The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

In The Mailbox: 06.16.15

Posted on | June 16, 2015 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: To All Those Upset Jon Snow And Hillary Clinton Fans Out There
Louder With Crowder: Michelle Malkin Blasts Old School Media
Doug Powers: Let This Be A Lesson To Reporters Who Don’t Obey The Hillary Campaign’s “Fawning Only” Signs!
Twitchy: “Stop Posting This Crap” – Bill Nye’s Hot Take On Climate Change Is Full Of Hot Air
Andrew Klavan: The Democrats Are Gollum


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: St. Louis Cardinals Investigated By FBI For Hacking Astros
American Thinker: The Only Privilege In America Is Liberal Privilege
BLACKFIVE: Book Review – The Fixer
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Hotline Miami Playlist
Conservatives4Palin: Gov. Palin – GOP Offers Voters Strength And Diversity In 2016
Don Surber: Rachel Dolezal Makes More Stuff Up
Jammie Wearing Fools: Awful, Horrible Woman Charged Boys & Girls Club $200K Speaking Fee, Ignored Kids Who Wanted To Say Hello
Joe For America: Public School Teacher Won’t Teach Shakespeare Because He’s White
JustOneMinute: Blumenthal Heads For The Hill
Pamela Geller: Third Muslim Arrested In Jihad Attack On AFDI Garland Event
Protein Wisdom: This Is Soooo Not A Ten-Year-Old Essay On The Left’s Control Of Identity Politics
Shot In The Dark: First Prize Is An Eldorado, Second Prize Is A Set of Steak Knives
STUMP: Illinois Pensions – General Assembly Retirement Plan Number-Crunching
The Gateway Pundit: Markets Jump For Trump – Dow Up 92 After Trump’s Announcement
The Jawa Report: Future War Porn
The Lonely Conservative: Champion Of The Working Class Doesn’t Pay Campaign Staff
This Ain’t Hell: Iknoor Singh Wins Suit Against Army Grooming Standards
Weasel Zippers: Michelle Obama Bashes America While Overseas, Tells British Muslim Girls They Face Same Struggle As Blacks In US
Megan McArdle: Primates Of Park Avenue – Stranger Than Non-Fiction?
Mark Steyn: The Field Where Liberty Was Sown



Category: Linkagery

Feminist Tumblr: Still Crazy

Posted on | June 15, 2015 | 243 Comments

Because I’ve been busy the past week reading Women’s Studies textbooks (including Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions), I haven’t updated you on Lilly the Human Train Wreck. She is the mentally ill feminist Tumblr blogger who filed a federal complaint against her university, which forced her into an alcohol counseling program after she accused a fellow student of raping her. After I called attention to her “Support Survivors” blog — because every survivor needs “support” from a 23-year-old mentally ill alcoholic college dropout, right? — Lilly freaked out: “We Need to Get Him Off the Internet.” A week later, I’m still on the Internet and Lilly is still a trainwreck, but Sunday someone on Twitter pointed out that conservative blogger Gerard Vanderleun has waded into the digital swamp of crazy that is Tumblr, in an apparent attempt to confront these lunatics with facts, logic and other oppressive social constructs. Gerard responded to Lilly and I noticed in the “notes” of that post another feminist’s unhinged rant directed at me:

this incites a rage within me that i cannot even begin to explain.
“don’t go to college parties if you don’t want to have sex”
basically if you’re a woman, don’t leave your fucking house or do anything if you don’t want to have sex because men are so self-entitled that they will fucking do whatever they want anyway and then blame you if you speak up when they literally assault you.
this whole entire ‘article’ is complete bullshit. and don’t even get me started on the whole jibe about ‘not listening to successful adults’ because there are plenty of very successful adults who recognize rape culture and work against it. the ‘adults’ this asshole is listening to are victim-blaming shitlords and i would rather listen to educated people on social media than listen to ‘established’ people who have no fucking idea what they’re talking about.
i could seriously write a whole fucking essay about what complete shit this is, but i’m so fucking angry i just can’t rn.
i’m just so sorry that lilly has to deal with this bullshit when she’s already dealing with so much and helping so many people. lilly, you are a wonderful human being and i know so many people, including myself, are so grateful to you and proud of you.

