My Guests are pissed. But now that I’m posting again at a high rate? I am reminded that a lot of posts can be stream of thought. As in, nonsense. So, I’ll try and keep this brief (and likely somewhat fail).
We posted on the Oscar’s a few days ago. But two things. One, I should have provided some examples. Second, we did not properly give credit where credit is due.
First, the second. The quote, “Now everything sucks” I used is from Red Letter Media, specifically, Mike. If you’re into movies? This is a channel you cannot do without. Most, if not all, of current movie channels use their previous quotes. That’s how long they’ve been doing their excellent thing. I don’t even think a lot of channels realize they’re using the same words from the RLM guys from like a decade ago. It’s endemic. I realized I was using their quote a few days ago in my post, and should have credited them, but didn’t. Bad form. So here that is.
Second, the only reason people know the B movie Samurai Cop exists is because the RLM guys got into it years ago. Comparing this movie to Kurosawa’s’ Sanjuro is like asking anybody to step in front of a semi truck in motion and it’ll somehow all work out.
Samurai Cop is 1980’s/1990’s Southern California straight B garbage, but fun to laugh at. Sanjuro is pure art. If you want to know what I was talking about a few days ago? This is it. Here is an example I should have shown.
One is fun to laugh at. The other is pure art. You may disagree with me, but that’s for you to determine on your own. It’s great if you like superhero movies, or vampire movies, or Michael Bay laughing all the way to his mansion. I don’t mind either way. If you like something? Roll with it, joy is essential, especially in our stupid modern world. I guess I’m just telling you where my brain was at.
One is what Hollywood/(wider movie world; like Japan) used to be. The other is what Hollywood is today. Maybe I was a fool decades ago for not seeing it? The end start of the path that took decades to really happen? And it all fell off a cliff. Not sure?
The place I lived like over a decade ago (I’m “getting old”; everyone on The Internets says this all the time; I know this; I also know I’m not about to be devoured by scorpions tonight; please don’t judge me; I can’t sleep if you think scorpions are under my bed). Wait, uh, … what?
Basically I moved there back then to be closer to my relatives from another State. It’s been awesome.
If you’ve been a demented soul like me and are part squirrel, Albanian assassin, and the seven other people who have read this blog? You might remember I’ve written about that residence in the past. Then I left.
One of the reasons I had to leave was the target gunfire in the park that my second floor overlooked. They did it at about 11 or so. Not every night. I can’t remember how often it was; maybe about monthly. It drove me and my dogs nuts. Guess what? Nobody ever did anything about it. In Earth terms (even though it was not a rich USA place) it was essentially one of the richest counties on the planet.
Nobody cared.
It kinda creeps me out that I now live in one of the most rich counties in the world (this county is not the county mentioned above) and they can’t even get the street signs correctly. I’m not joking. One of the richest counties on Earth can’t produce intersections that make sense to a normal person.
This is how the planet works.
This is why everything that is wrong lately is happening. When your local or national government is so incompetent that they can’t be bothered to make the nearest traffic sign work? Why would you trust them with anything else.? Or get involved with anything else? You have to live your life, don’t you?
Iran has been front page news in the media for weeks. I myself dug into it, I kinda am ashamed about it. For what? Remember South Sudan, Syria, Burma, Central African Republic, Sudan today?
What about obscure stuff? How about continuous fighting (for decades) between the Indian government and those maoist insurgents? What about Mexico’s multi decade war against insanity, drugs, and anarchy? What happened to all the feelings about Tibet or Xinjiang?
Guess what folks, especially in the modern era of social media, nobody cares. Iran is top page news for now. In (let’s estimate) six months nobody will care. Oh, oh, … the media will tell you the war has increased your price at the gas pump this month? Hasn’t that been happening via inflation for an entire fucking half decade?
Remember Ukraine? Remember THAT? Iran is front page news. But! Every. Single. Day. At the moment, tens of thousands of Ukrainian Soldiers are under fire from Russia. Remember that?! But the media is like: Oh no, no that’s not important anymore, we need to report the current price of a barrel of oil like it’s a fresh killed deer at a medieval market.
