Monthly Archives: July 2024

Quick Thoughts on The Acolyte

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I am late to the party because I have not been overly enamored with the expanded Star Warsproducts of late. I adore Andor and thoroughly enjoyed season 1 and 2 of The Mandalorian but season 3 was aimless, The Book of Bobba Fett felt as though it had no point and Ashoka failed to entrance me and I dropped the show after two episodes.

Disney Studios/Lucas Film

The Acolyte falls squarely in the upper half of these offerings. It was decent enough and I was interested enough to watch the entire season. Set considerably earlier in the cannon’s history the series’ focus is twin girls, Mae and Osha, powerfully force sensitive and at the center of possible Jedi maleficence.

The cast is uniformly good with the most surprisingly performance in my opinion belonging top Mannie Jacinto. He manages a performance so distant to his previously best-known character, Jason Mendoza on The Good Place as to reside in an entirely different galaxy. (Yes, that analogy was intentional.) Lee Jung-jae as a troubled Jedi master was also exceptional.

Amanda Stenberg as the twin women held my attention and played the two characters quite well.

The Acolyte received some serious scorn from elements of fandom. I will not address if the root cause of that scorn is out of misogyny or from a desperate need to preserve an image of the Jedi as pure and wholly good. I must admit that I side with the fiction galactic senator that questions unchecked political power held by a religious order.

Overall, The Acolyte entertained and remained a pleasurable way to past a few evening hours but it is unlikely to stay with me in the manner that Andor has proven. It is not quite Star Wars for adult, but neither is it explicitly for children

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Why the Joke Sticks

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The conservative side of the political divide is upset because the ‘JD Vance is Weird’ line sticks to their vice-presidential candidate like napalm to an innocent civilian.

The ‘weird’ descriptor gained a lot of traction when it was deployed by a Democratic governor and then amplified by a political group that governor headed. From there is has taken off with other surrogates and just plain people on Twitter. Vance’s people have yet to find an effective counter and I think it is unlikely that they will, but it is also unlikely to the dispositive in the election. It sticks because it fits like a key in a lock to many people’s perception of Vance.

One of the minor fake controversies surrounding Vance and that surface before he was picked for the number two slot was that he used eye liner make-up. I have no idea if the man utilizes that particular form of facial make-up, but his eyes are striking in a manner consistent with that use. It adds to his appearance feeling ‘off’ in a way that doesn’t quite rise to intuitively obvious but noticeable.

Vance also exhibits a lack of stage presence or charisma. This is not a new phenomenon. in the 2022 election cycle that elevated Vance to the Senate the Republican Governor in a red state beat his Democratic rival by 25 points but Vance in the same environment could only manage a 7-point victory over Democrat Tim Ryan. Even among Republicans affection for Vance is lukewarm.

These observations made Vance particularly vulnerable to the label ‘weird.’ Bill Clinton gave the impression of someone willing to tell you whatever you wanted to hear, to a smarminess that made the description ‘slick’ stick. During the Regan administration there was a skit where Regan showed his old friend Jimmy Stewart about the white house with Regan kindly but slightly befuddled. Once Stewart left Regan turned into a cold, brilliant calculating man commanding ever officer with sharp orders. That skit is forgotten because it found no cultural fire because that image of Regan, the brilliant mastermind, was at odds with the popular perception. Narratives stick with they line-up with preexisting perceptions.

After McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 the Alaskan governor came under national scrutiny that she was ill-prepared for. When asked what sort of foreign policy experience she brought to the ticket she answered that as governor of a state that was close to Russia this gave her foreign affairs experience. Just as Rick never said, ‘Play it again, Sam’ in Casablanca Palin never said, ‘I Can see Russia from my house.’ That was a satirical performance on Saturday Night Live. But because that performance fitted perfectly with the impression because of Palin poor performance under intense press scrutiny that image of her stuck.

When a single Twitter user posted a joke tweet reporting that in his memoir Hillbilly ElegyVance confessed to having sex with a couch the visual raced to the top of the political environment. The joke about the couch stuck to Vance for a few reasons, firstly because he already had a poor charismatic image, his already well-known and extremist views on sexual matters lends itself to sexual perversions, and finally because anyone slapped with the label ‘hillbilly’ is suspect in American Culture.

