Doc Armstrong Versus Thor!

It's another new Slumgullion, and this episode we're joined by Writer-Director-Actor-Author-Human-Hyphen Larry Blamire (Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, Dark and Stormy Night) to talk about his two-fisted pulp novel, Doc Armstrong: Suburb on the Edge of Never, which has recently been awarded a coveted Third Fist by the National Association of Pulp Manufacturers' Sub-Committee on Fist Metrics.

We also chat about Larry's graphic novel series, Steam Wars, his book of Western horror stories, Tales of the Callamo Mountains, and its upcoming sequel, and his three alternate universe dictionaries, Larry Blamire's Blammary: Terms You May Not Know: With Unrelated Illustrations #1, #2, and #3.

Also, a whole lot of goofy stuff, and even a few tough, probing, thoughtful questions, but the answers are hard to understand, because everybody's eating scones.

Then we make a seamless transition to the Unknown Movie Challenge, as the New Movie Crew has its legally binding say on Thor: Ragnarok. Oh, and we murder Tinkerbell. Sorry about that.


Also available on Stitcher and iTunes

Adopt a Minx!

So there's this thing I've never heard of called "Stiff Man Syndrome". I don't know what it is, but like everything else in my life it immediately became a source of anxiety and made me wonder, if not actually worry, whether I'm Man enough or Stiff enough. And "Syndrome" reminds me of "Thunderdome", so now I'm thinking it's one of those things were Two Stiff Men Go In, One Stiff Man Comes Out, and I'll probably be the jerk left behind for the Zamboni driver to sweep up. Assuming Thunderdome death-matches are held on ice, which I assume they are, because the cold would explain the stiffness.

However, if you're not a man, but you're still stiff -- I mean chronically, catastrophically stiff, like, just had a staring contest with Medusa stiff -- then you may have the rare neurological disease that is now known as "Stiff Person's Syndrome", because Feminism, or maybe just because everyone expects doctors to be able to sex their patients at a glance, like that guy at the chicken hatchery who peeps at bird vents and separates the pullets from the cockerels. I dunno...Maybe I'm expecting a lot, but as I always say -- and you can check the record on this; Snopes will back me up that I always say this, often two or three times on a first date -- that if a guy with a G.E.D. and a history of alcohol abuse can suss out poultry sex organs with a 90% success rate, than I can expect no less from my neurologist.

So anyway, it's a neuter disease now, stiffening men and women with equal disdain for pronouns. And yet, I think everyone who has Stiff Person's Syndrome will agree -- it's a bitch. (Take that, SJWs!) On of those people is our own The Minx.

If you've been hanging around these parts for any length of time you probably know The Minx, who shares a birthday with our own Bill S., and is owned by distinguished cat about town, ZoeLuna:

Please leave me out of this.

Before we go any further, I'm must first take a step that is anathema to me, yet unavoidable: I'm about to doxx the crap out of The Minx. I'm sorry, but ethics in gaming journalism demand it. Her real name is Nadine! (Attention: Whoever had "Nadine" in the office pool, please see Jesse in Accounts Payable, she has your free box of Zone Bars.)

Nadine is a deeply fine person, kind to humans and animals, a reference librarian who was forced to retire because libraries are biased against Stiff People and prefer employees who can make a fist. And she's facing a round of expensive treatment and could really use some assistance and a bed that isn't acting as an Airbnb for her roommate's bedbugs. Mary and I gave what we could, but we're both unemployed right now, so it was a minuscule amount (on the bright side, our donation did conclusively prove that the ha'penny is still considered legal tender).

Here's a brief newspaper article about Nadine, SPS, Life, the Universe and Everything.

After you give that a peek, please visit her Go Fund Me -- One in a Million Nadine -- and help if you can.

Thanks!

Operation Afreet is Afoot!

If you've been following the comments to Hank Parmer's latest post (a study of P-51 Dragon Fighter, which is, I daresay, a far more exhaustive review than the filmmakers ever expected to receive, and every bit as snarky as they deserve), then you've learned much about Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, a series of novellas which shares a superficial similarity to P-51 (dragons, witches, and other magical beasts doing their patriotic duty in World War II), and our friend Li'l Innocent's efforts to translate the tale into sequential art.

This part of Anderson's oeuvre was new to me, and I found the discussion fascinating; Li'l was kind enough to follow up with a little more background:

I found a scan of the 1950-something Fantasy & Science Fiction cover that Frank Kelly Freas did to illustrate Operation Afreet. It's almost abstract, and yet - in its ​SFish way - in the grand mid-century pinup tradition. There's no justification in Anderson's text for the lady's outfit! But I remember as a 12 year old grooving on the magazine, that the magical elements of the art fascinated me as much as the glamour aspects. Such a cool pictorial narrative teaser! 

I did a bit of research on Freas and was interested to learn that as a kid in his early 20s, he was an Army Air Force reconnaissance photographer in the Pacific Theater in WW2 -- and also painted pinups on bomber noses.

Anyway, I thought you and Hank might enjoy seeing this, in more ways than one!

Let me count the ways that I might enjoy this!  Mid-century pulp mag? Check! Busty, flame-haired, cat-suited sorceress with unnecessary spurs? Check! Actually, I better stop there...

I've dug out the presentation (book size) versions of my Operation Chaos pgs. Will take a bit o' scanning to reduce them to blog-postable jpgs. I'll let you know when they're on my Lady's Mantle blog.

Personally, I can't wait to see the images, and I'll post links as soon as they're up.

We Miss You, Doghouse

It was two years ago today (seems longer, yet seems like yesterday) that we lost Douglas Case, AKA Doghouse Riley, the best writer I've ever had the privilege to know (and I suspect I'm not the only one who feels that way). DR was a clear-eyed thinker and a devastating wit who neither took shit nor offered quarter to the professionally stupid; but though he played a curmudgeon on the Internet, he was in fact -- if occasionally in secret -- the most humane of men, guilty of many surreptitious acts of kindness. He was also modest to a fault, which is perhaps why he gave away his words to hoi polloi, rather than auctioning them per syllable to the highest bidder, and if he were still around to read this testimonial the first sentence alone would be enough to earn me a written reproach, of which "over-praising" would be the gentlest gerund I could hope for.

