November 27, 2021

"Brew Brew Brew Brew" by the Vengagroyps (cozy Tea Tunes tribute)

To close out the thankful-for-frens weekend and cozy season as a whole, here's a tribute to the tradition of Special Boy Tea Tunes. Something I've never directly taken part in (not being on any social media), but whose wholesomeness is unavoidable if you read the cozy groyper accounts (like the host of the event, @groyper on Gab). No point in spelling out the references -- either this is for you, or it's not. But even if not, you can still get the gist of its appeal.

It's set to the tune of "Boom Boom Boom Boom" by the Vengaboys, which would be ideal for a Jungle Jamz session during the summer. Still, we need infectiously bouncy music at all times of the year.

Like the original lyrics, there's no real big picture here, just a simple straightforward message to not be alone when you're feeling down, only adapted to our too-online era, and making it more about frens than a fwb. The therapeutic power of bubblegummy dance music will never fade, though.

Pronunciation guide: to maintain the strict UNH-tsss rhythm, during the pre-chorus, stress on "and" in the 2nd line, and "to" in the 6th line.



* * *


HOOOO, HOOOO
HOOOO, HOOOO

Welcome to the underground

HOOOO, HOOOO
HOOOO, HOOOO

HOOOO, HOOOO
HOOOO, HOOOO

You spilled your tendies and could use some frens
Someone to help you evade your permaban
Just come and log on, froggy, join the chat
We're gonna make it tonight

HOOOO, HOOOO
Groypers, Peepos, and Apus
HOOOO, HOOOO
Make jungle grunts
HOOOO, HOOOO
Vibing to the purest moods
HOOOO, HOOOO

Brew, brew, brew, brew!
It's time for tea and tunes
Enjoying cozy weather
No e-girls whatsoever

Brew, brew, brew, brew!
We're gonna shout AGOO
Enjoying cozy weather
With Weather Channel tunes

HOOOO, HOOOO
Everybody monke 'round
HOOOO, HOOOO
Welcome to the underground

HOOOO, HOOOO
Groypers, Peepos, and Apus
HOOOO, HOOOO
Make jungle grunts
HOOOO, HOOOO
Vibing to the purest moods
HOOOO, HOOOO

Brew, brew, brew, brew!
It's time for tea and tunes
Enjoying cozy weather
No e-girls whatsoever

Brew, brew, brew, brew!
We're gonna shout AGOO
Enjoying cozy weather
With Weather Channel tunes

November 25, 2021

Thankful for frens

Posting will be light through the weekend, feel free to use this as an open thread.

For now, a message of thankfulness for frens, including a special fren. Our roles may change, but that doesn't mean we drift apart and stop being frens. We will always be thankful for the frens we have had, and continue to have.

Maybe this '90s Eurodance hit is too upbeat and bouncy for Thanksgiving, but consider it a "Christmas in July" kind of vibe. Something peppy to wake you up from you turkey-induced slumber this weekend.

Love you, special fren.

November 21, 2021

Re-igniting the left-right alliance; and more on regional differences caused by national ethnogenesis

I wrote another post-in-the-comments (from here and on), about the fading populist spirit from the Trump years, as shown by the greater emphasis on race and gender than class when right-wingers were reacting to the final phase of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.

Namely, freaking out that so many women on the jury meant it was over for him, without asking whether those women had college degrees or not. And being unaware that Kenosha is one of the prototypical counties that had been loyal Democrats for decades, before flipping to Trump twice, due to de-industrialization, and the lack of nationally-connected employers that would make the place a magnet for over-produced elite aspirants and parasites looking for their QE handouts.

There's also a shift back to portraying the enemy of Trump, Rittenhouse, and whoever else on that side, as blue-haired cat ladies who majored in gender studies and post on TikTok. This is a fake enemy that does not exist. The real enemy is a blonde doggy mommy who lives in the suburbs, posts on Twitter (like the right-wingers themselves), and majored in a field that Rush Limbaugh Boomers would've praised as a "real major" -- law, business, or STEM.

To counteract the drift back toward performative culture wars within the upper-middle class, of the Bush and Obama years, we need to re-ignite the left-right alliance against the bitterly despised elites that was the norm of online political types just a few years ago.

The only thing I can do right now in this brief post is point you toward another podcast to listen to, and group of people to interact with on Twitter. If you're reading this blog, you're probably already familiar with Aimee Terese and the ladies from Red Scare. But I don't think I've mentioned some of the others very often.

Red Star Radio (twitter here) is the purest example of the left side of the left-right alliance. Anti-capitalist lefties, but who are against the dehumanizing cultural project of the left. Opposed to the hysterical scientism from the media about COVID-19, the lockdowns, the vaccines, masking, government mandates, etc. Also did recent episodes defending basic civil liberties in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, and a new one about the questionable models behind the hysterical scientism related to climate change.

Co-hosts are Brit Alexander McKay -- member of Mancs for Marxist Masculinity -- and Canadian Leila Mechoui -- booster of Berber Babes for Bolshevism. (She hasn't explicitly said what her background is, but pretty sure it's Moroccan, or Maghrebi at any rate.) Good-natured, lighthearted, not irony-poisoned or emotivist, and not an audition for a "news comedy" show.

* * *


To add some substance to this plugging post, when I get back to the series on national dialects and ethnogenesis, the case of Britain will distinguish Northern from Southern dialects. And since we rarely get to hear Brits speaking conversationally -- usually only in songs or news media presentations -- you can listen to McKay for understanding the Northern dialects and regional cohesion vs. hostility.

Southern dialects, along the meta-ethnic frontier against the French, departed from the historical norm by lowering their vowels. This happened especially during the Great English Vowel Shift, which arose as Southerners came into intense conflict with France during the Norman Invasion and the Hundred Years War, and wanted to mark themselves as the True English, fighting on the front lines against The Other -- unlike the Northerners who were farther removed from the conflict, and whose traditional pronunciation we want to distinguish ourselves from.

This change was less imitated in the North, so that up there "luck" and "look" have more or less the same vowel (a higher vowel, whatever it is by micro-region), whereas "luck" in the South has a lower "uh" vowel like we use in America and Canada. However, Americans are a mix of Northern and Southern English, so we also use the higher, unchanged vowel as Northerners when it's written with "a". E.g., Northerners pronounce "last" as Americans & Canadians do (the trad way), whereas Southerners changed it to the lower "open wide and say ah" vowel.

The podcast is also useful to appreciate another aspect of ethnogenesis, namely that there is much tighter cohesion along the meta-ethnic frontier, and more internecine hostility farther away from it. So, the Southeast and Southwest of England feel very close to each other, despite the Southwest being more rural and the Southeast being more urbanized. They're still both Southerners -- the True English who were forged in the crucible of the conflict against the French.

Whenever McKay, who's from the Northwest, has to mention someone from the Northeast (say, Paul Joseph Watson), he reflexively gets in a dig about how they're a worthless Yorkshireman. Far away from the frontier against the French, the civil wars between Lancaster and York never fully faded away. Such hostility between neighbors did not survive along the Southern border, as they were compelled into a larger collective by the conflict with France.

