Turkey frying: I just can't even... (Thanksgiving 2024 mishaps)

Longtime readers of this blog know well my fondness for deep-fried turkey.  It's an art that I've been doing since Thanksgiving 2002 and I take it very seriously.  For me there is no finer way to cook a bird as magnificent as the American turkey than to fry it in a cauldron of hot peanut or cottonseed oil (your preference) for forty minutes or so.  It makes the meat VERY juicy and tender.  And there's the machismo thing going there: Turkey frying really is quite a manly task to perform.  It's so potentially dangerous.  Precautions must absolutely be taken to ensure safety for all involved.  I'm as professional as one is apt to be without doing this for a full-time living but keeping everyone safe is something I don't mess around with.  Unfortunately there are always the troublemakers that turn up every Thanksgiving who have to show us now NOT to deep fry turkey.  And here are two examples from this year's holiday that have me shaking my head in disbelief.

First up is this story out of Connecticut where some people attempted to fry a turkey inside the garage of their $4 million mansion.  Here is the result:

The people survived but the mansion was reduced to a smoldering ruin.  To quote Beavis and Butthead: "Huh-huh-huh, dumb-asses!"

This next one, has me really scratching my head.  In video he posted to his social media accounts, none other than incoming Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  is deep frying a turkey of his own.  Can you spot what he's doing wrong?

Let's see... for one thing he has no shoes on!  He's also frying in a short-sleeved shirt.  And he is not wearing gloves!  Any one of those is a major no-no.  Especially operating a fryer in bare feet.  WHAT is he thinking?!?

Without seeing the burner itself it looks like RFK Jr. might be using a tripod-based fryer... which is something I for one would NEVER use.  I've owned two fryers in my time and they've each have a wide square base.  Much more stability with that.  A three-legged fryer is too top-heavy and at risk of tipping over.

I would also recommend wearing eye protection.  I've worn sunglasses (if I have any) most of the times I've fried.  I've never seen hot oil pop anywhere that high up, but you just never know.

I wish that I could report that I've had fried turkey this Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately I haven't been able to make any since Christmas 2019, before the COVID plague cranked up.  And the price of both peanut and cottonseed oil has more than doubled: One of the more expensive things that has come to cost more in the Biden-era economy.  Maybe things are going to get better now.  Make America Fry Again, President Trump!  Anyhoo if you want to see what it's looked like when I'm at work here are some pics that my girlfriend at the time took during Thanksgiving in 2012.

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Public domain is destroying my childhood (Look at what they've done to Popeye!)

In the past couple of years some beloved characters have begun entering public domain.  And that's led to them being abused by people with less than noble intent.  The worst example probably being the recent film Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, in which Pooh becomes a feral bear hellbent on revenge for Christopher Robin abandoning him.  It's a horrible thing to do to such a revered children's character and of course it found an audience, probably of people who never cared to even watch the Disney movie much less read the original book.

But what "they" have done to Popeye has got to be worse than that.

Here is the trailer for Popeye the Slayer Man:

This is actually one of two movies coming up featuring a murderous Popeye.  The other is Shiver Me Timbers and it looks more horrible than this one.

I'm sure the people who do this think they're being "cute" but they're really not.  It's almost pitiful: They could be using their talents and their tools to make something much more original and endearing to a larger audience.  And instead they are giving us this... crap.

This isn't something being done in tribute to a beloved franchise.  It's not like this is a "fan film".  A true fan film is done out of care and devotion and appreciation.  Star Wars has had tons of fan-produced movies, some of them even full-length features.  Nobody who has made a serious fan film ever expected to actually make money for their effort.  It's something you do because you have a neat idea that you want to express your love of that particular setting and its characters with.  And because making movies can be a fun experience for everyone involved.  There is a kind of child-like innocence that happens when making a sincere fan film.  We certainly had that vibe when my friends and I made Forcery years ago.

Popeye the Slayer Man is not any of that at all.  It's a cheap cash grab making a mockery of the source material.  There is nothing whatsoever "funny" or "horror"-filled about its premise.  Just like the other movies being derived from characters now lapsing into public domain.

I certainly won't be seeing this.  Any more than I saw the Pooh "film".  And I sincerely hope that nobody involved in this dreck ever gets taken seriously by the entertainment industry.

Betty Boop enters public domain next year.  God only knows what some sick minds out there plan to do to her.

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Chris sees Doctor Who's "The Star Beast" so you don't have to

"Doctor... I let you go."

~ final words of the Twelfth Doctor

 

 Oh dear Lord.  It was so much worse than I was ready for.

I keep hearing Peter Capaldi's last words as The Doctor, now several minutes after watching "The Star Beast": the first of the three hour-long specials "celebrating" the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who.  

Because that is what I'm feeling now.

This GIF that I made a few years ago, taken from the Mel Brooks film Silent Movie, somehow expresses the disgust and sense of being let down that I'm experiencing at this hour:

 

I had been a fan of Doctor Who ever since I was six years old, and sneaking in watching it WAY past my bedtime when WFMY in Greensboro aired episodes of it after the 11 o'clock news on Sunday nights.  Those were mostly from the Tom Baker era, and I'll never forget the first time I heard that theme by Ron Grainer.  Then I discovered that PBS ran Doctor Who at respectable hours on Saturday afternoons, and I got to see those and not have to worry about Dad catching me out of bed.

I was an on-and-off fan of Who throughout childhood and adolescence, and then came the day when a lady from PBS (standing in front of a graphic of the TARDIS) announced that there would be no further broadcasts of Doctor Who on public television.

So began the show's "time in the wilderness", apart from the "Dimensions In Time" 3-D special for Children in Need, when there was no new Who.  It seemed the show had finally run its course.  But I never lost my appreciation for it.

And then one night in the fall of 1994, I was logged into the bulletin board system run by a friend.  His BBS featured FidoNET, which was sort of a USENET (remember that?) connected to bulletin boards all around the world.  And there was a group on it called the Doctor Who Echo.

It was like that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where everyone realized they've had similar experiences with the UFOs.  It was finding others, out there, who were just as much Doctor Who fans as I was and indeed many who were much more Whovian than I thought possible.

