The Parable Of The Two Women At The Coffee Shop

And Jim came to the LORD and said, "Hey, I want to write a parable."

And the LORD said, "Cool, sounds good. Make sure it's short. Parables are short."

Jim said, "But, aren't parables a thing that God does, not man?"

"Well, biblical parables, sure, but you aren't writing a biblical parable, right?"

"No, of course not."

"Good. Hey, can I hear it? I like it when My children speak to me."

"Wait, when did you start capitalizing 'My?'"

"14th century or so. It fell out of fashion. Typeface issues."

"Ah."

...

"Jim, the parable?"

"Right! So, the moderate white church is like two women who agree to meet at a coffee shop. One of them orders them coffees and ..."

"Names. If you only have two characters in a parable, they should have names, even if it's just a title, and as soon as you can get them in."

"Ah. The moderate white church is like a Christian woman and an atheist woman who agree to meet at a coffee shop. The Christian woman orders coffees for both of them, and she's pretty sure she orders the very specific coffee the atheist woman asked for, but she's thinking so much about the conversation they're going to have that she thinks maybe she forgot."

"Wow, what kind of conversation could do that?"

"Oh, when a Christian person sits down one-on-one with a non-Christian person, their church will have taught them that they absolutely must bring up Christianity and 'preach the gospel to the unbeliever,' even if it doesn't make any sense in context."

"Right, yeah, that. I interrupted you - go on."

"So, the Christian woman is sitting there, rehearsing the conversation in her mind, trying to figure out what her friend might say in response and desperately hoping that the non-Christian woman follows the script, when the non-Christian comes in and sits down.

'Sweet Jesus fuck, what a day,' she says ..."

*winces*

"What? She's a non-Christian. She swears. Heck, some Christians swear."

"I know, it's just that you're kind of limiting your audience with that."

"I'll use asterisks then. 'Sweet Jesus f***, what a day. Really need some caffeine,' she says, and sits. The Christian woman starts the conversation she'd planned as the non-Christian woman slugs down a mouthful of coffee beverage. The non-Christian woman doesn't hear the Christian woman's carefully planned opening because she was clearly about to talk about her day and says, 'What?

The Christian woman repeats her opening salvo in the salvation fusillade, but is interrupted when the non-Christian woman throws up all over the table. Messily. The non-Christian woman says, 'you made sure they used soy milk, right?' and the Christian woman responds that she was more concerned with her eternal soul, and not her drink order. The non-Christian replies that she's not lactose-intolerant, she's actually allergic, and the room's spinning, so would she please get out her EpiPen. Then the non-Christian woman collapses to the ground and starts gurgling.

The Christian woman says that she's concerned for the non-Christian woman's eternal salvation, and the non-Christian woman croaks out one final, 'Screw you, Barbara,' and dies."

...

"Wow."

"What did you think?"

"That was kind of a lot, Jim. Parables usually come with an explanation."

"Oh, well, the moderate white church has kind of always been here, every since the 17th or 18th century or so. People who mean well, and occasionally do well, but often let bad stuff happen to people because it would seem awkward or rude to stop it. Sometimes they even cause the problem to begin with, but rather than taking ownership of their role, or acting to be better, they persist in focusing on salvation even while the problem is ongoing, or even getting worse."

"Yeah, that does happen. Too often, honestly. It's not a bad parable. Too simplistic to be canonized, but I'm glad you told it to me. As I said, I like it when My children speak to me."

"Thanks, LORD, that means a lot."

"You're welcome, Jim. You always are."

MST3K Top 25: #23, "Horror At Party Beach"

When you think of MST3K, you probably think of a black and white 50s/60s scifi movie being riffed on by three figures in profile. There's a reason for that - they did a lot of black and white sci movies, but, well, they aren't good. They're also short, and pretty repetitive and frequently burdened with a whole lot of sexism. I mean, yes, Jack Frost has the father reassert his "natural" manly leadership, but it's based on traditional Slavic folklore - bad gender dynamics are to be expected, and the setting is pure fantasy.

And, holy crap, every time I watch this movie, I forget just how racist it is. First, though, the plot. Sorry, the "plot."

In a small coastal town, kids are partying on the beach while, out at sea, people dump nuclear waste overboard which immediately causes a human skull to mutate into a giant humanoid figure that looks like someone jammed a clam on top of an old-timey diving suit and then jammed a bunch of hot dogs in its mouth.

The first victim of these monsters is, of course, the girlfriend of our main protagonist, a blue-eyed, blond-haired scientist-type. The rest of the movie is taken up with the scientists coming up with enough clues to figure out how to kill the monsters while they run around killing young women. Almost exclusively young women. Frequently really dull-witted, under-dressed young women. Yeah, it's pretty darned skeevy.

Eventually they figure out that the creatures are vulnerable to elemental sodium, get a bunch of the stuff and ... throw it at them? Frankly, their delivery system appears to be government-issue clips of sodium exploding, as it is wont to do when exposed to water.

With a running time of less than 80 minutes, they still manage to make a movie where basically nothing interesting happens. There are a few things though:

1. The costumes are gloriously derpy. This isn't unusual for a scifi movie from this era, but they're given long, loving shots, in close-up, and more than once.

2. The initial scene where our hero and his girlfriend encounter what Crow calls, "Jean Paul Sartre's biker gang." They're almost entirely non-threatening, are built up as villains for an entire scene and then just ... disappear after their one confrontation with the hero.

3. The science talk. It's long, it's boring, it's deeply implausible and I just love all of it.

Less loved are the scenes with the black housekeeper. They're dreadfully, horribly racist. Seriously, just gross.