Since all we have left of him are his words, let's continue our tradition of reaching at random into our old comment threads and marveling anew at the pearls he strewed there.

On the occasion of Chris Vosburg's birthday: 

Happy Birthday, Chris. 

Also, Lyle Lovett turns 52, and Fernando Valenzuela started breathing through his eyelids 49 years ago. 

And 119 years ago today, Mississippi enacted a literacy test for voting, the beginning of the wildly popular regional “Grandfather clause” fad which would prevail for another 74 years. (Some people have Ann Coulter pics, I have Today in Institutionalized Racism entries.)

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At least this loser has the courage of her lunatic convictions 

And I’d agree with you, Jay B, if that courage extended to her actually facing actual evidence instead of making shit up. 

Sixty percent of the problem is it’s too fucking easy to be one of these people.

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Ya think Goober here refuses to eat fowl as a professional courtesy?

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Please, Scott, no more Dr. Mike. 

Hey, Joyce read the Police Gazette, van Gogh contemplated gobs of spittle on a wall, and Doug Giles is already up to 1997 in The Big Book of Pop Culture References. Genius has its prerogatives. 

Okay, questions: 

1. Can anyone tell me exactly when the Feminists took over the courts, and the centuries-old tradition of automatically awarding child custody to the father was reversed? 

2. Is there any political movement more pathetic than the thirty years of this Divorced Dads shit? “Hi, we have a legitimate concern, which we’d like to address by combining the worst possible features of Anti-fluoridationist rhetoric and Black Helicopter paranoia, worded as a snopes-worthy email, and all filtered through our blinding hatred of how that bitch spent so much of my money on clothes.” 

3. Dr. Mike used to be an atheist? Have we heard that one before, or is he tryin’ out some new material? 

4. Do you think it occurred to him that no professor would debate him because they’re smarter than the Christians he used to drag to his Level?

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Thanks so much; I love all you guys, and I’m honored to be the first non-Coulter birthday, I think. 

Also: Peetie Wheatstraw and Rebecca West. 

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Y’know, I sorta hate to see the War on Xmas business leaking steam; it’s given me my only Holiday traditions: 

1) Driving around my neck of the woods counting the number of churches, and private residences, displaying a creche, something which is so vitally important to to the Season when public land is involved. (This year was on par: one church, two houses, in a random search of a five-mile radius and a spot check of every local church in the phone book.) 

2) Noting when the issue comes up that the Nativity tale, with its seamy manipulation of text to correspond to the Hero saga, its clumsy, and shameful, historical inventions intended merely to get the Christ child to Bethlehem, which supposedly “fulfills” a “prophecy” of Isaiah that has nothing to do with it, and the dueling genealogies which suddenly turn matrilocal when necessary, ought to be spotted outright by any literate person post-Lord Raglan. It’s enough, really–too late for that now–to note that the historical facade was demolished in 1890 by Emil Schürer, the Protestant theologian and author of A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Christ, to such an extent that the book’s late-20th century revisers left that section intact and answered a hundred years’ worth of desperate attempts at rebuttal in the footnotes.

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Aw, jeez. The one Socialist you types would love to have an amiable discussion with, rather than hurling shit at long-range, and he’s already dead. Just can’t buy a break these days, can you?

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Interestin’, innit, that guys–and I use the term advisedly–like Matt and Dr. Mike Adams, Ph.D Doctor, who are so goddamn allergic to pushy dames takin’ over men’s work, nevertheless chose careers which can be boiled down to “Typist”? 

By the way, the Communications Director for Giuliani ’08 was Katie Levinson, who gives every appearance of being a woman. Which does raise the question of how one coordinated the communication of Giuliani policy–try to decide where the noun, the verb, and the three 9/11s were supposed to go?

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Funny, I was in Kindergarten in 1960, and I grew up trying to stick it into every woman I met, and I never made the connection. Sex, as I recall it, was something which seemed like an enormous amount of fun. Contraception was something which prevented pregnancy, was not nearly as much fun, and generally came in the form of a condom (which, I add solely for historical perspective, I was renowned among my early-teen, non-feticided peers for marching into the Hook’s Drugs and demanding of the lady pharmacist, though in those simpler times the pharmacist filled orders for her retailer employer without filtering them through her own moral system first). True, I have no idea what sort of contraception, if any, accompanied most of the thousands of tawdry, faceless, anonymous sexual acts I engaged in in the dorm rooms, motels, empty classrooms, alleyways, elevators, public parks, bridge abutments, cornfields, and fortuitously unlocked parked cars in and near my college campus, but the women I did bother to speak with afterwards were on the Pill about 50% of the time, and a lot had negative physical reactions; IUDs and diaphragms were trendy alternatives. Which, like all those Sheiks and Trojans that pockmarked my wallets, pretty much pre-date the ethical morass created by oral contraception by a century or centuries, you sick, sex-adverse fuck. Wonder what people were usin’ ‘em for all those years?

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On an article entitled "No More Terror in the Skies if Men Take Charge:

I see Gary managed to get into Western Michigan in 1969, while college deferments were still in effect, and ride out the draft. What a surprise.

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On a pro-male only military plea by R. Emmett Tyrrell entitled "The Male of the Species (American)"

Tyrrell’s own military record is spotty, as in “there’s a big empty spot in his bio where it would have occurred”, except for reports he was in Bloomington, Indiana, serving as wing-nutjob and vacuum-tube manufacturer Sarkes Tarzian’s buttboy. 

The verbiage bombardments apparently keep the flashbacks away. And/or the questions.

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The last person imprisoned for felonious consensual oral sex in Indiana, as I recall, was a heterosexual male who got a hummer from his ex, who then got mad at him for something and swore out a police report, after which she tried to recant but the authorities pursued it anyway, and the man did actual hard time, you should pardon the expression. 

