Woooooooot—it’s Halloween! At long last!
Halloween is particularly fun when it’s on a Friday. My little town “observed” trick-or-treating last night, but I’m going with Dr. Fiancée and my niece and nephews tonight (we’re not dressing up, but the kids are). I’m looking forward to some family time.
How are you celebrating tonight, readers?
With that, here is 31 October 2019’s “Happy Halloween!“:
Video games used to be a bit of a niche—a large and popular niche, but a niche nonetheless. Sure, our mom loved playing Dr. Mario on our old Nintendo, but that was about the extent of it. Video games were largely for boys, who grew up into men. Those men rebought the classics when they became available digitally, and continued to fuel the development of new games with their hard-earned dollars.
Of course, video game companies sensibly sought to expand their market share. They developed more casual games to attract older gamers and more women. The Nintendo Wii marked a major shift, as the kinetic style of the console made it popular among many demographics, most notably the elderly. Nary a retirement home or assisted living facility lacked a Wii, with which geriatrics could play virtual tennis and bowling.
All of that is wonderful. More gamers means more games, and it means broader acceptance of video games as a fun, harmless pastime (in spite of the ludicrous stories that insist on linking video games to violence—malarkey!).
Lately, however, video game developers have followed in the footsteps of film and television, making a mad push towards increasing “representation” in games. This development is premised upon a number of false premises, such as “women are objectified damsels-in-distress in games,” which ignores Princess Peach, Princess Zelda/Sheikh, Lara Croft, and many other “strong female” protagonists or supporting characters in game.
That obsession is linked to another false premise: that in order to enjoy a video game (or movie, or book, or other work), we must see carbon-copies of ourselves in them. According to this reasoning, a black kid can’t enjoy a Mario game because Mario is an Italian-American plumber, not an African-American one.
As Ponty so eloquently points out, video games are frequently a form of escapism. We don’t want to be ourselves; we want to be a burly barbarian, or a sneaky thief. When I play roleplaying games, I don’t play a six-foot-one, two-hundred-fifty-plus pound nerd with bad eyesight; I typically play a short rogue or bard character, pilfering loot from NPCs’ homes. I’d never burgle a home in real life, and the game doesn’t make me want to do so; rather, it gives the thrill of being a second-story man without any of the terrible consequences for either myself or the victim.
Regardless, gaming, too, has been a major front in the Culture Wars, going back to Gamergate in 2014. Nearly ten years on, we’re still fighting similar battles.
With that, here is Ponty’s essay “The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry”:
It’s been nearly three years since I last wrote an installment of You Can’t Cuck the Tuck, but not because I grew disinterested in Tucker Carlson’s insightful commentary. Quite the opposite: his powerful, succinct analysis of our current ills has only deepened my respect for him and his worldview even more. That he delivers his critiques with mirth, laughter, and good humor only strengthens them.
Sadly, Fox News—an organization that hasn’t done anything particularly interesting since Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld—has embraced cuckery and kicked The Tuck to the curb. The last vestige of FNC as a truly conservative option in the space of mainstream cable news is now gone.
The Virus is like a bad movie series that just refuses to die. There was a controversial but impactful first release that everyone was talking about, even if they didn’t see it. Then there was the lackluster sequel, which still enjoyed some popular support, even though ticket sales were down.
Now it feels like we’re on the tired third film, which is a watered-down, ineffectual finale (one hopes) to a premise that is played out. Sure, critics love it, but audiences are tired of its antics.
What still seems to make it into the script of every one of these films is the part where the government bureaucrats lock everything down and release a bunch of ghosts into Manhattan (uh, wait, what?). Meanwhile, we all kind of sit by and twiddle our thumbs and put our masks on dutifully.
What happened to the band of merry wastrels who tossed tea into Boston Harbor, rather than comply with an odious monopolization of the tea trade? Or the plucky scofflaws who made it impossible to enforce the Stamp Act? I’d rather disguise myself as an Indian (feather, not dot) and caffeinate the water supply than put a mask on again (but that would be cultural appropriation, of course).
In short, why don’t we get a backbone, instead of cowering behind masks and locking ourselves indoors? We’re literally cowering before an invisible enemy with a 99%+ survival rate.
Well, liberty is never easy. Better to stay inside watching movies and disconnecting from reality, eh?
With that, here is 29 July 2021’s “TBT: Phone it in Friday XI: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part IV: Liberty in the Age of The Virus“:
Well, it’s not quite Valentine’s Day yet, but I thought it would be worth looking back to 2020’s Valentine’s Day post, which was mostly a collection of various blog posts and reflections on the holiday.
I’m still wondering how Jay Nordlinger gets to travel the world writing pithy little observations about violin concertos and the like. How do I position myself to take his place when he finally retires or kicks the bucket? Who else is going to critique all those free concerts in Vienna?
But I digress. The Season of Love is upon us, and I suspect restaurants will be packed this weekend with lovers canoodling over their cannoli (or, in the case of the high number of breakups on Valentine’s Day than average, crying into their kishka). Sounds like another weekend of frozen pizza and spaghetti for yours portly.
So, here’s some great stuff from better writers to celebrate your Valentine’s Day Weekend. It’s 14 February 2020’s “Phone it in Friday VI: Valentine’s Day“:
Earlier this week I was having a conversation with someone on Milo’s rollicking Telegram chat, in which we were trying to figure out the name of a short story involving people living in underground cells, communicating only via the Internet. I had a feeling I had written about it before, but could not remember the name of the story.
