Year: 2023

Lonesome October

It’s not too late to read the book in the appropriate month. The Dark Herald pays tribute to an increasingly forgotten fantasy great and one of his more original novels.

A Night in the Lonesome October was Zelazny’s love letter to the old Universal horror movies as well as classic authors in the field. He dedicated the book to Shelley, Poe, Doyle, Lovecraft, plus a couple of relative newcomers Bradbury and Bloch. Also, Terhune but that was mostly because of the dog.

This is a book where the style of the story’s telling outweighs the narrative and that is perfectly fine because it is the style that matters the most. The narrative itself is just for fun, although Zelazny makes the reader figure it out for himself.

The book is constructed as a diary of Snuff the Dog. Each chapter of the book corresponds to a date in the month of October, the climax as you have guessed is on Halloween. Snuff used to be something else, somewhere else, but in this time and place, he is Jack’s Dog. Jack as you already know has to do his work at night and yes Jack does have a very big knife.

Jack and Snuff are part of a faction called the Closers, it takes quite a while before you find out what they are closing. There is another faction called the Openers and they are in opposition to the Closers. It’s more than a little difficult to tell which side are the good guys and which the bad because their methods are rather similar and early in the story they can’t really tell which side the other is on either. It is all part of the Great Game.

The Openers and Closers are familiar to you. There is the Good Doctor and his secret Creation, the Great Detective, the Mad Russian Monk, the Count, the Fallen Priest, and Larry Talbot. Each of these Player in the Great Game has an animal familiar with human sapience. Except for Larry who is of course his own best friend.

At the start of the Game things are very cordial between the players, the Great Game is only played every few decades so there is a sense of comradery… At first. But as the month progresses, alliances are formed which are followed by betrayals, naturally. Then Players start being eliminated, that too is part of the Great Game. Finally, the remaining Players and their familiars gather in a certain place where the rite that will decide the fate of the world will be decided.

Although it may not show, Roger Zelazny is probably one of the more significant influences on my own writing. And while Lord of Light is my favorite of his novels and the epic Amber series is the most similar in scale, A Night in the Lonesome October is easily the one that has proved to be most influential.

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A Warning for Americans

And for everyone else who just wants to be left alone. Sometimes, being left alone isn’t an option. Sooner or later, you may be forced to make a choice regarding for whom you will fight, like the people of Ukraine who now fight themselves conscripted and forced to fight for Clown World, NATO, and the Kiev regime. Simplicius quotes a letter from an award-winning Russian writer who volunteered for the Russian Army and is now fighting on the front lines at Avdeevka:

Do I feel sorry for them? No. They killed and injured my friends, they want to kill me every day. I don’t feel sorry for them. Although, for the most part, the people who stand against us are not rabid Nazis, but ordinary Hataskrayniks who were forcibly driven to slaughter.

But if you look at everything in its entirety, it was they who brought Ukraine to its current state. That same silent majority who don’t care about Bandera, or the Russians, or the USA – as long as their farm, kindergarten, pigs are not touched, as long as they don’t run out of vodka and lard.

They didn’t care about the Maidan, about the shelling of Donetsk and Lugansk, about the genocide of the Russian population, about the murders of children, women and the elderly, about Azov’s torture, about language bans, about the split in faith… And then it turned out that they couldn’t sit it out, that you have to take a machine gun and die for the interests and goals of NATO.

And then they hated us, with a fierce, terrible hatred. Because their little farmstead world collapsed. Because this war reminds them every day of their cowardice, weakness and silence. And in their anger they blame us for everything, because they are afraid to look in the mirror and ask themselves uncomfortable questions.

These reluctant Ukrainian soldiers would have been wiser, and they would have had a much better chance of surviving, if they had stood against the Kiev regime instead of doing nothing until they found themselves forced to fight for it. Because, as enemies from Japan to France and Germany have learned over the centuries, Russia very seldom loses its wars.

It all sounds a little too familiar, doesn’t it, as the USA goes to undeclared war again in defense of Israel and the collapsing Clown World Order.

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Netanyahu Rolls the Dice

The IDF appears to have launched its ground invasion of Gaza:

Israel’s war cabinet overcame a bitter rift to launch troops and tanks into Gaza yesterday – while Palestinians were left in a terrifying blackout as communications were shut off and Israeli warplanes unleased airstrikes on the strip.

Benjamin Netanyahu only agreed to press into the war-torn enclave after hostage talks with Hamas terrorists had collapsed and he had unanimous approval from senior ministers. He had previously refused to authorize an invasion as he rallied political support – angering military chiefs as their western allies began to call for a ceasefire, the Telegraph reported.

Now, the Jewish nation already have troops and tanks on the ground in Gaza as they ‘expand’ their military operation, with aerial bombardment overhead unleashing strikes of ‘unprecedented’ intensity into the burning region.

And those living in the besieged strip have been left in the dark as their electricity and communications were cut off – including that of struggling NGOs and emergency services.

‘Our troops and tanks are inside the Gaza Strip. They’re shooting and they’re operating,’ Major Nir Dinar confirmed to the New York Times.

Well, now we’ll find out if Hezbollah and Iran are all talk or not. As a general rule, IDF officers are trained to err on the side of aggression, and they assume that Arabs will usually run rather than fight. Their current training was shaped by the experience of their elders, who were described as follows by Col. Macgregor in his book Margin of Victory.