Didn’t know about the puppet ban, actually, but I’m all for it; I had the same childhood reaction to the nasty little string danglers that other people have to clowns.

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Happy birthday, MaryC. Your earth-shattering birthday sex ’til dawn is in the mail.

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On a Pastor Swank column: 

His crook and liar cronies stand to right and left of his every move. 

I’m really not sure why Reality would be caught dead in Ol’ Glamorshots’ neighborhood, but for some reason this remind me that the first week of March, 1982, was about the point the list of Reagan administration indictments broke into double digits.

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The two things which probably have surprised me most over the course of my life are 1) the fact that crappy, intelligence-insulting advertising continues to sell crappy, intelligence-insulting products fifty years after television first irradiated the nation’s living rooms with it for eight hours plus per day; and 2) that right-wing/High Church apologetics still take off from the utterly fabulous and then start lying. (Which, by the way, is more delusional: armies of feminists “embittered” by every Palin speaking engagement, or Sarah Palin, happy hausfrau and political juggernaut?) It’s the same shit I used to get every morning on the editorial pages of Gene Pulliam’s Indianapolis Birch Society Morning News in the Sixties: perpetual outrage that one’s political opponents were always being disagreeable. 

As they worked to demonstrate that Anthony was indifferent on abortion, the Palin critics managed to conveniently skip over the other suffragettes and their writings in newspapers and letters. 

Oh, yeah. Just like all the people complaining about BP never mention that none of Shell’s platforms is gushing oil. Beyond the nominative, I mean.

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So far there’s been no organized protest against stopping at red lights and going on green. 

So, Farber’s never met any libertarians? Or is he just critiquing their organizational skills?

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Can you imagine someone, even a year or two ago, openly advocating Nazi racial policy as a paradigm for the U.S? 

Too young to remember the heyday of the National Review, aren’t you?

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Okay, again, since they never get it: unlettered appeals to “animal behavior” are definitely contraindicated if you’re trying to convince the world to keep its knees together. The whole of human sexualityscreams promiscuity: the lack of estrus, permanently inflated breasts, large testicle/body weight ratio, our close kinship with the chimpanzee. (The other apes have harems, by the way, not lifelong committed monogamous heterosexual relationships.) 

And, sorry, I missed the weekend discussion of Zombie Raquel Welch, because I was busy having sex (okay, so, ten minutes of sex, but it took 36 hours of pleading first), so may I just say, now,Raquel Welch was a sex symbol? In the era of Bardot, Deneuve, and Diana Rigg? Maybe to middle-aged drunks nostalgic for Jayne Mansfield. Raquel didn’t exude Sex; more like that plastic burning smell you get when you turn on an electric appliance for the first time.

Mrs. Peel? Really? Even without a head Jayne was way hotter. 

Dude, unless you really were middle-aged, we had very different childhoods, you and I.
And my point–or the one I was trying to make–was not that tastes don’t differ, but that Welch was about as “Sixties” as the girdle, the gin martini, and the flattop. Plastics, Ben. 

And she had racial issues, to boot. At least Jim Brown thought so, since he’s alleged to have asked her on lunch break during filming of 100 Rifles if she wouldn’t mind passing the salt, since it wasn’t black.
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Okay, I understand they’ve got a lot of nice artwork an’ stuff, but for the life of me I can’t understand the appeal of a religion which makes grown people fly off the handle about masturbation. 

The other thing I get no end of amusement from is the whole The Pill Caused the Sixties routine. And thanks for bringing up Eisnestadt; I remember what a big deal it was when women of my acquaintance could go to the college health center and get contraceptives. It’s curious that we still found reasons to engage in non-procreative sex before that.

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But there is an empty space next to the cards which tells another story that continues to grieve Jerry and his wife, Dayna. Over thirty years ago, Jerry and his then high school sweetheart, Dayna, chose to abort two of their children. 

Boy, there’s a love story for the goddam ages, huh? Let’s just make a little side bet here that the decision to terminate the pregnancywasn’t the mutual decision of two high school lovebirds, and that the empty place on the kitchen counter thirty years on is as ugly a little power play as could be imagined. “I love you, Snookums, and even though you murdered two of my children I hold myself almost as responsible for that blank space on my countertop shrine”. Any takers?

My own position has been, and remains, that I’ll be obligated to show concern for the politically-motivated professional mawkishness some time after those people have demonstrated genuine concern for the well-being of every unwanted infant born on the planet. 

Don’t expect to get called on that anytime soon, say, this lifetime. 

In the meantime, the fact that you, or any other average human has enough brain capacity to imagine some set of circumstances other than what he experienced, the language to communicate those imaginings, and the self-assurance to insist to others that he “knows” what is or isn’t possible I chalk up to an accident of human evolution and our apparent temporal proximity; it doesn’t compel me any more than your writing science fiction, or a cookbook, obligates me to sample it.

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On Sheri's return to blogging:

God, darlin’, I’ve missed you. This is like one of those family reunions I go to every…okay, I never go to family reunions.

 On idiot who wrote article she was making gentle fun of:

I am not an economist; I am not a survival expert; I am not a firearms expert; I am not an attorney; I am not a physician. In fact, I am not an expert in anything! 

Oh, sir; blathering on about survivalism as though you were Annie Jacobsen after an in-flight viewing of Mad Max is not nothing. Although it should be. 

Interesting, in a “non-expert demonstrating his insufficient grasp” sort of way, that the only proficiency you recommend is organized by caliber. 

Because, assuming you survive the Hoped-For Apocalypse with something to defend, how long, ya think, before you’re defending it from people who are even better armed and more proficient? It’sAmerica, dude; people like you have been helping arm every last jumpy loner to the teeth for the past fifty years. Freedom! (And thanks. A lot.) 

Second, how difficult is it to find anyplace in the continental US that’s more than a mile and a half from a road? National parks and nature preserves, maybe, and they’re going to be filled with idiots who learned survival techniques from a guy who read a pamphlet and projected his fears of Negro buttrape onto his RenewAmerica column. Plus they’ll be armed. Heavily. Did I thank you for that? 