A few months later I got Internet access for the first time.  Rec.Arts.SciFi.DoctorWho was one of the first newsgroups I subscribed to.  Using the Netscape Navigator browser I found (and bookmarked) the Doctor Who Home Page and discovered reams of text files of not only serious information but also bloopers, a "drinking game", just gobs of humor that had my sides hurting from laughter (literally!).

January 1996.  I had just gotten my first apartment.  My roomie was off in England as part of Elon's winter term.  Days before I was going to get seriously started moving in there threatened to be a fierce winter storm.  Mom convinced me to take the bare essentials and some clothing on to the apartment, 45 minutes away.  On the way I stopped at the mall in Burlington, looking for some entertainment.  I found the Doctor Who 1983 special "The Five Doctors" on VHS.  I bought it, got my things into the apartment and watched that tape while eating pizza from Little Caesar's.  I felt like I was king of the world, or at least my little corner of it.  I watched "The Five Doctors" a few more times while being iced in with nowhere to go.  It has become a tradition: every first night I spend in a new home, I've watched "The Five Doctors" while dining on pizza.

Then came the buildup to the premiere of the 1996 Doctor Who television movie, starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor (regenerating from Sylvester McCoy's previous Doctor).  Some were disappointed in the TV movie.  I thought it showed great promise and it was a let-down that it gained no further traction.

But true to form, The Doctor refused to die.

I need not go into the return of the Doctor Who series in 2005.  Even if you're fairly new to Who you probably know something about how long its "Nu Who" incarnation has been around, beginning with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor.

Russell T. Davies was the showrunner then.  And I thought he pulled off a magnificent job in bringing the show back.  Oh sure, there were some fits and starts.  There were a few rough edges.  And maybe a little "progressiveness", but that never overwhelmed how amazing the new series was.  I was willing to overlook those.  The first of the new episodes I saw was "Dalek", featuring the return of The Doctor's most classic enemy.  And then some weeks later I downloaded (the revived series was strictly on the British side of the pond, not legally available in the States) the two-part story "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances", written by a chap named Steven Moffat.  That tale completely blew me away with its awesomeness.  And when Moffat brought us "The Girl in the Fireplace" during the following season, David Tennant's first as the Tenth Doctor...

...that one genuinely brought on the tears.  I couldn't remember any television story that had so moved me.

I could go on.  But I wanted to establish my credentials first.  If I haven't driven home the point yet, here it is: I GET Doctor Who.  Arguably better than many if not most modern fans can.

When it was announced that after Peter Capaldi's time in the role ended, that The Doctor would regenerate into his/their first female incarnation as Jodie Whittaker in the role, well... I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't cautiously optimistic.  I was willing to give her a chance.  But such a change was fraught with risk, and I'll say something here that I've said many times in the past few years: there is a dynamic at work throughout the Doctor Who franchise, between The Doctor and his companions, and that should never be "tinkered" with.

But I still was willing to let Whittaker, and new showrunner Chris Chibnall, prove themselves.

Folks, I will readily admit to being one of the Chibnall era's biggest detractors.  For the first time it was readily obvious that THE MESSAGE(tm) really was seriously becoming more important in the show than... GASP!... actual character and plot.  And then there was the "Timeless Child" notion that completely obliterated most of the canon about The Doctor's very existence.  Strangely I don't blame Whittaker herself.  She was just playing the role, she had no say in what the show's execs intended for her time as The Doctor.  I absolutely believe that in better hands she could have been an amazing Doctor.

But that wasn't to be.

And then it was announced over a year ago that Russell T. Davies was coming back to helm Doctor Who.  And again, I found myself cautiously optimistic.  Ideally it would be Steven Moffat, who took over the reins following Davies' first tenure, as THE ONE who would restore order to the Whoniverse.  But it seems that is not going to ever happen again, leaving Moffat's era - which encompassed Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi's respective Doctors - a brilliant diamond forever shining bright across the annals of the television medium.

"Cautiously optimistic".  I really was.

Then came the past few weeks, and Davies' insane changes to much-beloved villain Davros.  One fan posted an eloquent defense of the original Davros design on X/Twitter.  Davies replied: "Tough".  Which was definitely not an act becoming a conscientious and responsible steward of the Doctor Who mythos.

And then the advance word of "The Star Beast" special started filtering down.  And even the BBC admitted that the special was being driven by "The Message".

Much like what happened that night on the Doctor Who Echo on FidoNET nearly three decades ago, I began finding other devoted Who fans, who were becoming increasingly rattled by these developments and Davies' attitude.  Some serious dissent was brewing across the Intertubes.

It all came to a head yesterday, with the premiere on BBC and on Disney+ (yes, Disney is now partly running Doctor Who, which may explain some things) of "The Star Beast".  And X/Twitter's most trending topic for most of the day was "RIP Doctor Who".

I read a lot of those tweets.  I made a few of my own also, sharing some thoughts about how liberalism corrupts and destroys everything it touches (it really does).  And could it be that liberalism has now brought down Doctor Who?

Well, I made up my mind as I was working throughout most of the day.  I had to see "The Star Beast" for myself.  And make up my own mind about it.  A longtime reader of this blog made it available to me.

I just spent an hour watching "The Star Beast".

People, it's impossible to shine a turd.  But it can sure have lots of glitter thrown at it, in the desperate hope that some of it will actually stick.  However in the end all you're left with is glittery sh-t.

Words cannot possibly contain or convey how much I absolutely hate this "special".  It was so much WORSE than anything I was braced for.  So many times I wanted to give up, but noooooo I had to ride it out.  Had to be willing to give it a chance to redeem itself.

There is no redemption for "The Star Beast" and it's glaringly evident that there is no redemption for the Doctor Who franchise in Russell T. Davies' grip.

