Oct 062019
 

OK, here we go on getting rid of books. A *lot* of books. Starting off with paperbacks, the great majority of which are sci-fi novels. Rather than trying to sell them individually, I’ve packed them into boxes, roughly 12 to 14 per. Eight bucks per box plus postage, which seems to work out to about six bucks media mail… so, $14 per box. If you want four boxes of books, postage drops to$15, so call it $45 for four boxes of books. As always first come, first served, but going after four boxes will put you at the top of the line. Any left by mid week will be disposed of. Each box is carefully  and artistically numbered with the very finest calligraphy (off to the left). If interested, send me an email:

Sold: 5,9, 14,16, 17,18,19,21

Spoken for:

Available: 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,10,11,12,13,15,20

 

Added a few more:

 

 Posted by at 12:04 pm
Oct 052019
 

As is probably news to nobody at this point, a few days ago Bubbles Cortez had a public town hall event where a woman stood up and went on and on about how the Green New Deal was cool and all, but it didn’t go far enough. Rather, in order to save the planet, we need to EAT THE BABIES. As it turned out, the woman was not a generic crackpot, but a plant from the Lyndon LaRouche PAC.

As anyone who remembers the 1980’s can attest, LaRouche was…interesting. He ran for President as an independent and sometimes as a Democrat  running on policies that were part arch-conservative, part conspiracy theorist. He touted space-based weapons and fusion power, but thought the Brits were ruling the world or something and had his people protest Richard Wagner concert Because Reasons. But the important thing to remember was that for about the first half of his life he was a devoted Communist; when the Commies basically booted him out for being too weird even for them, he, like Mussolini before him, turned from a devoted and devout far leftist into a pseudo right-winger. Never, EVER trust anyone who was ever a Communist or a Socialist. Even if they come around and adopt conservative or right-wing policies, the stain of the Commies points out clearly that their ability to make good judgements is seriously impaired. They might be fine  people of good moral character… just don’t let them anywhere near politics. LaRouche died earlier this year, bringing to an end a long and bizarre political career.

Anyway, LaRouchies remain and are about indistinguishable from cultists. So seeing them trolling modern Socialists? HILARIOUS. Whackos vs. whackos… is there anything better?

Still, the crazy lady (the one in the t-shirt, not Bubbles) raises and interesting thought. We’ve always thought that the “Green” in “Green New Deal” referred to nebulous “green” environmental policies. But when the woman went on about “eat the babies,” note what Bubbles *didn’t* say: “You’re wrong, eating children is not only not helpful, it’s evil.” At most she was annoyed that someone was taking the spotlight off her. So maybe “Green” refers to a different green:

Perhaps what the LaRouchie Lady has done is to expose the Green New Deal for what it is: a secret cabal of Cthulhu worshippers whose end goal actually is to eat the children, or at least feed them to their dark god. It makes sense: it is known that when Great Cthulhu wakens from his death-like slumber in sunken R’lyeh, he will “clear off” humanity from the world, laying low all the works of Man. What could be more in line with the goals of the Green New Dealers?

 

 

 

 Posted by at 3:22 pm
Oct 042019
 

Ever since people started seeing “Joker” months ago the stories were that Joaquin Phoenix put on a hell of a performance and that the movie was something special. But once the “professional” critics started yapping about it within the last few days, many of them started trashing it, with “cultural experts” downplaying it. It would embolden incels to go violent; watch out for nuts with AR-15’s; toxic masculinity; blah, blah, blah. It seemed odd that a movie that seemed to have everything going for it would set off a noticeable subset of the critic community.

I saw it today. My own review: it’s a damned fine flick. It’s not really a comic book movie, but more like a 1970’s New York crime movie. Phoenix Play Arthur Fleck, a quite realistic sort of character… just one with some serious mental health issues. not criminally insane, just… disturbed. Through the course of the movie things keep going wrong for him; sometimes due to his own bad decisions, sometimes due to his psychological conditions, and many times due to external events and situations which he has little to no control over. As a result, he slowly transforms into the Joker.

Fleck has no political motives for his actions. He’s just a screwed up guy in a screwed up world. But…

Through no intention of his own, Fleck becomes the inspiration for a political movement. People wear clown masks, protest in the streets and in the end carry out acts of violence… not quite in his name, but with him as a figurehead. In the end, Joker becomes a Hero Of The Masses. And who are these masses? Essentially… Antifa, or the Democratic Socialists, the generalized far left. The protestors explicitly want to “kill the rich.” They wave around signs saying “RESIST!” Democrats and Republicans, capitalism and Socialism, these labels are not stated…but they’re implied. A leftist protest movement rallies around a delusional violent murderer.

Suddenly, the critic community’s ambivalence about this movie comes into focus.