Look, I understand the backwoods Baptist inclination is to hunker down in small groups headed by some cracked Big Daddy, and dream of being called on to repopulate the earth. And that’s every day, not just in emergencies. But, please, just try to avoid the temptation to give other people advice. And while we’re at it, don’t buy (indifferently treated and flimsily-packaged) bottled fucking water as an emergency supply.

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chimpanzify 

They really can’t help themselves, can they?

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“My name is Dawn Stefanowicz. I grew up in a homosexual household during the 1960s and 1970s in Toronto exposed to many different people, the Gay-Lesbian- Bisexual-Transgendered (GLBT) subcultures, and explicit sexual practices…. 

I was at high risk of exposure to contagious STDs due to sexual molestation, my father’s high-risk sexual behaviors, and multiple partners…. 

I was outraged at the incidences of same-sex domestic abuse, sexual advances toward minors and loss of sexual partners as if people were only commodities. I sought comfort looking for my father’s love from boyfriends starting at 12 years old. 

From a young age, I was exposed to explicit sexual speech, self-indulgent lifestyles, varied GLBT subcultures and gay vacation spots. Sex looked gratuitous to me as a child. I was exposed to all-inclusive manifestations of sexuality including bathhouse sex, cross-dressing, sodomy, pornography, gay nudity, lesbianism, bisexuality, minor recruitment, voyeurism and exhibitionism. 

Sado-masochism was alluded to and aspects demonstrated. Alcohol and drugs were often contributing factors to lower inhibitions in my father’s relationships.” 

I guess it’s lucky for Dawn’s audience that she seems to have been exposed to the whole damned megillah of perversion, the better to warn the entire potential book-buying audience. It’s a lot like the incredible good fortune that every believer in reincarnation with a story to sell used to be Caesar, or Cleopatra, or a Crusader, some historical figure vaguely known to a wide range of semi-literates, and not James Gadsden, or Robert Cooper Grier, or the guy who blocked Diana Durbin’s father’s hats.

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On Orly Taitz:

I hope he wants his daughter and his future granchildren to live in a constitutional Republic, not tyranny that we are seing today. 

Leaving aside the question of how one gets two professional licenses in California while exhibiting the writing skills of an eighth grader–and not a particularly bright eight grader–it’s amusing to note the diffusion of wingnut vocabulary (“This is a Republic, not a democracy!”), which for forty years has meant “Tough shit if the public doesn’t agree with the Retro-Dixiecrat/Mineral Rights West stranglehold on the Senate; you get another chance next election day”, and now gets contrasted with “tyranny” and without irony. Even if it is filtered by a woman who’s illiterate in five languages.

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Y’know, my feeling has always been that if you’re going to live in the 3rd century C.E. you ought to address your arguments to the 3rd century C.E., and leave all questions which have arisen since the invention of the microscope to the people who don’t.
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Well, you gotta love a measured, even complimentary response from a guy who apparently googles himself so often he got to my favorite blog before I did. 

So, back at ya, Russ J. Thanks for all the laffs. Can’t say I won’t miss all the kindnesses the Right has provided these many years. But I did want to mention, before things get ugly, that “Tea Parties”, in word nor deed, don’t raise my blood pressure. Y’all are more like seventy-two car alarms going off at once in the Wal*Mart parking lot: par for the course, self-defeating, and inaudible once you get used to it, I suppose, except I can’t see any reason to get within two miles of the place, myself.

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 Rest in Peace, Doghouse, you've earned it. But boy could we use you now more than ever.

Happy Birthday, Bill S! And the Minx!

Hey guys, it's Mary here. Like that bossy voice from The Outer Limits, I'm seizing control of our traditional March 15th menage à deux in honor of beloved Crappers Bill S. (legally known for the next 24 hours as Bill S!) and The Minx, because this year's theme is all about food! (Okay, in the vein of Bill O'Reilly, it's actually about pictures of food...)  But we've spared no expense, bringing you lavish spreads for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Dessert.

Also, since your birthday is right after Pi Day, I've decided to make some kind of pie for every meal! No need to thank me, or blame me, it's just what I do.

And remember: it's your party, and you can cry if you want to, and you probably will, once you see the menu...

Breakfast

Here you go! The Breakfast of Champions! (Okay, fine, maybe not sports champions...I can't really see anyone celebrating a Super Bowl or a World Series win with this particular dish, but definitely, like, Regional Spelling Bee Champions, or maybe...I don't know...Champion Spark Plugs.)  Made with "double rich Carnation", it's sure to clog your arteries and help you cut down on those pesky birthdays.

Lunch

What's that? You didn't have enough eggs with your Breakfast Pie? Have no fear, Creamed Egg Pie is here! And with its corned beef crust, it's a natural for those birthdays that fall in the middle of March, since this really does kind of does look like the stuff you see (and have to step over) on the sidewalk outside your local sports bar on St. Patrick's Day.

Dinner

Lobster Tails and Champagne Cocktails? Who needs 'em?! Not when you have your very own Whole Fish Pie!  It all looks so good, I don't know where to start! Maybe for the exit...!

And now, for your extra special Birthday Dessert

Butterscotch Pudding Pie! Finally, that horrible tasting hard candy is now a horrible tasting, gelatinous dessert. Blow out the candles and wish for a quick and easy death after eating this monstrosity.

Happy Birthday, Bill and Minx. And please, keep the leftovers.  Keep them very far away from all your loved ones.

Scott here: Thanks, Mary. I don't think Wo'C has hosted such distinctive and eye-catching fare since the days when Sheri decided to cook all the recipes from The Gallery of Regrettable Food.

But I don't like pie, so here's some beefcake:

This year Bill requested British rugby player Ben Cohen. I had to confess that I'm not as up to date on my hot rugby ass as I should be, so Bill helpfully added that Cohen "also heads up an anti-bullying foundation, which makes him a good guy too, in my opinion."

