Radio Friday: The Road Is Long

At long last, after almost seven months and nearly 6000 words, I'm almost finished with my review of Down Every Road, the 100-song behemoth of a box-set Rolling Stone insists on referring to as an album. To celebrate the upcoming arrival of this entirely unnecessary beast of a post, let's listen to the one percent of those songs that I properly adore.



Nelson was on the recorded version to - it was his idea for him and Haggard to tackle this song, which Townes Van Zandt wrote. Toby Keith is up there too, for whatever reason.

Special bonus song: this horrific slice of White American Christian sulking about how somehow it's them who don't get sufficient respect in the US. Think of this as the merest taste of the politics I've been bombarded with across four discs and more than half a year.



How can this be the same world I live in?

A Tale Of Two Towns

"This does not look good for our heroine."

With the Twin Peaks resurrection seemingly only days away from complete collapse, it seems a good time to talk about a show that's put a truly impressive amount of effort into running its play-book: Fortitude.

(Spoilers below the fold)

Victor And No-One (Fuck The Fascists)

I haven't a great deal to add to the cold, swirling outrage spinning around the Hugo Awards getting themselves rocket-jacked by grotesque fractions of human beings so that the corpse of the awards' good name can be tanned and cut into swastikas. Adam Roberts has already covered this beat with his usual aplomb (Update: as has Abigail Nussbaum, as Jamie points out in comments) and further strong contributions have emerged from Jack Graham, Philip Sandifer and Andrew Hickey.

Those three have, in fact, slapped together an Emergency Anti-Fascist Podcast, which I can't recommend highly enough. All of it is smart and considered - I completely endorse the strategy of buying in to voting to vote "NO AWARD" across the board - but I'm particularly interested in the idea that geek culture is particularly susceptible to the kind of villainous horrors Vox Day is openly pedalling because so many of us had a genuine claim to victimhood as school-kids that we're refuse to let go of as we reach adulthood. As Sandifer points out, even at its worst the experience of a cis white male geek is unlikely to match up in the horror stakes with the ever-present threat of sexual or racist violence, but for many of us it was legitimately terrible, and having to go from years of that to suddenly be told you're now on top of the pile and owe it to others to be constantly aware of how good you have it can presumably be an awful wrench.

I wonder though if this captures the whole picture. When Sandifer points out that Vox Day's most controversial comments are so reprehensible not even FOX News or the Republican Party would put up with him, Graham notes this would only be true if those comments were public. Sandifer shoots back that Day's comments are public, but it may simply be that the sense of the word "public" is critical. It's at least arguable that what would cost Day his position at a "news" corporation or a seat in politics wouldn't be the disgust of his colleagues but the fear of the inevitable push-back from the public. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that supporting the throwing of acid in women's faces or calling black people less evolved than whites are positions you'd find much sympathy for in Ailes' world. Much as I despise those people, I'm not going to assume that level of derangement from them. What I am saying is that there seems to be at least a grudging tolerance of extreme views on the right so long as you remember what side you're supposed to be on. It may be that geekdom is not more tolerant of grotesque extremism, so much as has far less motivation to rid itself of those spouting said extremism.

That may or may not be a compelling thought. Either way though it's at least instructive, because it leads us to a potential limitation in Sandifer's argument. I think it's almost impossible to deny that conservatives have made delusions of oppression just as much a central facet of their world-view as has the post-eighteen year old geek. That the latter group can are clinging to an essentially irrelevant past rather than an entirely fictional one doesn't seem that useful a distinction: we believe what we believe. To the extent thy differ, how do we distinguish between the persecution complexes of the conservative and the geek?

Alas, I have no idea. I mean, I could quite easily take Sandifer's theory further, arguing the problem with geeks isn't just the insistence on hanging on to old grievances, however legitimate, but our (often subconscious) insistence that the battles we lost in school must be re-fought with ourselves as the victors. Attempts to marginalise geeks for not being the right sort of geeks are everywhere, because for every one of us who took from school the lesson that a war over tastes and opinions in fiction is a bogus construction [1], two of us concluded the only problem with the war is that we should clearly be the ones winning it.

In other words, for many of us our early life taught us to be on a hair trigger, but gave us no morally defensible process for deciding where to point the gun. And I see that as feeding the appalling unwillingness to call out people like Vox Day, who operate as "one of us" only insofar as they don't operate as one of the nebulous "them" of our shared past.  We've become so caught up in a war we consider quintessential to our own being that we're seemingly prepared to forgive anything "our people" do, so long as they don't say anything that actively betrays us.

This is, without doubt, a thoroughly disgusting position to hold, and can only work so long as we define "our people" as a cabal of straight white cis men terrified that anyone else might get a turn at enjoying themselves .  But I still don't see how that thoroughly disgusting position varies from the thoroughly disgusting position held by the right-wing. That so much of us operate as though we are members of the right-wing is a disgraceful and humiliating stain upon our fandom.  But that's not the same as us being uniquely awful. On the contrary, the problem with our awfulness might be precisely that it's so pedestrian.