Watch what you read, what you listen to, and what you look at on your blinky box of choice. Even if you can do nothing about it? Can you do anything, I mean anything of value to help the Iran situation? I can’t. But at least don’t let your brains be led by the media.
Reality will be changed soon. And the media will feed you clickbait of another kind till then. This is why everyone should volunteer and help their neighbors. This is why sports exist.
I got my love of movies from many sources. But a ton of it was from my Grandma. She had her VHS collection. I’ve got my Blu Ray collection.
I think on this degenerate loser blog we’ve posted about the Oscar’s probably about half a dozens times over the years.
I can’t remember the last time I went to a movie theater. Nor the last modern movie I’ve seen at all. As one of the most accurate video creators said a few years ago: “Now everything sucks.”
I think Sinners is supposed to win big? I’ve not seen it, or ever will. But I guess it’s a movie with vampires. Gee, nobody has ever done that before.
Hollywood is finished. The Oscars are nothing currently more than (forgive my language) a complete circle jerk. Where they all think they are important and matter. When they don’t.
I wish it was the other way around. If a good movie I wanted to see in the theater came out? I’d watch it opening weekend. It’s not gonna happen. Culture has moved on. It’s just that the Oscar’s and Hollywood either don’t realize it or accept it.
I was having lunch at a bar between errands today. This nice lady, based on her behavior and look, probably almost in her 80’s steps up and asks the barkeep for a $150 gift card.
On a whim, I asked her who it was for. She kinda brushed off that question and I didn’t press it. Then she says to me on the side, with her wonderful smirk, “It’s a good gift. Everyone has to eat.”
Both of us just started cracking up.
Many times, even the briefest of human interactions can bring laughter into your heart. It’s enteral.
You can see it in every part of the world. It’s just about walking around so your eyes can take it all in. But then your brain tends to shut down, because it can’t process what you’re seeing. This is the idea of seeing the most grinding poverty imageable, then within 15 minutes you can be drinking beer with your mates in a modern bar.
Every, single, part of humanity has this situation. Every country on Earth. In the West, the kindly term is ‘homeless’. Other places it’s ‘poverty’ or ‘destitution’. Either way, you get what I mean. And then these people can live this way literally one block away from the rich, modern world and they are essentially invisible.
Let me say this up front. I don’t have an answer for this. Apparently, since this concept still exists, none of us do. This post is about observation, not solutions. But if you have watched Star Trek you know the Federation has, somehow, removed this from Humanity. How did that happen in the show? Will it always be fiction? Maybe. But if it’s not, none of us will be alive to see it.
Kenya stops my brain on all this. One of Africa’s best economies where being in parts of Nairobi can seem like you’re in Singapore. And then drive a few hours in either direction and it’s South Sudan. The mind shuts down, it can’t process this is any normal way.
This is the way it works:
Leave apartment after you’ve read this degenerate blog post with the pinnacle of some form of human technology => walk to restaurant with friends => see homeless person along the way => acknowledge that they are homeless either through their own faults or the combined faults of others => ignore them => forget within 19 seconds you’ve seen them => eat at restaurant with friends => you are happy
As I wrote years ago on this stupid blog, I did a lot of soup kitchen volunteering. Essentially, one of my points was when you help people in situations like this, if you really think about it, you could be them.
I don’t give a shit what anybody says, in our own way, everybody is trying. Even suicide is an action, ultra negative, but still an action, chosen by said person. It’s horrible. But in a way, nobody ever truly gives up. It’s engrained to our human nature.
More than anywhere else, Kenya taught me this. Except maybe Vietnam too. Same thing. Absolute modern life you see, and in the same day, the most grinding poverty in the world. But it isn’t just on travel, it’s at our doorsteps everywhere. Wherever you live.
I had a great time in Kenya. But I guess I’ll wrap up these words with the simple statement: Help someone.
Love your neighbor(s). It doesn’t matter what you do. Volunteer; give money; research other unique ways you can make this crazy planet better. Kenya is a wonderful place. Go there. The people are so kind and awesome. It makes you understand who you are.
