Blackmoor Vituperative

The second feature on tonight’s horrorfest (following “A Christmas Horror Story“, 2015) was “No One Lives” (2012). I would have linked to a trailer, but every trailer I found gave away important plot points (boo!) and was infested with that obnoxious seizure-inducing strobe-to-black that every goddamned trailer seems to have nowadays (double boo!). So do yourself a favour, and avoid any trailers before you see it.

That being said, we enjoyed this much more than we expected. Despite the impression made by the first scene, it is not humourless torture porn (which I can’t stomach). It is a slasher movie (lots of blood, a fair amount of nudity), but it also brings a new angle to the genre, and there was some humour. I enjoyed it. I might even watch it again.

I might sound like a grumpy old man, but I think we had a better class of angry white wingnuts back before the Internet. Nowadays, every halfwit with a keyboard thinks he’s William F. Buckley.

I haven’t signed this petition. Not yet, anyway. I have… concerns.

Would President Trump do terrible things to our country? He appears to have every intention of doing so. His cabinet, this far, is full of ultra-wealthy people, united in their opposition to basic human rights for my gay friends. His grasp of international diplomacy seems… lacking. Also, the next President will likely appoint several justices to the Supreme Court of the the United States, with ramifications for generations to come (the Court has not exactly been a beacon of justice in recent years, but I can’t imagine that it would get any better with justices appointed by Trump).

But is getting rid of Trump enough reason to tell Americans (not just those who voted for Trump — all Americans), “No, your vote actually doesn’t count”? Is preventing the election of President Trump enough reason to start the next civil war? Or does permitting him to take office make that war inevitable? What will my nieces’ and nephews’ children say about us, thirty years from now? That we caused the war, or that we simply failed to prevent it?

I rather like the idea of the electoral college making itself relevant by being the voice of sanity it was intended to be. But I find myself wondering at what point “the consent of the governed” becomes less important than “doing what we know is right”. It’s a very dangerous thing, to “know” that one is right.

And yes, I know that this petition, like all such petitions, is absolutely meaningless. It’s an impotent and pointless gesture.

But that’s how it always begins. Very small.

1. Click the Start button.
2. In the search box, type “command”.
3. Right-click the “Command Prompt” item, and select “Run as administrator”.
4. In the command prompt that opens, type

   xcopy sourcepath destinationpath /O /X /E /H /K

   and then press ENTER, where sourcepath is the source path for the files to be copied, and destinationpath is the destination path for the files.

5. For example:

   xcopy C:\Users\Public D:\Public /O /X /E /H /K

Early every year, seeds are growing
Unseen, unheard, they lie beneath the ground
Would you know before the leaves are showing
That with weeds all your garden will abound?

If you close your eyes, stop your ears
Hold your mouth, how can you know?
The seeds you cannot see may not be there
The seeds you cannot hear may never grow

In January you’ve still got the choice
You can cut the weeds before they start to bud
If you leave them to grow higher, they’ll silence your voice
And in December you may pay with your blood

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth and take it slow
Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear
And later you can say you didn’t know

Everyday another vulture takes flight
There’s another danger born every morning
In the darkness of your blindness the beast will learn to bite
How can you fight if you can’t recognize a warning?

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth and then you know
Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear
And later you can say you didn’t know

Today you may earn a living wage
Tomorrow you may be on the dole
Though there’s millions going hungry, you needn’t disengage
For it’s them, not you, that’s fallen in the hole

It’s alright for you if you run with the pack
It’s alright if you agree with all they do
If the fascist’s party slowly climbing back
It’s not here yet, so what’s it got to do with you?

The weeds are all around us and they’re growing
It will soon be too late for the knife
If you leave them on the wind that around the world is blowing
You may pay for your silence with your life

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth, they’re never there
And if it happens here, they’ll never come for you
Because they’ll know you really didn’t care

— Solas, “Song Of Choice” (1998)

I just had a conversation with someone who said that President-elect Trump’s intended cabinet appointments so far indicate that he is “reaching out to the opposition”. Initially, I though that was a particularly funny comment, and congratulated them for their sarcastic humour.