The host segments are excellent here, especially their surf rock spectacular, "Sodium," but otherwise there's not much here to recommend the movie.

Rating: C-. This is a cookie-cutter black and white monster movie and it's just not a whole lot of fun to watch without commentary.

MST3K Top 25: #24, "Jack Frost"

Continuing in my reviews of some person's top 25 list of MST3k movies, it's Jack Frost!

No, not you.

Former a sort of troika with two other movies, Jack Frost is one of several Russo-Finnish productions that the boys and the bots endured, and it's probably my favourite of the lot.

Produced by a film company with far more love of their native lands' mythology than they have moviemaking talent, this is, in its essence, a retelling of a whole bunch of Slavic stories, with its main set piece a story in which a young and powerful hero learns an important lesson about humility in pursuit of his lady love, a young woman who lives a Cinderella-like life of misery in a house with a horribly mother, a browbeaten father and an ugly stepsister who is the apple of her mother's eye. I mean, a beet of her mother's eye. Beets are Russian, aren't they?

Anyhow, if you've ever read Joseph's Campbells, "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" or watched a George Lucas movie, you know about how this movie goes. It begins, as they always do, with a young, beautiful woman named Nastenka being threatened with a horrible beating if she doesn't knit a pair of socks in a single night, which means that she has to plead with the dawning sun to stay down for just a few stitches longer, while out in the woods her future husband Ivan beats up a bunch of bad guys, throwing their clubs into orbit, before ignoring the admonition of a mushroom-headed wizard and pridefully attempting to shoot a mother bear with her cubs in order to impress Nastenka, causing him to gain the head of a bear. Y'know, the usual.

Not you either.

So, cursed with the head of a bear, Ivan goes off to do good deeds in an attempt get back in the mushroom wizard's good graces, and hopefully in Nastenka's good graces as well. After driving off several groups of people with his horrifying bear-headedness, he encounters an old woman who needs helps getting to her home in the mountains. She rides him bear-back* all the way home, finding out when she gets there that she's blind. The mushroom wizard restores Ivan's fine-looking head and he tears off looking for Nastenka.

Meanwhile, Nastenka's put back to the grinding wheel, working hard for her mother in an effort to get the ugly stepsister married off. It works out in one of the ways you expect it will - the mother does everything she can to hide Nastenka's beauty, Nastenka remains pure and faithful to herself and when she tries to sacrifice herself to help someone else (the stepsister, in this case), she's revealed to be as beautiful on the outside as she is on the inside. Naturally, her mother commands her father to take her out to the woods to abandon her. Horrified at the thought, he decides to go against her, but rather than let him face her wrath, she sacrifices herself again and jumps off.

That's the stuff.

Then she meets Jack Frost! Finally! Near the end of the movie! He's actually a pretty nice guy in this iteration, basically just a dude responsible for bringing on winter with a magic staff that you must never touch or you fall into eternal slumber. He takes her off to his place to warm up, then takes off, leaving behind his staff because of course he does.

Meanwhile, Ivan can't find his beloved and so consults one of my favourite characters in all of folklore: Baba Yaga. She flies across the sky in a mortar piloted by a pestle and lives in a cabin that runs around the land on chicken feet. She's basically immortal, is always cranky and is typically either the villain of the tale, or the person who tells the hero what they need to know, but only after they beat her challenges.

In this case, the challenge is evidently stuffing her into her own oven. A couple of times. Tough old bird, that Baba Yaga. He snags a magic sled and heads over to Jack Frost's where, if you've been following the plot at all, you know that Nastenka has touched Jack Frost's staff* and now sleeps in a deep, magical slumber. Does she awaken from it when Ivan confesses his love for her? Yes, yes she does.

They return to town, with Jack Frost who, seeing how terrible the ugly stepsister and her mom are, drives the ugly sister away on a pig-driven sled with a dowry of ravens. And, of course, gender balance is restored and the henpecked husband is restored to being the head of his house as Ivan marries Nastenka in what amounts to a cutscene.

Fin.

Whatta Fin. The movie is ridiculous, but the skits are even better. Mike dresses up like Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance, Bobo and Brain Guy have a petty squabble after spending too much together, Crow gets turned into a bear and eats Tom Servo - it's just a great episode of MST3K all around.

Rating: B+. It's not traditional Western filmmaking, and it's goofy as all heck, but it's also fun and fast-paced and is really supposed to make you laugh. I think that's what a lot of people miss about mythology in general - it's supposed to be funny. Odysseus telling the Cyclopes that his name is "Nothing" is supposed to make you laugh; Robin of Locksley being genuinely terrible in a fistfight is intended to make him a little mockable. The humour here is ... Finno-Russian, but it's supposed to be there, and I would watch this movie without Mike and the bots. Well, I would, except I've watched it about half a dozen times with them, so...

* Yes, I see what I did there.

MST3K Top 25: #25, "Alien From L.A."

A while back, my wife sent me a top 25 list of MST3K episodes, and we've gradually been working our way through them during quarantine, at the rate of one or two a week. The boys love Mike and/or Joel and/or Jonah and the bots, so it's a nice time to gather 'round and laugh together. Because Facebook is basically my living room and I generally end up talking about bad movies with people in my living room, imma gonna do that now.

 

The first movie on the list is "Alien From L.A.," a Golan Globus production directed by Albert Pyun. People who are at all into B-movies are already groaning and rolling their eyes - Golan Globus and Cannon Films are among the worst studios ... ever, really, and Albert Pyun was one of their favourite directors because he was cheap, and worked fast. He's probably best known for the 1990 Captain America movie, which is as terrible a movie as can exist and is a part of the genuinely terrible decisions that nearly drove Marvel Comics out of business.