See? She “could seriously” write an essay, not “rn” (right now), because she is so angry at “victim-blaming shitlords” like me. People who criticize feminism “have no fucking idea what they’re talking about.”

She’s so mad, she might even learn to capitalize properly.

It is necessary to remind you what I actually wrote:

Perhaps it is traumatic to college girls who, despite solid GPAs in high school and high SAT scores, are nevertheless too stupid to understand why college guys want to get college girls drunk. Do I need to draw you a diagram, ladies? Whatever else is going on at these parties, sex is certainly near the top of the list of desired outcomes, so if you don’t want to have sex, don’t go to the party. However, if you choose to ignore that advice, and go to the party even though you don’t want to have sex, there are all kinds of common-sense strategies that smart girls use to avoid misfortune. On the other hand, if you’re a feminist, common sense doesn’t matter, and offering smart advice is “blaming the victim.”

Please go read the whole thing. Maybe in recent decades, human nature has completely changed. Perhaps a spirit of humanitarian generosity is now the reason college guys cheerfully provide alcohol to underage freshman girls. Why, only a complete “shitlord” — someone who has “no fucking idea” — would suspect that college guys want to get 18-year-old girls drunk so they can have sex with them. Because college girls getting drunk at parties and having sex with college guys never happened at any previous time since the dawn of human history.

Facts, logic, caustic sarcasm — nothing can penetrate the rigid fanatical certainty of her totalitarian worldview. She buys into this belief system, and achieves Feminist Consciousness.

“In terms of the oppression of women, heterosexuality is the ideology of male supremacy. . . .
“What we are doing in revolutionary struggle is to make our consciousnesses different. When enough people’s consciousnesses are different, then we make a revolution.”
— Margaret Small, “Lesbians and the Class Position of Women,” in Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement, edited by Bunch and Nancy Myron (1975)

“Feminist consciousness is consciousness of victimization . . . to come to see oneself as a victim. . . .
“To apprehend myself as victim in a sexist society is to know that there are few places where I can hide, that I can be attacked almost anywhere, at any time, by virtually anyone.”
— Sandra Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (1990)

“All women are prisoners and hostages to men’s world. Men’s world is like a vast prison or concentration camp for women. This isn’t a metaphor, it’s reality. Each man is a threat. We can’t escape men.”
— Radical Wind, August 2013

“The threat of violence alone affords all men dominance over all women.”
— “Men and Violence,” March 27, 2015

Feminism teaches her that she is victimized by heterosexuality, the “ideology of male supremacy,” and she is induced into a state of anti-male paranoia: Fear and Loathing of the Penis!

Once she learns that every man is a threat, the young feminist experiences any overt expression of male heterosexuality — a glance, a smile, a confident masculine swagger in his walk — as psychologically traumatic. It is specifically those traits that any normal woman finds attractive in a man that the feminist is taught to view with fearfulness and resentment. For example, a muscular man’s superior strength represents to the young feminist a threat of violence. The feminist despises any man who has advanced skills, knowledge and experience, because this means he is “arrogant,” a word which in the feminist lexicon defines any man who thinks he knows anything about anything. If a champion NASCAR driver were to offer a feminist advice on how to drive, she would walk away in a huff and then get on her Tumblr blog to denounce him as a “mansplainer.” Like, who does that Jimmie Johnson think he is, right?

Strong men are dangerous, knowledgeable men are arrogant, white men are racist, straight men are homophobic and any man who is successful in life is privileged — his success is actually proof that he is a misogynistic oppressor, because the only way that any man ever achieves anything is by depriving women of equality. Because feminism is a totalitarian ideology, the young feminist is led to believe that she has acquired a monopoly on knowledge merely by calling herself a feminist. She automatically becomes an expert on any topic that interests her, and no man on earth knows anything — unless he agrees with her.

Circular logic is circular. Quod erat demonstrandum.

