Friday Ephemera

Since we’re sharing song videos here’s one that will cause a heap of trouble.
Note: link is very, very NSFW

you’ll hit three analogues to the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic
True enough. In the sense that it’s psychosexual and involves thoroughly unqualified adults projecting their weird perversions onto children will the full complicity of the state, it seemed like the best analog. Dare I ask what else you might be thinking of?

Well, it seems that California is still there.

Since we’re sharing song videos here’s one that will cause a heap of trouble.
well now – there’s some fine toxic masculinity on display!
That was hilarious!

It was live
DIY defribullator?

I was okay, with the exception of a red mark across my throat for a few days.
I had a similar but much less dangerous event because I was merely running at full speed cutting through a neighbor’s back yard (game of hide-n-seek as I recall) and hit a low clothesline … right at my mouth. Similar, I believe, to a horse bit being yanked on.
I distinctly remember the shock of the sudden stop and watching my feet swing up to eye level before I dropped and had the wind knocked out of me.
I got out of it with a cuts at the corners of my mouth and I believe the issue of the line was resolved mom to mom. I knew not to ask but I notice the line was hastily relocated to proper area and height.

@Squires: ’ Speaking of surprises, the hostage taker at a synagogue in TX…’
Thankfully, that’s now the ex-hostage taker. Thus proving ‘taking hostages in Texas’ to be even more risky than sharing a lift with Karl….

An explanation appears to present itself.

When I began my degree in Artificial Intelligence at Edinburgh University in the early 2000s I was impressed by then unkown-to-me Chomsky’s linguistic innovations.
I later became equally unimpressed with his political arseholery.
There is truly no fool like an educated fool.
His political arseholery is however one of the driving forces in the world today. He understood, as well if not better than Orwell, how language can be used/distorted to control how people think. Far more dangerous on a fundamental level than Alinsky. So effective as to have many conservatives…”conservatives” that I know passing this quote of his around as if he’s some kind of conservative. I think that’s quite a testament to his abilities. Impressive…in a somewhat pejorative manner.

Sounds like they didn’t bother to write a story arc first,
The TV show is based on a series of books, which I haven’t read, and which continue beyond where the TV version stops. There are two or three more books, I think. Presumably, the show’s writers and producers were hoping for an extension or renewal, or some other offer, to complete the saga.

The TV show is based on a series of books…Presumably, the show’s writers and producers were hoping for an extension or renewal…to complete the saga.
Ah, that makes sense.
Future funding will be provided by the North Malden Icelandic Saga Society.

I find it ironic that it took them 6 seasons to finally get a decent acting job out of Holden
God, he was dull. Holden and Naomi, the characters and the actors who played them, were some of the weakest points of the show. The secondary characters were often much more engaging. And while I didn’t much care for the in-system political drama, or the aggravating Belter patois, the bigger science-fiction ideas were often done well (Miller 2.0, Metallic Table-Miller, huge objects doing impossible things, etc). Which makes the finale all the more unsatisfying, as these are the things that aren’t concluded or resolved. Even if taken as a tease or cliff-hanger for another project, one that may never materialise, it didn’t work.

Street art: brilliant. I bet the Woke won’t get the joke at all.
In other news, the DOJ has now charged Oath Keepers for Jan 6 with insurrectionist activities–for people who marched around and then left. They really are trying to make conservative protests illegal.

Snowhenge
I have questions.

Another gritty reboot.

Awwww … brothers.

Not following you here: I am not aware of any conservatives who quote Chomsky as a respectable authority on any political matters.
They don’t. This may come as a surprise to many conservatives, and even “conservatives” but a lot of people call themselves “conservative” yet know little about what that might mean. For instance, I often refer to myself as being conservative because if I use the more proper term that would more closely fit me, i.e. “classical liberal”, the kind of conservatives of which I speak laugh because those that know me think it’s bloody absurd that I would be a liberal and those who don’t know me would laugh because, you know, libtard!
There are many, many conservatives, or people who regard themselves as such, people recently politically active, people with military backgrounds, people who have grown up with conservatives all around them and have never known many truly different people such that their own conservatism has not been tested in honest debate. Most of these people, these conservatives, would fold like wet cardboard in a logical discussion (supposing you could find one) with a moderately reasonable leftist (supposing you could find one). It’s often been my observation, even a temptation, that I could turn most of the conservatives I know to a leftist endorsement…maybe not the entire leftist agenda but certainly significant parts, by posing questions and ideas that they had not considered.
A great number of conservatives…”conservatives” that I know know virtually nothing about economics excepting the fact that they have had to work hard (often too hard) to get their hands on what money they need to get along in the world. These people know nothing of Chesterton, nothing of either of the vons, neither Hayek nor Mises, nothing of Mencken (not that he was conservative per se but…), nothing of Sowell except what I have posted about him on FB, and Hobbes or Burke? Fuhgeddabowdit. These are people with whom anything approaching firm politics and such are rarely discussed but we understand each other via other casual means of conversation. Thus when faced with a plausibly conservative quote from Chomsky or any other similar leftist, they fall for it as being a conservative thing. Leftists, being far more politically savvy mostly because it is from whence they get their kibble, easily play these conservatives…”conservatives”…and sucker them in.
As for brushes with death…A witch turned me into a newt once, but I got better. True story.

