she touts her new novel-- er, biography -- and claims that "99% of what the CIA redacted" from her book "had nothing to do with national security."

Gee, I thought everything she did was super-secret spy stuff. Could it logically follow that just maybe her ultra-clandestine mega-spy desk-jockey identity in reality actually "had nothing to do with national security"?

Move a Mountain? Start With a Seed...

2008-07-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

OK, however you may feel about religion, someone has come up with an Internet test of faith: mustardseedchallenge.com. A webcam is trained on a mustard seed and the goal is -- by faith alone -- to move the mustard seed from the left side to the right.

I am assuming this is a sincere experiment and that the seed is not glued down...

Hey, Geroge Noory, time to get your remote viewers and psychokinetic experts in there to nudge it!

Remember Heinlein's observation:

"If you pray hard enough, you can make water run uphill. How hard? Why, hard enough to make water run uphill, of course! [Expanded Universe]

Rush Limbaugh Plagiarizes KomanSense?

2008-06-10T15:04:00.000-07:00

Or do great minds simply think alike? On May 20th, I wrote my observation that "Barack Hussein is running for Jimmy Carter's second term, right down to promising to screw things up again with Iran." The very next day, May 21st, Rush Limbaugh observed that "It's going to be Jimmy Carter's second term. They don't care about ruining the country. We're running against people who want doom and gloom to happen."

He replayed that clip today when he noted that John McCain used the same line on MSNBC's Nightly News: "Senator Obama says that I'm running for Bush's third term. It seems to me he's running for Jimmy Carter's second."

So did McCain plagiarize Limbaugh... or me? I don't care -- a good joke deserves a wide audience!

Green: It's the New Red!

2008-05-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

Vaclav Klaus , Czech Republic president, has finally torn the mask off the environmental movement by pointing out that neo-communists have merely replaced "the environment" for "the proletariat" as the reason for our enslavement. As someone who grew up under Communism, he's hip to all their lingo, and the semantic equivalents he draws are enlightening indeed.

The ecology movement has always been a haven for leftists, so it's no surprise that their relentless quest for power over the lives of all has taken up this new Inquisition ("Are you using CFLs, unbeliever? What is your carbon footprint, knave?").

Do we now need to inquire if there are environmentalists in the State Department? Will the Neo-Coms be unopposed in their goal to establish a Dictatorship of the Climatologists?

Stay tuned.

The Great Continuation

2008-05-20T09:14:00.001-07:00

OK, so McCain is running for Bush's third term (or The Bush Dynasty's fourth term) and Hillary is running for the Clinton third term. From the sound of it, Barack Hussein is running for Jimmy Carter's second term, right down to promising to screw things up again with Iran.