America is still a free country, and therefore feminists have a right to promulgate their lunatic ideology. The problem is that anyone who tries to point out what hopeless lunacy is involved in feminist ideology is branded a “hater,” a “rape apologist,” a victim-blaming shitlord who has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. Therefore, the next time a freshman girl accepts an invitation to attend the welcoming festivities of the Philanthropic Collegiate Benevolent Society for Providing Alcohol to Horny Teenagers (for so she must imagine such a party to be) and the results are exactly what any person with common sense would expect, her sexual victimhood is to be blamed on the patriarchy, and not on feminism, even though it was patriarchy that told her the simple truth:

DON’T GET S**TFACED DRUNK AT COLLEGE PARTIES

What part of that is so hard for feminists to understand? Most college girls actually do understand this, which is why a majority of college girls are neither (a) feminists nor (b) rape victims. They don’t get drunk at parties, they don’t get raped, they don’t make false accusations or file federal Title IX complaints. Most college girls do not suffer PTSD, anxiety disorder or suicidal depression. Most college girls are not bisexual alcoholics, and they do not seek out bisexual mentally ill alcoholics on Tumblr when they need advice.

We see how feminists (in fact, a tiny minority of deranged fanatics) have managed to arrogate to themselves a presumed authority to speak for all woman. Disagreeing with feminists proves that you hate women.

Being a married father of six and now a grandfather, I am far beyond danger of any direct threat from these lunatic ideologues. Unfortunately, however, radical feminists now exercise hegemonic control over academia, and no one in authority at any college or university would dare criticize or oppose them. The frightening thing is that many young male students are unaware of the peril that hovers like a ghastly shadow over every campus in the 21st century.

Think about this: At a private Catholic college in California, where parents pay tuition of more than $40,000 for their children to attend, the Student Coalition Against Rape (SCAR) is operating a 24-hour Campus Assault Resources and Empowerment (CARE) telephone hotline for female students who want to report their male classmates as sexual predators. Do you think they are doing this so that, during the entire nine-month school year, zero reports will be made?

Or do you suppose that at some point (this year and every year henceforth) at least one woman at this college will have an experience that she will identify as sexual assault or “harassment”? Female students substantially outnumber males on this campus (59% female, 41% male), and this hyper-vigilant scrutiny of male behavior must either (a) yield at least an occasional accusation, or else (b) give rise to claims that victims are afraid to report what horrible brutality these beastly rapists have inflicted on them. Feminists assert as a fact that 1-in-5 college females will be raped before graduation, and if they cannot produce a sufficient number of valid accusations, they will be forced to invent them.

In 2015, no male can safely attend college unless he resolves never to socialize with his female classmates. Never speak to them, never look at them, avoid them to the greatest extent possible and, whatever you do, don’t even think about dating a college girl, let alone having sex with her. Attempted heterosexuality on the 21st-century campus can destroy your life, young man. Therefore, if any female student attempts to strike up a conversation with you, it must be presumed that she is endeavoring to solicit a reaction that can provide her with the pretext to accuse you of harassment or sexual assault. You think I’m joking, young man, but do you want to take the risk of becoming the next unfortunate victim of feminism’s Campus Crusade to Abolish Heterosexuality?

“Oh,” says the clever young fellow, “that will never happen to me. I would never make the mistake of dating a feminist.”

How do you know? Do you think these crazy women all wear fluorescent orange vests marked “Feminists Against Heterosexuality”?

Do you think Emma Sulkowicz showed up for her sophomore year at Columbia University and told Paul Nungesser that she was setting him up for a false rape accusation? Do you think fraternity members at the University of Virginia had any clue, in the fall of 2012, that a mentally ill freshman named “Jackie” was preparing to blame them in a rape hoax that would lead to national headlines two years later?

Look here, young man: Behold the face of Karyssa, the young feminist who branded me a “victim-blaming shitlord.” Karyssa looks utterly normal, and yet she is clearly in the throes of the same anti-male hysteria as Lilly the Human Train Wreck.