Turns out it was E.M. Forster’s novella “The Machine Stops,” originally published in 1909, and I wrote about it in this catch-all post from the early days of The Age of The Virus (so early, in fact, I was not capitalizing the first “the” in that moniker, which I have texted so much, my last phone auto-predicted “The Age of The Virus”). I compared the story to Kipling’s “The Mother Hive”–a story that apparently is assigned regularly in India, because pageviews for it always seem to coincide with large numbers of site visitors from the subcontinent.
But I digress. The story sounded eerily like what our elites asked us to do during The Age of The Virus: stay home, get fat, consume mindless entertainment, and don’t socialize. Granted, some of us could go outside and plant gardens (I still got fat, though), but the messaging was not “become more self-sufficient so we can mitigate disaster” but “buy more stuff and don’t do anything fun.” It was depressing to me how many people embraced this line of reasoning, turning government-mandated sloth into some kind of perverted virtue.
I appreciated the break that The Age of The Virus afforded us, but it came with the severe curtailment of liberty—and Americans ate it up! Instead of people boldly throwing ravers and partying down, laughing at our elites, we instead retreated into our hovels, shuddering in the dark. When I did through a big Halloween bash, it was a massive success—because, I suppose, people had finally had it.
I guess that’s the silver lining. With that, here’s 3 April 2020’s “Phone it in Friday XI: Coronavirus Conundrum, Part IV: Liberty in the Age of The Virus” (perhaps the longest title of any blog post ever):
With the unlimited free time of summer, I can finally get some work done in the yard. I’ve finally transplanted my potted tomatoes and peppers into my flower beds—probably way too late—after getting up weeds this weekend. I need to get out with the weed trimmer soon to get the edges of the house and around the grapevines and fig tree, but the beds are looking good, if a bit bare.
While pulling weeds Saturday, my girlfriend’s dog started nosing at a little frog—possibly a toad—hopping around in one of the rocky beds along the side of the house (I thought it might be a gopher frog, but now I think it’s more likely a Southern toad; if anyone can tell from the video, please leave a comment):
I get quite a few of our amphibian friends around the house, often hiding out in planters and shady spots in the yard. After the Spooktacular in October, I found quite a few hunkering down inside of the ceramic and red clay Jack O’Lanterns and votives I had on the porch.
Indeed, one morning I found one chilling on my toilet seat! I sucked him into my vacuum’s canister and emptied him safely outside.
I have always loved frogs (just not when they’re hanging out in my bathroom), and I’m delighted that so many of them live around my house. In doing some research on frogs and toads in South Carolina, I stumbled upon a WikiHow article entitled “How to Make a Frog Home in a Garden.”
Given my free time and desire to spruce up the yard, I jumped at the opportunity to put together a small frog pond of my own, which I installed Wednesday.
A big story in media this week is Joe Rogan, host of the popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, has signed an exclusive deal with Spotify that could be worth over $100 million.
Joe Rogan’s podcast has been around since 2009, and features long (two hours or more) interviews with personalities from every background and occupation. The long-ranging, free-flowing conversations (really, they’re more conversations than traditional interviews) make for great listening, and I suspect part of the key to Rogan’s success is that he offers something for everyone. For example, I ignore most of Rogan’s content, but I’ll never miss an interview he does with any of the various figures on the Right, from Ben Shapiro to Gavin McInnes (persona non grata from Rogan’s show these days, unfortunately).
McInnes describes Rogan as a man with a “blue-collar brain,” but who is generally open to learning. That is, he’s rather meat-headed and unsophisticated in his analysis, but he’s willing to discuss anything with anyone (Flat Earthers, for example, are regulars on his show). His only real sticking point, until the SJWs targeted him, was marijuana. He lost it on Steven Crowder for merely suggesting that copious consumption of marijuana isn’t completely benign. Yikes!
On Sunday (my first day back playing piano in church!—everyone else was in their cars listening over a short-range broadcast)—I posted a video to my Facebook artist page of Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson singing Tom Jones’s 1968 classic “Delilah”:
I’ve received a handful queries about my statement that “this video sums up my entire musical philosophy.” Naturally, there’s a bit of cheek in that statement. My short answer is similar to the jazz musician’s (Louis Armstrong? Dizzy Gillespie?) when a lady asked him how to swing: “if you have to ask, you’ll never know.” The video should speak for itself:
But I began digging into this video a bit more. What is this bizarre game show? When was it aired? How did Bruce Dickinson end up singing “Delilah”? It reminds me another video that “sums up my entire musical philosophy”—Jack Black’s appearance on American Idol singing Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose”:
Fortunately, there are some scant details out there. The show was Last Chance Lotter with Patrick Kielty, an Irish game show that ran for ten episodes in 1997. The gimmick was that the show took losers from other game shows, gave them a lottery ticket, and anyone who had a ticket worth ten pounds or more could compete in the main game. Some of the money won would go into a pot for one random audience member to win.
I haven’t quite worked out how the musical numbers figured in, but the musical guest would essentially sing a song to add even more cash to the pot by spinning a wheel (that was transparently rigged—the audience knew the wheel was controlled, from what I can gather). That’s why Bruce Dickinson was on the show, and his performance of “Delilah” is one of the most spectacular musical renditions I’ve ever heard: mariachi horns, bouncing bassists, leopard-print suits, and Dickinson’s soaring vocals.
The Washington Post blares under its masthead that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” That alliterative tag line for The Bezos Post is intended as a not-so-subtle jab at Donald Trump, as “democracy” for The Post and the rest of the Mainstream Media means “letting overcredentialed grad students and aloof experts run everything while ignoring the proles.” Apparently, a businessman who has slashed federal taxes and regulations and devolved power back to the States is a would-be authoritarian.
For all its dire virtue-signalling and hand-wringing, though, The Post and its ilk are wrong: just like the unsuspecting coeds in Midsommar, liberty dies in broad daylight.
The Portly Politico 