Can't argue with that. Plus, I went over to Cohen's official Facebook page and saw that he also has a "grooming range" that he's quite proud of:

I'm not sure what a "grooming range" is; perhaps it's the area you designate for manscaping ("I have a fairly narrow grooming range -- below the pecs but above the pecker"), or maybe it's a stretch of the African savannah where metrosexual men like Pastor Doug Giles gather to pick nits off each other. Anyway...enjoy!

The Minx is more circumspect about her Wants and Do Not Wants, but I'd be remiss if I let her go without the traditional...

Sexy Birthday Lizard! 

Please join me in wishing Bill and The Minx a very happy Unplugging of the Umbilical Cord Day.

Our 2014 Year End List of the Ten Best Year End Lists of 2014!

Veteran habitués of the blogosphere will likely remember two things which loomed like twin colossi over the early years of the weblog phenomenon: the subtle, but incisive satire of Reasonable Conservative Jon Swift (known in civilian life as the journalist Al Weisel), and a long-running argument about whether it was "blogosphere" or "blogtopia" (personally, I leaned toward the former, because the latter seemed a bit too optimistic for me). One of Jon/Al's legacies is the Blogger Year-End Roundup, in which all bloggers great and small could submit their best posts of the year, gaining new readers and encountering new voices.

Fortunately, Batocchio of Vagabond Scholar has kept the tradition alive, and the 2014 edition is now up, featuring some of our favorite writers -- Carl of Simply Left Behind, TBogg, Roy -- and many with whom I'm unfamiliar, because I don't get out much.  Which is the great thing about this annual feature -- it offers the thrill of discovery without the necessity of getting off the couch; in other words, it expands one's horizons without interrupting the expansion of one's ass.

Each participating blogger seems to have made a thoughtful, illuminating selection from his or her body of work, whereas I did what I do every year: hastily skim the archives then pull out something at random, because I'm an impulse shopper.  Click here when you have a moment, and enjoy a finely wrought time capsule of 2014.

[We're in the last days of our fundraiser -- an explanation of the cause, and how you can help, if you're able, can be found here.  Thanks.]

Farewell, Iala

[Note from Scott:  D.Sidhe posted this news in the previous thread, but it deserves to be on the front page.  And D.?  If you have any photos of Iala you'd care to share, I would be more than happy to add them to your lovely tribute.]

Hey, guys. Scott, I need to threadjack.

So our beautiful fluffy twenty one year old kitty Iala died this last weekend. It was old age, we knew it was coming, and she died as I think she would have been content with, at home, in her perch on the bed, between me and my partner, both of us there at the end telling her we loved her and were grateful to have had the time with her. It sucked, but it wasn't terrible, just heartbreaking, if you understand that.

Iala, whose name is taken from a sort of bipedal cat vampire of Romanian folklore, could draw blood through carelessness, or when she was getting a pill, but she spent a lot of time happily showing off her belly to play venus flytrap, too. Which also drew blood. Well, vampire.

She was the most good natured cat I've ever met, and sweetly tolerant of our other cats, she spent a lot of time grooming her humans and sitting on top of them while we all slept. An adventurous, deeply amusing whirlwind in her younger days, as she got older she spent more time with social works like Groom Humans and Clean Water for Cats and Occupy Chair and Bed. We respected her work and tended to end up sleeping and sitting in weird configurations to not make her move.

She was six months or so when she started squatting our doorstep, and following me everywhere I went. This led to a confrontation with a truck, at which point we said "Fuck it" and took her in. She wasn't much good in the wild, but smart enough to find a good home for a long and spoiled life.

Some of my favorite moments, the time she managed to crawl behind the water heater and get stuck there so we had to drape a towel behind it for her to climb up. Her general willingness to not bat around the obnoxious kittens we adopted, even when they were playing with her tail. Her occasional late night roaming across the pillow covering my partner's face at night. The time she stalked by the dryer and smacked the door closed while the younger cat was sleeping in it.

She is survived by the young annoying girlcat Nagi, and her human slaves, who she always treated with patient contempt. She will be placed in a box in the closet with Cypress, and Tora, two other cats whose company she tolerated, and I'll talk to her when I walk by. Also, she liked boxes. And sunlit patches, to which I will occasionally move her when we spend time.

Scott, you can move this away from your much-needed lols review, or whatever you want.

My family here at WoC, you guys don't have to say anything if you don't want to, it's always hard to find things to say. If you could spare it, maybe a small tribute to Sheri's foundation, or just a hope for a sunny blanket in a window for Iala to watch squirrels from in the beyond.

Remembrance of Doghouse Rileys Past

One year ago today the blogosphere lost a unique voice, and World O' Crap lost a friend of many years standing -- Douglas Case, the Hoosier Sage, better known around the intertubz by his nom de net, Doghouse Riley.  In memorium, I went through the Wo'C archives --- at least, those that survived the Great Hack Attack of 2010 -- and collected just a few of the pearls he so generously strewed through our comment threads over the past decade...

Okay, I hate to take away from larger issues, such as “what sort of shenanigans are involved in someone hiring Meghan Cox Gurdon as a writer?” or “who is it imagines there’s an endless market for the sort of self-absorbed blatherings you can’t escape at a family gathering?”, and I’m not even going to mention that May 1 column where she asks why, if black people are flocking to Obama it isn’t the most natural thing in the world for white people to hope one of their own finally makes it to the Oval Office, except she frames it as the sort of question no obviously well-mannered white suburban columnist would dare ask, since, y’know, they all have the good sense to pretend not to be racist anymore. I’d just like to know how one “assembles” loaves of bread in the morning for baking in the evening, and who it is thinks a baguette should be soft. But I’m easily distracted.

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What is the deal with Ben Stein? 

Stein’s the Wayne Newton of American letters. He was resurrected during the brief, then-campy fashion for the hopelessly unfashionable about the time Disco died, and, like Newton, he somehow managed to overstay his welcome by a good half-century, becoming convinced of his own popularity into the bargain. He’s a cautionary tale about American culture–embraced for his role in a movie by its fans, who were to young to know, or care, what being a Nixon apologist actually entailed–as well as a living example of how people actually believed at one time that Ronald Reagan was just a gag we were pulling on ourselves, that we’d all have a good chuckle, then go home and forget all about it.