Feminist Against Heterosexuality are monitoring every campus now, young man. These hate-filled young fanatics are watching everything you do and listening to every word you say. Feminist ideology defines every man as an oppressor of women. You are their enemy and they will celebrate your destruction as a victory. You should assume that any woman with whom you communicate is sharing all your e-mails and text messages with her feminist comrades. They are archiving your social media data, searching for proof that you are thinking unacceptable thoughts or engaging in unacceptable behavior. Feminists are collecting evidence against you, young man, so they can get you expelled from college, permanently branded a rapist and, they hope, sentenced to prison. Your downfall will make international headlines, your name will become a synonym for masculine evil, and the woman who destroys you will be applauded for her heroic courage.

This is your final warning, young man. Don’t become a statistic.

UPDATE: Therapy isn’t helping Lilly the Human Train Wreck:

I’m seeing my therapist again tomorrow.
But I don’t want to see her much longer. I need to look for a better one.
I have no idea how to go about this search. I saw everyone in this god damned town and none were a fit or had enough availabilities.
But I’ve just about had it with this one. She was nice last time when I couldn’t hold back tears, sure. But she showed far too much sympathy for my high school abuser simply because he might be/is gay. And her son is gay. And I literally almost lost it and actually almost messaged my abuser to attempt to get closure but caught myself because there’s no way it would have helped me at all. This woman is not good for me.
I just can’t imagine searching once again for someone else. At this point maybe I just shouldn’t see anyone. None of them have been all that helpful anyway. None of the EMDR ones are available. So I am screwed.

In case you’ve forgotten, Lilly had a crush on this boy:

She fell in love with Sam in sixth grade, but he rejected her. She contemplated suicide. Beginning in her freshman year of high school, Lilly was “involved with other boys, and girls,” but by senior year, she renewed her romance with Sam. She “almost lost [her] virginity” to Sam, but meanwhile, she found out Sam was “hooking up” with her friend Steven, as well as “seeing other girls.” She “kept asking him if he was gay.” Much drama ensued.

The “drama” is what Lilly now describes as “abuse,” but she was the one pursuing him, and I’m sure that if you asked Sam, he’d say, “That bitch is crazy.” A fact Lilly seems determined to prove.

UPDATE II: More from Lilly the Human Train Wreck:

I wish I could have his website deleted. But I can’t. Nobody can do that but the police or a lawsuit. And I don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to sue him. That’s how much money it would cost. Who has that kind of money laying around? Nobody.
I wish his family would show resentment or embarrassment. I wish his wife would divorce him and take the kids. . . .
Even if Mr. Stalker stops talking about me or my followers, HIS followers won’t. Because his followers are really crazed people. Really sick in the head. Really deranged. They’re like one step away from blowing up a Planned Parenthood-batshit crazy.

You see? A 23-year-old lunatic sets herself up as a sort of Internet expert offering “support” for “survivors” — and when I quote what she wrote on her blog, this proves that I’m a bad person, to whom bad things should happen.

– + – + -+ –

 

This article is part of the Sex Trouble project that has been supported by contributions from readers. The first edition of Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the War on Human Nature is available from Amazon.com, $11.96 in paperback or $1.99 in Kindle ebook format.





 

Category: Uncategorized

In Defense Of Rachel Dolezal. . .

Posted on | June 15, 2015 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

Sure, Instapundit. . .

See, lefty social-justice-warrior types always lie.

If you don’t have any concept of truth, then it’s really all morally equivalent.

But you can’t hold [all lefty social-justice-warriors] responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole. . .system? And if the whole. . .system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg – isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America.

It was funny in Animal House, where we understood that the sophomoric drunkards were sort of a pack of live-action Wile E. Coyotes. Alas, the distinction was blurred somehow, and I freely blame the Commies.

Category: Culture

In The Mailbox: 06.15.15

Posted on | June 15, 2015 | 15 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


Truth


Not all the way back in the saddle…


OVER THE TRANSOM
Proof Positive: Are These Truths Self-Evident?
Louder With Crowder: Why The Rachel Dolezal Scandal Really Handicaps The Left





Michelle Malkin: Why America Hates The GOP-Obamatrade Deal
Twitchy: Rachel Dolezal Resigns, But George Wallace Steals Her Thunder


