Big Larry’s European adventure

It sounds like Larry Correia had a blast on his European tour:

Of all the languages, German was by far the easiest to pick up words and phrases for me. Despite being related to Portuguese and Spanish, French sounds totally eluded me. And Czech is HARD (they have like 46 ways to make conjunctions). But German shares a lot of word roots with English, and the actual structure is pretty straight forward. Plus it is fun to just walk around and make up vaguely German sounding names for things, like a pigeon is Das Poopinbirden.

The next day we drove across all of Germany to the Czech Republic, and I got to experience the autobahn, which my whole life has been this sort of mythical place that has no speed limits, and is filled with drivers that understand slow traffic stays right, and where they never camp in the left lane, and in fact, if you’re blocking the left lane, they’ll come right up on your bumper at 100 miles an hour, honking, and flashing their lights. It was a place devoid of mercy, unforgiving of weakness. So we set out.

Apparently there are two kinds of tourist drivers on the autobahn. Those who are weak, fearful, whose crying pillows smell of lilacs and shame, who stay in the truck lane, or who wander out into the left occasionally, timidly, to be honked at and chased aside by awesome Teutonic Super Drivers…

And the other kind is the American who manages to average 180km an hour across all of Germany in a Volvo diesel station wagon.

It was AMAZING. I felt like a race car driver across an entire country. You know why German cars don’t have cup holders? Because if you stop to drink while driving, YOU WILL DIE. And you should. You need to be on. I’d get a gap, jump out to the left, floor it (because fuel economy is for hippies I’m on the mother f’ing autobahn!),  and nobody pulls out in front of me in a minivan to enforce their personal speed limit, people ahead of me going slower (like 100mph) immediately get out of the way, and when some bad ass comes up behind me in a super car, I get out of his way, and then they blast past me like I’m standing still.

It was beautiful.

You wouldn’t think a diesel Volvo would be comfy at 112 miles an hour, but it really is. Yes. I friggin’ love the autobahn. If I lived here I would buy a giant BMW or Audi and drive very fast, all the time. Why can’t we have something like this here? I would like to institute autobahn style rules on I-15 in Utah. Sure, a few thousand people would probably die in the first weekend, but after that it would be awesome.

Can confirm. What some might find interesting is that Italy has its own sort of temporary autobahn, which is certain stretches of the autostrada on Sunday mornings from 9-11 AM. Spacebunny and I were driving home from Verona one morning, doing about 100 MPH or so, when I saw a red car coming up VERY FAST from behind.

It turned out to be a Ferrari 456. A few moments later, a tricked-out blue Porsche with a vague resemblance to a 911 flew past as well. My Call of Duty mate, who used to race Formula 2, has friends who drive for Ferrari, and drives an Aston Martin, later told me that there are certain sections of the autostrada that are intentionally left camera-free so that the men with the supercars can let them rip at times when the traffic is light.

European pro tip: if you see silver in the distance behind you, move over without delay. No one in Europe drives faster, or is more likely to ride your bumper, than drivers of silver Mercedes station wagons. My theory is that if you need a station wagon, but insist on spending the money for a high-performance engine, you’re probably a roadway lunatic. I see plenty of nice, big-engined sports cars and sedans cruising along the autostrada at reasonable speeds, but every single Mercedes station wagon driver is flying along at least 20 MPH faster than the flow of traffic, no matter how fast it is, with his left blinker permanently on.

And for some reason that still eludes me, they are always silver.

Larry is right about German being easier for English speakers too. As for French, I honestly found it easier to pick up Japanese. The Italians may speak rapidly and use the same word to describe three completely different concepts, (hence the need for all the gestures) but at least they enunciate.