Yes, THE MESSAGE does loom large.  Like the atrocious Absorbaloff from the reprehensible "Love & Monsters" episode (don't go looking for that, please), it gobbles up and dissolves into nothing everything it touches.  The only people who are apparently crazy about this hour-long chapter are hardcore leftists, the sexually deviant and trans-activists of the kind that lately stalk J.K. Rowling like so many rabid hyenas.  Not even the return of David Tennant and Catherine Tate to the saga can raise hopes that the Davies era is going to be anything but "progressive" in your face as long as he's in the big chair.

("Binary gender" is now a superpower.  And The Doctor must now take care not to tread wrongly and "mis-gender" anyone.  Just two of the atrocities committed during the running time of this... thing.)

I have a theory.  I've shared it on X/Twitter a few times.  Here it is: Russell T. Davis has become aware that he is mortal.  That one day he will shuffle off his mortal coil.  As a homosexual man he has no children.  He has no posterity, other than his body of work.  But that's not enough to satisfy him.  Davies is suddenly aware of the ingrained NEED to perpetuate himself.  And that's what is driving him most with his return to Doctor Who.  Russell T. Davies of 2005 was not like this.  THAT Russell T. Davies also had no issue with bringing Davros back in his classic form.  But TODAY's Russell T. Davies is now cognizant of the reality that he will DIE someday, and maybe sooner than later.  So he is now hell-bent on proliferating his sexual politics and hard-left agenda through Doctor Who and impose that upon generations to come.

Perpetuating himself through his creations, which are only meant to tear apart and destroy.

Clearly, Russel T. Davies has become that which he claims to hate.  Davies has become Davros.

I feel like I'm just getting started with how much "The Star Beast" let me down.  And apparently it let a lot of other people down also.  Broadcast figures from its premiere indicated that only about 5 million or so people tuned in.  Definitely not the ratings that "The Day of the Doctor" special ten years ago on the fiftieth anniversary earned.

The next special, "The Wild Blue Yonder", transmits this coming Saturday.  Followed by "The Giggle" and then the Christmas special that sees Ncuti Gatwa becoming the Fifteenth Doctor.  I have to wonder what these upcoming specials will gain in terms of viewership... if they gain anything substantial at all.  I kind of feel sorry for Gatwa.  I've seen some of his work and he would make an outstanding Doctor... but then again, Whittaker could have been an outstanding Doctor already, had it not been for The Message(tm) having the priority over everything else.

Okay, that's it.  I'm done with Doctor Who.  Maybe forever.  This show died in that blinding white light at the end of the Twelfth Doctor's regeneration.  Nothing since has been up to snuff and it sure looks like nothing yet to come is going to be proper Who either.

Incidentally, I spent Thanksgiving Day afternoon - the sixtieth anniversary of "An Unearthly Child", the very first Doctor Who episode - watching some of my many DVDs of the show's classic era.  First was the Fourth Doctor story "The Deadly Assassin" and then there was "The Five Doctors".  I celebrated The Doctor and everything good that he has stood for, for decades.  I'm very thankful for those DVDs (and I still have that VHS tape of "The Five Doctors").

To me, there is no more Doctor Who now.  It began with "An Unearthly Child" in 1963 and it ended with the final Peter Capaldi episode.  Everything since has been about nothing but forwarding THE AGENDA.  Doctor Who is now in the hands of people who do not now and might never have truly appreciated The Doctor and his universe.

But as Russell T. Davies put it so beautifully: "Tough".

Let us be grateful that we had The Doctor and his companions and their adventures for as long as we did.  And for now, there is still physical media of the classic series (and even many of the revived show) that can be purchased and archived away.  I recommend that you do that now, before Disney+ becomes the only means of watching the show at least here in America.  There is some genuine value in physical DVDs and Blu-rays and even videocassettes.

But as for what Doctor Who has now become?

Maybe there is some value in what the show is turning into.  Perhaps people better than I will look at what Doctor Who is morphing toward, and politely tell Davies and his woke minions that "oh yes that's nice!" when secretly they loathe it.  Kind of like a grown-up looking at the mad scribblings in crayon of a five-year old, who insists that it's a beautiful work of art.  And maybe the drawing will be put on a refrigerator door, before eventually being taken down and relocated to the basement.  Where rats and roaches will finally chew up its fading paper.

Let it fade.

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Changing Doctor Who's Davros is officially the STUPIDEST thing I've seen all year

The Doctor - the titular hero of the long-running BBC series Doctor Who - has had many, many enemies in his sixty years of saving the universe.  Everyone from Cybermen to The Master to the Weeping Angels to... well just about anything you can come up with has been a potential threat.

But there is one foe who is above and beyond the rest: Davros.  The insane creator of The Doctor's oldest nemesis, the Daleks.

From his first appearance in the 1975 Tom Baker-era story "Genesis Of The Daleks", Davros has gripped viewers as few Who characters did.  Bound to a life-support vehicle, only one usable arm, his natural eyes blinded necessitating a cybernetic replacement... Davros is someone who sought to perpetuate himself through his creations.  And he never cared who got in the way.  That one mechanical hand of his is stained with the blood of trillions of sentient beings across the span of thousands of years.  It could be readily argued that Davros is the greatest villain in fictional history, in terms of people killed and civilizations destroyed.

And now, returning Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davis has gone and ruined Davros in the name of leftist insanity.

Davros returned the other night for a Doctor Who "Children in Need" special.  And though it was billed as a comedy sketch, Davies has been most forthcoming in declaring that this is the Davros we are going to be seeing from now on (or at least as long as Davies is in the big chair).

Behold "Davros" on the left, compared to classic original Davros on the right:

Yup.  Davros is now just a regular Joe Shmoe, without ANY of the accoutrements that obviously inspired him to create the Daleks in his image.

As for WHY Davies is doing this to such a classic and iconic character, his reasons are... well, ridiculous.  From the story at the Radio Times website:

Speaking on new BBC Three companion series Doctor Who Unleashed, Davies said: "We had long conversations about bringing Davros back, because he's a fantastic character, [but] time and society and culture and taste has moved on. And there's a problem with the Davros of old in that he's a wheelchair user, who is evil. And I had problems with that. And a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, of associating disability with evil. And trust me, there's a very long tradition of this.

"I'm not blaming people in the past at all, but the world changes and when the world changes, Doctor Who has to change as well.