 

That’s a story for another time, though, as there’s more than enough terribleness in “Alien From L.A.” for me to talk about. The movie came out in 1988, and is … loosely science fiction, so, of course, it had to have a gimmick. The first involves a shy, unattractive, nerdy heroine making a journey to the center of a hollow earth where she meets threatening weirdos who teach her the real meaning of self-esteem, such that when she returns to the surface, she is a bolder, more confident person.

The second, stranger gimmick, is that the shy, nerdy heroine is played by Kathy Ireland. Yes, that Kathy Ireland. In order to make us believe that Kathy frickin’ Ireland is unattractive, they dress her as frumpily as possible, give her glasses so massive and thick they could be used to focus an industrial laser and instruct her to talk in a high-pitched voice that sounds like some combination of nails on a chalkboard and a small child screaming. It’s genuinely the worst part of the entire part, and you’d better believe that Mike and the bots take every opportunity they can to make fun of it.

 

Our movie begins with her dad falling to his apparent death “in Africa,” before cutting to Los Angeles where young Wanda Saknussemm (that is not a spelling error) is dumped by her hunky boyfriend (Don Michael Paul) because they’re incompatible. And, frankly, he’s right, because she’s freakishly annoying and he has at least the vestiges of a personality.

 

She gets the letter about her father’s death, which leads to some immediate questions. Her father’s “death” consisted of going up a set of stairs in what looked to be an Egyptian tomb in the basement of an abandoned house, completely alone. I mean, saying that her father vanished would make sense, but the plot requires that she be pining for her father for the entire movie, so, here we are. By the way, as Mike and the bots point out, her emotional reaction to absolutely everything is staring absently into the middle distance, so we don’t get much actual pining. This is par for the course with a Pyun film - the plot and characters just sort of mill around on screen for the running time of the movie, and then it ends. Aren’t you looking forward to the plot description?

 

Well, it’s pretty short, really. Wanda heads off to “Africa,” where she goes to the same abandoned house and falls down the same hole at the top of the same stairs. She wakes up in an underground dystopia that looks like every single lava level that every single video game in the 90s had, with mostly red and purple rocky backdrops and periodic gouts of flame. There she and an underground dweller face off against a group of toughs where she learns that the underground is pretty much a hardscrabble dystopia, and loses the first layer of her unattractiveness - those massive glasses and her frumpy over-sweater.

 

And here’s where the meandering begins. She and the underground dweller, who inexplicably is attempting an Australian accent, go to the big city where it turns out that people from the surface world are wanted, for reasons. Well, sort of. For some reason, the powers that be don’t want anyone to be aware of the surface world, which is why they announce that she’s in the city over their public address system. After a costume change, she ends up hunted in a confusing series of “action” shots where she loses and gains at least two additional male love interests before finding her father and returning to the surface world. We close with her confronting her formal male love interest, now dressed as one expects Kathy Ireland to be dressed in the 80s - in a revealing bathing suit.

 

That’s … that’s it. That’s the movie, folks. It’s one hour and twenty-seven minutes of Kathy Ireland talking in a high-pitched, nasally voice and a whole bunch of questionable costume choices.

 

Final Rating: D-. This is a low rating, even for an Albert Pyun file, but even for him this is a cheap, generic sort of movie. There isn’t a single scene worth watching, really, and despite its short running time it still manages to feel plodding and slow. Do not watch without the MST3K crew, or an equal astute group of jokesters.

BLM Nashua Vigil

(I did my best to write down all of the names of the speakers, but I'm sure I got some spellings wrong. If you're reading this and have any corrections, please drop them in the comments. My goal here is to amplify the voices I heard, and I cannot do so nearly as effectively if we don't know whose voices they are.)

Last night, on June 6th, I was the guest of some very gracious hosts. I went to a vigil hosted by Black Lives Matter Nashua and, well, that makes me a guest. The meeting was partly for me, but it wasn't about me. I get that this makes some people uncomfortable, the notion that they're not the center of things, but, as I said, they were gracious and ... well, right to do so.

The vigil was at Greeley Park on Concord Street, which the city closed off for the duration. Not only was Concord Street lined with cars, but I and my companion noticed that basically every single side street was well. Somewhat amusingly, there were still spaces at the park itself, but we allowed that it was all right as they'd need them for some of the more elderly attendees, as well as those with families. There were easily over a thousand people in attendance, after all.

Everyone took some pains to keep socially distant, and everyone was masked. I saw a fair number of people who had their noses sticking out the top of their mask, but, well, that's gonna happen. We're new to this, we're all new to this.

Police presence was minimal - I spotted six officers, and three or four plain clothes officers, and the chief of police was also present. About halfway through the event, a helicopter began circling overhead - I never got a good look at it, but I suspect it was a news helicopter as there was a persistent, though relatively small media presence.

We took up position under a tree with some friends from work and waited for the event to get underway.

First of all, I mentioned this on Facebook, but if you really think that BLM is funded by George Soros, let me assure you that the man is a skinflint on a level that would make Scrooge McDuck think he was a too tight in the purse-strings. They couldn't get the first mic to work, and Jordan, the organizer, attempted to rally the crowd by yelling through a vastly undersized megaphone. He introduced two clergy members, whose names I didn't get, and, well, the first guy didn't have any problems at all.

He prayed for peace, for understanding, for change and for the Lord's guidance. The second clergy person tried to use a megaphone with her mask on. It worked about as well as you'd expect, which is a shame.