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Broken City – San Bernardino
American Thinker: Colonization And Cultural Genocide – They Call It “Immigration”
BLACKFIVE: Someone You Should Know – Captain Gavin John Hamilton, MC
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Overdue Friday Fiction 100 Word Challenge
Conservatives4Palin: In Stinging Defeat, Obama Declares Victory
Don Surber: Who Else On Flag Day But Betsy Ross?
Jammie Wearing Fools: NBC Hack Andrea Mitchell Complains About Obama’s Golfing
Joe For America: Texas’ Governor Abbott Lays Smackdown On Mexican Government
JustOneMinute: The Alliance Of Free Riders
Pamela Geller: American Muslims Who Plotted To Murder Me Are Loyal To ISIS
Protein Wisdom: Rachel Dolezal And “How To Be Black”
Shot In The Dark: Trulbert – A Comic Novella About The End Of The World As We Know It
STUMP: Buyers Of Distressed Munis – Get Out!
The Gateway Pundit: Breaking – Rachel Dolezal Resigns As Spokane NAACP President
The Jawa Report: Council Of Islamic Losers Losing
The Lonely Conservative: What’s With The Outrage Over The Trans-Race Woman?
This Ain’t Hell: Marine SGT Cody Leifheit Saving The World
Weasel Zippers: “Wheels Up!” Michelle Obama Leaves On Yet Another Taxpayer-Funded Vacation
Megan McArdle: US Can’t Import The Scandinavian Model
Mark Steyn: Fangs, Light Sabers, And A Supernumary Papilla


Trulbert!: A Comic Novella About the End of the World As We Know It

Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Sunday: Showgirls and Other Attractions

Posted on | June 14, 2015 | 11 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

This week I’m trying to get back into the blogging saddle, so to speak; you might even see the return of Live at Five tomorrow! For now, insert the usual disclaimer here about being discreet in your clicking, ogle the intro pic of traditional Vegas show girls, and on with the linkagery.

Members of the “Jubilee” revue at Bally’s.

Randy’s Roundtable returns to lead off with Barbara Fialho, followed by Goodstuff with Caroline Munro, and Animal Magnetism with Rule 5 Friday and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL’s herd this week includes a Rule 5 tweet, Feminist Lindy West, Melisandre from Game of Thrones, the late Monica Lewis, High Sparrow Obaa and Cersei Pelosi, Rachel Dolezal, and Songs Sinatra Never Sang.

American Power returns after a long absence with Emilia Clarke bikini pix, Afternoon Rule 5, Melissa Debling, Hannah Davis, and Emma Kuziara.

A View from the Beach checks in with The Witch of Sleepy Hollow – Katia Winter, All the News That’s Fit to Bare, A Graceful 67, “Jerry’s Breakdown”, Kate Moss Not a Model Passenger, One Mean Rugby Player, Scientists Go Gaga Over Ferns, Obamacare Schadenfraude – Aloha to Hawaii,  and Crazy Cat Ladies – Cause or Effect? (cave girls).

At Soylent Siberia, it’s your morning coffee creamer followed by Monday Motivationer – Fire!, Greek Goddess, Tuesday Titillation Water Ballet, High Style, Humpday Hawtness Museum Piece, Falconsword Fursday Strapped, Happy Birthday Kate Upton!, Corset Confabulation, T-GIF Friday Because Corsets, and Weekender Honey Bunny.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Jennifer Rikert Wolski, his Vintage Babe is Monica Lewis, and Sex in Advertising is covered by Hardee’s All American Burger.* At Dustbury, it’s Susana Gimenez and Jedediah Bila.

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox is midnight on Saturday, June 20.

*It’s Carl’s Jr. in this part of the USA, but the nested possessive contractions annoyed me.


Visit Amazon’s Intimate Apparel Shop

Category: Rule 5

James Boulware Was Crazy

Posted on | June 14, 2015 | 59 Comments

James Boulware attacked Dallas Police Headquarters and then was shot to death by SWAT officers after a standoff in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. He was crazy:

Boulware’s family said in a statement that it was “in shock.”
“We tried to get him mental help numerous times, but the system failed him, because he was declared ‘sane.’ He was very delusional. It was very obvious,” the family said.
Boulware, 35, of Paris, Texas, had been arrested multiple times. One of the more troubling arrests was in May 2013, when he allegedly choked his mother, strangled his uncle and made threats, including one about a mass shooting.