To put it in American terms, the British South is like the American "West" (from the Midwest out to the Pacific coast), and their North is like our East. The standard national dialect in America is Western, whereas the least nationally normative are those along the East Coast, whether Northeastern or Southeastern. And the entire West coast is well unified, from SoCal up to Seattle, whereas the Civil War never fully faded away between the Northeast and Southeast. Even within the Northeast, Boston and New York are bitter enemies, in a way that is impossible between Seattle and San Francisco on the West coast.

That's because the meta-ethnic frontier in America has been out West, against the Indians (and later on and more briefly, the Japanese Empire).

Secession has already taken place among Northern Brits, when Ireland split off 100 years ago. (They can deny they're any sort of British, but everyone knows they're from the same family of islands and peoples.) And Scotland recently got as far as putting independence up to a popular vote. That will never happen anywhere in the South, and Celtic revival (i.e., de-Britishization of their ethnicity) has been weakest in Cornwall, as it's part of the South, compared to Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the North.

The American version of this is that secession will never take place out West, whereas the East is most vulnerable to fragmentation. It reveals the cluelessness of various separatist "movements" (whites only, right-libertarians, anarcho-libs, whoever else), that they chose places in the Northwest as their spot to breakaway from the national government. In reality, it will be Florida (back East) that breaks away de jure, and recently has already begun to de facto.

November 16, 2021

Public mediums, not individuals, are superspreaders, concentrating pathogens from orders of magnitude of people

The big story about COVID-19 right now is the failure of the mass vaxx campaigns to stop the spread, just like this time last year saw the total failure of 100% mask compliance to stop the spread. (Although at least the masks did not give young people heart disease.) Soon I'll get to this topic -- why do vaccines fail when the disease is spread through a public medium (all coronaviruses, influenza, plague, cholera, etc.), as opposed to those spread through personal encounters (smallpox, HPV, measles, etc.).

But first, I'll have to develop one of the factors I think plays a big role in that. Even if it turns out not to matter for the topic of vaccine failure, it's still a crucial difference between the dynamics of public medium diseases and personal encounter diseases.

In contemporary sex ed classes, students hear the warning that, "You're not only having sex with that person, but everyone else they have had sex with (and everyone who those first-degree partners have had sex with, ad infinitum)".

There's something to this, but it is exaggerated and turns out to be the wrong category of diseases to issue such a warning about. How many other people has that person had sex with? Most people only have single-digit partners in an entire year, at most, while others are monogamous or even celibate for the year. Ditto for the number of partners for those first-degree contacts. There's almost no chance you're talking 100s, and possibly not even 10s, for the typical pair of sex partners.

Then there is the matter of how long the effects of those distant contacts last. If someone gave your partner an STD two years ago, but it has cleared in the meantime, they are no longer able to pass it along to you. For the purposes of measuring the indirect effect on you, it's as though your partner never had sex with that third person at all.

So, the warning should be modified to say, "You're having sex with everyone else who that person has *recently* had sex with" -- where "recently" is measured on the time-scale of the relevant diseases that could be passed along to you. If a disease clears up after 1 year, and your partner had sex with them 3 years ago, they are not included in the list of people the person has recently had sex with.

This is why the typical person is not a walking petri dish of STDs by the time they're 30 or 40. The pathogens clear up after some time, although not for all diseases, like those that can lie dormant. Therefore, during any single sexual encounter, a person is not exposing themselves to the pathogens of a large number of other people -- probably only single digits, and probably low single digits. That still allows for contagious diseases to rise in epidemic fashion, but it is not the gross interconnected web that the warning statement implied, and the epidemics won't be so bad.

The exceptions prove the rule here, as we see from people who do have high body counts, like gay men and prostitutes. It's worse in the case of gays, because a bunch of hyper-promiscuous people are having sex with each other, so the first-degree and second-degree and nth-degree contacts are also high body count people. During a single encounter among gays, the person could easily be exposed to 10s or 100s of others. This makes virulent wildfire-spreading diseases like HIV emerge among them, but not among heterosexuals.

Nor, for the most part, among prostitutes. While prostitutes have a high number of partners, their johns are mostly unfuckable losers. So when one john sees a prostitute, he is exposing himself to the diseases of her other recent johns, but those first-degree contacts have likely had 0 partners themselves during the past year -- that's why they're going to the prostitute, because they're desperate and unwanted. And prostitutes do not have sex with each other, so two high body count people are not going to have an encounter with each other, in the world of prostitution.

It's true that one john could have sex with two or more prostitutes, and indirectly link two high body count people. But the larger point remains -- any and all prostitutes within a given area are servicing the same local population of unfuckable losers, none of whom have extensive partner lists. So the web of connections does not spiral out exponentially like it does for gays, although certainly more so than among normal heterosexuals who don't visit prostitutes. So there's no HIV epidemic that will emerge within the (female) prostitute world.

As usual, I'm focusing on STDs to discuss person-to-person transmission because not even the strongest anticontagionist will argue that they don't require close personal encounters between an infected and a susceptible individual. It takes two to tango. They distill the essence of contagious disease dynamics.

* * *


Now let's shift to diseases whose pathogens are spread through a public medium, without encounters between the sick and the susceptible. Again the canonical example is cholera from the 19th C., spread by the medium of the public water system, where a sick individual's defecation (containing pathogens) entered the water supply through the sewers, and where a susceptible individual sampled that contaminated water every time they drew up water through a pump (for drinking, washing themselves, washing clothes, etc.).

The sick and the susceptible individuals never encountered each other during the course of the transmission. It was the public medium with which they both had contact -- perhaps separated by entire city blocks -- that spread the disease from one to the other.

In total contrast to the personal encounter diseases, look at how many other individuals you are exposed to by coming into contact with a public medium like a city's water system. It was everyone who was served by that system -- everyone whose defecation entered into the same body of sewer water. It's not as though each household had their own body of water that collected their waste, with no two households' wastewater bodies ever merging to form a single body of wastewater.

Rather, the public water supply reflected the whole collective that it served. And the size of that collective would have always been greater than mere single digits -- could be 10s, 100s, 1000s, or higher.

When I say someone is "exposing themselves to" all those other people, I don't mean they actually come into contact with the wastewater of every last one of them. I mean it in the sense of taking a risk, playing Russian roulette. More precisely, they are "sampling from" that population who contribute their wastewater to the whole system.

That is equally true for the class of encounter diseases like STDs, though: even if your current partner has traces of what was given to them by 5 recent partners, you won't necessarily pick up traces from all 5 of them. You will be sampling from those 5.

The main point is that a person samples from a much more gigantic size population when they come into contact with a public medium like a city water supply, compared to coming into contact with another individual human being. A city water supply could easily be a "walking" petri dish -- accumulating tons of particles across tons of pathogen species coming from tons of sick people -- whereas a particular individual person will not be.

How does that affect the potential for epidemics? Well, just imagine the early stages where the local frequency of the disease is small, say 1%. If it's an STD, 1% of your potential partners has it. If those partners have been monogamous recently, you're damn unlikely to get it. Even if they've had multiple recent partners, who have still left traces within your potential partner, that number probably reaches a max of 10. Sampling 10 individuals for a disease with 1% prevalence is still highly unlikely to give it to you.