[1] To a point, of course. Fiction has power, and that means it can be used by the enemy. But that simply makes it all the more important that we focus on what aids the enemy, as oppose to what simply turns us off personally. Simply put, the wider we cast our complaints, the less force we can exert on what genuinely needs to be fought against.

Friday 40K: Maximum Naughtiness

Here at last, over two years after acquiring the Dark Vengeance box-set, I've finally painted the last cultist in my first non-Astartes unit for my Red Corsairs. Here he is, happily gambolling across the steppes of my second finished Realm of Battle tile.

And there's the whole gang, fearlessly straddling a rather alarming fissure on the surface of Skwidcowch I. That's some dedication to naughtiness right there.

A Tale Of Cocktails #51

Eggnog 

Ingredients

1oz whisky
1oz rum
5oz milk
2oz cream
1 egg yolk
60g Sugar
Pinch cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
Pinch nutmeg

Taste: 6
Look: 6
Cost: 8
Name: 7
Prep: 2
Alcohol: 2
Overall:  5.7

Preparation:  Beat egg yolks until light and fluffy, whilst adding sugar a little at a time. Heat milk, cinnamon and nutmeg until near boiling. Add to egg yolks and whisk furiously. Add mixture to remaining milk, stirring continuously over heat until it thickens. Remove from heat and stir in cream. Leave to cool for one hour, then add in alcohol and vanilla essence. Then chill.

General Comments: DO NOT DRINK THIS WARM! Don't make the same mistake we did. Warm egg nog tastes like risotto thrown into a blender. I have an almost unhealthy love for risotto, but even I realise that it should only be served al dente, not fluid.

Drunk when sufficiently chilled, however, and with enough nutmeg, this isn't too bad. It's sweet and thick and creamy, which is always a good combination, though it tastes so bad when warm I can't help wondering why people bother with it at Christmas. Really though, it's nothing above average, and considering the quite ridiculous level of preparation required to get it into my belly, I submit we all have better things we could be doing, or at least pummelling our internal organs with more readily assembled drinks.

Circles And Streams

This obvious nod to Firefly is probably the most original
part of this whole damn film

 

What came first, the xenomorph or the facehugger?

Veterans of long-term blog perusal here will probably already know my feelings on 2001: A Space Odyssey. To sum up: the stuff with the apes takes far too long, the middle section is thoroughly devoid of recognisable emotion (HAL's death scene excepted), and the final section is such dreadful incomprehensible bobbins that it makes me nostalgic for the monkeys that kicked everything off.

I will bow to no-one regarding this admittedly tremendously unpopular critical position. But I will accept the argument, as was once made by a friend of mine, that the narrative of the film doesn't really give it any option but to end in nonsense. When David Bowman's journey concludes with him meeting an alien life-form utterly beyond his ability to process, it precludes our ability to process it either. We are no smarter or more evolved than Bowman, We can't grasp what he's seeing on any more useful a level than he can.

There is a similar idea which surfaces throughout Prometheus.  Indeed, with the film's set-up involving an inscrutable alien presence which may have guided our evolution for purposes unknown, the idea is perhaps all too familiar. But if Prometheus cribs liberally from Kubrik's iconic film (as well as Alien, obviously), it does at least expand on the theme.

(Spoilers follow)

Quck Quz

Update: Now with added spelling!

Shamelessly "liberated" from a local pub quiz, I really rather liked this round and so figured I'd give it a... well, not a wider audience, obviously, but a different one at least.

For the first ten questions, there are two six-letter word answers, with the second answer only one letter different from the first. For example:

Combat teams fight against underwater ink-squirters: Squads - Squids.

For the last five questions, instead of changing a letter for the second answer, add one instead.

1. Courteous detectives, perhaps?     Polite - Police (Tomsk)
2. Think about food then add condiments    Reason - Season (Tomsk)
3. Take a fall during a gang-fight Tumble - Rumble (Dan)
4. A psychiatrist finds themselves in a holy place    Shrink - Shrine (Tomsk)
5. Lose your nerve before a big fight    Bottle - Battle (Pause)
6. Give an ant a disease    Infect - Insect (Pause)
7. An Eastern ruler with a healthy glow    Sultan - Suntan (Moddey_Dhoo)
8. Feel a bit shook up about having a black eye    Shiver - Shiner (anonymous)
9. Got into a scrap about nothing at all    Fought - Nought (Moddey_Dhoo)
10. Haggle over price with an ex-US President    Barter - Carter (Moddey_Dhoo)
11. Put into some kind of order, than blew a fuse    Sorted - Shorted (Pause)
12. When given a faint colouring, went off    Tinted - Tainted (Pause)
13. Product protection for someone in a ward perhaps Patent - Patient (Dan)
14. Annoy the riverbank sportsmen    Angers - Anglers (Pause)
15. Relish a sharp tingly sensation    Pickle - Prickle (Pause)

Good luck!