KomanSense

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.

Mr. Peterson for President?

2008-05-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

I've finally figured it out. That whiny, wimpy voice... John McCain reminds me of John Fiedler, the character actor who played wimpy, whiny, but sometimes angry and psychotically violent little men. He was the shy Mr. Peterson on The Bob Newhart Show and Juror #2 in 12 Angry Men. He was also Cadet Alfie Higgins in Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. It's unlikely, however, that President McCain will get America as close to outer space as Cadet Higgins did.

Lamest Choices Since Carter/Ford

2008-05-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

As much as anyone talks about 2008 being 1968, it's more like 1976. And our choices appear to be amongst Tweedledumb, Tweedledumber, and The Red Queen.

The Unspoken Assumption

2008-04-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

What I find most disturbing about B.O.'s pronouncement (and subsequent, dissembling attempts at explanation) that small-town Americans cling to guns and religion because they're frustrated with government is the implication (not noted by any pundits I've heard since) that if people were pleased with government they would gleefully surrender their guns and abandon their religion.

What does that tell you about how Obama views the power, seductiveness, and overwhelming allure of The State?

Perspective Inversion in Obama-Rama

2008-04-14T18:40:00.000-07:00

Senator Barack H. Obama spoke about how small-town folk cling to certain attitudes out of bitterness. Switching on the old tu quoque machine, let's see if we can come up with a parallel observation...

“You go into these big cities in California and, like a lot of big cities in Europe, Communism has been gone now for 16 years. And it’s not surprising, then, that they get bitter, they cling to victim disarmament or Big Government or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-citizen sentiment or anti-business sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

How many liberals do you know that fit this description?

The Chavez Doctrine

2008-03-05T11:57:00.000-08:00

So let me get this straight. Hugo Chavez is poised to invade Colombia -- a country that has not attacked Venezuela -- because of Colombia's attack on a FARC compound in Ecuador? I thought invading a country that has not attacked yours was the province of Hugo's personal El Diablo, George Bush. Perhaps Hugo is proposing a Chavez Doctrine of preemptive war?

10th Anniversary of... Nuthin'?

2008-01-15T21:20:00.000-08:00

OK, I know I promised in 2005 to be more... consistent with postings on this blog and then I promptly slacked off. Not good for a writer. I get e-mails from fans asking "Where's the next Captain Anger?" "Will there ever be Book Two of The High Pilgrimage?" "Why is there no KoPubCo edition of Death's Dimensions?" and the ubiquitous "Didn't you used to be a writer?"

I've got tonnes of excuses, but to enumerate them would be whining. I've not produced a new novel since 1998 (Millennium: Weeds, which was only published in German and Japanese)(and Captain Anger: The Microbotic Menace was published in 1999, but written earlier). So I guess 2008 is my tenth anniversary of writer's block.

The good news is, I'm weaning myself off of self-pity and am outlining a new novel, as well as working on new publications for KoPubCo. Progress is slow because of... well, that would be whining, wouldn't it?

As time goes by, I'll probably reveal some of what's going on in my life, but I've never been one for the public confessional, so expect a lot of elliptical evasiveness.

2007-12-18T13:49:00.000-08:00

Sorry — I just wanted to see this:

Rosie-Not-So-Riveting

2007-03-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

The View has its value -- it allows us to see the insane, hateful face of those who would deliver us to the enemy. ABC.com only allows 500 character e-mails, so mine was necessarily brief and far softer in its demand than I could have written:

Rosie has gone too far. She is aggressively defending a murderous terrorist and implying that he -- who granted no mercy to the 3000 dead on 9/11 -- is the VICTIM of American justice rather than the proper recipient of it. Her words go far beyond entertainment or commentary. She is a conscious apologist for an enemy who would not hesitate to kill us all, and I will boycott Disney until she publicly and SINCERELY apologizes for her hateful, traitorous support of the enemy of all that is decent.

Does she really think that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will love her for defending him and refrain even for an instant from slaughtering her and her family along with the rest of us if he could? Does she think radical muslims would be tolerant of her and her lifestyle out of gratitude for her betraying and denouncing her fellow countrymen?

Don't liberals get it that someone who would plot to kill Jimmy Carter -- a recently professed opponent of Israel -- doesn't care what positions infidels take? They merely consider her one of what Lenin called the "useful idiots."