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O god I hate bar culture. 

And I apologize, sincerely, to those of you who don’t, because what you enjoy is the bonhomie, or the skills of a good mixologist, or maybe just the rank smell of desperation and the shedding of IQ points by those with few to spare, and that’s not what I hate. 

I hate the debasement of taste, the TGIFridayfication of perfectly decent spirits that came about when adults stopped drinking and marketers swooped in to secretly turn everyone into a 19-year-old in the guise of turning everyone into a 22-year-old. Flavored martinis! Cinco de Mayo, the Mexican St. Patrick’s Day! Mixed drinks named by a panel of morning zoo personalities! Gimme a Blow Job! Har har har. 

Oooh, and great news–Bacardi has managed to take the Mint Julep, a drink which once desecrated honest bourbon, and not just transpose it for their execrable product, but produce a special “rum” for the purpose, so pre-Korsakoff’s alcoholics can feel like connoisseurs! I swear to god, if we just put Bacardi’s marketers in charge of Iraq there’d be lines around the block at every recruiting station.
Same thing happened to decent pot smoking in the 70s, when the Thai stick and Primo Bud morons moved in. 

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Ironically, a provocateur is someone who "provokes trouble, causes dissension or the like; an agitator." 

Ironically, that's not what "agent provocateur" means.

Ironically, someone at something called "American Thinker" wrote that. 

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Well, I thought I said this yesterday, but Lileks’ material is no funnier than it should be, and since I’m five years older I can attest that by the time he turned up, the “Look, humorously anachronistic kitchen design!” bit had already died of old age, despite being cared for by people who did it much better. 

To me the problem is his borrowing on the other side of the equation: he adopted the “I’m a slightly goofy Everyman, which makes my tiniest notion a lot more sensible than those eggheads who thought up the metric system” newspaper columnist tone that others had already stolen and done better, and he applied it to material that requires a certain amount of real, not mock, self-deprecation. Your own kitchen is going to look like it’s wearing sleeve garters and a handlebar mustache before long. 

Kitsch is funny because of the uncritical acceptance of bad or indifferent commercial “aesthetic”. It’s really not possible to make fun of shag carpeting or June Cleaver’s green bean casserole and simultaneously celebrate the Clorox Rotating Toilet Wand, on sale this week at You Know Where.

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Humor, oh yeah. Why, just today Jonah uncorked “Disgruntled? Is anyone ever just ‘gruntled’?” I mean, how’s the Left supposed to compete with that? 

Of course the real difficulty in dealing with the Pantloadian wit (I have to admit that before this hour I was innocent of anyone ever referring to Steyn as “funny” in the comedy sense) is that it only becomes humor after its delusions of seriousness have been utterly demolished. It’s like telling the waiter that was the worst onion soup you’d ever tasted, and having him reply, “It was zabligione! It was zabligione!” and run sobbing into the kitchen. 

Anyway, I’m sure gonna miss these guys when they’re gone, and like Mark Twain, I think I’ll ask for a piece of the rope as a souvenir.

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Roll call of Republican Presidential speechwriters since 1968: Bill Safir(e), Pat Buchanan, John McLaughlin, Ben Stein, Peggy Noonan, Tony Snow, David Frum, Marc Thiessen, Gerson.

I b'lieve that's all I have to say.

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Another prime example of the results of spending all your time seeking the approval (and donations) of people who already agree with you, as Tabor appears to imagine he’s constructed a trap out of a couple of willful misapprehensions of Darwin, like it doesn’t occur to him that if it hasn’t worked in 150 years it’s unlikely one more column will do the trick. Hail to thee, rapidly aging Young Jessie Helms! Nobody you talk to knows any better, and anybody who knows any better takes one look and laughs. 

a radical piece of legislation which would go beyond Roe versus Wade in declaring abortion to be a fundamental right, such as the right to free speech. 

But that’s exactly what it is. Precedent is law; Court decisions are Constitutional law. Your right to be read a Miranda warning, say, or your right not to be forced to pray in public school, are as “fundamental” as any in the Bill of Rights. (I happen to think this is partly a shortcoming of rights advocates continuing the argument over abortion as it was pre-Roe, and partly, maybe mostly, the result of how the argument has been scripted in the Press for thirty-five years, as though these “moral” arguments are somehow the crux of the matter.) 

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My own hope this holiday season is that some day acts of love will become so common that the world will take little notice. 

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 Y’know, I hear the chicks really dig a guy in uniform.

Here’s the thing: I’ve made my peace, in a manner of speaking, with the anti-fluoridationists and the unrepentant racists and the penis substitutionists and the simpering jackboot lickers in the years since I first saw an Impeach Earl Warren billboard; such people are actually out there, despite everything common sense would tell us. But I’m goddamned if I can figure out the “damned feminists keep me from getting laid” routine, especially when coupled with “and the threat of child support” since a) the Right keeps insisting we’re a “center-right” country, which would at least raise the question of mathematical probability, not to mention the fact that I can walk through any mall in town and see dozens of women obviously unspoiled by political philosophy, not to mention that on certain sides of town I’d be hard-pressed to see anything but; and b) I thought these guys were the Personal Responsibility crowd. I guess that only goes for the responsibility to make sure the gummint keeps queers from marryin’. 

I mean, all else aside, who exactly do you think you’re kiddin’,dude? 

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Aragon: What’s here? the portrait of a blinking idiot. 

Good Lord, is Ross even aware that several of his sentences have broken loose and are beating the shit out of his helpless premise? “Bush was right about Social Security”? Tell me, which was he more right about: that letting people stake their entire Social Security claim in the stock market, circa 2006, was a foolproof small-government ticket to a worry-free retirement, or that we couldn’t possibly wait to solve a theoretical problem which was yet thirty-forty years away, because waiting would force the government to inject massive amounts of cash into the system on short notice, which we all know would violate the sound fiscal principles Republicans stand for?