Except they weren’t making a joke. They apparently actually believed that. Which left me speechless.

They then went on to explain how they were reasonable, and thoughtful, and in way of example of their reasonableness, gave me a short list of their horrific beliefs. They concluded with, “We all want the same things, just have differing opinions as to how to get there.”

I replied, “I strongly suspect that you and I do not want the same things.”

“What do you want?” they asked.

What do I want? That’s a good question. I want zero-calorie, 80-proof rum. I want a reliable 200 Mbps Internet connection that costs less than $100 per month. I want every movie and TV show ever made to be available on, at most, two or three Roku channels, and for them never to be removed. I want a house where I can look out my window and see nothing but trees, ocean, and sky, and to live in peace with my wife and my cat. But that’s small stuff. When it comes to the world outside my window, what I want is less easy to define, so it took me a few minutes to distill it down. So this is what I said:

I want a world where people who are decent and kind can live their lives in peace without fear of being deported, or having their basic civil rights denied because they love the wrong person, or being hooked up to electrodes to shock them “straight”, or being put into internment camps because they picked the wrong invisible friend, or being harassed and driven away because they have the wrong ancestors.

They replied that they considered themselves a realist, and they considered me an idealist.

I replied, “I consider myself someone who doesn’t want their friends treated like sub-humans by people like you.”

Which was probably not the most constructive thing to say. So it goes.

Last night I dreamed that I had made up a RPG character who was a male Asian-American police detective in Los Angeles, who knew karate and had expertise with motorcycle stunts. Initially, he was going to speak with a TV-stereotype accent, but then I changed my dream-mind and decided that he was from Van Nuys and spoke just like everyone else in southern California. (I’m not sure what that says about me.)

The game system was an adaptation of ZeroSpace to TV action shows (which is certainly feasible, although it’s not something I’d ever considered before now), and I had a printed character sheet that I was taking to the game. The printed character sheet was the size of a bath towel. When I got to the game (which was apparently going to be played in a fast food restaurant — brightly lit, plastic chairs, little tables), everyone else was already there, including Susan: each of them had their own huge character sheets.

Lloyd was going to to be GMing the game. When I handed him my huge character sheet, he started walking to the other side of the room, but my character sheet got stuck on something and tore. The last thing I remember in the dream was being annoyed at that and saying, “Aw, come on, man.”

The image above is Daniel Henney, an actor who resembles how I imagined the character in the dream.

I am putting this here so I can find it later (and not have to write it from scratch every time).

Moral argument: NO ONE should have their privacy invaded to earn an honest living, much less to receive assistance when they are struggling. The only time it’s even remotely defensible is when someone is operating heavy machinery or otherwise directly responsible for the safety of others, and at those times the test should be for the person’s ability to operate that machinery — and that should include the effects of ALL drugs and illnesses which impair motor function. Until that happens, “drug testing” is no more than an excuse to exert power over others just for the sake of doing it.

Practical argument: Several states have enacted laws requiring drug testing of those receiving public assistance. In those states, the evidence is overwhelming: more money is spent on drug testing than is saved by withholding support from people who test positive for the substances being tested. The only purpose for drug testing recipients of public assistance is to pay extra in order to treat them like shit.

Pragmatic argument: The surpassing historical ignorance of those who would deprive the poor of food never ceases to amaze me. Even if there were no other arguments for keeping the poorest among us fed — if chubby bourgeoisie like me were all heartless, rapacious narcissists — the simple fact is that when the poor are kept hungry, we chubby bourgeoisie tend to find our heads in baskets. I like my head where it is, thank you very much.

There nothing as destructive to humanity as the preservation of the enmity of previous generations, long since dead.

(This might not be literally true. There may be more destructive things. But this one really irks me.)