But what if it's spread through a public medium? Then you have to avoid getting it after exposing yourself to 10s, 100s, or 1000s of people. By sampling 100 people for a disease with 1% prevalence, you're expected to get it. All it takes is that one critical exposure. Maybe your symptoms will be worse if you get even higher doses of it, but still, with the one crucial exposure, you've now got it, and you can pass it along in turn via the public medium.

If you're sampling 1000s for something with a 1% prevalence, you're expected to contract it 10s of times. And even if some of those infections are hunted down by your immune system, or they by chance don't reach their target organ after entering your body, the other infections will. You're going to come down with the disease, and contribute pathogens back into the public medium to complete the cycle.

The bottom line is that it's far easier to avoid contracting a pathogen when you're only rolling the dice a few times, vs. rolling them 10s or 100s or 1000s of times. Only public medium diseases allow for rolling the dice such a large number of times during any given contact with the transmission vector.

* * *


That brings us finally to the topic of "super-spreaders," a term with various definitions. Usually it means that a few sick individuals have a high number of contacts, any and all of whom they can spread the disease to, whereas most sick people have a small number of contacts, and are far less likely to contribute to the disease's continued spread.

I don't like using this term for individuals, though, because that highly-skewed distribution reveals exactly why such diseases do not become widespread and everlasting. Transmitting an encounter disease is a labor-intensive process -- if one sick person "wants to" spread it to 1, 10, 100, or 1000 others, they are going to have to put in higher and higher hours into the relevant activity.

That severely limits the share of sick people who will spread it at these high orders of magnitude -- unless the person does the activity for a living (and gets paid as a rising function of their number of contacts), or is just driven to it by a wandering, super-extraverted personality, what is the incentive to contact so many distinct other people during a single day, week, or month? None.

Of course, that makes it more spreadable than if every single sick person kept mostly to themselves. But it underscores the fragility of the transmission -- it crucially relies on a few people to do most of the heavy-lifting. Without them, it sputters out before catching on like wildfire.

And if it is a true encounter disease, quarantining a sick individual would work, by preventing contacts. And if there are only a small number of "super-spreaders" to quarantine, then the collective effect of a quarantine would also be massive and simple -- easier to lock up a small number, no matter how much they prefer being out and about, than to lock up a huge number. For example, implementing some real thot patrol by confining the local prostitutes and other high body count people, to curb an epidemic of an STD.

These all speak to the fragility and extinguishability of such a disease, whereas the term "super-spreaders" gives the impression of inevitability and broad reach of the disease.

* * *


The concept of "super-spreading" is better suited to public medium diseases, because there is a broad reach of, and nearly inevitable contact with the disease, when a medium is collecting pathogens from a huge number of people, and susceptible people cannot help but come into contact with the medium.

But it is the medium -- not a sick individual -- that has super-spreading powers. Its role in the transmission is not affected by the pathogens, so it is not limited in the number of contacts it can make with susceptibles. Public water doesn't move slower or otherwise fail to reach susceptible drinkers, just because it's polluted with cholera. And drinkers cannot detect the presence of cholera vs. unpolluted public water of their time and place, whether by sight, smell, etc., so they don't know when they should reject it for being polluted.

That is the opposite of an encounter disease, where having the disease limits their reach -- maybe an STD leaves someone bed-ridden, unable to get out and meet future partners, or maybe it leaves a visible sign that makes potential partners run the other way.

And more importantly, public mediums are not limited by the labor-intensive nature of spreading pathogens through encounters. A given volume of water can be excreted into by 1s, 10s, 100s, or 1000s of individuals -- it only depends on how many people happen to live in the region it serves. It does not need to increase in volume by the same orders of magnitude in order to serve those larger-sized populations. It does not need to do any of its activities by those higher orders of magnitude -- it just does its typical standard thing, and however many people come into contact with it, come into contact with it.

Ditto for the volume of air inside a building, to briefly return to coronaviruses. If it's a high-traffic building like a supermarket, that volume could collect the aerosolized breath of 1s, 10s, 100s, or 1000s of people during a day. An air volume of the same size, but in a low-traffic building like a storage facility (for things, not for livestock), may only be collecting the breath of the 1s of workers who work there.

The volume or size of the medium does not have to rise at all, let alone by orders of magnitude, in order to put exponentially larger numbers of people into an indirect chain of transmission. The indoor air is just doing its typical standard activity of being stagnant and filling up space, and however many people breathe into it (and breathe from it), do so.

Ditto for the insect population that spreads insect-borne diseases like malaria, plague, or Yellow Fever. The entire insect population acts like a public medium, similar to drops of water adding up to the entire water supply, or particles of air adding up to the entire indoor volume of air. People come into contact with this public medium by being bitten by the insect, which allows transmission of pathogens between two people who never have an encounter with each other.

And the same size mosquito population could be cohabiting with a human population that is 1s, 10s, 100s, 1000s, or millions. Mosquitoes don't have to boost their own population by 100 times, or do 100 times their swarming activity, in order to reach 100 times the human population -- however-many people are in their environment, are in their environment. And mosquitoes are not burdened down by being carriers of the pathogen (if anything, the pathogen will co-evolve to benefit the carrier).

That is the opposite of labor-intensive activities that spread encounter-based diseases, like a sick person who has to increase their dating-and-mating activities, to have sex with more and more partners in order to spread an STD to more and more susceptible people.

To conclude, public medium diseases unleash a more unrelenting and unavoidable assault on their targets, due to the medium collecting and concentrating the pathogens from such a large number of people. It is impossible for a person to sample the pathogen load of such a large population when it's an encounter disease, due to the labor-intensive nature of the activity that spreads it, and due to the hindering effect of the pathogen on its human carriers.

On the applied side, no public medium disease can be substantially curbed or eradicated through measures that target people, since they are not the source of the inevitable super-spreading phenomenon. Quarantines failed for cholera, plague, Yellow Fever, influenza, etc., just as they failed for COVID-19 -- along with masking, and now mass vaxx campaigns.

Rather, public health measures must target the medium through which transmission flows, which is the source of the high degree of connectivity among people. Such as separating outgoing wastewater from incoming potable water, chemically treating water to purify it, and so on. Or eradicating the local insect vector population, or at least putting up repellents or nets that keep them from biting sleeping people. Or for indoor-air diseases -- all respiratory epidemic diseases -- improving the ventilation to keep polluted breath from accumulating in the stagnant air, or releasing a purifier into the air to neutralize the pathogen (and which has no harmful side-effects).

Anticontagionism led the way forward, intellectually and practically, during the last peak of pandemics during the 19th C., and neo-anticontagionism must lead the way forward in the new pandemic era.

November 15, 2021

Kenosha rebelled against rioters, voting Trump by wider margin than in '16, after being Dem lock for decades

Something that election thieves don't appreciate is that legitimacy is socially constructed. It is not automatically, impersonally conferred on whoever occupies a certain office, however they managed to get there. The whole citizenry is watching the process, and if it's stolen, then they withhold their conferral of legitimacy.