It was ‘wait, what?’
It was quite jarring. It went from ‘What if we…?’ to over-and-done-with almost instantly. Much as I was happy to see the back of the character, and his dreary offspring, it was a bit of a fumble.
And so, instead of a satisfying conclusion to an ambitious story, we got a hasty and uneven wrap-up of local events – the increasingly tiresome Inaros storyline – and a sense of what might have entertained us, on a much grander scale, had the show continued.
But hey, at least the season wasted plenty of time on Drummer’s doomed polyamorous pseudo-family. So there’s that.

Sounds like they didn’t bother to write a story arc first, so that they knew how to satisfyingly resolve the threads.
Well, yes. That’s how television works. It’s why Smallville went sideways after season 3, why Heroes shat itself after season 2, The Big Bang Theory inverted itself during season 3, etc.
Making a faithful adaptation – or even a quality product – is not even remotely a priority for most TV writers. Their priority is getting paid, so look at what will get them paid.
By and large most SF deals with Big Ideas that don’t lend themselves well to a kinetic visual medium. There have been any number of TV/film adaptations of The Cold Equations and they’re crashingly dull because it’s not a visual story (I did see one that was clearly adapted from a stage play treatment, which is at least in the ballpark).
Another gritty reboot.
I never much cared for Frasier as the stock plot was “Frasier’s pomposity/ego gets him in a pickle, and in the third act we watch him twist and be humiliated in front of the rest of the cast”. The problem is that the main character in a sitcom has to be at least sympathetic, so all too often the stock plot was “Frasier, being somewhat clueless about the people around him, tries to do something decent for them and in the third act we watch him twist and be humiliated in front of the rest of the cast”. It’s like proto-Chuck Lorre.

These people know nothing of Chesterton, nothing of either of the vons, neither Hayek nor Mises, nothing of Mencken (not that he was conservative per se but…), nothing of Sowell…
I know a few like that: If they’ve read any books it was Ayn Rand, in college, and nothing since. Presumably Rand settled all questions. Sigh.
But I also know some people who call themselves “conservative” or “libertarian” who cannot really be such, given their complacency about steady erosion of individual liberty.
I often refer to myself as being conservative because if I use the more proper term that would more closely fit me, i.e. “classical liberal”, the kind of conservatives of which I speak laugh…
In my case the communication problem is with liberals, who tend to have no idea what “classical liberal” means, so I often just say “conservative” or “libertarian”. Sigh.

the film noir comic book rendition of Elmer Fudd/Bugs Bunny
If you haven’t read Batman vs. Elmer Fudd, do. Yes, the premise is completely ridiculous; it’s an absolute master class in taking a ridiculous premise and running with it completely straight, and it works.
I’ve come to the conclusion that a great many fantasy works only work because everyone committed to the premise – Star Wars, A Discovery of Witches, etc. They’re just silly on the face of it but if everyone involved agrees to sell it, it can work.
Are they even worse?
Yes. Like so many terrible films of late, they’re based on a deconstruction of a genre by someone who hates that genre (Millar).

There wasn’t the extensive woke preaching like in the first one
I don’t actually remember that from the first one. Can you note some examples? I’m normally pretty aware of subtext.

I’ve touched my face hundreds, maybe even thousands of times since March of 2020. Does that count?

I attended an urban, integrated public* school. That should count for numerous close brushes with death.
* comprehensive state school, in England.

“It is sweet and fitting to be raped to death by the black hordes”?
My Latin is a little rusty.

My Latin is a little rusty.
But not your gladius, I trust.

If anyone’s getting aroused by this thread, I’m summoning a constable.

If anyone’s getting aroused by this thread, I’m summoning a constable.
What sort of spell does one use?

Evocation, verbal component. Cannot be cast during combat. Constable may appear anywhere between the next round and never (see dice roll chart).
In light of recent news, I’m not sure if constables are lawful good or chaotic evil. (And with that I exhaust my knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons.)

I finally saw Alphaville
Conclusion: Intellectuals can have very odd criteria for excellence.
But then, I once saw a very short “experimental” film made by several science fiction writers (Delany, Disch, and others) which consisted of many short cuts of various types (zoom-in, zoom-out, pan, facial closeup, etc) assembled in random order. The filmmakers claimed to be surprised that the result was extremely disturbing. I think any normal person could have told them that there was nothing surprising about that at all.