Tom Selene -- In the Arms of Eris

2007-03-11T18:30:00.000-07:00

This is getting depressing, writing about friends who have died. I'd been wondering about former AnarchoVillage inhabitant Tom Selene, on whom I'd based a character in my novel The Jehovah Contract. I tried ZabaSearch, but that turned up nothing (not surprising, when trying to find an anarchist). I Googled his name and found this mention of him from Rancho Todos Santos, which mentions that he passed into the waiting arms of Eris, goddess of Chaos, on June 26th, 2006.

Tom was a valuable source of information about pharmaceuticals and the Ordo Templi Orientis. In fact (if I recall correctly), it was through Tom that I first met my friends in the OTO (Lon DuQuette, et al.)

He was a colorful figure, full of joy and life, and once told me that when he worked as a perfusionist, he had the opportunity to hold a living human heart in his hands and felt the true magnificence of Life.

"Unto them from whose eyes the veil of life hath fallen may there be granted the accomplishment of their true Wills; whether they will absorption in the Infinite, or to be united with their chosen and preferred, or to be in contemplation, or to be at peace, or to achieve the labour and heroism of incarnation on this planet or another, or in any Star, or aught else, unto them may there be granted the accomplishment of their wills; yea, the accomplishment of their wills. AUMGN. AUMGN. AUMGN."

So mote it be.

Gross Gems -- Funny Forgotten Films

2007-02-25T12:48:00.000-08:00

If you view my Blogger profile, you'll see a couple of Favorite Movies listed of which you have never heard: Tarzini of the Garbanzo and Mission: Imbroglio. You won't find them listed on IMDB and (until my profile) a Google search would turn up nothing (Tarzini) or coincidental couplings of the two words "mission" and "imbroglio" (although there seems to be a foreign film trailer of that name).

The two films -- and several others -- were the creation of a "studio" called Gross Gems. What was Gross Gems? In the late 1960s/early 1970s, a bunch of high-school guys in the Los Gatos-Saratoga area (one-horse towns back then, but now "wealthy suburbs of Silicon Valley") somehow got hold of a 16mm camera and proceeded to create a handful of one-reelers that spoofed the culture of the times. While I remember Tarzini (a great take-off on every Tarzan film ever made) and Imbroglio (a dead-on satire of Mission: Impossible that predated anything the Abrahams/Zucker trio ever did), they also created Utter Confusion, Jet Car, Golfer, Scramble, and more. I had seen some of the films at our high school (I think) and then, most memorably (since I kept the program book) at Villa Montalvo, a ritzy arboretum in Saratoga.

I remember the night well (or do I? Time may have played with my memories). It was my first date with Terry Sicular, and my dad drove us there. I had overcome my shyness to ask her out because I suspected she would appreciate their wicked humor. I must have been a good judge of intelligence, because I Googled her name recently and discovered that Dr. Terry Sicular is a globe-trotting economist at the University of Western Ontario! She's written tonnes of articles about China.

The show consisted of the Gross Gems films interspersed with "Gross-Outs" -- short blackout skits with titles such as "Snake-Charmer Gross-Out" and "Rod McKurihanihanO'Clancy Gross-Out". I recall them being amusing-to-hilarious and alternating very well with the films.

(After the show was over, I tried calling my parents to pick us up, but the phone was busy -- this was long before call-waiting. So the curator of the arboretum drove us down the hill to the gate, racing at breakneck speed and honking loudly at every curve. Terry and I looked at each other as if we might become a headline in the Los Gatos Times-Observer about the fatal dangers of the Montalvo access road.)

But I digress.

The producer/writer/actor was Rick Harper; Doug Harrison played piano, acted, and did some soundtrack work; Sandy Stotzer wrote and acted; Don Langston wrote and acted; Peder Jorgensen provided production assistance; Roger Pease, also PA; Don Stewart and Lane Parker were PA's; Roquefort the Lizard engaged in Public Relations and The Ape (see photo above) provided backstage noise.

My favorite line from Mission: Imbroglio was from the opening scene in which the Jim Phelps-type is receiving his orders from the tape recorder, which reminds him that "...if you or any of your IM force is caught or killed, the secretary will miss you guys around the office."

I just wanted it on the record that the Gross Gems films ought to be resurrected, digitally restored, and made available to the world. They were that funny.

The Triumph of Feminism

2006-10-20T21:28:00.000-07:00

Well, here's I post I didn't realize was sitting around for months, so here it is a little belatedly, but just as timely...