The first speaker was Annie Kuster - as I said to my travelling companion, "Hey, it's that lady from my voicemail!" - and while I fault her for a lot of things, I can't fault her for enthusiasm. She charged the stage with that janky mic in hand and belted out a greeting to everyone, ending with a cry of, "Black Lives Matter!" Everyone applauded, as you do, and a guy up front jumped up and started trying to lead a chant of "All Lives Matter."

He was escorted from the premises by a lone officer. As I observed later, I suspect he was not arrested for anything, but that was entirely within his control. Jordan took the stage again and that was when it was made clear to the non-Black folks in the crowd that they were guests in the space tonight, and this was a place for Black voices and experiences. Which is fair. I mean, it's in the name of the event and everything, so it shouldn't've been a surprise to anyone.

The first speaker was Melanie Levesque, senator for the 12th District of New Hampshire. She spoke in measured tones about the Pettus Bridge march during the Civil Rights era, tied it into the demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd's death and wrapped back around to talking about the systemic issues from the 60s that persist into the present day. While she said that, "the vast majority of law officers are good and just," they are part of a system that makes racial disparity inevitable. She closed with a quote from Barack Obama, "Don't boo, vote."

Next up was Jim Dunchess, the mayor of Nashua, who read a prepared proclamation. I haven't been able to find the text of the proclamation as of this writing, but it was good to see a high official of the city present there. He was calm and conciliatory, every measure a politician, but the sort that seems to actually be getting good done in his city, to look at his record.

Third was Linda Gathright. She spoke for only slightly longer than Annie Kuster, but spoke powerfully. She is the Clerk on criminal justice for the town, and asked that anyone with concerns about interactions with the police let her know about those issues. She called for us, and for the BLM movement to focus on "actionable policies and reforms," ending her speech with the admonition that "black lives are not disposable."

Shoshanna Kelly spoke fourth, and while the others certainly were emotional at times, she started by telling us, "I'm going to try to get through this without crying," and seemed to manage to do so only by speaking with great passion. She talked about George Floyd's daughter saying, "Daddy changed the world," and charged all of us to prove her right. She also spoke in less than glowing terms about the president, and said that "A leader is not elected ... a leader is what you do," and charged us with things that we could do to lead. It was getting dim out at this point, and I was writing in a tiny notebook, so I might've missed one or two, but the gist is:

1. Buy from a Black-owned business

2. Donate

3. Read a book from a black author

4. Listen

5. Come to a Community Conversation*

6. Talk to your kids

7. Ask questions

8. Vote.

On that last one, she commented that, "voting is the difference between fighting the system and changing the system." She closed with, "Black lives are worth it, and America is worth it."

Elaine Davis then came out and sang, "Rise Up," a capella, over a janky microphone on a warm, windy early summer day. She killed it.

Next was Grace Kandecki, who was introduced as a "youth," but carried herself with enviable poise. She was born in the Congo, but spent most of her life in the States. She talked about systemic racism as being an abstract set of standards, cultural norms and laws that produce unequal opportunity for people "of colour," and spoke against increase militarisation.

Kurt Burtram might've been my favourite speaker of the night, if I had to choose. He used humour in the best possible way: to disrupt. His jokes were only occasionally intended to lighten the mood and were usually aimed at the non-Black members of the audience as a friendly but pointed barb. He talked a lot about his family and friends, his personal experiences with racism in New Hampshire. As he put it, "I know who I am: I am not a threat to you." He closed with what seemed to be a gag, doing a genuinely terrible impression of Louis Armstrong as he croaked out, "What A Wonderful World," throwing in jokes about how he'll "only see friends shaking hands after Covid." When we were done singing with him. He put the mic back on the stand and said, simply, "And I think to myself, 'what a wonderful world.'" And left.

Jaden Smith followed up with a poem, whose title I didn't catch. The overall theme was pondering the notion of living in a "world where everyone's colour blind," and how that wouldn't fix the problems that we think it would, ending with a stanza in which she exclaimed her pride and self-worth.

Next was Kendall Reyes, a former NFL defensive end. He spoke unguardedly about his own failures to properly serve the Black community he came from, but said, "We're all here because we want to do better," ending with an admonition that everyone there donated $10 to a cause, or spent 1 hour a week volunteering, we could make a difference.

Nala Doyle was not soft-spoken as she exclaimed that the problem with police wasn't a few bad apples, but a rotten tree, and advocated for demilitarisation of the police and the removal of qualified immunity.

Samantha Searles, the Communications Director for Black Lives Matter Nashua, gave a memorable introduction: "I came from black slaves that could not be killed, a Cherokee who would not be moved, and a white man who loved a black woman before it was legal." She never let the foot off of the gas, going hard after the racist comments of Manchester alderman Joseph Kelly Levasseur, the current president and a lynching in Claremont*. She ended with the argument that, "If you really want change, vote or, better yet, run for office yourself. With what happened in 2016, lack of experience or ability is no longer an argument."

Hutch Mosely is an 8th grader and he's kind of incredible. He spoke with gravitas and ability well beyond his years when he said, "We can be angry all we want, or we can stand up and make a change," closing with a quote from Barack Obama: "We are the change we seek."

Alana Shoat opened with thanks to the crowd, saying, "I've never felt to at home in my community and I've been her my whole life." She talked about the inadequacy of a single month, the shortest in the year, for Black History month, and that the struggle for civil rights was, "not about black people versus white people anymore, or about left versus right anymore, it's about all of us versus injustice," closing with the observation that, "All lives cannot matter until black lives do."