"So we made the choice to bring back Davros without the facial scarring and without the wheelchair – or his support unit, which functions as a wheelchair.

"I say, this is how we see Davros now, this is what he looks like. This is 2023. This is our lens. This is our eye. Things used to be black and white, they're not in black and white anymore, and Davros used to look like that and he looks like this now, and that we are absolutely standing by."

This ranks right up there with how the show fired Colin Baker back in the day.  It's even right up there with the reason American network ABC cancelled Police Squad! forty years ago (ostensibly because people actually had to WATCH the show in order to "get" it).

Where does this stop?  Will Cybermen now be referred to as "Cyberpeople"?

Hey, I know: Disney is the American distributor of Doctor Who now.  Let's go all out and get rid of Darth Vader's trademark breathing, since it's obviously unfair to asthmatics!

I say not for the first time: leftism corrupts and destroys everything that it touches.  There is nothing progressive about "progressivism".

Look dammit, that is NOT a "wheelchair".  That is a mobile life-support system, that gives Davros a range of movement after he was direly wounded in an attack by the Kaleds' mortal enemies the Thalls.  Davros can't live without it.  That it gives him lower body mobility is beside the point... or not.  After all it did inspire the look of the Daleks.

I honestly cannot believe the BBC is letting Davies eviscerate such a renowned character.  It is beyond crazy.

Well, if this is the way they want to go, let 'em.  I don't have to watch Doctor Who and neither does anyone else.  But the beautiful thing about this series is that there's no real consistency.  Perhaps someday a more sane showrunner will bring back Davros as he is most known and feared.  Just as I look forward to the "Timeless Child" being retconned out eventually.

Until then, Who has lost me.  And I imagine it will have lost a lot of older and more dedicated fans as well.

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Play that Mariah Carey song and it'll be THREE kittens...

Yes, at  12:01 this morning a lot of radio stations began their playing two entire months of Christmas music.  Something which I have never liked.

Good friend of this blog Lee Shelton made this graphic several years ago.  He said that it's time to bring it back out and I agree wholeheartedly...

Wow.  The original pic is from 2004.  A few months before I began this blog.  I weigh about 30 pounds more now.  A lot of that I gained in a very short period of time beginning in late 2008, after going on some medication for treatment mostly of depression.  I lost most of that but some of it still lingers.  I think that twenty years later I'm looking pretty healthy.

That's my father you see behind me.  I remember exactly which cap it is that he's wearing.

Okay well anyhoo, you have all been duly notified.  Look, I don't mind Christmas music for a few days after Christmas.  But before Thanksgiving is WAY too early.  It's making the year seem to go by much faster than it should.  There is no rational reason for it.  So, why the %@$& do radio stations DO it?

If radio stations still had human disk jockies I could probably call them and ask.  I guess we'll just never know.

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Mythic Games: They'll NEVER deliver this Kickstarter

For a few months now I've debated whether or not to make this post.  I gave the company at issue a gracious amount of time to respond to the very MANY people who had taken them at their word and trusted them to produce a great product.

However it has now been almost seven months since anything in the way of official word has been published.  That should have been plenty of time to let the backers know what's up.  Claiming that it's been caught up in "manufacturing problems" isn't cutting it anymore.

So it's time for Mythic Games to level with us: Is there going to ever be a release of the Monsterpocalypse Board Game?

I've written before about my fondness for Monsterpocalypse: the miniatures game about giant kaiju monsters thrashing it out with one another atop a city that the players build, then demolish.  Monsterpocalypse was first published by Privateer Press in 2008.  And it enjoyed some terrific growth in popularity for a couple of years.  Unfortunately a series of business decisions (making the game "collectible" and having to buy blind boxes of minis, the mishandling of the movie deal among others) caused a dip in interest.  Privateer Press eventually brought the game back as a more traditional miniatures game, where players were free to buy whichever models they wanted and paint them on their own.  Which was certainly how the game should have been marketed from the beginning.  But it was still an awesome game.  I certainly enjoyed playing it, especially with my precious Lords of Cthul faction.

Anyway, Monsterpocalypse has lingered for some years now.  And then two years ago this fall a French company, Mythic Games, announced that it was adapting Monsterpocalypse as a board game.  Basically the same as the regular Monsterpocalypse but with miniatures that didn't call for assembly and painting, and playable on the resilient surface typical of most board games.

There was a lot of hype for this game.  And to finance it, Mythic Games turned to Kickstarter: that website devoted to letting people find backing from those who are interested enough to want a copy of the finished product.  Kickstarter has been a terrific platform for fostering innovation and creativity.  A few years ago I had thought about doing a Kickstarter, for a board game I had designed rules for.  Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) some friends convinced me of how politically incorrect the game would be, and that was the end of that particular project.

Mythic Games however, dangled a really beautiful carrot before us.  There was going to be the core Monsterpocalypse Board Game.  And the more backers supported it, there were "stretch goals" that would be unlocked: more miniatures that would produced.  As backing grew, so would the game itself.

The Kickstarter went live on November 2, 2021.  In a matter of minutes the core game set was fully funded.  And by the time the Kickstarter had ended on November 24th more than $1,300,000 dollars had been raised.  A handsome amount by any measure.

I backed the core game.  My finances were a little off-kilter at the time (in short, I was skint broke).  But then came the stimulus check from the government and I decided that I wanted to go "all-in" on the Monsterpocalypse Board Game.  When the pledge manager was activated after the Kickstarter itself, I loaded up and pledged support for all of the unlocked minis, as well as faction-dedicated boxes with more minis.  It wasn't every product that I put down for, but I wanted to have a complete set of all the factions so that if I played someone we would have all the options available.

Here.  Read this: My post from a year and a half ago about Monsterpocalypse Board Game.  That alone should convey how much I was looking forward to getting this game.

Well, delivery of the game and all it's associated products was stated to be around November 2022.  A reasonable amount of time.  Mythic Games after all had to mold the zillions of pieces, print the various paper/board components, do everything required for marketing a board game.  And for awhile we the backers were getting updates from Mythic about how the production was coming along.