Tammy Skinner, of Suffolk, Virginia, killed her own child by shooting herself in the abdomen as she went into labor. Just as with partial-birth abortion, a fully formed and indisputably viable baby died. This, despite the fact that she could have surrendered the child minutes after birth to a hospital or firehouse. She stood trial and was acquitted. I'm sure feminists would hail this as a victory for the constitutionally protected act of Woman's Choice. What a woman. What a choice.

As I portrayed in my novel Solomon's Knife, the pro-abortion/anti-abortion dichotomy can be resolved if we break down the act into a four-way choice:

keep the fetus in the woman (normal birth)
kill and expel the fetus (abortion)
expel the fetus without killing it (abandonment)
transfer the fetus from one woman to another (transoption)

I believe that a woman has the right to terminate her pregnancy, but not to kill the fetus, which is a genetically distinct human being from conception onward. Once you separate out terminating the pregnancy from terminating the fetus, you see that the abortion camps can be divided four ways:

People who would force a woman to continue her pregnancy to birth
People who demand the death of the fetus
People who would condone a pregnancy termination if it didn't kill the fetus
People who would accept letting the fetus live if they could freely terminate the pregnancy

It is obviously the last two groups that I think would embrace transoption (and I think constitute the majority of Americans) and the first two groups that I consider enslavers and murderers respectively.

KoPubCo gets noticed!

2006-04-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

The source for all my novels, as well as back issues of New Libertarian, has been very kindly mentioned by 2006 Chauntecleer Award-winner Wally Conger's Out of Step site and also in Freemanic's blog and Brad Spangler's.

I'm actually getting orders, too!

Licence Reviewed -- The 007 Replay

2006-01-30T20:45:00.000-08:00

I bought the complete James Bond DVD collection a few months ago and for 2006 have decided to view them in order, one every Friday night, for the next half year. I started, of course, with Dr. No. It holds up very well. I remember seeing it as a kid in our town's single theater. Nothing could be more of a religious experience than seeing Ursula Andress rise from the Jamaican waters. There's a certain claustrophic feel to the nuclear core scene that later films, with larger budgets and sets, did not possess.

I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the films, especially my favorites, such as Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice. I'll keep you informed of any insights I might have with a 40-year retrospective.

Yeah, More Resolutions

2005-12-31T23:48:00.000-08:00

OK, I'll slip in some resolutions at the end of 2005.

1. More postings. I've been remiss, I know. I've got some topics I want to cover, such as: Words Conservatives Should Never Ever Use Again and Can Intelligent Design Explain My Knees?

2. The return of KoPubCo. Koman Publishing has been acquired by The Triplanetary Corporation, a California company. With that acquisition comes a new direction: KoPubCo will bring back the currently out of print works of yours truly, as well as a new line of historical adventures for children. More on that in 2006...

3. More new writing. Look for a new Captain Anger and an updated Kings of the High Frontier.

4. Less clutter: look for lots of stuff for sale on eBay, dealer name TriplanetaryTrader.

All my best wishes for a Happy New Year!

Tookie's Last Chapter

2005-11-28T18:48:00.000-08:00

A lot has been made of quadruple murderer Tookie Williams and the children's books he has written. The implication (without any proof) is that his books may have warned a few kids away from joining gangs (such as the Crips, the gang he founded and recruited thousands of kids to join).

The idea that a few good works late in life can undo the fact of four murders (a fact never successfully challenged in 25 years of appeals) undercuts the powerful lesson sent by carrying out the death penalty: that some crimes are unforgivable. In fact, if Tookie -- who shot four people to death based on their race -- is the writer he claims to be, then he should realize that the best final chapter he could write is the one that ends with him walking to San Quentin's Comfy Chair of Oblivion, whimpering like a coward, begging for mercy.

It's what the priest in old crime movies tells the death-row inmate: his remorseful death will do more to show the kids where a life of crime leads than any number of colorful kid's books.

Asking for clemency is neither dramatic nor artistically satisfying (if your intention is to convince kids not to join gangs -- unless Tookie's insincere about that, too). And being granted clemency (especially while refusing to admit to the crime or showing any remorse -- a requirement for clemency) creates a final chapter that tells kids that mass murder is no big deal -- you can do it, refuse to admit you did it, and walk free with a Nobel Prize nomination under your belt, have an Oscar winner portray you on TV, and be the darling of the intelligentsia forevermore.

Sorry, Tookie. You're a killer four times over. Your children's books are as unconvincing a sign of your rehabilitation as finding Jesus is for other imprisoned fiends. And asking for clemency makes you a lousy writer with an abysmal sense of narrative logic.

Bad writer! Die, die!