I’m walking back from errands tonight after a good burger. I’m walking back to me apartment. I’ve walked this route hundreds of times. But there was an anti-ICE protest in my way. For whatever reason.
Think what you will of Trump or ICE or whatever. But don’t get the fuck in my way when I’m just trying to walk home in peace.
I thought about going around them. But then, like, I’m an American. This is how I get home. I’m just going to walk on. So, I walked thru their formation keeping my eyes straight forward. Any time I was blocked I just stood there staring forward and said nothing. Not matter what they said to me. When a body window opened, I just walked on like I’ve done hundreds of times.
But then this kept happening. Eventually (to their credit) the protest organizers told the others to let me pass. Like they owned the sidewalk, as in a medieval castle gate. Even though I hadn’t said a word. Then I walked home.
On one of the crosswalk signals I saw later on the way home, somebody had written in sharpie, “FUCK ICE”. I chuckled a bit. The person who wrote that probably felt a bit of happy in their spine when they wrote that. I made them feel good. Even though what they wrote means essentially nothing.
Our modern Western culture is about words and outrage and cultural conquest. Actions are irrelevant. As long as you say and write what you think (on either “side”) that’s enough. Then they go home and feel happy about themselves. Even though they have accomplished absolutely nothing.
At least at some level, I hope most humans anywhere, everywhere have heard of our great civilizations that at this point are thousands of years old: Sumera, Babylon, Egypt, China (in so many forms), Assyria, Hittites, Songhai, Inca, and on and on and on.
In what we now (incorrectly in my opinion) still call the Middle East and its surrounding areas you hear tell of a mysterious island at the center of Earth’s trading empire. Bahrain. Some references refer to it as Elam. There is an argument to be made that this is true as a civilization across the Persian Gulf from Bahrain was called Elam.
History at these eras goes far too back for comprehension. Maybe Bahrain was once a client state if not conquered by Elam. But the general consensus is to refer to that ancient island as Dilmun. It was never an empire or had any real power. It was essentially a permanent city state. It’s wealth and importance came as a trading post between parts of the world. In what we now (incorrectly in my opinion) call globalization, Dilmun was essential. In the world of the citizens of Dilmun, ‘globalism’ to them meant ‘life’, every single day.
If you ever have a chance to visit Bahrain, even for a brief flight layover, your one and only destination needs to be the National Museum. It’s a quaint swell place, and does a really, really good job of portraying the entire course of the island’s history.
When your island is inhabited by humans for almost five thousand years, things change. It is possible that Dilmun was once semi tropical, and in time turned to the blank desert it is today. But regardless of the weather, Bahrain being only a city state, and at the border of so many empires became what happens to people in their positions: A Doormat.
The number of different civilizations and cultures that conquered Bahrain are innumerable. Even today, the royal family ties their origins not to Bahrain. They came from Kuwait. They are Sunni. Yet the majority of Bahrain’s citizens are Shia (since the island is so close to Iran), this is the central reason why things don’t work quite so well there today.
Then maybe as much as a little less than half the people living there are South Asians who also make up so much of the people across the Arab world. They come for the money. They have essentially no rights. They put up with it because they earn many times more than they could at home.
There is so much more I could write about the above two paragraphs. But I just don’t feel the energy to do it. It can quickly devolve into a sad tale. Where you want to bathe in the misery. But when you talk to all these people, they aren’t broken. They’re trying, each and every day, regardless whether they are a citizen or not.
Also, sandstorms suck. So does the heat. Bahrain is surrounded by relatively shallow parts of the ocean. Which allows the humidity to skyrocket. In Kuwait even if it’s 120 degrees the dry heat is at least somewhat tolerable. In a 90 degree Bahrain morning with 100% humidity it will end you. It would be so hot that first thing in the morning I’d leave my flat for work and the entire pavement would look like it was drenched. Even though there was no rain. It kind of broke me I think. Even all these years later, I kinda really fear a lot of heat.