Beyond that: Phoenix does not present as entertaining a Joker as Heath Ledger did. Arthur Fleck is, to be blunt, a damned depressing guy. But “Joker” only really comes along as such in the last few minutes of the movie; if there is a sequel, *then* Phoenix could potentially let loose a full-on nonstop Jokeriffic extravaganza of unhinged entertainment. But where Ledger was watchably wacky in all his scenes, he was really only in “The Dark Knight” for a matter of minutes. Phoenix is essentially the whole freakin’ movie. Offhand I can recall only one scene that he wasn’t in. It’s all Phoenix, all the time, and he does a fantastic job of depicting a mentally ill sadsack in one of the worst places imaginable: Gotham City (i.e New York City) in the late seventies or early eighties (the date didn’t seem to be stated explicitly, but at the end of the movie we see a family emerge from a theater showing “Zorro, the Gay Blade” which came out in 1981). Loaded with garbage strikes and street crime and slums and drugs and porn theaters and overpopulation and “super rats,” it’s a place that would drive healthy people to madness.

 Posted by at 8:05 pm
Oct 032019
 

I’ve recently chucked a *lot* of old VHS tapes. I first got access to a recorder back in the late 80’s and wound up recording a *lot* of stuff that, in retrospect, I just didn’t need anymore. Invader Zim and Babylon 5, along with prit near every sci-fi movie to hit HBO from 1988 or so until maybe 2004, bits of news events, documentaries, etc. As much as those tapes cost to purchase back in the day, they have transformed into zero value today. Ce la vie, I guess. Along with tossing those self-copied tapes, I also junked a whole bunch of taped movies that I bought… pretty much all of which have been subsequently replaced with DVDs or Blu Rays. It didn’t occur to me that, perhaps, someone might have some interest in them. It still doesn’t, really, but who knows. Shown here are the commercial VHS tapes that I still have, some still wrapped in plastic, the great majority of which were only watched a few times. If anyone wants them, let me know. The “Animal House” one is a weird mishmash of tech… it has a CD-ROM in a pocket on the back of the box.

Also on hand are a *bunch* of microfiche of the Journal of Organic Chemistry, issues dating from 1993 to 1995.  There’s a *lot* of stuff here for anyone who ants to toss me a coupe of bucks and pay the postage. Otherwise, these, like the VHS tapes, will enter an exciting new adventure called “landfill.”

Update: Trashed. They belong to the ages now.

 Posted by at 7:13 pm
Oct 022019
 

I found a few things that might be of interest. Not selling them (unless you want to offer me ten grand each… then I suppose I could entertain the notion), just thought them interesting:

1: A Boeing property tag from the SST program.

2: A thank-you card printed up for Werner von Braun. Sadly, not signed. Came tucked into the Spivak archive a year or two back. Seems he might’ve had a 60th birthday party or something and either handed these out or mailed them to attendees or well-wishers or some such.

3: The invitation that was mailed to me back in April of ’96 to go witness the first public launch of the Delta Clipper. I was invited due to my activity within the Iowa State (University) Space Society. We put on the Mid Continent Space Development Conference every year and repeatedly had Bill Gaubatz of McDonnell Douglas come and give a presentation on the Delta Clipper program.

 

 Posted by at 10:52 pm
Oct 022019
 

Will Franken is actually pretty durned funny, and is worthy of a watch.

 

Comedy Unleashed” appears to be a comedy club in London that doesn’t actually focus on wokeness, but on funniness. They may be worthy of further examination… and for watching in the future for when they are finally shut down by the Brit government and the owners and comics arrested for crimes of offending people.

 

 Posted by at 6:43 pm
Oct 022019
 

Better part of 20 years ago I started building a 1/24 scale model of the Black Horse SSTO spaceplane. This USAF design was a purely rocket powered vehicle, with engines that burned kerosene-based fuel with hydrogen peroxide oxidizer; it would take off horizontally from a runway with the H2O2 tanks prit near empty, rendezvous at altitude with a tanker aircraft and bring aboard all the H2O2 it needed, then blast off for orbit. It was a cool concept, and it *might* have even worked. So for reasons of my own I decided that what the world needed was a ridiculously large model of the Black Horse. I got as far as a fiberglass shell of the main wing/body, missing only control surfaces, wingtip fins, rocket engines and surface detailing. And then… life intervened, the model got set aside and put out of the way, out of sight and out of mind.

So… anyone want it? As is, with a light dusting of genuine artisanal Utah dust. No reasonable offer refused. Shipping cost is on the buyer; I expect it’ll cost a fair amount, but it is pretty rugged since it’s fiberglass (the original was made of foam and plaster, a fiberglass mold made and a fiberglass shell cast for the final finishing which I never got to). If nobody wants it, no sweat… off to the trash. I’ll give it a day or so.

   

 Posted by at 11:33 am