The Mystery of Malcolm Butler

Questions are being raised about the mysterious benching of Malcolm Butler for the Super Bowl:

How are you feeling about your coach today, Patriot fans?

Still got “Do Your Job” and “No Days Off” tattooed somewhere on your body? Still blissfully living the life of “In Bill We Trust”? Still applauding the coach for giving the media the finger every time we ask Bill Belichick a football question? Still believe his decisions are none of anybody’s business?

I sense a crack in the blind loyalty the Hoodie traditionally receives from Patriot Nation. The Patriots lost a very winnable Super Bowl Sunday night in some part because Bill benched cornerback Malcolm Butler for some undisclosed infraction or violation of the Patriot code.

We don’t know the reason, of course. No one will say anything. Bill and his stooges (yes, that means you, Matt Patricia) are still parsing out the bogus company line that Butler’s benching was a football decision.

Rubbish. Butler played in more than 98 percent of the Patriots’ defensive snaps in 18 games this season. He was healthy enough Sunday to play one snap on special teams. But he was not allowed to play defense on a night when the backup quarterback of the Eagles shredded Patricia’s House of Cards for 41 points.

You know, Minneapolis isn’t exactly New Orleans or Miami, so I tend to doubt Butler could have gotten himself into too much trouble the night before. Is Belichick being a good guy by refusing to throw Butler under the bus for his own actions? Or is this an example of Belichick being too stubborn for his team’s good?

Why didn’t they ask Adams?

Celebrated creeps and criminals

I had no doubt whatsoever that one of the major figures of science fiction fandom and Lifetime Member of SFWA, Forrest Ackerman, was a seriously creepy pervert who preyed upon any young women foolish enough to hang around that environment. The way the man named “Uncle Forry” used to publicly drool over a young cosplayer named Heidi Saha should have sufficed to lock him up and instigate a multi-agency crime scene investigation of his garage, basement, and garden. But now there is eyewitness evidence that “Mr. Science Fiction” was exactly the creepy molester he appeared to be, courtesy of one Lucy Chase Williams, who posted this indictment of the man last week.

I and other young women like me were subjected to a different kind of “Forry worship.” How differently would any of you have felt, when all you wanted was to talk about monsters with the “over eager editor” of your favorite monster magazine, if your Uncle Forry had forced wet kisses on you? If he had put his hands all over you, pinching your “naughty bottom” and squeezing your “boobies”? If he had enthusiastically related with a big grin how he wanted to strip off your clothes with everybody watching?

And if, in the face of your total refusal of any of his attentions every single time you saw him in person, he never didn’t try again, and again, and again? And if for years, in between those times, he mailed you letters with pornographic photos, and original stories about how naughty you were, and how he wanted to hurt and abuse you, yet all the while make you weep and beg for more? And if he continued that behavior, despite written and verbal demands to cease, entirely unabashed for more than two decades?

No, I can’t forget him either — or how he turned my childhood love of monsters into something adult and truly monstrous.

I’m not sure what is more appalling, the fact that so many of the famous figures of the recent science fiction past were deviants and sex criminals or the fact that the current science fiction community still resolutely refuses to stop celebrating them or to root out the deviants and sex criminals currently in their midst.

Like Marion Zimmer Bradley, Forrest Ackerman is still celebrated by the SFWA as well as the freaks of science fiction fandom.

UPDATE: Beyond creepy. “Obsessed” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF HEIDI SAHA was assembled by Forry Ackerman and sent off to the printer prior to Heidi’s summer 1973 appearances as Vampirella at the New York Comic Art Convention and TorCon 2.

She was 14 years old.

Sound advice, sound parenting

A reader has pulled his son out of Scouting:

My son has been in Cub Scouts the past two years, and I had already made the decision to take him out of the program due to questionable decisions that the national leadership had made. On Saturday, I saw something that made me very glad for that, and worried for one of the other troops in the state.

Last Saturday, there was a march to the state capitol along with a rally afterwards. Lots of troops and dens were there, but a couple of guys with one of the troops were getting selfies with the capitol building in the background…and were holding a United Federation of Planets flag.

Conclusion: If you have a kid in any sort of program, BE INVOLVED so that you can see what’s going on with your own eyes, and act as appropriate.