The closing speaker was Jamila Ashanti Scale, who read from a statement that was very powerful and moving - my pull-quote was an admonition to the spirit of George Floyd that "justice will be served and you will not be forgotten." As she spoke, a rainstorm started, and a rainbow formed behind the bandstand she spoke from.

The event closed with a series of statements from Jordan, the organizer of the event, recapping a lot of the points already made, and observing, "We can boo and vote; I think we can multitask," and talked extensively about his radicalization at the death of Sandra Bland, and how mobilized he and the rest of his online friends felt in that moment.

Throughout the even, the victims of injustice were named almost a hundred times - George Floyd, Ahmad Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and a dozen others.

Apart from the one gentleman who tried to disrupt the event, is was entirely peaceful. I've felt more threatened picking up take-out, which makes me think of Alana Shoat, and makes me hope for a day when she can feel the kind of security I'm privileged to feel every day.

* Police found there was no hate crime because the other kids had put the loop of rope around their necks too, there wasn't proof one of the other boys pushed the black boy with the intent of hanging him, and there were no racial epithets on that specific occasion, although there had been in the past.

"Riots Are Complicated"

I said this on Facebook and it was taken somewhat poorly, as it's not a blanket condemnation of riots.

I won't condemn riots.

They aren't nice, they are polite, but they are periodically necessary, if you look at history. I mean, Spartacus? The hero of the movie Spartacus? The hero? He started out by leading a riot. Well, I mean, we call it a rebellion now, but it was a riot. What he did was illegal, and the people that he fought against were the duly and properly empowered structures of society, and he tried to stab them in the face.

One could argue that what he did was just, in the long arc of history. One could argue that it was right, in the end, but at the time? He was a rioter. He's one of the many revered and beloved rioters in history.

Of course, we are distant enough from the riot to distanced from the damage it caused and the lives that we lost, and we're definitely not the Roman Republic. I mean, senators don't even wear togas anymore, except in their frat boy stage.

Now, that doesn't mean that public violence in protest of authority is always and ever a good thing, but it does mean that I won't condemn all riots, particular ones that are y'know, ongoing. I'm pretty sure the Roman people weren't terribly pleased with the Third Servile War at the time.

Now some people have brought up looting as being the especially bad thing here but, y'know what? They divide into three basic groups:

1. Outside actors. We know that there have been a bunch of people not associated with Black Lives Matter or any other organization behind the protests who've been looting, vandalizing and otherwise rampaging, some of them with the specific intent of making the protests violent. They're gross and awful, and they need to be stopped. In a lot of cases, we're actually tracking them down and arresting them, like the racist yahoo who set fire to a courthouse in Nashville.

2. Opportunists. Yah, I know, I'm supposed to angry with them because it's unjust, but unless and until Jeff Bezos looses his purse-strings to pay his people a living wage, I remain unconfused as to who's stealing the most wealth and property.

3. Activists and protesters. It's been said repeatedly that "these people," the regular activists and protesters who succumb to the urge are "hurting their cause." I'm going to keep this as simple as I can: In a world where four men killed a man in broad daylight, and only one of them is currently under arrest, and only after massive public pressure, after unjust death after unjust death, after being told that they can't kneel during a song, they can't speak from a stage, they have to protest just so, behave just so, with no real change, how much more "hurt" do you think their cause can be?

Riots are complicated. We might not want them to be, but they are.

And, yes, violence doesn't solve anything - what it does do, is make new problems, and sometimes those problems have a clearer solution than what was there at first. Is that going to be the case this time? We don't know. We can't know, because we're in the middle of this thing. I hope I'll see you on the other side.

Memoriam

(Note: This post has some videos embedded, and one sound file. They are relevant to what I'm saying. You don't have to listen to them all but, well, you'll miss bits if you don't. Most are songs, if that helps. I should also note: I'm not always the narrator in these clips.)

I miss my grandfather on days like today. He was clever, funny, articulate and, most of all, fearless. He spoke his mind clearly and boldly, and without an excess of words.

He fought in WWII, where he served as a radio operator, and he simply hated war and regarded it as the worst possible state of man. He was glad to have served because if there was a potential for a worse state, he felt strongly it would be life under Axis rule, but he hated war. It might be the best lesson he taught me. Well, that, and how to keep from slicing my tee shot.

Today is Memorial Day. It's not my holiday, in the larger sense, because it's an American holiday when one remembers the veterans who've died, whether in war or after. As I understand it, the day's near the end of May because the weather's decent and it gives one a chance to visit the graves of those veterans, to tend to their graves and leave flowers and such. Thus its original name: Decoration Day.

The rough Canadian equivalent would probably be Remembrance Day, placed on the Monday of the week in which November 11th falls. That day is known in some places as Armistice Day, commemorating the day that World War I officially ended. The Armistice had been under discussion for some time, of course, and was really just the formal recognition of the end of hostilities.

Right to the end, the generals and men in the back offices continued to give perilous and fatal orders the men in the field. They were, after all, just men in the field. Plenty more where they came from. The last formal casualty, on the British side, was 90 minutes before the signing, but unofficially, deaths continued until the 14th, as news spread.

Nasty bit of business, that war, but they all are. All of them. We like to talk about "good wars," but while there might be some wars that don't kill quite so many bystanders, where mostly only the bad guys die and most of the good guys live, we haven't had a "good" war yet. And then there's talk of "just wars." Don't get me started on "just wars."

"Just war theory" seems to mean, "Killing people by the shedload as usual, but it's okay because we feel bad about it this time."

And don't get me wrong, sometimes wars need to happen, the same way that sometimes cancer treatments need to happen. But celebrating war, lauding those who participated in them merely for participating in them, acting as through peace came about just through the violent conflict and not through the negotiation of peace, I can't do that.

