This one's about Pete Hegseth

"I know niggas is hard-headed but I ain't got the patience
Don't want me havin' no patience, turn into more patients
More trips to ICU 'cause I see you
Trying to get away with shit a real nigga wouldn't do"

 

DMX - Where Da Hood At

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"You'll never get rich

You sonovabitch

You're in the army now"

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Once upon a time, my family's adorable puppy killed a cat. Strays from the neighbourhood continually trespassed in her yard, no matter how many times she chased them off. She'd tree one occasionally and have to be locked indoors while my father coaxed/carried the furball back down. Then one cat was too slow climbing and she shook it like a terrier having caught a rat, snapping its spine.

 

The adorable puppy was in turn attacked by a neighbour's pit bull while walking down the block, out in the open street. One year it broke her tail. A couple years later, it tore open her flank, thankfully not hitting much but skin and subcutaneous fat so she eventually healed up alright after being stitched up twice. But she's still absolutely terrified of even walking along the other side of the street from the pit bull's yard, and has to be walked to the park by the back road.

 

See the difference there? The Adorable Puppy did murder a repeat offender invading her territory and ignoring all warnings. But she doesn't go after cats in general, making no fuss at the neighbours' pampered housepet since it has the sense to stay on its own side of the fence. In fact when our relatives visit with their own cat, the two animals have always studiously ignored each other like divas at a cocktail party, instinctively accepting some sort of transitive in-group membership via monkey clan. They obviously don't like being in the same house, but neither raises a hackle. T'would be impolitic.

 

The pit bull attacks everything that moves, anywhere it moves, going after a local child on another occasion, who thankfully escaped before it could reach him. And though you'd rightly assume those holding a dangerous animal should take extra care to keep it contained, the same psychosis leading some to buy a pit bull prods them to "accidentally" let it slip out of the yard even more often than most. They want the drama. They want to play the victim when others call them on it as if they and their precious murder-beast are being targeted in a pogrom.

On a completely unrelated topic, the webcomic site Big Head Press has seemingly shrunk a bit over the years, down to its main libertarian adventure yarn and its porn spin-off. A couple of decades ago it also hosted a gargle of similar fare, including The Probability Broach, wherein a medium-boiled detective from a commie hell-topia travels to an alternate-dimension free-market paradise to be shown the wrong of his assumptions on public safety and powermongering, yadda-yadda, you know how that sort of story goes where academics are evil wizards and anyone who's not a shotgun-totin' shitkicker might by some contrivance prove a devious foreign subversive. Given how much of it reads like Robert Heinlein fanfiction, I will admit to having enjoyed The Broach well enough, which did not blind me to some of its more batshit insane moments, more often than not involving Americans' obsession with firearms.

 

"Vaughn's gun didn't do him much good, though."

"Not against a machinegun -- that's what happens when you outlaw handguns -- matters escalate."

Wait, so if you outlaw pit bulls, everyone will manage to find and buy Bengal tigers? How does that track? You gave your character gun N, had him killed by gun N+1, all as proof that N-1 would result in more gun murder? Well, I'm sure it aaall made sense back at the rally...*

 

Most comical the railing again criticism of the gun fetish as sexual sublimation, when the detective's requisite plucky love interest wails for a few pages around the stunning line: "who's sicker, somebody who thinks his gun is a sexual organ, or somebody who wants to take everybody's sexual organs away?"

Umm, the first category, definitely. You're still the crazy one. Your sublimation is unhealthy, and if my Pride-And-Joy were a revolver, I wouldn't blame you for making me at least wear a kevlar condom around town. 

 

There's a particular insanity to the image of a pit bull as call to atavism, as a strongman championing "the hood (at)" or his people, tribe, what-have-you. Much as a religious cretin might in his unbearable ignorance present an agriculturally, artificially selected banana as symbol of God's tailoring of the world for humans, a pit bull is the result of hyperselection for a highly artificial environment, the fighting pit. It exists at the mercy and self-destructive insanity of an entirely different species. In the wild it would show its innumerable disadvantages like its coat or its loss of energy-saving canine loping gait, etc. Wolves are certainly more aggressive than domestic dogs as a whole, but a wolf born with a pit bull's omnidirectional hyperaggression would likely be torn apart by the rest of its pack or would at least be abandoned to its fate when it idiotically runs at a bear or whatever. Most animals value but also understand the limitations of turf and trespassing. T'would be impolitic not to.

 

And for the human species itself, while warrior castes had existed for millennia, mass militarist sentiment among the lower classes was a rare phenomenon until Napoleon's** adept exploitation of our overdeveloped social-climbing instinct, discovering he could pay soldiers, instead of material goods, in artificial status symbols a.k.a. medals a.k.a. the latest spaulders in Word of Warcraft. North-American colonists had guns for immediate necessity, not sport or ideology.