Scouts and Star Trek… really not a good combination.

Didn’t see THAT coming

I have to admit that I never thought I’d ever see any of our books in that first category.

#1 in Kindle Store > Comics & Graphic Novels > Zombies
#1 in Kindle Store > One hour (33-43 pages) > Comics & Graphic Novels
#1 in Kindle Store > Comics & Graphic Novels > Historical & Literary > Historical Fiction

Then again, The End of the World as We Knew It is an excellent book that we publish in print, and it’s a zombie story of sorts. Mil-zombie romance?

Ruh-roh

Super Bowl Ratings Slip To 8-Year Low As Eagles Score Historic Win

1) 2015: 49.7 – Super Bowl XLIX: New England Patriots vs. Seattle Seahawks (NBC)
2) 2016: 49.0 – Super Bowl 50: Denver Broncos vs. Carolina Panthers (CBS)
3) 2017: 48.8 – Super Bowl LI: New England Patriots vs. Atlanta Falcons (Fox)
4) 2013: 48.1 – Super Bowl XLVII: Baltimore Ravens vs. San Francisco 49ers (CBS)
5) 2011: 47.9 – Super Bowl XLV: Green Bay Packers vs. Pittsburgh Steelers (Fox)
6) 2018: 47.4 – Super Bowl LII: New England Patriots vs Philadephia Eagles (NBC)

They can’t blame cord-cutting for this one. What has to be making the NFL execs nervous isn’t just the fact that the game last night was a great, high-scoring one between two big-market teams that went down to the wire. It’s also the fact that the public response to T-Mobile’s heavily converged commercial has been so viciously negative. You’re betting on the wrong horse, gentlemen. Do keep in mind that if everyone believed in equality, there wouldn’t be a Super Bowl in the first place as every team would finish 8-8.

Spacebunny has been entertaining herself today by watching, as she put it, T-Mobile representatives trying mop up the blood on Twitter.

Mailvox: the new narrative

What is this, take #6 on the Nunes Memo?

I’m working in DC, and the tiny pieces of the Swamp I get to see are concerned, as are the residents who work here.  The Media is in full “shovel mode”.  As an example, WTOP radio (which is owned by Hubbard Broadcasting of KSTP fame) on a daily basis has WaPo, USA Today, NBC/ABC/CBS, etc reporters as guests feverishly pushing the Narrative.  The current drill is that Page wasn’t the original target of the Russia investigation, so the Nunes Memo mox nix.  The comedy writes itself.

Yeah, that’s not going to work either. They might as well try just shrieking, “Stop looking at the man behind the curtain!” It’s kind of funny that they haven’t figured out yet that the public now notices a) when they are all singing the same tune and b) collectively change that tune as adroitly and as mindlessly as a school of fish.

Will Caligan’s Comic: results

I am pleased to announce that after more than 400 votes were cast, the following books were chosen to serve as the basis for the graphic novels by the backers.

  1. The Green Knight’s Squire (31.3{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6})
  2. The Stars Came Back (17.2{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} )

This means that the first 12 issues will be based on the John C. Wright trilogy, which will be known as Saga of the Swan Knight and collected in two graphic novels, Swan Knight’s Son and Swan Knight’s Sword. The next 6 issues will be based on the Rolf Nelson novel and will be collected into a single graphic novel called The Stars Came Back. John and Rolf will be working with Chuck Dixon and me to adapt their works to the graphic format.

Thanks to all the authors who contributed their works to the campaign and thanks to all of the backers, both those who voted and those who didn’t. We’ve put a very good team together to support Will in creating these graphic novels, and we believe the end results are going to be something that everyone involved will be proud to have been a part of.

In other comics-related news, we are very pleased to announce the release of the digital edition of the first Dark Legion Comics book. Rebel Dead Revenge #1: Stonewall’s Arm by Savage Sword of Conan artist Gary Kwapisz is now available on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited.

O Death, where is thy general?

Confederate general Stonewall Jackson has fallen, mortally wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Taken from the battlefield to his deathbed, he is not afraid to die, but Satan has different plans for him.

Playing on the vanity of an aged voodoo priestess, the Devil decides to raise Stonewall from the grave and place the greatest tactical commander of the Civil War at the head of an evil army of angry dead.