I went to Bahrain for work, and had to stay here a long time. I did not enjoy. Mostly because I missed my family. I also just had a hard time connecting with the entire idea of the island. More than once I walked thru the Shia zones where I was told never to go. They did not kidnap me or kill me. They barely even acknowledged my existence. They had their lives to live. Sunni verse Shia politics are there, but it doesn’t change their lives.
Then there are the South Asians. The best meal I ever had in Bahrain was at a Thali place with some coworkers that was in a dirty back alley and was completely packed. It was incredible. And this is coming from a guy who would want to play curling in traffic before being a vegetarian.
I never met a single person in Bahrain that I hated. Some people I didn’t like, but never hate. These people, regardless of their skin color, race, culture, history are all just trying to muddle through and improve their lives and the lives of their families.
But even with this wonder of human light, I still can’t put my finger on why I feel so uncomfortable with my time there. I don’t understand why. I guess all I can do is acknowledge that I definitely would never want to go there again. I would never recommend anybody travel there. But I don’t have a clear answer even to myself as to why.
But, they have a future. Let’s see where it goes.
my own shot, from my flat balcony; good luck to them all, I truly hope for the best
So Hollywood has everyone convinced for over fifty years that sandstorms work like a tidal wave. Like a wall of sand one hundred meters high swallows everyone whole. But somehow some or most of the people in the movie live. And they look like they’re still wearing makeup, and got less sand on them than a kiddy building a beach sandcastle.
First off, that’s not how sandstorms work. In only of the rarest of occasions are they that violent, and also, the lack of eyewitnesses cannot be ignored. If you get hit by a wall of sand that big? Everyone dies. They’ll never even find your bones. It’s like a ship sinking in the middle of nowhere ocean where the mermaids kill everyone, but nobody is alive to confirm it.
Sandstorms don’t flow upon you like the wave of the tsunami. They settle upon you like a blanket that your worst enemy bought for you and mailed to you even though it was surrounded by malaria carrying mosquitos. Plus some rabid cute little mousses in there, for extra credit.
In Star Wars: Attack of the Clones there is the infamous line where ordinary average gentleman, amateur bridge player, spacecraft mechanic, player of musical instruments at local orphanages, and future genocidal maniac Anakin makes his comments about sand to Padme that have been panned for decades.
I’ve always found this odd. Because his statement made perfect sense to me. I despise the prequels (please somebody kidnap Lucas and hand him over to my Guests). But this line is not a problem for me. It speaks to those who have had to clean sand out of their entire body and anything they were wearing. And even then it doesn’t work.
Will you die? Probably not. Is it the most annoying thing ever and makes you feel like a walking piece of sandpaper? Yes. Humans cannot live in the ocean otherwise they dehydrate, can’t swim forever, can’t breathe underwater, and are mauled by an orca who can’t believe its luck.
But I guess to a certain degree we can survive sand, live with it, and move on. It’s really weird. If you try and live in the ocean ala The Simpsons dolphin episode, you die. If you try and live in space and aren’t protected the absolute pinnacle of human technology, you die. But we can live with sand and bleached skeleton deserts?
Why do I say this? I guess it’s been on my mind. And it’s a prequel (pun intended <= do you get it? I did a thing there. <= DO YOU GET IT?!) to my next post. I hope. Or I’ll disappear on this degenerate blog for another year. Either way.
when is your next shower? If you don’t know, this is merciless
You would think that as long as this degenerate blog has been here I would have published hundreds of things on the Civil War. When I was a kid/teenager, I was what was then referred to as a “Civil War buff”. I doubt anybody beneath the age of 30 would even know what that term means nowadays. I’m sure the schools and universities don’t really teach it anymore. Of if they do, they gloss over it get back to the ‘isms. It’s why I gave up being a history major.
Plus (and this should surprise nobody) most university professors (of any discipline) are total weirdos. It’s not fun talking history with a professor when it’s so unsettling you wonder how you didn’t think to walk in their office strapped with a loaded firearm for your own mental and physical safety.
This particular post is meant to try and do this topic more. This one is on Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. This is another opportunity for Private Barber to provide his prolific words on the conflict.