 

But in closing we must in brief touch on Pekingese and try not to lose a finger, because many toy breeds in fact display the same level of aggression as pit bulls, and are undisciplined even by that comparison! Had Chihuahuas the size to carry through on their intent, every tupperware party would end as redly as Cujo's wettest dreams. And as for surviving in a natural state, well... let's just say the local squirrels would acquit themselves better. By analogy, if you scoff at the absurdity of pumping military staff full of testosterone, admit depo-provera's no divine ambrosia either. There's nothing healthier or more natural in recent decades' obsession with feminization, in fabricating a political prop of what should be personal choice, in the feminist movement's desperation to prop up transsexuals and transvestites and metrosexual poodles as morally superior misandrist converts and a show of diversity reducing diversity to a neutered cherub ideal. Feminists' yapping purse-pooches have made at least as much a spectacle of their ideology as libertarian gun nuts, and their market penetration is even greater. Gun Queen Story Hour, anyone?

 

So yes, great, leash the current political insanity. Then also leash the other brand you've refused to address for decades running. As would be politic.

 

 

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* A lot of times this sort of argument hearkens back to increased alcohol consumption during prohibition, naively ignoring that manufacturing a machine gun takes a helluva lot more investment, coordination and precision than mashing some grapes in a barrel and forgetting about the sauce for a while. Bathtub gin is doable. Bathtub anti-air missiles, not so much. The proliferation of firearms is not a grass-roots movement, but the result of very large, very organized, very governmental corporate profiteering.

 

** Though Napoleon tends to be over-credited for this. Pretty sure the Prussians were developing the same system around the same time. 

AoW4 Factions, 23

AoW4 has managed the odd feat, unequaled since City of Heroes, of inspiring me to not just write up a character bio but constantly create new factions and give them all more or less whimsical flavor text. So here they are, one by one:

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I've always hated the roleplaying stigma against death and necromancy, so last year I made several Shadow factions playing the evil either up or down as the mood struck me. This ended up my favorite one of the bunch. Shadow/astral have great synergy in terms of spellcasting, though these guys aren't as specialized for pure nuking as my syrons or Cheshire cats. In contrast to my usual summon/buff-heavy routine (though I do miss my beasts 'n weeds) this faction needs a scant few summons to shore up the front line (made up of skeleton cannon fodder in the first place) before they simply debuff and nuke everything in some truly spectacular displays of pyrotechnics (cryotechnics?) especially with various casting point bonuses meaning you can really let rip with the big guns. (Caveat: always starved for mana.) Strategically, the economic side's a struggle but rapid research at least widens my bag of tricks quickly, freebie skeletons ease the recruitment pressure and the Keepers of Knowledge diplomatic bonuses help more than expected. Also, a Defender giant avatar combined with back-row evokers allows for faster than usual early expansion, for a nerd faction. Love it, and replayed it a few times after ascension.

