Blog Archives

Pacific Rim

I recently saw Pacific Rim with Allie and her family. They asked if I wanted to go along, and explained that it was about “giant monsters fighting giant robots.” I decided it would be a fun lark, expecting a sillyass popcorn flick with good special FX. To quote director Guillermo del Toro, “We cannot pretend this is Ibsen with monsters and giant robots. I cannot pretend I’m doing a profound reflection on mankind.”

If you haven’t seen it yet and plan to, you might wanna stop reading here.

Even though it was live-action, this was the biggest, baddest, most hardcore anime ever. Giant monsters and robots, explosions, cities being razed, incredible effects, insane weapons, and a battle cry of “This is for my family!” Some of the action scenes are a little too dark, but the colors are so vivid it almost doesn’t matter. Amazing camera work as well. There’s minimal blood and guts – children around 8 years old or older should be able to handle the movie just fine.

But what surprised me a little was that there was an actual story, and how it was handled. Del Toro said, “I shot about an hour more of material than is in the movie. Every character had a bigger arc, the characters were more complex. But I was really trying to strike the balance where I said,… let me try to get each character to its minimal requirements to have an arc that has a beginning, middle and end, and a payoff.”

I think this helped the movie quite a bit. None of the navel-gazing or handwringing that can be found in nearly any other movie these days. No overblown soliloquies about courage, duty, or sacrifice – they just do it. If a movie with themes like this can be made (by a pacifist, at that) and do well, then maybe Western civilization isn’t totally down the crapper yet.

This is the movie that “Man Of Steel” should have been.

100

I’m up to my 100th post, and I wanted to make it something insightful, noble, uplifting, and memorable.

"Don't forget, it's a two-drink minimum, hot stuff!"

“Don’t forget, it’s a two-drink minimum in my pants, hot stuff!”

Hey, it’s 1 out of 4. I guess I could count it as 2 out of 4 since something is kinda being uplifted in that pic.

Okay, fine. Have something awesome.

Stephen Hawking’s video for The Big Bang Theory panel at Comic-Con 2013.

Thanks for hanging out at this train wreck of a site.

Property Rights Vs. Abortion

The libertarian case against abortion –

…My journey and reasoning on abortion begins and ends with the view that it is the taking of an innocent life. Whatever the cause of the pregnancy – chosen or not – the unborn child was innocent of causing the pregnancy and therefore not justifiably subject to aggression in the so-called self-defense of the mother.
However, for my purpose here, I will approach this issue via the positions of two of the staunchest libertarians of recent times – Murray Rothbard and Walter Block, and primarily Block.  Although I believe it to be a moral issue, I will approach it here on their terms. Both have written in favor of abortion (although Block uses the term “evictionism”), and both have defended their respective positions from what they consider to be a libertarian viewpoint: a trespass by the unborn child and the property rights of the mother.
With this in mind, I will present the case that it is the unborn child, and not the mother, that has the right of use of the womb for the term of the pregnancy.  I base this on causation, reasonable reliance, unilateral contract, and, as Block has introduced the language of landlord and tenant, a lease and the covenant of quiet enjoyment.
Many abortion proponents (including some libertarians) present it as an issue of individual sovereignty, the usual refrain being “my body, my choice” or something similar. The fallacy is that the fetus is assumed to be an extension of the mother’s body – or sometimes even a parasite invading the woman’s body, therefore trespassing on her property – instead of a separate, sovereign being of its own.

Hat tip to The Observer.

Random Static Emissions

The Programming Director here at Night Sky Radio has taken a sudden and urgent sabbatical, leaving only three pesos and a hastily scrawled note saying he’s going on a trip. The playlist for the night has disappeared, along with the contents of the hidden compartment in his bottom desk drawer. The News Director was the only one who answered the midnight phone call, and provided the following (to use the term loosely) “thoughts” on current affairs to fill the dead air between commercials, along with several swear words that no one would have thought he was familiar with.