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 On Ann Coulter modeling mink:

Yeah, there’s nothing like evoking a more glamorous, genteel era by being as patently offensive as you possibly can. 

And really, what else screams “I’m feminine, dammit!” like a couple pounds of makeup and the pelts of a few wily minks you outsmarted? 

Attach a few live ones to her. That’s a calendar I’ll buy.

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On Jonah Goldberg:

See, this is why, when I’m in the mood for scrambled history I turn to David Brooks: the calories are just as empty, but there’s less lard and he rarely tries to garnish it with hacked-up bits of FDR.For chrissakes, “Wilson was the first progressive president?” What, TR and Taft don’t count because they were Republicans? Does he imagine his audience didn’t finish junior high? Okay, so that’s justified. But, sheesh, “pathetic” is something for him to aspire to. 

Honestly, the Times owes that Gelernter hack an apology.

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On Ben Shapiro:

Y’know, now I stop to think about it, it’s been a joy to watch Benji grow from ersatz teen brainiac to college witling right through to premature senility and rumored joblessness. And to realize, in the bargain, that he had six or seven years there to simply come to his senses and figure out how to behave like a normal person, and chose, instead, to be the only person in America, probably apart from his parents, who believed the Ben Shapiro Myth. Or cared. 

Look at that drivel. It’s the product of about as fine an education one’s parents can buy in this country. “Knowing who Jimmie Johnson is” is the best he can do?

I’m from the motorsports capital of the universe. I like motorsports. I even watch NASCAR on occasion, not that it really qualifies; if you start talkin’ that Authentic NASCAR shit around here it won’t be long before somebody offers to help you pull your head out of your ass. 

And Benji’s from California, birthplace of drag racing, and a state with its own stock car and open wheel traditions. You’d think if he was so all-fuckin’ real folks an’ all he might reference his own traditions instead of that Counterfeit Confederacy crap. 

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I’m mad about the Em Ess Em inquisition of “Joe” “the” “Plumber” (I don’t even trust Republican articles or conjunctions anymore) m’self: they pillory the man just because he was so convinced of the correctness of his own view, which, needless to add, was the wrong one, that he felt required to make shit up to prove its superiority. That clearly amounts to punishing him just for being a Republican (see Palin, S.; Goldberg, J.).

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Sheesh, does this stuff go through some central lab where they test for accuracy and excise anything that qualifies? How difficult is it, really, to understand the concept of treason? It’s the only crime defined in the Constitution, fer chrissakes. There’s a famous precedent that no one could be tried for treason after the Civil War because the United States never recognized the CSA. The Rosenbergs were executed for espionage. 

And, in Ethel’s case at least, wrongly, on ginned-up evidence which still could not rise above “paltry”, and while withholding evidence that would have exonerated her (as well as exposing our spying on our ally in WWII, and without Presidential approval). 

Of course it’s long been recognized by anyone paying attention that these most American of Americans turn out to have little knowledge of, and zero respect for, her actual laws, or, for that matter, her actual citizens. But their salient feature–aside from their numbers and political clout having thus far prevented them from becoming a subcategory in the clinical diagnosis of psychopathy–is their willingness, even preference, for lying even when the facts might make their case.

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If Jesus hadn't wanted you to be scorned he'd'a given you better arguments.

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Malkinses is the rock-thrower from the tenth row of the mob, the eighth person to attack the prostrate victim, so she kicks a little harder to make up for being a physical coward. 

That’s merely commonplace. What’s remarkable is that she, like Goldberg, rapidly approaches forty years of age with no sign of having ever progressed beyond her high-school Reaganism, of having ever learned to construct an argument or evaluate one; in fact, it’s what both have been rewarded for all their adult lives. And it shows. If the Malkinses’ vileness or Goldberg’s stupidity ever required rebuttal that day is past. Today it is sufficient to simply point at them. And warn the children.

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On trolls:

I knew there was something I missed about junior high school. And this isn’t it.

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On Kyle-Anne Shiver:

This very positive force [fear] that innately urges all human beings to guard themselves from disasters, big and small, is one of the strongest protections we all have 

So, yours wasn’t working throughout the Bush administration, or did you just switch it off? 

There are probably not too many Americans over the age of 50, who do not remember the black power moment at the Olympics of 1968 and the fear those raised fists could evoke in the shadow of American cities inflamed by riots and uncontrolled violence. 

Yes, because who among us is not a cosseted white suburbanite who’s been nursing racial fears for five decades? 

(I have to give Kyle-Anne some props for using “inflame” to mean “set fire to”, but then I’m a big fan of Late Middle English, and anything that speeds its return I deme quemeful.) 

(Of course the violence which actually inflamed inner cities in 1968, as we use the term nowadays, was the violence that separated Martin Luther King from his previous ability to use oxygen.)I also remember that those fists were attached to names–Tommie Smith and John Carlos–and that non-scary white Australian silver medalist Peter Norman (whose name I had to look up) wore a patch signifying his support. And I remember the real reaction–beyond people like Kyle-Anne, whose boot-shaking had, no doubt, been a more or less permanent condition since the mid-50s–was, in fact, what we seem to do best: an easy suburban outrage unburdened by fact or understanding. And I remember that Avery Brundage, the IOC president and one of the slimiest bastards ever to not rule an Axis power in WWII, threatened to throw the entire US Olympic team out if the two weren’t expelled. 

And, of course, it turned out that America need not have worried; Ronald Reagan would soon make People’s Park safe again, and in four years George Foreman would begin the conversion of the Olympics to a quadrennial flagasm. 

And Tommie Smith and John Carlos, like Jim Hines (100m) and Lee Evans (400) would spend a good portion of their lives giving back to their communities.

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And Andy McCarthy–a former Assistant US Attorney–wants to get to the bottom of a story which does not just include, but hinges on the idea that one’s parent, even if a natural-born citizen, must also be at least 21 years old if the other parent is a foreign national? 