“Muslims are not welcome in Germany”

AfD is stepping in to shoulder the responsibility of defending the German people that the two mainstream parties have so badly shirked:

One week after Austria was shocked by the news that its right-wing, anti-immigrant Freedom Party, had swept the competition, gathering over 35% of the vote and leaving the other five candidates far behind, Europe’s anti-immigrant juggernaut just added to its momentum when neighboring Germany’s populist AfD party adopted an anti-Islam policy on Sunday in a manifesto that also demands curbs to immigration according to AFP. The biggest surprise however, is that the three year-old party is now also Germany’s third strongest party.

Formed only three years ago on what was originally a eurosceptic platform, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has gained strength as the loudest protest voice against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcome to refugees that brought over one million asylum seekers last year. However, with the migrant influx sharply down in recent months, the AfD has shifted focus to the signature issue of the xenophobic Pegida street movement, whose full name is Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident.

“Islam is not part of Germany” ran a headline in the AfD policy paper agreed in a vote by some 2,400 members at the party congress in the western city of Stuttgart.

The paper demanded bans on minarets on mosques, the call to prayer, full-face veils for women and female headscarves in schools.

Within three years, every Western nation will have a strong political party that endorses some sort of restrictions, if not outright bans, on Islam. The current battle in the British Labour Party over Muslim anti-semitism in the party may mark an important turning point here, as it appears that Britain’s Jews have begun to realize that “let’s you and him fight” is not a functional strategy and are no longer able to fool themselves into thinking that a de-Christianized West is a beneficial option.

Reconquista 2.0 has begun. One hopes it will be more peaceful and less protracted than its predecessor.

All ur base no longer belongs 2 u

Jerry Pournelle reflects upon Peggy Noonan’s dawning horror that the Republican base is no longer what passes for conservative:

“Those conservative writers and thinkers who have for nine months warned the base that Mr. Trump is not a conservative should consider the idea that a large portion of the Republican base no longer sees itself as conservative, at least as that term has been defined the past 15 years by Washington writers and thinkers.”

The Second Gulf War saw us invading Iraq in response to the al Qaeda attack on New York, although there was zero evidence that Saddam had anything to do with it. Then came Afghanistan. In each case we sent just enough to do the job, but not overwhelming force to achieve victory – likely impossible in Afghanistan unless we were prepared for decades of occupation, and given the Soviet experience even that was likely to be arduous. All of this seemed to be destroying monsters, not protecting the liberty of the American people.

Some of us said so at the time. The response from National Review, once (when under Bill Buckley) the voice of the American Conservative Movement, was to feature the Egregious Frum reading out of the Conservative Movement all those who did not enthusiastically support the invasion of Iraq. Since that time I have not been “a conservative”. Paleo-conservative, perhaps; one who believes Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk have much to teach us; yes. But officially not a conservative according to National Review. Since I am not one of them by their own account, having been read out of their movement, I have no obligation to defend their policies – not that I ever defended all of them; after all, they did read me out of their ranks because I opposed the long war in Mesopotamia, did not think we could build democracy in a “nation” composed of Kurds, Shia majority, and Sunni, and ruled by Baathists, and thought we had no business expending blood and treasure when we had no describable national interests.

Trump’s people think the same way: patriotism trumps ideology. That is, of course, a very conservative principle, or was when I was teaching political science; apparently it is not so now. Miss Noonan sees it; I doubt the neoconservatives who have become to leaders of the conservative Movement will understand, or care; but perhaps the American voters will. Reagan was no ideologue, and he won. True: Trump is no Reagan; but you know, Mr. Reagan was not always Ronald the Great either. But he was always a patriot.

At 81, Dr. Pournelle is still far sharper than the average bear. He’s pointing out something very important that has escaped nearly every political commentator, including me, which is that for decades, beginning with the John Birch Society, conservatives have been reading people out of the conservative movement.

And now, they have read so many people out of conservatism that the movement is no longer, in any practical sense of the term, a popular movement anymore. I’m an alt right figurehead, but I’m no conservative. Jerry is an old school Cold Warrior, but he’s no conservative. From Ann Coulter to John Derbyshire to Mark Steyn to Paul Craig Roberts, the best intellects of the right are all ex-conservatives.