And then, inexplicably, the updates - which had been weekly and then became something to expect monthly - began to decrease in frequency.

This concerned many backers.  Was there something wrong with production?  Mythic elaborated that time was needed to machine the molds.  And then it was the global supply chain breakdown that plagued many manufacturers world-wide.  And these were reasonable, the backers thought.

But the rate of updates was decreasing even more.  And some were now wondering if Mythic was committed at all to giving us Monsterpocalypse Board Game.

Well, some backers  began demanding refunds.  I cannot recall if this has at all happened.  I do know that Mythic Games is offering store credit for its other products.

Ahhhhh yes, the "other products".  Mythic Games meanwhile had been selling and doing Kickstarters for more games.  While apparently doing not only nothing at all about the Monsterpocalypse intellectual property, but it's been speculated by many that the company took that $1.3 million from the Monsterpocalypes drive and has been applying it to their own IPs.

Is that the truth?  I don't know... but I can report that bulk e-mails have been regularly received by my main account, pitching other games.  I've tried unsubscribing but that's not happening.

Those updates?  The ones that Mythic promised at the start of the year would be a regular feature?  The most recent update was on March 31.  There has been absolutely nothing from the company about Monsterpocalypse since then.  Complete radio silence.

This, is unacceptable.

If the company would be straight with us, and give assurance that the Monstepocalypse Board Game was being produced even now, then I might... might... be willing to wait another year.  I believe a number of backers of this project would be willing too.

Unfortunately the more shady that Mythic Games gets with us, the more that our patience runs thin.  The more that some might be inclined to press legal charges against the company.  Mythic Games is based in Paris however, which may make litigation that much more wonky.  But I'm sure there are some with a little know-how and understanding of the French legal system who could start a court case against the company.

A year and a half ago I was cheerfully steering readers of this blog to the Monsterpocalypse Board Game pledge manager.  I believed with honest intent that Mythic Games was going to deliver on this product.  However it increasingly is becoming apparent that the resources pledged on this particular Kickstarter have been misappropriated and abused and that there is no publishing of this game that is actively being pursued.

Mythic Games made me look foolish.  It did that for everyone who was enthusiastic about Monsterpocalypse not only about this particular product, but about the entire franchise.  Monsterpocalypse is a very fun pastime.  To see it treated like this, is abhorrent.  It deserves much better.  Maybe it's primary publisher Privateer Press can take over the project.  But that would require the original funding being transmitted to them, and I don't think that's going to be possible.

What am I trying to say with this post?

Avoid Mythic Games like the plague.  That company has abused our trust in it.  If you've been contemplating getting this Monsterpocalypse-based game, DO NOT DO SO.  Neither would I recommend any other product that Mythic Games is presenting as a game.

Mythic Games owes us a solid explanation.  And if there is no Monsterpocalypse coming, it owes us our money back.

Will that happen?  I doubt it.  But at least with this article some may have warning against doing business with them again.

EDIT 10/18/2023 8:53 PM EST: A correction.  I have been notified by a number of readers that while Mythic Games has much of their operations in France, their headquarters is located in Luxembourg.  This blogger appreciates that bit of information.

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Dear Elon Musk: Make Twitter usable again

This line from the 1983 movie WarGames has come to mind in the past couple of days:

Except right now it's Elon Musk instead of Dabney Coleman.  And instead of the WOPR computer the problem is that Twitter is, at the moment, complete junk.

A few years ago I embedded the timeline of my most recent tweets on this blog, in the right-hand column toward the top of the page.  It gradually came to be a great complement to the blog proper.  Instead of making a post about anything that I found interesting enough to share, I simply tweeted it and it would also come up on the blog.  It had become a "secondary spinal cord" of my humble website.

Well, as you can see, the timeline is gone.  There is just a link to my individual Twitter page and you can see some of my tweets there. I say "some" because Twitter owner Elon Musk has limited how many tweets you can see per day.  And oh yeah, you MUST have a Twitter account and be signed into it if you want to read tweets at all.

Mr. Musk, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US?!?

 

Musk claims that he's doing this to keep Google and ChatGPT and whatever other systems are out there from automatically sucking up information from Twitter.

What Musk has done instead is make Twitter absolutely FUBAR and completely useless so far as any meaningful work goes.

It's the proverbial "throwing the baby out with the bathwater".  Speaking of babies, why do I now think that had he been in Solomon's place, Musk would have gone ahead and cut the little infant in two?

"Mr. Musk, after very serious consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your microblogging service sucks."

Well, there's only one thing that I can think about doing, in light of these circumstances.  That being: I'm going to stop using Twitter at all, for the foreseeable future.  If Elon Musk reverses course and rolls back all of these limits, I will gladly come back to Twitter and forgive its owner and anyone else responsible for doing this to us.  But I need my embedded Twitter feed back to normal.

Nobody of sound mind does this to his or her customers.  It's like the phone company limiting your calls to two hundred seconds per day.  That's how insane these new policies at Twitter are.

Maybe Musk will get the point if enough people complain.  Because right now it looks like he's sabotaging his own company.  If there's a financial angle to that, I've no idea what it could be.  But he needs to fix this, immediately.

 

 

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New Substack: Words of dire warning about transsexuality

Just made a new post on my Substack at christopherknight.substack.com.  I don't know who originally wrote this.  But I found it this morning and it resonated greatly with me in regard to some things I've seen firsthand about transsexuality.  It is with a seething rage that I am witnessing what is being done to kids in the name of "gender fluidity".  The youth are being told lies and getting persuaded to do irreparable harm to their bodies and in the process their minds and souls.  By the time they realize what has been done to them it is too late.

Maybe this will come as not only words of warning but also wisdom, to any person considering "transitioning" to a male or female.  Because the long and short of it is, it's not possible to do that and it's madness to try.  Perhaps this will be found by a young man or woman who is being given smooth-sounding words about their "real identity".  I hope this will make them pause and consider what it is that they are contemplating doing to themselves.