That's why everyone outside of libtard bubbles is openly flouting the Biden admin's agenda and getting away with it. Notably with masks, vaccines, woke propaganda in schools, and so on and so forth. If the government is illegitimate, the citizens will only follow those orders that it was already going to. They will not follow those that they are not on board with.

If they viewed the government as having won fair-and-square, then they would carry out its orders whether they liked it or not. That happened with McCain and Romney voters when Obama was in office. There were no widespread non-compliance movements of any sort. Everyone in the Tea Party paid their taxes, got healthcare coverage or paid the fine, and all the rest of it. Because Obama did not steal either election. His opponents responded not by openly flouting the admin's orders, but by staging an electoral attack, winning back the House, then Senate, and with Trump, the White House.

But since the Democrats flagrantly stopped the ballot count in multiple battleground states on election night in 2020, "discovering" 10s or 100s of thousands of votes in the *weeks* after the election, which went 100% to Biden -- they forfeited any legitimacy upon usurping their way into office. Words on a document do not enforce themselves, nor do entries in a spreadsheet.

"B-b-buh, this document says that Biden won the election!" Gee, I guess we all have to behave accordingly -- sike. It's like Tanya Harding stealing an Olympic medal at gunpoint, and demanding that everyone treat her as the real winner -- where is the fawning coverage, the lucrative deals with sporting goods manufacturers, etc.? Uh, you get none of that, because you stole the medal, you dumb bitch.

Imagine expecting all of the benefits that redound to a legitimate winner of a prize, when you have flagrantly hijacked it! Sorry sucker, you can't put a gun to the heads of everyone in the audience and make them treat the possessor of the medal as though they won it fairly. If all you wanted was the medal per se, perhaps as a trophy or to sell for its precious metal value, then you'll get what you want. But if you were looking for all those other tangible and intangible goodies that accrue to a legitimate winner, then tough shit -- win it for real next time.

This widespread withholding of legitimacy against the Biden team actually began before his inauguration, though. Before the citizens were expected to behave according to the Biden admin's orders, upon inauguration, they were expected to vote for him on Election Day, to give him a legitimate win, and make his agenda easily implemented upon assuming office.

And as I wrote last summer, the main function of the summer riots was to whip votes for Biden / Harris. They almost entirely targeted battleground states, not California or New York or Texas or Kansas, which were not up for grabs. They were both to punish those states, such as Wisconsin, for voting Trump in 2016, but also to intimidate them ahead of the 2020 vote -- "Don't forget, we can fuck up your city any time we feel like it, so don't disappoint us on Election Day."

Aside from the riots carried out by the paramilitary wing of the DNC (i.e., BLM and Antifa), there was the usual hysterical demonizing coverage by the entire media cartel, against Trump and for Biden.

And yet, voters were not intimidated by these soft and hard tactics. Wisconsin and the other Trump states voted for him again in 2020, now also including Nevada. Any state that stopped counting ballots on Election Day, and where the outcome was not 100% certain in advance (e.g., California or Texas), is a state where Democrats could not afford to just let the results play out and declare themselves the true, legitimate winners by the end of the night. They only stopped counting ballots, in order to pad their own side's count for weeks, where they were doomed to failure.

They effected the steal through the mega-cities that they control with Democrat machine politics, not through operatives in every single county throughout the state. In Wisconsin, that means Milwaukee was the source of the steal.

Kenosha, however, is not part of the Milwaukee metro area -- it's part of the Chicago metro, but not lying within the state of Illinois, and therefore not so easily manipulated by the infamous Democrat machine in Chicago.

Were the people of Kenosha intimidated by the summer of riots in their city, which got huge national coverage, and whose local hero Kyle Rittenhouse was vilified by the media cartel? Not at all!

In 2016, they were one of the counties that I profiled in this post, where Obama had won them twice before flipping to Trump, and whose population was at least 100K (i.e., not rural areas, which are Republican-friendly). Kenosha County went for Trump by a narrow margin of 0.3 percentage points, the first time they voted R since Nixon's landslide re-election in 1972, and Eisenhower's landslide re-election in '56.

But Trump 2016 was not a landslide, and not a re-election, so Kenosha people were not just following the rest of the country that time -- they were sticking their necks out, declaring themselves to be on one side of a major faultline.

Then in 2020, after the summer of riots that rocked their own hometown, they voted for Trump by an even wider margin -- by 3.1 percentage points, an order of magnitude higher than before, although still not a landslide. That narrowest of wins in '16 was supposed to flip back to the Democrats, but it moved in wider in favor of Trump. That's the first time the R's won the county back-to-back since 1928, when Wisconsin and the Great Lakes states in general were part of the Republican coalition, before they switched to Democrats under the New Deal realignment in 1932.

A wider victory for Trump in '20 is no surprise, since they liked him in '16, and he did not blow up the country in the meantime, and had only been incumbent for one term. So sure, give him another term.

What *is* surprising is that the people of Kenosha gave the finger to the DNC for destroying their city over the summer, rather than give in and vote for Biden in the hopes of no riots in the future.

And unlike Milwaukee, there is no huge imposing well-orchestrated Democrat machine in Kenosha. They do happen to be reliable Dem voters, but it's not a machine city like Chicago or Milwaukee or Detroit or Philadelphia. So the Democrats could not steal the county-level election in Kenosha, and had to pad their state-level totals through Milwaukee.

That may seem like a distinction without a difference -- they still stole Wisconsin's electoral votes, who cares which county they had to do it through? But it does show that everything hinges on Democrat control of a few key choke-points, and outside of that the citizenry can openly rebel against their soft and hard tactics, and there's nothing the DNC can do to stop it from going through. Kenosha County in 2020 is officially recognized, not just de facto understood, as a red-for-Trump county.

As power devolves due to Democrat delegitimation of the federal executive, having flagrantly stolen their way into the office in 2020, Democrats will have to increasingly rely on control over smaller-scale fiefdoms to ram their widely unpopular and hated agenda through. If it's a college town (say, Madison, WI), it will probably sail right through. But if it's a Trump county that resisted intimidation by riots, and did not get its ballot-counting hijacked on election night, then they can do more what they want, whether the usurpers in DC like it or not.

If there's any justice, Kyle Rittenhouse will get a statue of him blowing away the criminal vote-whippers, in Kenosha County itself. Of course it wouldn't fly in the state capital or Milwaukee, nor in a Wisconsin delegation in the national capital of DC. But it would remind everyone at those higher levels that they don't have the legitimacy and authority that they believe they do, and not to bother intervening in local affairs, since the lack of legitimacy means they couldn't remove the statue no matter how hard they stamped their feet about it.

This is the natural reaction to Democrats enacting "no-go zones" in major cities across multiple states throughout the entire summer of 2020. There are now no-go zones for libtards, and they are larger than cities, encompassing entire large states like Texas, Florida, Ohio, etc. National mask mandate? No-go. State-level mask mandate? No-go. Vaccine mandate, passport, etc.? No-go.