A Fine Frenzy

Erase her despair, you've always been there, you're shorter of hair, you're shorter on hair, la mer des mêres your Venus declare or you're off to the chair, all the spoils of a wasted life through all of my wasted years, through all of my wasted tears off the tourniquet, she still has all her hair but your bones crack in her little teeth, won't you be her leather, Pat's still perky but the old game is not up, Herbert, revert, don't lose sight of the dog that's inside you better yet don't lose consciousness with your back to the bitch, the oldest game is never over, the oldest profession has no borders, will you take your place in the great below her navel gazing, did they warn you of hazing, did they warn you of negging did they warn you of hazel eyes always seeking above is her sun your sun is hersun your sun ishersunyoursun, oh repair, she's always been there she comes, walking down the street race you to the finish line it's in a courthouse guns to your head when you've got nothing left to give sever flesh and bone and offer it to Herbert learned his lesson eventually but did you despair of the aristocratic life commitment it did she have a headache and where did she sleep last night, in the pi nes and you did you sleep in the lake of fire where the tied up, used up and dead to the world end up the hill to fetch a peel it back and doesn't it make you feel better to regiment your bhisti, christie lists her wants to loam your seedy needs, down girl down, down girl down you send him in it, she was up above it all, but when you live with ape men it's hard to be clean track it from the beginning, with beer and bread and a road well traveled the priestess cured wild meat into a hero, always who pay - two or three months does it mutter how much as if every month after, und du hast night gesicko, perverted luste, sons of goddesses ach schweine, sate this liebste meine hands and knees we crawl you cannot stop us all of this for youuuu-hooochie that frail braining you with her heart as big as a whale at the casino she know how to kick the gong around so git to the track and make them dullards fast but it'll never be enough, never be enough, never be enough to fill your head the dormouse said right before the cat meowed and out he cowed, the oxy, oxy ollenfree, all the men she tells youuu-hooo will never be, still gardening her bed of krater-era icons, the blood of your foes burns you at her jealous will you won't you realize she had you made from the start, made man high-grade man, rock superstar, five cars you're in charge of the honeys at the palladium is an imaginary currency at which girlies was laughin 'cause how's that gonna help you get a friend from whose ride to holla, when you gettin' clean of the heroine, where the parents comin' at you with supersonic speeds for the grand kids with guns gonna get it where I can't look at the world the way you look at the world is not enough but it's a start my love you 'til the day that hie die ist die erste stern von alle sad pictures of girls getting bitter sisters you used to have but don't any more than she can give her body it would be impolitic to bring up the soul cages in the fishwoman's yard full of brass watch, a cheque, maybe three weeks to live your fear of biological imperatives, it's relative, it's all in the family, they're hiding inside of me, sie will es und so ist es brauch, was sie will bekommt sie you gonna do right like some other man do it young and stupid the way she likes it's always there, oh despair of seeing her dancing pretty with tears in her eyes blackbird singing in the dead of night for her slice of your pie, deny your goddess three times into the seven day binge, that to surrender magnificently to passion accurst, but Fiduciary Annie's just a girl to me, kinda down, kinda feelin' some feelings you wouldn't believe the good old spells on you, 'cause you're hers if you love her, hers if you hasst her dead disco, dead funk, dead rock and roll was a euphemism for the dead love couldn't go no further her goals, hells' bells knocks me on my knees, rolls with platinum wheels, that don't impress her much ado about the shrew, but the mouse is called immodest if he redirects your female gaze from the glass ceiling where mandy went to med school to the glass floor where every scrub takes three steps toward the door mister, it ain't right babe, no, it ain't right, no, no, to feel so lucky while gettin's good times are killing me was this for real, just an illusion, a toxic pillory to make her numb to your place in the dirt, a toxic pillory to make you dumb to her funny little face, 'cause there's a knife for every day that I've known you, just remember, when you think you're free, you'll never be free, you'll never be free, you'll be the revenging mariner hoping that you'd die holding hands, have you started to turn into somebody else, that always happens to somebody else, you'll always know who you are, from the other side of the sixteen military wives reclaiming your small estate, disorder, disorder the toxicity of your city in the deep dank tarn where your hideous heart keeps beating, straining against Annie's grip for more, more than the chore, more than the bore, more than before, more than a mandate to adore, more than a man dares to restore, the crisped and sere hopes of lone moan before Weir was haunted by ghoulfriends, when they called him unforgiven unto unprofitable intrigues soaring above the beldam's curtain poles where Brunhild gets ever more impatient in her ring of monetized desire, where it's curtains for Marsyas preaching to the choir, down in the park where Paris and Ravana and Nessus and Koschei offer the spoils of a wasted life, allzumenschliche for yoouuuu-hoo've always been their, you've always been their, you've always been their despair.

Oh, despair, she'll always be there.

 

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I've been doing fewer of these stream-of-consciousness rambles the past couple of years, for... multiple reasons. One being that song lyrics and other quotes have increasingly hijacked said streams. This time though, it even started with a song, getting back in my car exhausted and drenched with a sudden rainstorm after a walk through the woods but somehow still sweating and struggling for breath, and the stereo piped up with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Despair. The singer's got the type of voice that really hits me (cf. Garbage, Metric, In This Moment, etc.) and so from the first lyrics my miserable drowned rat physical state was wrenched into her meaning, her intonation. And all I could think driving home was how fucking unfair this was, even as I worshipped every lilt and sigh and set it on repeat. I won't even bother trying right now to list every source I ripped off above. Some references even I can't remember after the fact, and this is about 90% random rip-offs by volume. Herbert is an initial and the mother of mothers references both NIN and my favorite comic book. The first few phrases were mentally composed on my way home, most of the rest sitting in a hot bath until my old tablet's text editor crashed on me and erased what I hadn't saved. So it goes. That was three months ago. I finally rediscovered it during another bath and picked up the Poe quote where I'd left off. So it also goes. But the last line was fixed as soon as I got in my car back then. And it still goes.

Spiny Orb Weavers

I've been getting better at spotting these absolute weirdos.

The main problem is that they seem to prefer shade, making not just spotting but photography a bit tricky.

Sometimes you get a closer encounter than you'd like though. They sling their webs a bit higher than triangle orb weavers, but I still ended up raking this one's apart with the top of my head.