From the short essays I came upon:

You will never be a real woman. You have no womb, you have no ovaries, you have no eggs. You are a homosexual man twisted by drugs and surgery into a crude mockery of nature’s perfection.

All the “validation” you get is two-faced and half-hearted. Behind your back people mock you. Your parents are disgusted and ashamed of you, your “friends” laugh at your ghoulish appearance behind closed doors.

Click here for more.
 

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What a lousy day to be a Batman fan

First it was the news that Frank Miller is making ANOTHER sequel to his legendary graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns.

And now tonight it's this: the first look at Jared Leto as the Joker in the upcoming Suicide Squad movie:

Disney shareholders, be of good cheer.  Your Marvel Cinematic Universe need not fear any competition from DC.

Romero.  Nicholson.  Hamill.  Ledger.  Leto.  One of these is not like the others.  One of these just doesn't belong...

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Human embryos, genetically modified for the first time ever

Isn't this how Khan Noonien Singh came about?

"Superior ability breeds superior ambition."

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Does this look like Lucille Ball to you?

The people of Celeron, New York are condemning... and that may be too nice a word... a bronze statue of hometown heroine Lucille Ball.

Here is said statue:

Ye gods, what a monster!!  It looks like something out of The Walking Dead.  Makes me wonder if this is what June Cleaver would be like envisioned by H.P. Lovecraft.  That is nothing like the stunning beauty, amazing actress, comedic legend and all-out wonderful person that Lucille Ball was.

To sum up: Celeron does not love this Lucy.

The statue has been up since 2009.  No real notion as to why only now is it getting the attention it is (maybe it's 'cuz in recent days a Facebook page about it has been created and racked up a zillion likes).  New York Daily News has more about this bronze monstrosity.

And I can't help but wonder if it works for Celeron, maybe going a similar route would deliver my own hometown of our pending atrocity.

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VA forces vet to get x-ray taken... to prove that his leg is missing

Has the caseload down at the VA ever included any paperwork for Captain Obvious?

So on the left we have one Chad Fleming, a former soldier who served in the Army Rangers.  And as you can see, he has a prosthetic left leg.  He sought aid from the Department of Veterans Affairs because... well, you know, that's what they do for men and women who have been in the armed forces.

But in order to determine if Chad was eligible for benefits, Veterans Affairs compelled him to get an x-ray taken of his left stump.  This is what the VA required so as to discover if Chad Fleming was truly an amputee.

From the story at TheBlaze...

Chad Fleming, a veteran who served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, says the VA took an X-ray of his artificial leg to prove he was actually an amputee. Though they could have referenced his extensive medical history or just used their eyes, he said, they wasted precious resources taking an X-ray of a leg that "doesn't exist."

"[The doctor] actually laughed," Fleming said. "And I told him, I said, 'You wonder why the country is in such a deficit? It's because you're wasting money taking X-rays of a leg that doesn't exist.' It's like, 'Dude I'm not a starfish. It isn't going to grow back.'"

Another veteran in the story went in for a dental appointment, only to be told that he needed to make an appointment to make an appointment to see the dentist.

I could make some snarky commentary about this and how it demonstrates how over-bureacratized and wasteful the government has become... but what would be the point of it?  What good could come of it?

Apologies to those I have come to know who work in the Department of Veterans Affairs.  Each of you are doing an admirable job in spite of the conditions of not just your department but government in general.  That being said: this kind of idiocy is irredeemable.  The pennies do add up and in time things like this are an enormous strain on precious resources.

I mean, really: how hard is it to look at a leg that isn't there?

(Thanks to good friend of this blog Dewana Hemric for finding this story and passing it along.)

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The most interesting carpool passenger in the world

I did something like this coming through Atlanta alone several years ago.  Except instead of what this guy did or having a mannequin, I used a pillow wearing my leather jacket and I went the whole way through the high-occupancy lane with my left hand on the wheel and my right one holding the pillow up and in sight.

How I cleared Atlanta while doing that, I'll never know.

From the Associated Press via Q13Fox News in Seattle...

Most Interesting Man in World' fails as carpool lane ruse

FIFE, Wash. (AP) — A Washington State Patrol trooper says it’s by far the best carpool scam he’s seen, but it didn’t work.

A motorcycle trooper parked along Interstate 5 near Tacoma on Monday afternoon spotted a driver and a rather unusual “passenger” pass by him in the carpool lane.

When the trooper stopped the car, he discovered the “passenger” was a cardboard cutout of the actor who portrays “The Most Interesting Man in the World” in Dos Equis beer ads.

The driver’s response?

“He’s my best friend.”

The highway patrol didn't confiscate The Most Interesting Man in the World, but they did tell the driver to not use him again.

Later on the patrolman tweeted: "I don’t always violate the HOV lane law … but when I do, I get a $124 ticket."

I love stories like this.  You have to give this guy props for some ingenuity even if it didn't work.  And hey, from the photo above it looks like he's still having a good time despite the error of his ways.

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Reidsville's $30,000 monument to madness

So my hometown of Reidsville, North Carolina has decided to ultimately remove a nationally-recognized statue with more than a hundred years of history, and let it instead be replaced with a horror straight out of H.P. Lovecraft...

"We'll tear your soul apart!"

Brief recap: almost four years ago the Confederate monument in downtown Reidsville was toppled and smashed by an errant driver.  The statue of the Confederate soldier atop the monument fell and broke into pieces.  The damage wasn't irreversible however, and it was determined that the statue and the monument could be repaired and restored to normal.

Reidsville's Confederate Monument
at it's original location

That's how things should have worked in a sane world.

But former dictator mayor James Festerman would have none of that.  On his own, Festerman decreed that the monument would never go back up.  That, despite a huge outpouring of support from the community for the Confederate statue to be repaired and returned to its rightful place.  Hizzoner Festerman declared that the monument was "controversial", nevermind that it had occupied the location sine 1910 and there had been no opposition to it in all of that time.  Festerman was just pulling that out of his [REDACTED].

So the "leadership" of the City of Reidsville had its way, and though the Confederate monument was eventually repaired it was relocated to a nearby cemetery.  In its place at the roundabout on Scales Street the city installed a wretchedly ugly planter and then for the past two years or so it's been a Christmas tree.