The bureaucrats and technocrats are starting to understand how impotent they are at enforcing their will in these places. They have brought this predicament upon themselves, by participating in the effort to steal the 2020 election in front of everyone's eyes on election night itself. They forfeited their legitimacy, so now half the country is a no-go zone -- for them.

This would not have been the case if the Democrats had won legitimately, witness the Republican voters' response to Obama's two terms. They may have hated it, but they all carried out the national agenda, and planned to turn the electoral tide so that it would be their own agenda being enforced when they took back the federal level.

Reversing course is 100% up to the Democrats, as the initiators of the current downward spiral of national legitimacy. If it continues, oh well, sucks to live in a fragmenting country, but at least some of us live in the no-hablo-libtard zones, and will never have to wear a mask, get a pointless / harmful vaccine, or demonize white children in schools.

November 13, 2021

"She's So Spicy" (Aimee Terese tribute, Tal Bachman parody)

I was going through my notebook to see if there were any Aimee songs left unfinished, as I'd better get them out now, while she's shifting from imaginary bf to IRL bf. Sure enough, there was one from the summer that only needed a few more lines. You can consider this the encore of the year-long "serenading Aimee" concert. Should the need for it ever arise in the future, the band would consider a reunion tour...

Like most of the others, it's set to the tune of a power-pop classic, "She's So High" by Tal Bachman. Original lyrics here. She's been getting nostalgic for her '90s childhood, so the timing couldn't be better.

This all got started when I was listening to the song, and thought, "What other MENA baddie historical heroine could I compare Aimee Terese to?" Fittingly for here and now, she's a figure from the imperial collapse period of Rome (the Crisis of the Third Century). I can just imagine her great-great-granddaughter leading a breakaway empire of her own on the periphery, taking Australia and New Zealand under her anti-woke wing, dealing a crippling blow to the core.

But mainly it's about translating the original into the online domain. A lurker or reply guy becomes infatuated with a larger account, although not a huge celeb account, someone approachable yet still out of his league. BTW, it's not a neg when I say "10K" -- that fits the stress pattern better than 20K or 30K.

Pronunciation guide: stress on both the first and final syllables in "following" and "spellbinding" in the 2nd verse, to match the original stress pattern.



* * *


Her account's a frenship zone
No cucks or e-girl clones
She's clutch, hella tight, based, unbound
It's only online, they say
How could it ever matter?
It sure doesn't feel that way
But still I shouldn't @ her

'Cause she's so spicy
Spicy 'n' gutsy, yet so cuddly
She's so spicy
Like Queen Zenobia, cursed Cassandra,
And Holly Golightly
She's so spicy
Spicy 'n' gutsy

Rollercoaster Red Bull feed
Sharp words, then less-than-threes
She's grown a 10K following
How could anons like me
Ever hope to top her?
Her eyes are so spellbinding
No need to photoshop her

And she's so spicy
Spicy 'n' gutsy, yet so cuddly
She's so spicy
Like Queen Zenobia, cursed Cassandra,
And Holly Golightly
She's so spicy
Spicy 'n' gutsy

Now she retweets my meme
That nearly cracks my screen
Being seen just hits my lowbie feels
It's only online, they say
How could it ever matter?
It sure doesn't feel that way
But still I shouldn't @ her

'Cause she's so spicy
Spicy 'n' gutsy, yet so cuddly
She's so spicy
Like Queen Zenobia, cursed Cassandra,
And Holly Golightly
She's so spicy
Spicy 'n' gutsy

November 12, 2021

Doomed Manic Pixie Dream Girls from vulnerable phase of excitement cycle: Michelle from Frantic (1988)

An earlier post detailed the role that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl plays within the restless warm-up phase of the 15-year excitement cycle -- coaxing wary sad sacks out of their shells, once people are ready to leave their touch-me-not refractory states of the preceding vulnerable phase.

Another post looked at their progression during the following manic phase -- now that everyone is comfortably out of their shells and mixing it up with each other (thanks in part to her), the MPDG can look after her own social and romantic needs. In the broader culture, there's the sense that the MPDG is no longer needed, and we're moving past her. That was the attitude during the early 2010s manic phase, after the most recent heyday of the MPDG during the restless phase of the late 2000s.

But what happens to these types of characters during the next vulnerable phase, when energy levels crash and everyone retreats into their cocoon in a refractory state? An earlier post showed that the male protagonists are more in the mood for a made-to-order robo-gf, so that they don't have to put themselves through the painful over-stimulation of socially interacting with various girls in order to find the right one.

Still, that's just what the guys want, and who the new desirable female archetype becomes. What about the women who, during a restless phase, would play the MPDG role? What are they left to do when everyone wants to be left alone? Their type becomes outright mocked, as in Lost in Translation from the early 2000s vulnerable phase, where a would-be MPDG is portrayed as an annoying ditzy airhead babbling on about how it's so good to get all the toxins out of your body, alluding to SanDeE* from L.A. Story (the previous heyday of MPDGs, the early '90s restless phase).

I was reminded of this series on the MPDG when I recently re-watched Frantic for the first time in 10 years. The protagonist's reluctant sidekick, Michelle, is clearly portrayed as an MPDG type of woman. She's an adventure-seeking free spirit, extraverted and engaging of strangers, and quirky / alternative / not-like-other-girls in her appearance, tastes, and lifestyle.

Aside from these personality traits, she also plays the relational role required of her type -- an earthly guardian angel who serendipitously swoops in to help out a down-in-the-dumps kind of guy. The protag's wife has been kidnapped, which puts him at rock bottom, but even before that, he is shown to be coasting along through one boring professional conference after another, and having a reliable yet humdrum marriage.

Enter the MPDG to bring a fresh and exciting energy to his tedious middle-aged existence. True to type, she also helps him find true love -- i.e., helps him recover his kidnapped wife. After all, the MPDG rarely winds up together with the protag at the end. She is more of a nurse, aid, and so on, to help him reach his full potential.

Yes, for those keeping score on the phenotypes, she fits the profile of the other MPDG actresses -- born during a manic phase (late '60s), hourglass shape, butt girl rather than boob girl. And corporeal, to the protag's cerebral.

At first she has a selfish material motive to reunite the protag and his wife, and she and the protag are merely reluctant partners trying to track down their shared antagonists. But before long she takes a liking to this intriguing sad sack, and they become more of an odd couple, as in a standard MPDG script.

Just like a guardian angel, she takes risks to help him out. By the end, her personal ulterior motive is gone, yet she continues to risk her very life in order to help him achieve his goal. Ultimately, through her sacrifice, the protag does manage to connect with his true love (wife), although the MPDG gets killed in the process by the antagonists.

Her grim fate at the end casts a pall over the rest of her otherwise normal MPDG character arc. Being a carefree gypsy who meanders from one adventure to another, helping out intriguing strangers along the way, is so unpredictable that it could put you in a crosshairs and get you killed. Then say goodbye to your series of adventures and emotional rehab relationships.