JD Vance no matter the outcome of this election is going to remain stuck with the ‘weird’ couch screwing image until he managed to fully shatter it with a wholly new one but that is a monumental task.

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My First Mid-Summer Scream

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Last week was a bit of a jumble with dental appointments and all so I did not get in any blog entries. (And despite what JD Vance might fear Blogs are neither more or less ‘masculine’ than a diary.)

Saturday, I attended my first Mid-Summer Scream a convention focused on horror in the arts. It is in Long Beach so it’s just a couple of hour drive from home, so the plan was up in the morning stay the day and return home late evening.

I posted on Facebook that this was like Comic-Con, going on the same weekend in San Deigo, but for horror. That impression is dead on target. The line to get into the convention wound around the complex for nearly a mile and took nearly an hour to navigate.

Inside the major attraction to people were the Dealer’s Floor, a massive space crammed with dealers in booth selling all sort of things and celebrities there for paid for autographs and photo opportunities. Upstairs and on the main floor were panels discussion, presentations, and performances which I had planned to take up the majority of my time.

I had a brief and pleasant conversation with Victoria Price daughter of legendary actor Vincent Price but my plans for the day were ruined.

About an hour or maybe more after I got into the facility the fire alarm began blaring and flashing. There was no fire or emergency. Perhaps some idiot had pulled the alarm as a stupid prank. Announcements were made that they was no cause for alarm at the alarm and technicians were trying to deal with it.

Forty minutes later it continued to sound and flash. I knew it would not take much more continued exposure on my part to instigate a migraine attack. I still had a long drive home and the prospect of that while suffering a migraine looked unbearable.

I left, the fire alarm still blaring, and made my way home.

Mid-Summer Scream is great for some people but not for me. Like Comic-Con it is simply too large too populated for my taste or enjoyment. I do not regret by day trip, but I shall not repeat it.

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Biden is Out

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In a surprising and ultimately selfless political move President Biden as renounced his intention to be the Democratic Party’s Nominee this November.

No person rises to with reach of the office of President of the United States without possessing a hefty ego and Biden is no exception. Candidates on a glid path to electoral defeat typically remain in the race hoping and delusionally believing that some fantastic twist of fate will win the prize and that bowing out only ensures defeat.

But that is for normal election against normal opponents.  Despite what every election cycle insists most elections are about government at the margins. Tax rates may rise or fall, regulations may tighten or loosen, now programs may start or old ones end but the nature of the American experiment remains the same.

Not this time.

Trump and his cronies have already demonstrated in deed and word that they have nothing but contempt for our democratic way of life. Trump led an attempt to overthrow a valid, free, and fair election and steal the office of President. His Vice Presidential pick has publicly stated that the President should simply ignore the rulings of the Supreme Court and impose the president’s will as that person desires.

The fate of our democracy is as stake in this election and Biden, in a move that is beyond Trump comprehension, understood this. Biden’s ego may have screamed for him to stay in the contest but his understanding of what was at risk proved the greater motivation. He understood that if he lost the nation lost and stood aside to let another carry on the fight he had won the first bout of in 2020.

That is real patriotism and not the false self-serving corrupt thieving that the GOP offers in their lies.

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How Many Legs Should a Dragon Have?

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In a recently and utterly low stakes online conversation the topic has been raised how many legs should a dragon have? This discussion has principally been initiated because G.R.R. Martin, author of the Game of Thrones novels, disputed the image used for the newest series which shows the beast with four legs and two wings.

Martin’s argument is based on evolution and that flying creatures evolved wings from their forelimbs leaving only the rear two to serve as legs. He’s right about that. On Earth all land animal life descended from a common ancestor which set the pentadactyl limb structure. Everything animal we know has the basic limb design, One Bone, Two Bones, Many Bones. IF dragons were evolved creatures from an ecology that mirrors Earth’s, then you would expect the same body form rules to apply.

In fact, the common ancestor is the reason why I have an issue with Cameron’s Avatar. Every land animal in that ecology has six limbs except for the big-eyed human analog. They are as out of place as a four-legged dragon.

But if they were evolved creatures they would not exist.