The Union needed control of all the inland rivers for victory. The railroad age was only just beginning. The rivers and canals moved almost everything until like the 1880’s. Even today, most people are probably unaware of how much of America’s cargo is still moved on riverboat barges.
So if you plant a fort along a key river, you own that river and can crush economic and military transport on said river at will. If you still don’t quite get me, just take a gander at this photo and I hope it will help via your eyes to understand what devastating control looks like:
Civil War buff? Yeah, I guess. I was actually on television in text form as a teen. It was the History Channel’s Civil War Journal hosted by Danny Glover. They would post what they thought were the best comments from their audience. Like two or three comments in between commercials for each episode. I can’t really remember what I wrote, but it had to do with why Charleston was so hard for the Union to take until 1865. It just happened that my extended family was already there for a birthday party. And the studio told me in advance they’d do it so we watched and waited. It took five seconds in text form. But it delighted my family.
It was probably kind of like the Eric Cartman Cheesy Poofs commercial. He does all this work in the studio and all they do in the end state of film is have him on screen for one second, but he’s still so, darn, happy.
Over to you Private Barber:
… We now turned our course up the Ohio [River]. When we arrived at Paducah, we learned that a fierce and bloody battle was in progress at Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. We soon came to the mouth of the Cumberland and turned our course up that stream. We had no doubt now of our destination. We were all eager to get to the scene of action in time to participate in the fight, but the captain of the boat was a rank rebel [a stubborn man; not a Confederate sympathizer] and he refused to run nights, to the shame of Colonel Turner, he refused to use his authority and compel him to run.
– Shiloh was still two months away. The butchery that Shiloh produced shocked the nation; and every soldier on both sides. Nobody in their wildest dreams would have thought the war would be so bloody when it started. Except for guys like Sherman or Forrest.
– Barber is “eager” for action, because he’s never seen it. Like most volunteer infantry regiments on both sides, officers (even regimental commanders) could be elected by their men. It’s important to remember that the United States Army never stopped existing. All throughout the war, you could enlisted the Army with the understanding that even if the war ended, you’d still be in the Army. The volunteer regiments that made up the bulk of both sides (the soldiers still signed two to three year papers) but whence the war ended they went home. You can literally hear Barber’s frustration that their regimental commander isn’t strong enough to speak up for them.
– But, it’s important to remember that Turner was probably just some guy. He was as new to war as Barber and the rest of his regiment. True confidence only comes from experience.
– This was before the Union Navy became a literal river killing machine. It’s early in the war, so this steamboat captain was likely a civilian ship hired by the Union to transport soldiers. He’s not sworn to the Union. He is also just some guy, and this steamboat is either owned by him or by his boss. And he ain’t gonna risk his civilian vessel on the Union’s dime. So if he, as the captain, said he ain’t gonna sail the river at night? That’s it. He knows Colonel Turner can’t do anything about it.
– Donelson was a victory boost for the Union because Grant showed his first spark of genius. Also, as the war was not going for the Union, a victory, any victory was needed to increase overall morale.
– This was before nightmares like Shiloh, when the war probably seemed to both sides of the conflict as relatively quaint. Imagine the Union newspapers. [We captured a fort!] This was big news in a military conflict for the past hundreds of years. In the past thousand years of war, it might take years to besiege a fort and take it. Grant did it quickly, it made his name, and his overall command of the army in the West. Nobody, and I mean nobody, could really realize what was coming. Two months later: Shiloh.
I wrote this original post seven years ago. SEVEN. Why did it take so long for the global elite to catch up to what was the exceedingly obvious even back then? Because they were all in on it. I wrote this in August 2019. After seven years it’s still a thing. Everyone is still covering their ass.
For the seven people and the squirrel who have been regular readers of this blog over the years, I’m going to try and start posting a bit again. Who knows if I’ll actually do it. But I have a travel post on my mind, we’ll see. I kinda of have to do it though. My Guests are telling me if I don’t reguarly post again they’ll pull the phone books out of the coat closet again. We can’t have that.
In the meantime, bathe in the misery. Those who are driving are horrible people. We’re all doomed.
Hope everyone enjoys the game tonight. This is why sports exist.
The Arcturus Project 