All of these men were tough task masters who trained their officers in unconventional ways. To compensate for the IDF’s small size, they emphasized individual responsibility, inventive tactics, and daring leadership. Their preference for demonstrated talent and guts over education and social standing infused the IDF with a degree of energy and imagination seldom seen in Western military organizations, which tend to reward longevity of service rather than performance. Only the youthful and dynamic leaders that rose to command inside the revolutionary armies of France in 1789 come close in comparison. Extensive combat experience against a known opponent—the Muslim Arab—translated into a strong preference for offensive action designed to surprise and unhinge the Arab enemy, a preference inextricably intertwined with the elasticity of mind that youth and imagination bring to warfare.

Margin of Victory, Col Douglas Macgregor

Israel’s political leadership is somewhat of a gerontocracy now, but one that possesses the advantage of actual military experience that is largely missing in the USA’s political leadership. But despite the tendency toward caution that tends to come with the years, any mistakes made by the IDF can be expected to fall on the side of taking excessive risks.

Only time will tell if this decision to engage in urban warfare is the correct call, and, as usual in the case of war, the decisions made by those parties that are not presently engaged in the conflict.

UPDATE: Some are saying it’s just a recon-in-force, but regardless, there isn’t any question that the infantry and armor are both in on the ground now.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says the military is “advancing through the stages of the war” in Gaza, with ground forces carrying out operations in the Strip.

“Infantry, armored, engineering and artillery forces participating in the activity, accompanied by heavy [air] fire,” he says, noting that “the forces are still on the ground and continue the fighting.”

He says no soldiers have been hurt in the expanded ground operation in Gaza so far.

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Clown World Backs Down

There will be no Third Front in Africa, at least, not for the time being:

The West African regional bloc ECOWAS, which had threatened to use force against Niger in response to a recent coup, is now quietly demobilizing the standby forces that had been positioned for a proposed military intervention, according to French news outlet RFI.

A meeting of ECOWAS military commanders was scheduled to be held in Nigeria’s Sokoto State this week. However, this was reportedly canceled due to organizational issues. The military officers arrived in Abuja, the capital of Africa’s most populous nation and the headquarters of the regional bloc, but did not proceed to Sokoto, RFI reported on Friday.

The demobilization order was expected to be issued during the meeting but, following its cancellation, ECOWAS will now be “very discreet” in withdrawing the standby troops, a source told the French broadcaster. ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) has two options, the source added: “Say nothing and let it be seen,” or “turn around.” The decision was made because “no one is opting for military intervention anymore,” RFI quoted a diplomat from one of the 15 ECOWAS member states as saying.

West African bloc ‘quietly’ withdraws forces deployed against Niger, 27 October 2023

It’s extremely informative to observe the way in which Clown World is reducing its support for Ukraine and refraining from attempting to claw back Niger, despite the African country’s importance to France, in light of what threatens to become the second major front in WWIII. This indicates that either a) Clown World has some sane and sober strategists involved in the decision-making process or b) Israel uber alles.

Either way, the more the US military gets itself enmeshed in the tar pit of the Middle East, the more likely it is that China will quietly go about its business of reunification with Taiwan and the faster the Kiev regime will fall.

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Service Outage

The servers that presently maintain SG and this blog unexpectedly went down for about 12 hours beginning last night. Although we have acquired backup servers for the purposes of decentralization and begun the process of setting them up, they aren’t fully in place yet, which is why IG, Arkhaven Comics, Castalia, and Arktoons didn’t go down, while UATV did.

In the future, if there is an outage here or on SG, I suggest going to Gab and following my account there, since it has absolutely no connection to our infrastructure and therefore is only likely to be affected at the same time by a global Internet outage.

For additional information conduits, consider following the UATV account on Gab and the Darkstream notifications on Telegram. And, in the event of serious problems, we will utilize the Castalia mailing list to keep everyone informed of what’s happening.

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Glowy McGlowerson

Apparently we’re supposed to believe these messages posted to Discord are the virtual “manifesto” of the latest wind-up toy therapized into shooting complete strangers for the purposes of pushing unconstitutional gun control laws.

[11:23 PM] RobertCard: I can’t stand these damn non whites ruining our country. They don’t deserve to live.
[11:25 PM] RobertCard: I’ve had enough of this political correctness bullshit. It’s time to take matters into my own hands.
[11:27 PM] RobertCard: I’ve been trained to kill and I’m damn good at it. These people will pay for what they’ve done to our country.
[11:30 PM] RobertCard: It’s time to make a statement. I’ll show them what a true American is capable of. They won’t know what hit them.
[11:33 PM] RobertCard: I’ve got my guns and plenty of ammo. Let’s make America great again by getting rid of these scum.
[11:37 PM] RobertCard: I won’t stop until every last one of them is gone. This is my duty as an American.
[11:40 PM] RobertCard: They can’t hide from me. I know their patterns, their hangouts. I’ll hunt them down and take them out one by one.
[11:43 PM] RobertCard: The army trained me to be a killer and I’ll use every tactic I learned to make sure these non whites regret ever stepping foot in our country.
[11:47 PM] RobertCard: No one will stop me. I have a mission and I’ll see it through until the end. God bless America.

The Maine Manifesto, Glowy McGlowerson, 25 October 23

Of all the fictional dialogue that was ever written, this may actually be the most obviously fictional. It’s not even AI-level fiction, it’s bad “I’ve read way too many Boomer memes” fiction. The funniest thing is the way that the federal employee who wrote it couldn’t even bring himself to use any of the printable slurs, much less any of the unprintable ones, and instead went with “non whites”. And he used it twice!

Also, if you’re going to try to pass off a mass shooting as the work of a true American white supremacist patriot, you probably shouldn’t choose one where white people are shot. In Maine, of all places.

This is so bad that I think it’s far more likely to be a /pol/ gag mocking the glowies than it is to have been written by anyone who ever shot anybody.

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