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A Biblical Feminist (huh?) critiques the show Girls. I tried to read it, but got so lost in the wandering pretzel logic trails that all I could do to escape was keep scrolling down in the hopes that the article would eventually end.

What I did get out of it – I think, I’m not really sure what she was trying to say – is that Girls is rooted in the Goddess concept, when the truth is actually the Divine Daughter Of God concept. I suppose it is a half-step more humble to merely be a “divinely empowered” (her words) than actually divine. I also got the idea that no matter what the creator of the show, Lena Dunham, says or does, she will be criticized by feminists for not going far enough (whether the writer actually intended to make this point or not is kinda fuzzy to me).

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Following from the above… White Girl Feminism At Its Worst

Lena Dunham won big at the Golden Globe Awards last night for Best Actress in a Comedy Series, and Best TV Comedy or Musical. In her acceptance speech she said, “This is for any women that’s felt like there wasn’t a space for her.”

Which women? The white millennial female who lives in New York? Dunham says she finally has a space for herself in creating the show but what about the other two-thirds of Brooklyn? The issues with HBO’s Girls have been discussed at length.

…That’s the problem with white girl feminism. It is the belief that showing smart intelligent white women is somehow enough — that it should be applauded; that women everywhere should be proud that these types of characters are even on TV at all; that all women should be happy that there is a show based around intelligent college educated women. But that’s not enough for me.

It’s not enough because there are people who are alienated, who routinely experience erasure of their own experiences for the sake of a joke or to set up a plot. There are those that would say it is her own right to write about whatever she wants, to exhibit characters in whatever way she desires. That’s true. But if we don’t evaluate our own privilege as white females than what are doing? How do we move forward?

Strip out the polysyllabics and buzzwords and it says “Just because you have the Constitutional right to write whatever you want, it’s not good enough. You have to include PC-approved caricatures of every splinter group, down to the last lesbian eskimo midget left-handed ninja albino.”

My favorite line in the entire article is “If feminism isn’t intersectional, it means nothing.” I suppose she’s half right.

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…I can look at you from inside as well… – The Vapors, “Turning Japanese”

One can never tell if the news coming out of Japan is real or fake. They’re just that weird. The latest reported trend is teenagers licking each other’s eyeballs –

…a post by a middle school teacher, originally shared on Naver Matome and translated by Japan Crush, describes the disturbing trend behind the patches:

After class one day, I went into the equipment store in the gymnasium to tidy up. The door had been left open, and when I looked inside, a male pupil and a female pupil had their faces close together and were kind of fumbling around. Could it be bullying? I wondered, but when I had a good look, the boy was licking the girl’s eye! Surprised, a shouted “What are you doing? Stop it at once!” and the two of them were so shocked they jumped apart. The girl burst into tears, and the boy just went bright red and was shaken up. At any rate, to try to calm them down I took them to the janitor’s room and listened to their story.

On questioning, the two students revealed that eyeball licking is basically like second base – what you graduate to after Frenching.

Mr. Y immediately told the school staff the story. A classroom assembly for the year 6 students was held, and when each homeroom teacher questioned the students, it was revealed that a surprising one third of the kids had done “eyeball licking”, or had had their eyeballs licked.

Lest you think this is just cod moralising from a squicked out adult, eyeball licking is a great way of spreading trachoma (eye chlamydia) and conjunctivitis/pink-eye.

One potential inspiration for the eyeball licking trend is this video from Japanese band Born, in which the lead singer gets his eyeball licked by a knife-wielding woman (around 3:35, warning video contains terrible emo rock):

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The last 20 seconds of that song sound like a cross between Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” and “Diva Fever” by Spinal Tap.

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Lastly, someone alert da GBFM that Ben Bernanke made a joke.

Even the guy’s humor is hopelessly Bernankified. You’d think all that fiat money could afford him a better speechwriter.

Express Air Medical Transport

A tip from Captain Capitalism

Express Air Medical Transport.