How crazy was he?

At the time of Boulware’s arrest in 2013, police issued a public alert that he was armed with guns, a large amount of ammunition, and also had body armor, and might go on a shooting spree.
“He was going to just kill all the adult members of the family and then that’s when he made the comment he may shoot up some churches and schools,” said Paris police chief Bob Hundley, according to a 2013 news report on NBC station KTEN.
According to an arrest report, the incident began when Boulware attacked two family members and went on a rant.
His mother “had gone into the kitchen to make her something to eat when the suspect began making comments about North and South Korea, and began talking rudely about religion, Jews and Christians,” a police affidavit said. “The suspect suddenly grabbed (his mother’s) throat with both of his hands and began squeezing.”
“He then punched his uncle and choked him “to the point of unconsciousness,” the affidavit said.

What has happened to our court system and our mental health system that someone like James Boulware, who has perpetrated serious violence and is so obviously deranged, is turned loose into society?

At what point was it decided that crazy people had a “right” to be crazy that was so important as to outweigh basic considerations of public safety? Who made the court rulings that limited our nation’s ability to lock up dangerous lunatics?

Answer: Federal judges whose courtrooms have metal detectors and armed police to protect them.

The key decisions were made in the 1960s and 70s, at a time when liberalism was the dominant legal philosophy, and when eminent intellectuals proclaimed that criminals and lunatics were victims of an unjust society. Mentally ill people and dangerous criminals were turned loose in the name of “social justice.” Now here were are, decades later, where it seems every day brings us headlines of shocking violence perpetrated by people like James Boulware who — despite their obvious mental problems and known capacity for violence — can’t be locked away. Because “social justice.”

His family said the system failed James Boulware. Perhaps more importantly, the system has failed America. People need to read Clayton Cramer’s My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill.

The people who most need to read that book, alas, are the least likely to read it. Federal judges, legislators and law school professors — the people whose bad ideas, bad decisions and bad laws have produced this mess — can’t be bothered to read anything written from the perspective of common sense. Our nation’s policy-making elite have become corrupt and decadent, blinded to facts and reason by their quasi-religious devotion to the ideological cult of “social justice.”

A deranged gunmen can hurt a lot of people, but what about America’s corrupt and decadent elite? Aren’t they really more dangerous? What do you think America is going to look like after Hillary Clinton gets elected president in 2016 and re-elected in 2020?

Our nation’s elite hate our nation’s people. Because the elite despise everything that made America great, they have deliberately sought to destroy the foundations of a free society.

Damn them and damn their decadent souls. Damn them all to Hell.

 

Category: Crime

Here It Is: #ClintonJennerDolezal2016

Posted on | June 13, 2015 | 22 Comments

by Smitty

In this blog’s relentless quest to immanentize the Next Big Thing, we proudly proffer the Tres Bimbos ticket.

That it’s Her Majesty’s turn, and we [nsfw] must not jack this up for her, goes without saying. And we’re supposed to feel vaguely positive about the “courage” inherent in an intensely personal decision that not everyone fully agrees with. Finally, we should offer three cheers to Rachel Dolezal, whose approach to fabulism is only exceeded by that of #OccupyResoluteDesk, as far as I can tell.

Thus, by the Power of Common Core, we humbly announce that three (3) is just a large value of two (2). We adjure you to vote for Clinton/Jenner/Dolezal in 2016, by write-in, if those odious, pedantic conservatives somehow infringe on your right to feel however you want about that age-old tool of patriarchal oppression, integers.

As the Really Hip Individual Currently Choosing to Retain a Male Sexual Identity Ezra Klein noted, the Constitution is, like, really old, or something. What better way to fight that Ancient Screed of Cisgender, Euro-Masculine Domination than to vote in a First Trimulierate in 2016? Progress is predicated upon the idea that anything conservatives esteem is on the target list for rhetorical saturation bombing. Progress takes a village, and rubs the lotion on.


Why not put another nail in the coffin of the idea of the Rule of Law by supporting the Tres Bimbos ticket? How about it?