It's not that she thinks the sacrifice is not worth it, or has regrets about making it. She could have run away from the final conflict and let the protag and his wife fend for themselves. It's more like she is leading an ill-fated life, and she accepts all that it entails. Like if she tries to help others against a cold impersonal world, she may wind up paying a price herself. No good deed goes unpunished -- but don't let that stop you from still performing those good deeds.

This rather emo take on the MPDG story fits well within the zeitgeist of the vulnerable phase of the excitement cycle. The protag may have been bored and checked-out, but he was not out looking for something new and exciting to reinvigorate him. It was not yet the restless phase, and people were plunged into a refractory state of wanting to just be left alone. And the would-be coaxers are warned about trying to help others out of their shells -- rather than get rewarded here and now, you may get martyred instead.

Examples like these tend to be rare, since the MPDG goes so against the refractory-state climate of the vulnerable phase. But sometimes it's impossible not to notice what character type they're trying to convey, albeit with a distinct spin for a different phase of the cycle. If I think of other examples from the early '70s, early 2000s, or late 2010s, I'll post in the comments.

If you want to watch Frantic, don't bother with the DVD, which was only released in a full-screen aspect ratio. Get the blu ray or stream it, in the proper widescreen format.

Let's end with the iconic dance club scene, which encapsulates the unique twist on the MPDG formula for the vulnerable phase. It's just as much about taking him out of his comfort zone as in the usual story, but it's more disorienting, and it's cut short by the grave reality of getting back to finding his kidnapped wife. (The Grace Jones song begins around 1:20.)

tfw no doomed new wave mpdg gf...



November 9, 2021

Don't be afraid to play the Manic Pixie Dream Guy role

With the news that Aimee Terese has gotten an IRL bf, that concludes my role as her online Manic Pixie Dream Guy (a term that sounds dumb in the masculine, but just for consistency). I'll use this occasion to reflect on the role, personally and in the broader culture, as well as advise other guys who fit the profile to play the role themselves.

Much like the MPDGs from the movies, I haphazardly ran into someone who was full of promise but was a bit down in the dumps. Through the power of my quirked-up free-spirited charm, over a series of adventures together, I picked up her mood and helped her find the resolve to achieve as much as she could in her ordinary business, but also to find the confidence to put herself out there romantically, once she truly sees how lovable she is.

And how else can you convince someone else of that, without taking part in a quasi-relationship with them first? Not just random compliments that can be batted away, but a persistent infatuation that lets them know they're irresistible long-term material who you can't help but want to bond with socially and emotionally.

I serenaded her a lot during the lonely lockdown period, but I think the turning point was portraying her as the "Girl All the Banned Guys Want". She really melted over that one. After awhile, there comes a moment when she realizes, "Jeez, this guy's really serious -- I truly must be that lovable, or else he wouldn't have hung around for so long and invested in me". It's giving her the whirlwind tour of convincing her that she's waifu material, without actually wifing her up.

Which is not to say the MPDG's role is a disinterested social worker, as though they saw someone starving and gave them food because everyone deserves to be fed. That is not even a quasi-relationship. The MPDG really is infatuated with the protag, and attaches to them rather than any number of other potential recipients.

And yet both of you can sense that this isn't a long-term prospect, that it's just a little too comically off-the-wall to last. But that's fine -- it's more of a preparation, for when they face the real test. Kind of like sparring with a partner before a scheduled match-up, or going to physical rehab after an injury but before navigating real-world environments again.

Just like in the movies, the MPDG and the reinvigorated protagonist usually do not end up together, but that's the point. The MPDG is fundamentally an earthly guardian angel for the protag, meant to be with them long enough to nurse them back to health, not destined to be their eternal soulmate, who they just might find after the proper social-emotional recuperation.

Their parting may be bittersweet, but it's not marred by regrets, jealousy, or hard feelings. They shared a special, quirky quasi-relationship that most people will never have the fun of taking part in.

* * *


Partly this post is to reiterate what the MPDG role is within the larger narrative and character development of those movies (it's not just individual personality traits, but a relational role). But it should also encourage other guys out there to give this role a try, when you find yourself in the right opportunity. I don't think many pay it much mind, or shy away from it if they do. It's deeply rewarding and fulfilling, and creates some of the most fondly remembered relationships of your entire life.

As it so happens, the last time I played this role -- IRL, before the lockdown / everyone's-online era -- was during a restless warm-up phase of the 15-year excitement cycle (naturally, that's when the MPDG role emerges). Instead of the early 2020s, it was the late 2000s -- but she reminds me a lot of Aimee in key ways.

Half-Levantine and half-European, short, skinny, boob girl rather than butt girl, ADHD, given to mischievous grinning, born in the late '80s (a vulnerable phase, when sad girls are born), good-looking yet also insecure, an outward intensity disguising an inner tender-heartedness... an uncanny resemblance, even if they're not quite twins.

I still remember when she'd found her first real boyfriend -- who she ended up marrying and having a kid with later on -- she was eager to get my blessing, or stamp of approval. Now that her training / quasi-relationship had completed, on to the real test -- well, coach, how did I do?!

Just like how the female MPDG has a maternal, nursing quality, the male MPDG has a fatherly, coach-like quality. I think that's what allows for the training / sparring / mock / quasi relationship to flourish -- if it were a straight-up dating-and-mating context, then the MPDG would only love the protag conditionally, as long as they were together. But if the MPDG has a maternal or father-figure aspect to them, the protag can expect more of an unconditional love and support. That gives their quasi-relationship a safer feel while they're recuperating and preparing, before the protag engages in an actually risky real-deal relationship later.

And they won't expect to end up together for real, for the long-term -- that would feel incestuous. The MPDG will, at some point, give the protag away to their new-found true love, just as a parent gives away their daughter during a wedding.

* * *


Is this role for everyone? Well, probably not, just like with the female MPDG. I think that, like the female MPDGs, you have to have been born during a manic phase of the excitement cycle, to have a sense of resilience or even invincibility, to be the leader or guide for someone who is a bit wary about coming out of their shell. That means if you're born in the first half of the '50s, second half of the '60s, first half of the '80s, or second half of the '90s.

The girl will not be born during the same phase -- those girls are already probably resilient and confident, being born in the same manic phase you were. Looking back on the late 2000s, I think it was mainly the late '80s-born girls (the sad girls) who were drawn to me as an MPDG, whereas the early '90s-born girls were the wild-child type and just felt like me being older than them added transgressive value to the random hot guy value.

So in the current restless warm-up phase, that means the girls most in need of an MPDG will be born during the first half of the 2000s, a vulnerable phase that created the generation of sad girls looking for an encouraging daddy figure on TikTok. Those born in the second half of the 2000s are going to be another wild-child cohort, who would be interested in you more for taboo-pressing value.

While the early 2020s could feature the occasional older-people version like me and Aimee, the scenario will most likely be a guy born from '95-'99 and a girl born from '00-'04, and only during this '20-'24 window (a restless phase of the cycle, when people come out of their vulnerable-phase refractory states, but some are more wary of doing so and need coaxing).