And now in place of the Confederate monument, the City of Reidsville has decided it will erect the eldritch abomination that you see above.  Allegedly a water fountain, the creator of which has titled it "The Bud".

More often than not it's being called "The Thing".  Local writers are describing it as something out of the Alien movie franchise (it definitely has that open-egg look going for it).  Or like a prop from a Clive Barker "Hellraiser" film.  I can't print what one person told me it looked like (it's that obscene).  I should recite incantations around it when it goes up and try to summon Cthulhu with it.

Incidentally, this "work of art" which looks like third-rate H.R. Giger is going to cost at least $30,000.

Generations to come should remember it as "Festerman's Fountain": a monument to the most indolent, apathetic, indifferent and tyrannical city government in Reidsville history (and that's saying something).

Seriously: twenty years from now people will be looking at that eyesore and wondering "what the #&@$ were they thinking?!"

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North Carolina town councilman tenders resignation... in Klingon

Gowron, not David Waddell
(but Gowron should have
resigned too, when you
think about it...)

That does it: if I ever run for office again and win, I'm going to give my acceptance speech in High-Elvish Sindarin!

Indian Trail is a nice town near Charlotte here in North Carolina.  And one of its city councilmmembers - one David Waddell - had decided that "enough was enough" about the way the officials of Indian Trail were handling what he considers to be development run amok, among other things.  Exasperated by it all, David Waddell decided to resign his seat.

Except that he did it using the Klingon language: the tongue spoken by the proud warrior race from the Star Trek franchise.

Here's the story from The Charlotte Observer:

An Indian Trail councilman decided to boldly go where no politician has gone before – and tendered his resignation this week in the Klingon language.

Apparently David Waddell no longer wanted to live long and prosper on the board.

In an interview Thursday, Waddell said his resignation letter to Mayor Michael Alvarez was written in Klingon, the language of a proud warrior race in the “Star Trek” TV shows and movies, as an inside joke. But in case the mayor wasn’t up to speed with his Klingon, Waddell included a translation using Bing.com.

“Folks don’t know what to think of me half the time,” said Waddell, so “I might as well have one last laugh” on the board.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/01/02/4582880/indian-trail-councilman-resigns.html#.UscUbs4uf5m#storylinAndAnd here's the text (and English translation) of Waddell's letter:

And here's the letter that Waddell submitted, in both Klingon with English translation:

"Perhaps today is a good day to resign"!  Good play, David.  You may have left a Klingon, but it sure sounds like you tried to bring the logical mind of a Vulcan to city politics.  May you live long and prosper!

(Tip o' the hat to friends of this blog Eric Wilson and Joshua Phoebus for passing this story along.)

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My thoughts on Syria

This has been one of the busiest periods that I've been in for quite some time now, hence the lack of blogging as actively as I'd like.

That being said, I'm feeling more than a little led to get this off my chest...

For well over a decade I have believed and as of this writing I still believe that George W. Bush was the absolutely worst President in the entire history of the United States.

For the PATRIOT Act, for creating the Department of Homeland Security, for failure to strengthen our border with Mexico, for a war in Iraq with no definitive goal or even overall purpose, for all of the "bailouts" and "stimulus" that deepened the damage to our economy... for all of those reasons and more, George W. Bush will forever be one of the most destructive Presidents that America was ever cursed with.  And I have no doubt that a wiser citizenry in generations in the distant future will point to Bush the Lesser as a grim example of how broken our current system of politics is, and has been for a very long time.

I earnestly believed that Bush the Lesser's place of shame would be secure for a very long time to come.  But now...

If the United States military is directed to take action in Syria, as is looking more and more likely to happen, then Barack Obama will have become the absolutely worst President in American history.

And barring going full-tilt bonkers and launching ICBMs at Quebec, I don't see how anyone else ever would possibly topple Obama from that spot.

Syria is not something we want to get mired in.  Other countries' civil wars very rarely are.  But Syria is the meanest situation imaginable.  The ruling government are not the good guys.  The rebels are not the good guys either.  There are many good people who are caught in the middle of this: they aren't combatants at all.  Many of them are Christians who are being targeted by the rebels.  And speaking of those rebels: there is considerable evidence that they are aligned with Al-Quaeda.

Just as there is overwhelming evidence that the chemical attacks we have seen in the news were not launched by the Assad government at all.  That they might in fact have been perpetrated by the rebels.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are at best, horribly misinformed about Syria.  They are at worst, blatant liars.

And there is no reason whatsoever to involve any American money, any American equipment, or any American life with any aspect of the civil war in Syria.

There are some things in this broken world which all one can do is appeal to God in prayer about.  Things beyond the jurisdiction of any sane and rational government.  What is happening in Syria is one of those things.  There is nothing the United States as a sovereign nation can do to remedy that situation.  But there is plenty that it can do to make it worse, and nothing worse than launching a military strike in Syria.

If Obama does this, nothing good will come of it.  Nothing at all.

Nothing.

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The world's ugliest church buildings

RealClearReligion has scoured the globe to come up with this set of 35 pages depicting the ugliest churches in the world.  Be they Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, non-denominational or whatever, these edifices may not be an affront to God... but they are an affront to human eyeballs!  Some of them can't really help it: they were obviously a convenience store or movie theater before being converted into places of worship.  But most of them - like the Church of Santa-Monica in Madrid, Spain - will have you scratching your head and wondering: "what the heck am I looking at?"  Others, such as Kappal Matha Church in Uvari, India, simply defy all attempts at rationality.  One can't doubt the faith being expressed in these sanctuaries... but there is no loss of bewilderment about what their architects were intending when they designed them!

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Is greed killing NASCAR?

Not long ago, stock car racing was the most-watched, most profitable professional sport in America and one of the biggest in the world (surpassed internationally only by soccer... or "football" or "futbol" or whatever).  Which isn't bad at all for a spectator sport which has humble beginnings in the manufacture and transport of illegal moonshine throughout the southeastern United States.  And that is where NASCAR's most faithful and stalwart fans have always been found, along with its most celebrated and capable drivers.