Category: Democrats, Hillary Clinton, humor

The Hugo Packet: The Novels and Related Works

Posted on | June 13, 2015 | 13 Comments

— by Wombat-socho

It’s been a while since I did a book post, since most of the time when I was on the road I was either driving, recovering from driving, or hanging out with friends and relatives, but I hope this makes up for it.

As most of you are aware, the Kulturkampf between the Social Justice Wankers who want to use the arts to preach and dictate and the rest of us who just want some decent entertainment has spread to SF fandom, much to the distress of the SJWs, who had been having it their own way with the Hugos up until this year, when it became public knowledge that anyone with $40 could register for the convention and actually vote. Thousands of people did this (further enraging the SJWs) and it looks like Sasquan will have the biggest membership of any World SF Convention (Worldcon for short) in quite some time, if not ever. In fact, if you haven’t registered yet, you can still get a supporting membership for $40 through August 2, which entitles you to not only vote for the Hugos, but to get free e-copies of many of the nominated works, which is arguably worth more than the $40 you’re shelling out all by itself.

So, having duly registered and obtained my packet, and read most of what’s in it, here’s how I’m going to be filling out my ballot. This is, of course, subject to change once I read the stuff I haven’t gotten to yet.

Best Novel
This is the biggie, the one that draws most of the attention. Before I got the packet, I was strongly inclined toward putting Jim Butcher’s Skin Game at the top of my ballot for two good reasons: up to that point, it was the only one of the nominees I’d read, and I thought Jim Butcher deserved some long-overdue recognition for the “Dresden Files” books, which arguably put urban fantasy on the map as a subgenre.
Unfortunately, now that I’ve read Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, I can’t honestly do that any more. Liu’s book is an awesome combination of alien contact, secret societies, an immersive computer game, the Cultural Revolution and its effects, and a hard-drinking chain-smoking policeman who doesn’t care who he pisses off because his people instincts are damn near infallible. A great book, and getting it for free from Sasquan beats forking out $13 to Tor. Also very good, but not quite good enough to beat out Butcher’s novel, is Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor. The tale of a half-goblin prince who suddenly ascends to the throne after the Emperor and other senior heirs are killed in an airship “accident”, this makes for very hard reading in the early chapters, since our hero knows nothing of the Imperial court, has no friends or relatives he can trust…Maggie Hogarth is absolutely right. And yet, you keep going, maybe because you can’t believe the author will put the screws to such a well-meaning protagonist, maybe because you want to see the trainwreck – but to give any clue beyond that would spoil the book for you, and I’m not going to do that.

So when the dust settles, my ballot is going to look like this:

  1.  The Three-Body Problem
  2.  Skin Game
  3.  The Goblin Emperor
  4. (not yet read) The Dark Between The Stars
  5.  No Award
  6.  Ancillary Sword (No copy, no vote. Screw you, Orbit.)

Related Works
This category too had a virtual lock going in: Mad Mike Williamson’s Wisdom From My Internet, since 1) it was chock-full of politically incorrect humor, 2) the SJW’s deserved a swat on the nose for handing a certain mediocre author and former SFWA president a Hugo for a similar collection, yclept Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, and 3) they deserved a further swat for completely ignoring Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 2: The Man Who Learned Better 1948-1988the second volume of William Patterson’s Heinlein bio in favor of some ahistorical trash by Kameron Hurley.
Once again, I find myself forced to change my mind as a result of reading the packet. John C. Wright’s Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth is a collection of brilliant essays on SF and fantasy that in many ways parallels what Stacy has been doing in his Sex Trouble posts, but with particular attention to our corner of literature and media. “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Tolkien” is particularly funny, but all of his criticisms are on point.
Lou Antonelli’s Letters from Gardner was not in the packet, and I haven’t read Tedd Roberts’ essay yet, so the tentative rankings look like this:

  1.  Transhuman and Subhuman
  2.  Wisdom From My Internet
  3.  “The Hot Equations”
  4.  (not yet read) “Why Science Is Never Settled”
  5.  No Award
  6.  Letters From Gardner

I’ll try and throw up some more posts in the coming week regarding the other categories.

Category: Books, Culture
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