There is simply no way that a beast that large, that massive will evolve flight. Yes, there were some flying dinosaurs with absolutely enormous wingspans, but they remained light, fragile creatures not massive lizards with weights measures in tons. It is furthermore an impossibility for the ‘fire breathing’ to evolve as depicted. The energy consumption required to power such abilities is too staggering to contemplate.

With all that said, dragons exist in a setting where the laws of physics are upended by sorcery and magic. In a world where non-nuclear transmutation is possible, and the laws of thermodynamics are abandoned. In such a setting a genesis for a creature outside of biological evolution exits and along that path the arguments of two or four legs are reduced to the author’s preference.

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No One Knows

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Macbeth Act 1 Scene 3

If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow and which will not,

Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear

Your favors, nor your hate.

We have no untrustworthy witches with which to foretell the destiny of our nation. All we have are untrustworthy polls and badly fitted historical analogies as we confront a crucial presidential election like no other.

The Republican Party is now shorn of all principle, devoting itself to a charlatan, a felon, a misogynist, and an insurrectionist all melded together like some horrid Voltron in the orange hued body of Trump. Never has a major party candidate mused about setting aside the Constitution, suggested that the military fire upon those protesting him, or been so enamored with strong men that murder and repress their own populations. And yet every measurable metric indicates a strong possibility of his electoral victory in November.

The Democratic party meanwhile is led by an aging pol form whom the signs of time’s inevitable decline seeming grow by the hour. It is an unavoidable truth that in appearance Biden’s looks weaker and more frail than he ever has. A terrible truth of elections is that appearance matters far more than reality. Did you know that there are studies that show a population of test subjects, utterly unfamiliar with any election or candidate can predict the outcome of a two-person election based solely on photographs of the candidates? Elections are not about policy and positions but vibes and narratives and the narrative is bad for Biden.

The Trump’s campaign is to attack Biden as ‘weak’ and Trump as ‘strong’ a battle plan that works more and more as Biden appears frailer and more aged.

Does that mean Biden should step aside?

I don’t know. In the modern era no party that has dumped its incumbent has gone on to victory.

A new candidate would throw the Trump’s campaign plans into chaos, but no one know what narrative would emerge.

Trump is the most dangerous candidate to ever try for the office and should he win reelection the nature of our democracy is changed. Even if he leaves at the end of his second term, either by walking out or being carried out, the changes he and his people plan to do lay the groundwork for further changes. Project 2025 envisions sweeping changes to the Federal government amplifying the powers of the presidency. This prospect thrills those on the right but they should quake at the thought that that those newly found powers will not always reside in hand that they control.

Never craft a political power you aren’t willing to hand to your opponents.

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No Two Books

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A common discussion point among writers is if you are a ‘plotter,’ that is someone who outlines your novel before writing it, or a ‘pantser’ (from ‘by the seat of your pants’ a person who writes without an outline. What I have discovered for myself is that no two books are written the same way even for the same author.

I have written heavily plotted novels. The longest outline I have created I think was some 87 pages, that’s nearly 22,000 words or about 20 percent of the total book. My last completed novel, the fascist werewolf one, I write sans outline. Though after about the first 10,000 words I created a 1-page document with the major thematic events for each of the five acts.

The current novel, a folk horror that is sort of The Wicker Man meets The Dunwich Horror is flying between these two extremes. I have crafted detailed character studies for the major character, again I have the 1-page document about the five-act structure but this time I am outlining act by act.

I have written a fairly detailed outline for act 1 and that act has mostly conformed to the battle plan. Now with 16,000 words completed (but not edited) the first act is finished. It is time to write the outline for the second act informed by how the characters appeared to me in the first. Luckily, I started the writing process early on this one and I am currently about 10 days ahead of schedule so there is plenty of time to compose this next outline and still make my goal of a completed draft by year’s end.

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Columbo; Short Fuse

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Conceived and produced in the late 60s Columbo is the platonic ideal of the ‘inverted’ mystery where the killer is revealed early to the audience and the intrigue of the story is how the detective find the tiny flaw in an otherwise ‘perfect murder.’ It is unlikely that the movies and series had someone other than Peter Falk been cast as the disheveled but brilliant police detective. Falk often improvised lines on camera to throw off his costars in the same manner that his characters threw off balance the quarry he hunted.