No soldier has ever died to "defend our freedoms." They've died because someone, somewhere, screwed up and now they have to go out and die while everyone else figures out how to unscrew things again, until the next time. It's not nearly as romantic when phrased that way, though. Reducing their actions to "defending freedoms" sounds so very ennobling.

So, given all that, given my deep and abiding hatred for warfare, how do I "celebrate" Memorial Day? I remember. I remember the cost of human stupidity, of stubbornness, of brutish, reflexive nationalism, a cost measured out and paid for in blood. The blood of soldiers, but also the blood of civilians, of innocents and villains and everyone across the great, majestic stretch of humanity.

Don't take this as hostility toward soldiers, or those who've served in war as a civilian. I mean, my grandfather was right. As terrible as World War II was, it was the best of a bunch of bad options. I know, however, that some will say that because I don't want them to die in something as stupid as war means that I hate them. As though one must hate firefighters if one hopes for a day when housefires are a thing of the past.

To be specific, though, I think of nurses who died on their feet from exhaustion, trying so hard to keep death at bay that they didn't see the reaper sneaking up on them. I think of the young soldiers who died at the first moment of the charge, a bullet passing from the front of the skull and out the back, sending then to the dirt, forever. I think of the children who died in a stranger's basement, huddled in a corner when the roof came down and staved in their skull or crushed their chest as indifferent violence rains down overhead.

If I want to get really fuming angry, I wonder if that nurse had a beautiful sonnet in her head that she never got down on paper. Did the soldier have someone at home whose heart would break forever at the news of his death? And the children. God, the children.

I remember. I memorialize. I hope.

https://soundcloud.com/jim-roberts-223408216/the-war-prayer

Mark Twain's War Prayer was about a specific pair of wars, but it really doesn't matter. We found more of them later. We always do.

Once more into the breach.

My favourite campaigns

My wife tagged me into a Facebook post from someone looking for ideas for D&D campaigns, specifically asking us to share our favourite campaigns. I started typing up a Facebook post, but,

These campaigns are in chronological order, as best as I can remember them. This isn't a comprehensive list, these are just the campaigns I learned something from. Most of my campaigns were unnamed until after college, but I've invented names here, where I could. I should not that these are all campaigns I ran - pretty much from the beginning, I was a GM, not a player, unless someone had a new system or concept they wanted to play.

Name: White Plume Mountain
System: AD&D (pre-published module)
Inspiration: I was at a birthday party and a friend pulled out this cool book he'd found in his brother's room. It was some kind of game, and he knew his parents didn't like it (It was the 80s, and we were kids in a private Christian school - yeah, Satanic Panic was in full swing.) They couldn't figure it out, and I was the weirdly social one, so I sat in a corner until I sort of figured it out.
Synopsis: I honestly don't remember - I believe it was pretty much just a straight-up, "explore this location and take everything that isn't bolted down," adventure.
What I Learned: You might notice that I didn't have a Player's Handbook. That is correct. I had the adventure module, and the portion of the Fiend Folio my friend could sneak out of his brother's room. We kind of winged it with the dice we gaffled from a Yahtzee set and had a lot of fun.

Name: Justice Machine
System: Heroes Unlimited (pre-published sourcebook)
Inspiration: While I'd picked up various RPG books over the years, it was hard to get a group together to play them. One of my friends read the Justice Machine comic, and I had the book for the main system, so I picked this up at a game shop.
Synopsis: I never actually found out.
What I Learned: Never pick up a sourcebook just because you THINK your friend will like it.

Name: The one where we play mutant animals
System: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles And Other Strangeness
Inspiration: The cartoon, initially, but the book is based on the original comic books, which were VERY different. Still good, just entirely different.
Synopsis: I ran a lot of different games in this system, most of them only lasting a couple of sessions, but generally the all took place at or out of Project: Manticore, an agency that used mutant animals as agents. Think of it as being OWCA, but with time travel once I got Transdimensional Turtles.
What I Learned: Making characters can be as much fun as playing them. System only gets in the way of player fun if the GM allows it to, but system can get in the way of GM fun by sucking.

Name: The Ballad of Jack Generess And The Airships
System: D&D (homebrew)
Inspiration: I fell in love with JRPGs and decided to try playing a JRPG-inspired campaign with a bunch of guys I met in my freshman year of high school.
Synopsis: I created the hex-grid world-map before I did anything, but I mostly improvised the dungeons and their contents, although I usually had a pretty good notion of what the boss was going to be. It was a pretty straightforward adventure, with the heroes rising from 1st through 12th level, ending with a massive fight between the party and their allies vs. the cyberlich and his minions. There were evil gnomes with jetpacks, flying squirrels, great ballads sung to the tune of Talking Heads songs, the whole nine yards.
What I Learned: This was the first time I played a campaign from beginning to end with the same group of people, playing the same group of characters or at least a continuous line of characters. I learned a whole lot from this game, including how to say "yes, and" off of the improv stage, how to imbalance a game properly, and a lot about how to manage player expectations. Also, a lot of the character names and place names I'd use in future campaigns started here.

Name: The Mothman Saga
System: Werewolf: The Apocalypse
Inspiration: UFO culture, specifically John Keel's, "The Mothman Prophecies"
Synopsis: I threw out 90% of W:tA's mythos and instead argued that the world was going to hell in a handbasket because the ultraterrestrials were fighting, using Earth as their field of battle.
What I Learned: This was the first WoD game I'd run, and while I'd played in a few one-offs of more narrative games, it was the first game that explicitly gave me permission to tell players that they succeeded just because success was more interesting than failure. Also, it was one of the few games I'd run that used real-world figures and events.