It landed on my shirt sleeve, and I had a few precious moments to snap some photos one-handed. That is not a happy spidey by the way. Pretty sure when they rear up like that, you're about to get bitten. My shirt was comfortably loose though and hanging apart from my skin, so I was fairly confident it would not get through. Which did not stop me from quickly brushing it off with my camera lens the moment it made a move.

Go Limit Yourself

Last month when I referenced the Netflix miniseries Ripley it turned my stomach to see it listed as a "limited series" on commentary sites, even in one of two instances on Wikipedia. That's not a valid term. It's a corporate marketing slogan. We already had a name for it, which is to say the old marketing slogan. Miniseries have existed for half a century and when they launched I'm sure the jargon sold for a while, sounded coquettish and fun like mini candy bars. Now of course a few quick economic recessions have given the public a taste for full-sized candy bars instead, so suddenly you're sold something "limited" to sound exclusive like collectable comics and get-it-while-supplies-last!

 

But why the fuck are the rest of you swallowing their bullshit? You are not obligated to use their word. You can still call it a miniseries. If it is true that you've built up a resistance to the old marketing hype, if it no longer fools you, that is precisely why you should absolutely refuse to call it anything else! In fact, whenever some Mad Man runs up to you shouting the latest focus-grouped buzz-word rebranding an existing product, the appropriate response is to kick his lying bitch teeth in, not collude in his manipulation of you!

 

...

...

Now let's talk about "mansplaining"... 

Today is August 5, 2026.

There Will Come Soft Rains

"And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I."

- The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner

 

 

Today is August 4, 2026

 

If you have not seen Grave of the Fireflies, try to find the original Japanese cut, the one that doesn't spoil the ending and dull its clout. Speaking of which, spoiler alert farther down this page. But we're starting with the weather. It was lovely until a couple of months ago. Sure, globally the warming trend continued, but in the couple of locations I keep an eye on, 2025 all the way to the early summer of '26 marked the longest stretch of sane weather in a couple of decades. We had a couple of slowly defrosting springs, a real winter with real winter freeze, a stormy last fall ending in biting sleet, a healthy amount of rain restocking the local hydrosphere after previous years' droughts, the works. Local works.

 

Every time I'd talk to my relatives and they'd remark on the cold I'd have to remind them: no, you're older than me, you should remember! This is how it's supposed to be, this is how winter felt in my childhood forty years ago, when we used to make snow forts and they'd last a week instead of not bothering with even a snowman that melts by afternoon. No, don't complain about a cold snap, March weather is supposed to slingshot insanely between freezing and balmy, not rocket straight to 30C all at once! And then in April and May they'd start commenting how nice the weather is for long walks and I'd remind them, well, just wait, 'cause the climate's still set to boil over, all the extra heat hasn't gone anywhere, that little chill, we're gonna pay it off pretty soon. And now it's pretty soon in July and August, and last year's bill's come due. Europe and Canada are getting torched by wildfires and Californians are holding their breath knowing they're next and it's pointless to remind everyone this new normal never had to happen.

 

Today is August 4, 2026

 

In Takahata's brilliance, Grave of the Fireflies' sneakiest gut punch comes not from ladling on shock value gruesomeness, but from painting its grim theme in Ghibli's habitually lush palettes. As the story progresses and our protagonists' plight grows ever grimmer, no matter how sapped they are of vitality, nature around them insists on lavishing its beauty and cheer upon other observers. Sapphire skies overlook verdant pulchritude and blade and leaf vibrate with newfound hope, perversely mocking the children's suffering. That perverse beauty shining through in Teasdale's poem as well gives the crucial counterpoint to Bradbury's automated house in There Will Come Soft Rains, penultimate story in the classic Martian Chronicles.

 

As in The Veldt, Bradbury's automated house, by doing everything for you, becomes symbolic of a system which though it appears to merely remove the drudgery of physical existence, instead overshoots into fabricating an environment feeding base impulses but where the intent and intellect which should rule such baser drives play no part, where appetites and habit formation run amok.

 

Today is August 4, 2026

 

But, like Teasdale or Takahata, I think our thousand-times-great-grand-pere of fabulism cheated his audience by holding a better option in the wings, by allowing readers a feeling that things could have been different if better decisions had been taken, that beauty can even exist to be experienced. The story was, as I said, after all, penultimate in its collection, followed by a glimmer of hope for a fresh start and conviction not to repeat old mistakes. No such hope exists. We're seeing the self-destruct quotient in the Drake equation, and it's not bombs or killer robots; it's consumer demand. The subhuman masses opt for football and empty calories and social competition, never advancement. Intellect subverted toward animal goals empowers the animal to destroy intellect. Every other human on the planet is a knife at your throat.

 

Today is August 4, 2026