In a bust of nostalgia, I decided to watch an episode from the early 1970s. Originally, I had planned on an episode where the guest star was the incomparable Ricardo Montalban but browsing through the available shows on Tubi I stumbled upon a season one episode with a stacked cast of Roddy McDowall, Ida Lupino, Anne Francis, James Gregory, and William Windom. Well, this one I had to watch.

McDowall, a brilliant chemist and photographer, plants a small explosive device in his Uncle’s cars which explodes killing the man on a dangerous mountain road where it might easily be mistaken as an accident.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the cast of Short Fuse this was actually a very substandard Columbo. There is actually very little for Columbo to detect and the character seemingly leaps to the correct solution without any evidentiary trail. The best part of any Columbo story, where the little detective reveals the flaw in the plan and the crucial elements that the brilliant upper-class murder missed is actually not present in this episode. Columbo plays a trick on McDowall’s character, causing him to panic and reveal knowledge he could have only if he had planted a bomb, but there is no ‘see, this is where you screwed up and I saw it,’ moment. In fact, it is highly unlikely that any grand jury would have returned with an indictment.

What a shame to see such a wonderful cast in such an inferior story.

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An Idiotic Theory

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I will grant you that Trump has a feral innate cunning when it comes to publicity. A nature endpoint for this celebrity obsessed culture.

However, the assassination attempt on Saturday was not some staged master-plan plot to sway the election. Ford had two assassination attempts and still failed at reelection. Such a thing does not generate sympathy for an already unpopular candidate.

And tell just how does this plot actually work?

There’s no way Trump stood there and let someone shoot withing inches of his head. Even Trump isn’t That stupid. So that would mean the shooter was just a decoy, a distraction.

Did they persuade the shooter to get up on that roof as an act of suicide?

Shots were fired and people were injured and killed. So that would have to have two or more shooters. Who are they? Where were they? Why take extra shots and kill people if the whole idea was to injure Trump and promote sympathy? You could do that with one shot.

How are the people remaining silent? The fatal flaw in nearly every ‘vast conspiracy’ is that it requires numerous people to maintain a perfect wall of silence. People just don’t do that.

No.

We have a young male shooter, acting in all likelihood irrationally, and whose exact motivation may never be known.

That’s it.

The world is often chaotic and unreasonable and this is just another example.

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Thoughts of the Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump

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Yesterday, July 13th, while delivering his usual lies, threats, and promises of vengeance Presidential candidate Trump was nearly assassinated by a gunman.

I have nothing but contempt and antipathy for Trump, the man who has more to damage our political system than anyone else. Should an artery in his diseased and putrid brain burst tonight causing him to assume room temperature I would not only not lose a moment’s sleep over it I would consider it a stroke of good fortune.

That said, and as I have said before, there is no room in our system of government for political violence. Full stop. What transpired yesterday is terrible for our nation, terrible for our culture, and terrible for our future. Here, in no particular order, are some thoughts on the matter.

1) When you normalize and excuse political violence you get more it and you will not be in control of it. Be it street level violence ‘punching nazis,’ mocking and inventing fantastical conspiracies following a brutal attack on political spouse, or an entire political party proclaiming violence insurrectionist as martyrs and hostages, the result is more violence and the degradation of our political life.

2) Grand conspiracies are fantasies no more real that the armies of Barad-dur. It is a deeply human thing to believe that order and reason move the world but love gunman are the rule and not the exception. Overly complex plots to employ ‘false flag’ are the stuff of bad thrillers not reality.

3) Early reports have a terrible error rate and rushing to judgment on them is an act of foolishness.

4) Today people are dead who were not dead Friday. Have some considerations for those killed and injured before you go

5) No one know how this will move the electorate or if it will at all. This election is so ahistorical we have no comparable past to judge it against by which we can make any reasonable assumptions for the future.

6) The elected officials and parties are revealing who they are. Some are coming out with sentiments of consolations and wishes for speedy recoveries while other are quick to deploy attacks and manipulated the event for their partisan advantage. Take note who is doing which.

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