Name: The War Of Skulls
System: Rifts
Inspiration: The cover of the Rifts gamebook. I wanted a game that ended with my players fighting a giant sluglord dude surrounded by women in gimp suits. ... Look, I was young and stupid, I'm not going to defend it.
Synopsis: I can't even tell you. Check out the next section.
What I Learned: Never run a game with more players than you can count on two hands, unless you really know what you're doing. Never assume that just because a book is designed by the same dude as a book you already own that they're even similar (Rifts was designed by the guy who did TMNT - he didn't do any better this time around). Never, ever improvise mech combat.

Name: Chaos Rising
System: 2nd ed D&D
Inspiration: I had the characters first, and so just built a challenge around that.
Synopsis: A dark lord rises in the West and the heroes have to go out and stop him. I made him a racist and a bigot, though, tying into the history courses I was taking at the time, which made him memorable.
What I Learned: College students basically game just like high school students, and still like stabbing stuff in the face, mostly.

Name: Savage Species
System: 3rd ed D&D
Inspiration: The 3rd edition sourcebook of the same name, and the phrase describing the X-Men as being "in a world that hates and fears them."
Synopsis: In a world of magic and wonder with a variety of mythical creatures abounding, the players track down a demon lord to a high tower and are killed, placed in a healing sleep and wake three hundred years later in a world where there's basically just humans left, and the demon lord is still around and needs killing.
What I Learned: Playing with bigotry in games is only slightly less dangerous than playing with matches near flammable objects, third edition has limits, but if you ignore them, they do kinda go away.

Name: Ptolus
System: 3rd ed, and later 3.5 ed D&D
Inspiration: The sourcebook of the same name. From which I took the title of the name, a handful of stat blocks and not a whole lot else, although I'd use bits of the book in various other campaigns in the ensuing years.
Synopsis: There are dungeons beneath the city of Ammeara, and they're leaking a dangerous amount of magic, with monsters running to the surface to escape it.
What I Learned: We actually spent about half of the game on dimension-hopping, which was a lot of fun. Also, I had my first gender-fluid PC, which was cool.

Name: Asengervald
System: Pathfinder
Inspiration: Pathfinder with all the fun parts, except for gold pieces and XP.
Synopsis: In the far north of my campaign world, there's a space I labelled Asengervald, and that I just never visited. For about three decades. So we did! Vikings, gnolls, "squeezings," all sorts of fun to be had.
What I Learned: Loki is a jerk, Pathfinder is vastly improved if you just give everyone a bonus to the appropriate stat at the point in the level where the game tells you they ought to give them a magic item that gives them that bonus instead, players are more cunning than you can guess, resource management is fun if you aren't always managing the same resource.

And that's about it, for now. I've run a couple of campaigns since, but they are memorable at this point because, well, they're barely memories.

Beyond The Mistgates

"Beyond The Mistgates" #1 published in April of 1994. It was at least in part a response to their competitors' efforts to bring in older readers with more mature content and sophisticated storytelling. The intent was to focus on Nightmist and the various extradimensional entities and characters that had showed up in her titles over the years.

The title was published as a bimonthly 48-page prestige format book with minimal advertising, a 24-page Nightmist story and then two shorter back-up stories. The problem was that Nightmist was already featured heavily in Darkwatch and Tome of the Bizarre, and keeping the stories in continuity while connecting them as a complex narrative proved to be too much. By issue 9, Nightmist was relegated to the back-up stories, with the main story being taken up by a rotating set of plots, some derived from the backup tiles. There were four main stories:

1. The Vagabond - In each story, some villainous but generally mundane character would get their supernatural comeuppance, with the strong implication that it was caused by, or put into motion by a mysterious character calling itself the Vagabond. The stories often had a close connection to some of the Golden Age horror tales, but with new twists and art that, while still distinctly pulpy, was overall cleaner and more precise.

2. The Olde Curiosity Shoppe - Set in Rook City, the Shoppe and its employees handled mystical artifacts that brought great power, but at great price. The characters were nicely drawn and the plots well-handled, but in the end the only gimmick was a "gadget of the week" that would not have been out of place in a Silver Age title and fan reaction was lackluster.

3. Jackdaw's Fury - Purportedly the tale of a British-born Native American taking supernatural vengeance on the "white man," the story was praised and hated in equal measure by people who found the title to either be a more sophisticated take on the extreme violence in the mainline of Sentinels Comics, or a pretentious and mawkish take on the same.

4. Purgatory - Part crime drama, part fairy tale, part teenage angst, Purgatory told the story of a trio of disparate characters and unlikely allies teaming up against a variety of supernatural forces in a town in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

The Olde Curiosity Shoppe lasted three issues for being discontinued, and The Vagabond was spun off into its own title, the first under the Mistgate imprint. The writer of Jackdaw's Fury quit the title and moved over to the esteemed competition in a snit that I don't think we have the space to elucidate completely. Purgatory effectively took over the title by issue 18 in 1997, and the comic was retitled for issue 21, when the number returned to 1 as well. There were still back-up stories, but those faded as well, and by issue 25 the title was now a monthly comic of standard length, and ran that way for 22 more issues before cancellation.

The writing team, Sheila and Greg Arp, were incensed by the cancellation, claiming that editorial had told them they would be able to see their planned fifty issue through to the end. Fans, most of whom admitted that the quality of the art and writing faded as the series wore on, were likewise annoyed, and it wouldn't be until 2011 that the Arps would make a deal with Sentinel Comics to publish a four-issue limited series that wrapped up the plot.