Lately however, NASCAR seems to have forgot "who brung them to the dance": those same longtime fans, most of whom have decades of loyalty notched on their belts.  Speedway Motorsports' owner and CEO Bruton Smith had this to say last week when it was announced that NASCAR was moving one of Charlotte's races to Las Vegas: "When the game is over, it'll be money, money, money... Money will move it."

NASCAR's big wigs are poised to lose it all if they keep going at this pace, so writes friend and colleague Doug Smith.  The owners and executives are selling out stock car racing's core fans by having events all over the map, taking them away from longstanding venues such as Rockingham and Darlington.  In other words: the pursuit of a higher profit is destroying what made NASCAR profitable to begin with...

I've written for several years that I wouldn't be surprised to see Nascar fold by 2020-2025. Or at the very least, there would be races that weren't televised live any more, if at all. Regrettably, there are enough sheep out there to keep the sport alive but I see no reason to change my prediction about Nascar on television because any sport depends on its traditional fanbase to support it in hard times. Nascar's attendance and ratings have been down for years and it can be traced right back to the unholy trinity's concentrated efforts to run off the traditional fans. MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, Soccer, Tennis, Golf, other auto racing bodies such as Indy and F1, and nearly every other sport I can think of tries at least to innovate but still remaining loyal to their core fanbase. In the case of MLB, I think they try too hard sometimes to do this since it hinders progress that could actually make the game better, but they are at least trying to keep their core fans.

Nascar on the other hand doesn't subscribe to this theory. They think that the fairweather fans are the group they need to go after. I'm not saying they shouldn't try to lure in new fans but I am saying that perhaps if they didn't mess with things that worked to draw in fans for over 50 years previously, perhaps they might actually draw in some new fans without running off millions of fans that Bill France Sr and Jr worked for a combined 55 years to draw in.

Crash here for more of Doug's thoughts.  It's well worth reading and pondering, whether you are a fan of NASCAR or are a student of corporate decision-making (if there really is such a thing...)

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This is my Eagle Scout card

I received it during my Eagle Scout ceremony at Fairview Baptist Church in Reidsville, North Carolina on August 16th, 1992.

It immediately went into my wallet.

I have carried my Eagle Scout card with me ever since.  It has been with me through college, across the ocean, through some very dark times and into some very wonderful times.

I've never been without it.  I had long planned to someday be buried with it.

Moments ago I removed my Eagle Scout card from my wallet.  I do not plan to carry it with me ever again.

Within the past hour it has been announced that the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America has passed a resolution to allow openly homosexual members.

This is incompatible with the spirit and the meaning of the Scout Oath and the Scout Law.  The principles of Scouting are about being the best that God intends for us to be.  Strength of mind, strength of body and strength of character are inherently essential toward this.  And part of that means developing personal restraint.  God intended for us to control our own bodies.  Not for our bodies to control us.

The National Council of the Boy Scouts of America has demonstrated that it does not understand the meaning of either the Scout Oath or the Scout Law.

And so it is, with great sadness and a grieving heart, that I choose to no longer be associated or affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America.

Maybe someday I'll be able to pick up the card and carry it with me again.  I pray that day does come.

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Zero-tolerance out of control: Pencil leads to boy's suspension, while Eagle Scout hit with felony

I'll be damned if (Lord willing) I get blessed with children and I put them in a government-run school.

They're not here yet.  But I already love them too much than to subject them to the insanity of a modern public school.  And few things exemplify that madness more than do zero-tolerance policies.

(Hey, I ran for school board once.  It can't be said that I never tried to make the public schools better.  But things won't going to get better until more people get up the gumption to tell the bureaucrats "ENOUGH!")

Two stories demonstrating my point.  The first is about seven-year old Christopher Marshall of Suffolk, Virginia.  He was suspended from his elementary school last week per a policy of "zero tolerance".

What was his crime?  Pointing a pencil as if were a gun at another student and making "bang! bang!" noises with it.

Yeah, you read that right.  That's all that little Christopher was doing.

From the story at WAVY.com...

Seven-year-old Christopher Marshall says he was playing with another student in class Friday, when the teacher at Driver Elementary asked them to stop pointing pencils at each other.

"When I asked him about it, he said, 'Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,'" said Paul Marshall, the boy's father. "It's as simple as that."

Christopher's father was a Marine for many years. He thinks school leaders overreacted.

"A pencil is a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made," said Bethanne Bradshaw, a spokesperson for Suffolk Public Schools.

The Suffolk school system has a "zero tolerance policy" when it comes to weapons. And, Bradshaw admits, that policy has tightened up in recent years because of widely publicized school shootings.

"Some children would consider it threatening, who are scared about shootings in schools or shootings in the community," said Bradshaw. "Kids don't think about 'Cowboys and Indians' anymore, they think about drive-by shootings and murders and everything they see on television news every day."

And then there is the tale of Eagle Scout, honor student, devout Christian and model young man Cole Withrow from Princeton, a small town near Raleigh here in North Carolina.  Cole had been skeet shooting and accidentally left his shotgun in his vehicle when he came to school late last month.  Cole realized his error and sought to do the right thing: he went to the office and called his mom to come and take the gun out and away from the campus.  Unfortunately one of the staff at Princeton High School overheard the call and alerted the police.

Cole Withrow with his sister Hannah Walker

Cole was arrested on felony charges and expelled.  He will not walk with his classmates at graduation in a few weeks.  All for trying to do the right thing in the matter.  For trying to do what his faith and his vows as a Boy Scout would have him to do.

Cole will be allowed to graduate, just not from his own school.  His family is fighting for Cole's right to be with his classmates.

But at least his troubles caught the attention of Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University.  Cole Withrow has been offered a scholarship to attend the college.  Harding University has also extended a similar offer to Cole.

Is it paranoia?  Is it laziness?  Is it intentional conditioning of the kids on the part of the public school educators and administrators?  For whatever reason it is, this kind of thing has gone on... and continues to go on... for far too long.

"Zero-tolerance"?  More like "zero common sense".

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