The South rises again in REBEL DEAD REVENGE!

Rebel Dead Revenge #1: Stonewall’s Arm $3.99, 43 pages. Be sure to Look Inside at the sample pages because the art is really good.

Super Bowl open thread

Discuss amongst yourselves….

Breaking news from Minnesota: Black Lives Matter activists have chained themselves together to block the light rail lines going to the stadium. This should turn out well for them.

4th Quarter Update: Very smart coaching by Pederson. He’s already burned four minutes on what he clearly intends to be the final drive. He’s going to try to get it down to less than 20 seconds with no New England timeouts before he lets them score. The best way to beat Brady is to keep him off the field.

The stink of sulfur

Also, Episcopals will no longer be referred to as a “church”.

God will no longer be referred to as He or Him in the Episcopal Church Diocese of Washington, D.C., which passed a resolution last week barring all use of masculine pronouns when referring to the Almighty. They will be updating their Book of Common Prayer as a result. According to LifeSiteNews, the resolution called for an end to “gendered language for God” and was passed quickly by delegates to the Diocese’s 123rd Convention.

“If revision of the Book of Common Prayer is authorized, to utilize expansive language for God from the rich sources of feminine, masculine, and non-binary imagery for God found in Scripture and tradition and, when possible, to avoid the use of gendered pronouns for God,” the resolution stated.

“Over the centuries our language and our understanding of God has continued to change and adapt,” the drafters of the resolution stated, emphasizing that masculine pronouns “limit our understanding of God.”

“By expanding our language for God, we will expand our image of God and the nature of God,” they stated.

The correct term is the Episcopal Coven. Which is why one can’t properly categorize this under “Christianity”.

Italian Vespers 2.0

Most Americans are unaware of how violent Italian history is. This reprisal for the brutal murder of a young Italian woman may in time be seen as the first metaphorical ringing of the bells:

The extreme right-wing suspect in a shooting rampage that wounded six African migrants in Italy has demonstrated no remorse for his actions and was “lucid and determined, aware of what he had done,” an Italian law enforcement official said Sunday.

Luca Traini, 28, was being held in jail as police investigate him on multiple counts of attempted murder for Saturday’s shooting rampage in the central Italian city of Macerata, with the aggravating circumstance of “racial hatred.”

Traini was an unsuccessful candidate last year in a local election for the anti-migrant Northern League party and friends have been quoted by ANSA as saying he previously had ties with the neo-fascist Forza Nuova and the CasaPound political parties.

Col. Michele Roberti, the Carabineri commander in Macerata, told Sky TG24 that “it’s likely that he carried out this crazy gesture as a sort of retaliation, a sort of vendetta” after a Nigerian man was arrested in the gruesome slaying of an Italian teenager a few days previously in the same city.

The dismembered remains of Pamela Mastropietro, 18, were found in two suitcases days after she walked away from a drug rehab community. Police arrested the Nigerian suspect after finding the victim’s bloody clothes in his apartment, along with a receipt from a pharmacy where she had bought a syringe and knives that are consistent with the crime.

While the Italian government is every bit as immigrant-crazed as Angela Merkel’s lunatic German government, it lacks any credibility at all and is currently teetering on the edge of collapse and replacement by anything and everything from an independent Venice to Matteo Salvini’s Lega Nord and the anarchic Movimento Cinque Stelle.

It seems that the main thing keeping the ethnic violence at a relatively low level is that the criminal organizations have been profiting greatly from the human trafficking and sex trafficking that is part and parcel of the third-world migration. But once the capos decide that living in an Italy that remains Italian is more important to them than short-term profits, I suspect we will see an abrupt change in policy that will astonish the world.

But Salvini would be far and away the best and most civilized option. He’s smart, dedicated, and committed to Italy for Italians. The status quo is no longer viable.

Italy is heading into a general election on March 4 and the head of the rebranded League party, Matteo Salvini, had capitalized on the teen’s killing in campaign appearances even before the shooting Saturday. Salvini is pledging to deport 150,000 migrants in his first year in office if his party wins control of parliament — drawing sharp rebukes that he is using the migrant crisis to foment xenophobia for political gain.