The Vagabond showed up briefly in the OblivAeon event in a massive attack against Borr the Unstable and appeared to have been killed in that fight, although that would hardly be the first time they'd been "killed."

The Jackdaw ran through 2005, to diminishing returns, and the character continues to show up in various books, usually as a hyperviolent x-factor that complicates a hero's fight against a foe, including a brief stint when Jackdaw was trained as a ninja assassin by The Operative, a time that even fans of the characters often pretend never happen.

None of the cast of Purgatory ever found real mainstream success, although Reckoning has teamed up with Fanatic from time to time and shown up in some supernatural comics, and it's at least implied that one of the TAs at Pauline Parson's university is Tantrum, grown up and with considerable control over her powers. A character named Tantrum also appeared as a recurring villain in a Visionary limited series, but given the difference in costume, personality and power set, it's generally held that this is a different character entirely.

Kaj is currently in continuity flux - in the events of OblivAeon, she's one of many nature spirits that were depicted as destroyed by the actions of his Scions, however she showed up again in the final fight. Whether this was an otherdimensional version of the character, or whether she'd once again resurrected herself is unclear at this time. With the recent announcement of an Akash'Thriya solo series, fans of the character are hopeful that she'll emerge in a mainstream title soon.

What I Think Of Nancy Pelosi Tearing Up Trump's Speech

I mean, for what it's worth, that's what I think of, every time someone talks about showing "decorum" or "decency" or says, "It's about civility."

Yeah, what she did was indecorous and uncivil. Sure was. It's just, well, that's Trump lying while making fun of a disabled reporter. Both of those things, at once, with a few extra layers of lie added on to the first.

For those who don't recall, he claims that he saw video of "thousands" of people singing and dancing on the roof of a New Jersey apartment building, celebrating the 9/11 bombings. No such video has ever been produced.

In his defense, his sychophants instead seized on an article about a police investigation into a few people celebrating 9/11 on the roof of a building, an investigation that never went anywhere, and whose claims could never be corroborated. Trump actually never recanted his claim he saw it on video so he's at the very least lying to himself.

In the picture above, he's talking about the article anyway, claiming that the reporter who wrote that article debased himself to apologize to him for altering his article after the fact. The reporter never altered the article, and there is no record of him speaking to Trump about the article. While telling this series of lies, he's mocking his disability. He has never apologized for it. He has never retracted any of his bald-faced lies. In fact, he claimed that he wasn't familiar with the reporter, despite the man having worked with Trump on a series of articles over many years, including multiple in-person interviews.

It is one of a series of turduckens of deception the man's foisted upon us, but for me it stands out because it's so simply obviously, starkly awful.

And, I get it, two wrongs don't make a right*. Speaker Pelosi had a bunch of options, up to and including just not inviting him to speak, as was customary prior to Woodrow Wilson. Honestly, as a Canadian in the States, it's weird to me how y'all spent so much blood and treasure to get out from under the rule of a pompous regent in order to, in a few short decades, reinvented the pomp and circumstance that surrounds a regency.

Ultimately, though, as someone who's looking at the expiration date of his immigration visa as the time when I'm going to have to start seriously looking at what will happen if my status is not renewed**, I find myself very much not caring that it was indecorous and uncivil. There are a bunch of Facebook posts about the rudeness represented by Speaker Pelosi's actions, but, she didn't mock a disabled reporter. She didn't refer to countries as "shitholes." She didn't belittle a POW's captivity. She didn't falsely claim that immigrants bring "crime and filth." She didn't grift money from a children's cancer charity.

Perhaps, perhaps you could argue that this is exactly why she ought to be civil, that we need to fight his rude incivility with "decent" behaviour, but there's a hard lesson I've learned over the course of time: being "civil" is nice, but "nice" isn't the same thing as kind, and when one person's incivility causes actual, measurable harm, responding with civility is appeasement.

You might also make the intimation that by ripping up that by tearing up one copy of a man's speech she's somehow insulting everyone he spoke about, but that seems odd, especially given that her defense for doing so is essentially what I've been saying here - that speech was, like Trump himself, full of mistruths and outright lies, and not worthy keeping around. I get that. Most of these speeches aren't great. Since I started paying attention to them, around Clinton, I just read the transcript the next day as that's all that really matter anyway.

The only argument that has any resonance for me is that it was a self-centered act and that, I think, has some validity, but it's not a particularly powerful one. You can complain about an act of self-centeredness performed to counter one of the most self-centered creatures in creation, a man who has said, simultaneously, that he doesn't think he's ever done anything that he needs forgiveness for, and that he doesn't like apologizing, but I'm not going to be paying much attention to your complaint.

In the end, it's turned out to be a pretty successful gambit - in the aftermath, there's been little discussion of Trump's actual speech, so maybe the Dems are finally figuring out how to get the media's attention and hold it.

So, that's it. In the game of politics, both teams scored some points that night, and everyone's arguing with the refs, again, even though nothing that happened during the speech actually broke any of the rules.

* Or, as in this case, that multiple wrongs from ones person, and then one wrong from another don't make a right. This isn't a particularly useful idiom here, is it?
** My son is on Medicaid, a publicly funded program. While the taxes I pay*** to the state and federal government more than cover the cost of the services he gets, this makes me potentially subject to having my reapplication denied. Yes, I could avoid this by becoming a citizen, but let's be honest, how welcome do you think you'd feel in a country that wants to kick you out for having the audacity to access the services your taxes pay for, but only because you're foreign?
*** Of course immigrants, even undocumented immigrants, pay taxes. Sometimes directly from our paycheck, sometimes just the ones we all pay every day when we buy gas, etc.