1-800-304-8094
If you don’t know precisely what they do, don’t worry, it is a very specialized service, namely air ambulance.  So say you are out on vacation, snow birding down south, or for whatever reason you or a loved one needs to get transported to a specialist in some other hospital in quick order Express Air Medical will fly you out there.

They are based in Florida but serve the entire United States.  And don’t wait for an emergency to happen, you might as well put their number in your cell phone now because putzing around looking for it on ole Cappy Cap’s site will take too long.

Right On Time

As some of you know by now, Allamagoosa and I are going to be married. We met through Sunshine Mary, got a nudge or two* from 7man and CL, and from there the dominoes just kept falling over. So much so that it seemed like someone somewhere was planning it.

The joke between us is that we’re so, uh, unique that no one else could deal with us. This is a only-slightly-exaggerated example –

If you’re coming to the wedding, bring kevlar and a dessert.

*”Nudge” meaning “go for it, dumb@$$!”

King Solomon Had The Right Idea After All

From Reason.com

Melissa Harris-Perry says that children belong to the community, not their parents.

No, really. I’m not paraphrasing, that’s what she said.

“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we have this private notion of children. ‘Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility.’ We haven’t had a very collective notion of ‘these are our children.’ So part of it is to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.

“Once it’s everybody’s responsibility, and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments.”

There’s another video of her at Newsbusters where she dismisses a fertilized egg as nonhuman and opines thusly –

[T]he reality is that if this turns into a person, right, there are economic consequences, right? The cost to raise a child, $10,000 a year up to $20,000 a year. When you’re talking about what it actually costs to have this thing turn into a human, why not allow women to make the best choices that we can with as many resources and options instead of trying to come in and regulate this process?

This is a purely materialist worldview, and a zero-sum one at that. On top of that, despite her claim of the process being “regulated,” she in in fact proposing a system of that can only function by mechanism of regulation. Collective child-raising has to have rules and regulations, determining whose turn it is to handle which duty and when.
By pure coincidence, right after I found this, I read this column by John Hawkins about Margaret Thatcher. This quote struck me in sharp contrast to everything Harris-Perry stated –
“I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first… There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.”
People taking care of themselves and their own. Such a radical, selfish concept, isn’t it?

What’s The Use?

Chateau Heartiste has another “Beta Of The Month” going, with  three candidates in the running. Contestant #3, knowing his wife was about to cheat or had already done so, posted –

People are to be LOVED. Things are to be USED. The reason why the world is in chaos is because THINGS are being LOVED and PEOPLE are being used,” the message declares.

Love and use are not mutually exclusive. Years ago, Walter E. Williams wrote

I’m reminded of charges of exploitation Mrs. Williams used to make early on in our 44-year marriage. She’d charge, “Walter, you’re using me!” I’d respond by saying, “Honey, sure, I’m using you. If I had no use for you, I wouldn’t have married you in the first place.” How many of us would marry a person for whom we had no use? As a matter of fact, the problem of the lonely hearts among us is that they can’t find someone to use them.

So, who’s using you?

Zero Sum

So a woman was telling a couple of us about someone she knows who is pregnant, and the baby has something that would qualify it as “special needs” once born…

Her: She already has a couple special needs kids, she doesn’t think she can handle another one.

Me: Can’t she have the baby and give it up for adoption? There are couples who will take special needs children.

Her: She doesn’t think she can have the baby and then give it up to someone else.

Me: So she’d rather give it up to nobody?

That was pretty much the end of the conversation.

Rain Of Temptation

I went to the pizza place and ordered extra cheese w/ green pepper. As I was carrying the box back to my car, I suddenly decided to check inside the box. Pepperoni.

I dropped to my knees on the cement sidewalk as the light rainy drizzle fell. Why, I shouted to the Heavens while shaking my fists in empty rage against my fate, couldn’t I have waited until I got home and it would have been too much effort to drive back and get it without pepperoni?