I’ve said it before: if you really expect me to jump on the Obama bandwagon the first thing you have to do is convince me this country is worth saving.

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On Orson Scott Card:

Oh well, thought I. I’ve already seen Prince Caspian and there’s nothing else remotely interesting in the theaters. 

Th’ fuck? The man’s sixty years old. Does he not have air conditioning or something? 

I mean, I can’t remember saying that any time after my 21st birthday, and that was before videocassettes and cable television.

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Jesus, you should pardon the expression, Rod Dreher’s religiosity is somehow more transparently pathetic than Doug Giles’ carnival hucksterism. Though it is nice to see that whack-job Protestant fascism and Mainstream Methodism Roman Catholicism“Orthodoxy”, or whatever Rod’s cult du jour is at present, can find common ground in their deep, dark longings.

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I like to spend at least half of any Andy Garcia movie trying to figure out what movie he thought he was making.

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Those that trumpet immigration, diversity and change are the last ones to judge such matters, however, because they tend to be cultural relativists whose moral foundation is even vaguer than the slogans they disgorge. 

Before I came to this I was afraid Selwyn had lost his Thesaurus. Or just worn it out. 

It is sobering to consider how great the odds that Young Selwyn Duke, at some point or other, received passing grades in both American History and English Composition.

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feeling the vice grip of a gasping economy. 

And like the man said, extremism in defense of economy is no vise.

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But isn’t homosexuality like race? No. Race has nothing to do with behavior

Y'know, Doc, I realize that we eradicated racism in this country too long ago for you to remember it (and many thanks, again, to all you white Southern evangelicals who made it possible), but the fact is that institutionalized racism was never about skin color, either, to hear the racists tell it, but the collection of behaviors--shiftlessness, promiscuity, lack of mental agility, inability to tell one's place, the tendency to ogle white women--which skin color just happened to predict with near 100% accuracy.

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1) No one has ever topped the two James Whale Frankensteins.  

2) Nothing to do with Halloween, but the most chilling moment in the whole genre is in the ice goddess segment of Kobayashi's Kwaidan, when the woodsman decides to tell his wife the story he swore never to tell, and her sewing stitch freezes in mid-air. 

3) Who ever sat through the first Halloween let alone the tenth? Talk about playing tennis with the net down. For a long time my life's goal was to yank the key out of that Casiotone and make John Carpenter swallow it sideways.

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1) If that's John Carradine at sixty I'm in much better shape than I realized. 

2) What I remember about Billy the Kid vs. Dracula was that it was one of the few bad movies I couldn't sit through, no matter what I had on board, and that it co-starred caffein pitchlady and marriage counsellor Mrs. Olson, before she lost her American accent.

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most days he is able to conquer the puzzles in The New York Times in ink. 

Big deal. I'm pretty sure I could beat the snot out of Will Shortz with my bare hands. 

As for the rest of this warmed-over claptrap--I'm pretty sure that bit about "more Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act" was stuck into the mythos at some point the way Rand McNally invents bogus cities to catch anyone plagiarizing its maps--I guess "growing up in Waco in the 50s and 60s" exempts one from knowing anything about the 1948 election, or Truman desegregating the armed forces, but what's the excuse for missing the fact that the minuscule Republican party in the South until 1964 consisted mostly of blacks who could vote? The fight over seating its delegates happened right there on th' teevee an' ever'thing.

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there is no legal reason why a nation at war must try to apprehend an enemy instead of shooting at him first. 

Sure there is, as everyone knows, including Yoo; shooting an incapacitated enemy combatant, or an unarmed and unresisting one, or one who has already surrendered, is murder. The man's as blithely unconcerned with black letter law as he is with human life. (The former may sound trivial compared to the latter, but consider that he earns his living at the law, whereas his status as human is subject to considerable doubt.) I wonder if he speeds up to run over jaywalkers. Just kiddin'. I'm convinced he does.

The killing of Yamamoto--which Yoo turns into one of those Bill Bennett Moral Tales for Children as Told By the Personally Depraved--is, in fact, proof that the matter used to be taken seriously; the intention was considered so borderline, so questionable, that the operation was undertaken only after it was submitted to the President for approval. And that's the killing of the commander of the Japanese naval forces during what was essentially a naval war (and, as you point out, a declared one at that), not the designated Second in Command of the Week whose threat to the United States consisted of mouthing off. 

And as long as we're on the subject we'll just note that the operation--a remarkable, split-second action in the face of severe risks--was carried out by uniformed members of the United States military at the direction of one of our greatest Presidents. Compare the near-random act of some CIA spook playing a video game and defended by a psychopath publicly masturbating to torture porn.

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Casting his vote in the 2011 Miss Wingnut Pageant:

First, like most of the above I miss the imaginary Golden Age of America, though unlike them it's not a fictional amalgam of Parson Weems, Ozzie and Harriet, and 19th century labor practices I pine for, but the very real, if artificially rosy, days of my own youth. Back then you couldn't have come up with this many identifiable wingnuts in toto, let alone after winnowing the likes of Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez, John Derbyshire, and Victor Davis Drusus Saigonius Hanson. Hell, in those days we had to scramble come up with more than three categories (Lyin' Red Baiter: Barry Goldwater vs. Dick Nixon; Angry Nun: Carl McIntire vs. Billy James Hargis; and Miss Anti-Fluoridation, which was the exclusive province of William Fuhbuckley after he threw all the other contestants out). Same thing every year, and, frankly, better times.

I guess I just wasn't meant for a time when wingnuts like Lileks and Genn would come up through a sort of farm system, like Texas' Miss America Corporation, and employ high-priced hair stylists and fashion consultants. It's like watching a bike race where everybody's coked to the gills on human growth hormone, except in this case it doesn't make anyone faster, or stronger, or, god knows, better looking, just tone deaf enough to continue.

So, Cal Thomas, the last surviving artifact of an optimistic time when we could say, "If we can just hold out until Cal Thomas dies of ugliness and impacted mucus this shit'll be over."

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Fascism: it’s not as much fun as it sounds.

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R.I.P., Doghouse.