Also like the female MPDGs, I think you need the typical shape of your gender -- hourglass waist-hip ratio for females, but inverted triangle torso for males. And attractive to seriously hot. But part of the MPDG quirk is being atypical of their gender in just a few ways, with the female ones having a bit of a tomboy streak, and therefore the male ones being more empathetic than the average guy. I think both male and female MPDGs are corporeal rather than cerebral, and therefore butt people rather than boob people. You're an *earthly* guardian angel.

The degree of physical intimacy is not set in stone, it could involve only flirtatious touchy-feely behavior, or go all the way. You're not a purely Platonic friend looking to boost their self-esteem, and you really will be infatuated with them. But just know that it's not meant to last, and it will be more of an intense unique adventure, not a stable and thankfully-boring marriage.

This isn't because it's a fling or summer romance, but because you're partly a father-figure or coach to them, and that restoring or building their confidence is a temporary role. Once they've found it, they've found it. There's not a whole lot more for you to do in that role. They're capable of flying on their own now, thanks in part to you, and they're meant to find someone else, somewhere else, for the long-term.

You won't feel so much "single" (angry, depressed, etc.), as much as an empty-nester (bittersweet).

Still, just as the bittersweet feeling of being an empty-nesting parent should not prevent you from getting married and raising children in the first place, neither should it keep you from playing an MPDG role for a sad girl who catches your attention, who's full of potential, lovable, and deserving, but needs to be won over and convinced of it.

November 6, 2021

King Kong (1976), the definitive portrayal

I checked this DVD out with a few others for Halloween, but was surprised by how little it resembles a standard horror or monster movie.

Made during the gritty 1970s, there is nothing supernatural, fantastic, paranormal, or surrealistic in its atmosphere, in contrast to the original from the peak of otherworldly terror during the early '30s. Unlike vampires and back-from-the-dead mummies, though, a giant ape deserves a more naturalistic portrayal, so it benefited from being remade during the '70s.

Even when the adventurers sail up to the mist-enshrouded Skull Island, the veil of fog has no high-key lighting, no dynamic movement of cloud shapes (as though they were hauntingly animated and trying to ward off the intruders), no boat-rocking waves (as though alive and angry), no unusual colors, or other visual effects. The forces instilling dread are wholly mundane, but no less disturbing for that -- the uncertainty of the natural world, especially where it's unexplored, opens up so many potential paths leading to disaster, rendering demonic intervention unnecessary.

Nor are the natives of the island portrayed as employing supernatural weapons against a supernatural menace, as in The Exorcist, one of the few exceptions to the naturalistic trends of the '70s. Although working themselves up into a frenzied tribal dance, lit by torches at night, their ritual is depicted (and explained by the academic in the party) in completely functional terms. Namely, they are offering up one of their women, so that Kong will be distracted enough to leave their settlement alone for awhile.

No magic involved, no primitive superstition, no purely symbolic performance (the woman is to be literally given over to a real-life giant ape). The priest puts on a special mock-ape costume, the sacrificial woman is dressed up in special bridal garb, and there's a carnivalesque level of music and dance, but none of it is out of this world. It could be from a National Geographic documentary.

The heavily stylized cinematography, however, is anything but naturalistic, utilitarian, and documentarian. It uses all of the elements of the sublime style, as I explored in a post about The Parallax View, shot just a couple years earlier. And all filmed in Panavision, whose signature shallow focus shots lend a theatricality to the naturalistic action. Especially when such an impression is called for, e.g., during the ritual sacrifice. She appears as a central actress atop a focal set-piece on a stage, with the environment appearing more as a flat blurry mural along the back of the stage, not an in-depth 3-D space that would be conveyed by a documentary.


Naturally, King Kong leans most on the technique of showing tiny figures loomed over by imposing landscapes and structures, suggesting their relative powerlessness before forces far beyond their control, and which in their stillness come across as impersonal and unmoved by the characters' predicament, rather than animated against them in a pathetic fallacy, which would at least give them the familiarity of being part of a social relationship (even if antagonistic). These structures are the natural environment (and the primitive man-made gate) in the first two acts, then architectural ones as the plot moves to New York for the final act.

The score is equally crucial to adding style to the naturalistic plot and characterization. It strikes the right balance between being too bombastic for the tone (as though a Hans Zimmer score were grafted onto it), and being too atmospheric to build any tension. Again the best moments come as the adventurers first approach Skull Island. As their boat has pushed through the fog and is approaching dry land, an almost triumphal military passage begins, but it never really soars, and is instead dragged down by a foreboding undercurrent. It perfectly sets the mood: they think they've begun a conquest, but are actually about to meet their doom.

Then during the natives' sacrificial festival, there is enough frenzy to their music to signal that this is an unusual occasion, not their typical Saturday night out dancing. And yet it's not overwrought or space-y enough to make it feel supernatural, as though to put you in the altered state of mind of a drug-induced shamanistic spirit-summoning. It's very exotic and unusual, even for this tribe, but it's not from another dimension.

Rounding out the straight-but-stylized Seventies-ness is the screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr., who also wrote The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor just before this one. Although not a conspiratorial thriller, there is still enough of the cynical tone and focus on corruption and deception among the elite power-players to give its social environment the same sense of alienation and inevitability (institutional rather than supernatural). At the same time, the main characters have enough of a heroic or romantic streak to make it feel like their actions might actually achieve their goals, in a triumph of their free will, rather than being doomed pawns moved about on an existential chessboard.

The stand-out performance is by the stunning Jessica Lange, in her debut role, as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She's a bubbly free spirit always searching for new adventures, and new people to brighten the mood of along the way. At first, she plays this role for the entire crew that has rescued her, flirtatiously but wholesomely lifting the spirits of an all-male crew, who would have otherwise felt like the crew in Jaws or The Thing.

Then she is drawn monogamously to lifting the spirits of the protagonist (played by Jeff Bridges), who had been on a course toward self-imposed perpetual bachelorhood, despite the enjoyment he gets from being a rugged academic-adventurer (a proto-Indiana Jones).

Finally, although she is initially terrified upon being kidnapped by Kong, she grows to bond with him as well, as her typically feminine rambling manner and clumsy ways intrigue the beast and endear her to him. She puts her own life at risk twice to help him out of trouble, and serve as his earthly guardian angel. First, when he is raging out against his cold metallic prison aboard the oil tanker that has captured him, and the captain is threatening to flood his cell rather than risk further damage to his ship, she climbs out onto the grate in the ceiling to speak to him and soothe him, then accidentally falls down in with him, where she calms him down further before climbing back out. Later during the finale, she insists that he not put her down out of his hand, but hold onto her as a hostage so that the military helicopters won't fire on him.

This emphasis on developing social relationships saves the movie from being another standard monster flick, as a remake of King Kong could have easily become. It's almost as though Kong himself were just another human character in a naturalistic adventure movie.

In fact, unlike the original, there are hardly any other monsters or unusual creatures in this one. There is a brief scene where a gigantic python threatens his girl, and he intervenes at huge risk to himself. This scene serves not to play up the fantastical cast of creatures on the mysterious island, but to develop Kong's relationship with her -- he is something of her abductor, but now also a protector and rescuer. Interpersonal relationships can be complicated that way, unlike monster-takes-girl. This relationship is present in the original, but is more richly developed in the remake.

So where did Kong come from, if there are no others of his species in the island? And hardly any other mega-beasts? Although the story does not go there, it seems more like he used to be a human being who, through whatever means, got changed into a giant ape, and who perhaps adapted a more ape-like personality and behavior over time -- but who could still be changed back to human if the right earthly guardian angel were to enter his world and reverse the curse. That would make it fit even more squarely within the "beauty and the beast" tradition.

Although this movie may not be exceptional by '70s standards, that's a pretty high bar to clear. It was a huge box-office success upon release, and critical reaction at the time was largely positive, if unsure of how to feel about the naturalistic rather than fantastical story.

I saw it as a kid sometime in the late '80s, in a giant Jazz Age picture palace, no less. I do remember it leaving quite an impression, but it was a bit over my head, and the only scene I distinctly remember is King Kong vs. the giant python -- the most monster-movie-like scene, with mano-a-mano combat between a clear good guy and bad guy. And of course I remember the thrill of the theme park ride that this movie inspired, Kongfrontation at Universal Studios Florida (sadly for Zoomers and Gen Alpha, you had to have gone there during the '90s or early 2000s).

It is simply a more mature and socially developed take on the monster / horror genre, just like fellow '70s entries Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, most of whose plots are going to go right over the kids' heads, except for the action-packed scenes.

Somehow during the internet nerd age, King Kong '76 has become panned or qualified-to-death, while the original remains highly respected. Probably because the current commentators are horror movie geeks who are going to be put off by the relative lack of fighting scenes, the eschewal of the supernatural, therefore the minor use of special effects (even though the animatronics are mind-blowing), and the pervasive emphasis on social relationships among the characters. BORRRINNNNGGG, dude just fast-forward to the only badass scene in the whole movie, where King Kong snaps that giant python's jaws apart, and be done with it!

Really the only bad thing about it is the theatrical release poster, and DVD cover, which makes it look like a low-budget camp-fest. But it's nothing like that.

This one is due for a major reappraisal, which I hope to have started here. If you like any aspect of what made '70s Hollywood so great, you're going to resonate with the remake more than the original. Pauline Kael liked it -- it was far from a mindless popcorn-muncher. At this point, despite being a blockbuster in its day, it's more of a deep cut. So go ahead and enrich your cinematic palette with, yes that's right, the Seventies remake of King Kong.

November 3, 2021

Today's electoral report (open thread on elections)

Lent a hand to spank the Democrat in the only interesting race I could vote in. Couldn't tell much about the Republican, other than he was against COVID bullshit and other woketard crap. Okey-dokey then.

At this point, I'll be voting straight-R for the next few years, until we get out of COVID / etc. hell. None of them will be populists, but Democrats have rapidly plunged the country so far down into oblivion, all the R has to do is promise to make things one circle higher in hell, and it's a slam dunk with voters.

Whether the winner with voters occupies the office, is another question. Steal or no steal? Well, my state resisted the national steal in 2020, so I was not so worried about that this time either.

Even if I lived in a state stolen from Trump, I'd still vote going forward, just to make them steal it rather than win outright, and thereby deprive them of legitimacy in office for having the stain of stealing on their hands, vs. concede them legitimacy by staying home and letting them win with clean hands.

Legitimacy makes a hell of a difference in getting their agenda rammed through -- look at how pathetic the Biden admin has been in doing literally anything that was not pushing an open door (e.g. vaxx mandates, where only the already eager libtards followed the orders).

Biden's WH is not only illegitimate for having to stop the ballot counting in multiple states on election day 2020 -- which delegitimized him in the eyes of Republicans and independents -- but for only coming out of the Dem primary due to Obama terminating the voting process. When Dem voters were free to choose, they said "Anybody But Biden". Kamala had to drop out even earlier, earning ZERO delegates.

Who does the DNC select, then? The last-place choices among their own voters -- Biden and Kamala, rather than, say, Bernie / Buttgag / Bloomberg / anyone else. Even if Dem voters were OK with their party stealing the general, they did not want those two specific losers to be the beneficiaries -- they would've wanted Bernie / Buttgag / Bloomberg / whoever, to wind up in the WH via a steal. So Biden and Kamala are illegitimate in the eyes of many Democrats, too.

Even his most loyal demographic group, African-Americans, have deserted him -- they are the most opposed to getting vaxxed. So much so that they'd rather stick to their guns on staying pureblood and risk "biting the hand that feeds".

Of course they aren't getting fed much by Biden anyway, so what are they losing? They have to pay the same inflated food prices, gas prices, etc., that the Trump chuds have to pay. They were not given a "Don't inflate my prices, merchant, I voted for Biden" card by the new admin. Nor cash hand-outs to defray the inflated prices. If they don't get to take anything from the admin, why should they give anything to it?

I experimented a little today with masking -- the elections board website said they're only encouraged, not required to vote. And sure enough, there was only an unmanned table at the entrance saying they're encouraged, and take a free mask if you don't have one. But I waltzed through barefaced, all the way through the ID check and explanation of how the machine works.

Still, I decided to play it safe at the end and put on a mask for the first time in over half a year, while clicking the touchscreen and feeding my ballot into the reader machine. Just in case the poll workers or a camera was noting which ballots were submitted by unmasked people and deleted their votes from the total.

But now that I see the guy won by a healthy margin, it likely wouldn't have made a difference if I had kept the mask off the whole time. So I won't be wearing it again to vote.

Also, a car with some girls catcalled me as I was walking over to the polling location. "Hot Trump guys lusted after by Democrat girls" is still a thing, all these years later. Didn't have the heart to shout back that I'm on my way to keep the COVID police out of office. But I didn't have to -- I'm just protecting them and their social lives, whether they realize it or not. That put me in a good mood, feeling rewarded, before even arriving to the voting booth.

Still, I'll never feel truly rewarded in the voting booth until I get to cast a vote for Tulsi "Gaia from Captain Planet" Gabbard. That's my biggest regret from last year's COVID craziness -- not voting for her in the Dem primary, since it was effectively long over. But then I could've added another rare-bird feather to my libtard-heart-attack hat -- Nader 2000, Trump 2016 and '20, and Tulsi... really missed out on that one. Doesn't have the same effect to say that's who I would've voted for, without actually casting the ballot.

Reunite the band, Tulsi, don't leave us all hanging.

One of the few women so wholesome she could get away with dressing up as a priestess for Halloween, without it coming off slutty and sacrilegious. "The spirit of aloha compels you!" she urges to a friend dressed up as a foaming-at-the-mouth libtard witch-hunter.

You know how some guys would fake an injury to be tended to by a cute nurse? Why wouldn't they pretend to be a rabid panic-monger, if they knew Tulsi herself would be sent to cure them of their ills?

Do Catholic girls fantasize about this stuff when they see a hot priest? We know how they'll fake an injury to get attention from a hot doctor, or their schoolmates in general. Can't imagine there's too many hot nuns for the Catholic boys to dream about, and they're not the ones who perform exorcisms in any case.

Not something I ever sensed in my Methodist church growing up, anyway. More proof of Catholic libidinal energy.