And now the Republican base, has realized that they, too, have been effectively read out. Just as the Democratic Party left Ronald Reagan, conservatism has left the Republican grass roots behind.

Of enthymemes and false erudition

First, Philalethes observes that my use of rhetoric was, indeed, effective:

VD’s original use of “Aztec” in the WND article was effective rhetoric, the Slate author’s snarky reference to it was at least attempted rhetoric, and then VD’s present response was also rhetoric, by the clever tactic of twisting the poignard out of her hand and stabbing her back with it. For me, it worked quite well, whether or not it was based on an enthymeme (about which I knew nothing until tonight).

Which is the point: either rhetoric draws blood, or it does not. Maybe for Mr. Camestros it did not, but that’s all he can legitimately say about it – though his effort to destroy the rhetoric by dialectic would appear to show that he is at least aware that this device did and would draw blood in the minds of most readers. So in sum I must agree that all Mr. Camestros has accomplished here is to make a fool of himself with his attempt to speak magisterially from the high seat on a subject about which he obviously knows less than does the person at whom he is aiming his barb.

Second, I will explain how the now-banned Camestros Felapton either badly misrepresented, or simply failed to understand, Aristotle’s fundamental distinction between dialectic and rhetoric, as well as the purpose of the latter. He’s rather like a tactician who doesn’t grasp strategy, as he seems to have a basic knowledge of the technical aspects without understanding their basic purpose or how they can be utilized:

I know what an enthymeme is, thank you, which is why I re-expressed your enthymeme as a formal syllogism with premises. I do so to highlight what your un-expressed major premise was. Put another way, what was the underlying assumption that you were appealing to in your rhetorical device.

That assumption appears to be this:
“People who are part-X are not people who are paranoid about X” Which is best described using the technical term ‘bollocks’.

If your response is an ‘effective’ one then it is because your audience is accepting that assumption as being correct.

An enthymeme has UNSTATED premises (or conclusion). The premises and/or
conclusion are suggested or implied (in the non-logical sense of
‘implied’). You seem to be thinking that ‘unstated’ means ‘logically do
not exist’. That is incorrect. With an enthymeme the reader is expected
to ‘fill in the gaps’. This is why I asked you what your premises were
so as to re-express your enthymeme as a formal syllogism.

This initially made me suspect that Felapton was simply being dishonest. The reason he wanted me to translate the rhetoric into dialectic, and complete the formal syllogism, was so he could criticize it from a logical perspective and thereby discredit it in an attempt to persuade others to believe Slate’s claim that I am paranoid about Aztecs. (Which was, in itself, merely another step towards his real purpose.) He was pushing me to state the unstated because an enthymeme does not only contain unstated premises, but those premises are often incorrect from the purely logical perspective. This is why Aristotle gave this type of syllogism a different name and devoted considerable effort to defining and explaining how it worked, because otherwise it would be nothing more than an incomplete syllogism.

Consider one example provided by Wikipedia:

“Candide is a typical French novel, therefore it is vulgar.”

In this case, the missing term of the syllogism is “French novels are vulgar” and might be an assumption held by an audience that would make sense of the enthymematic argument.

Now, obviously not all French novels are vulgar, so therefore, Felapton would argue that the syllogism fails logically and is incorrect. That is why he was trying to get me to state the unstated premise of my Aztec enthymeme, so that he could attack it dialectically. But as I pointed out, the syllogism was an enthymematic argument, not a logical argument, and therefore his attempt to logically disqualify it was totally irrelevant. As I have repeatedly pointed out in the book he has not read, there is zero information content in rhetoric; it is not designed to inform and persuade, but emotionally convict and persuade, because, as Aristotle correctly informs us, many people cannot be persuaded by information.

This is the point that Felapton fails to grasp, and his subsequent comment tends to indicate that it is not merely dishonesty on his part, but also a genuine failure to understand the distinction between rhetoric and dialectic that underlies his incorrect statements on the subject.

A great place for you to start to get a better understanding of the role of enthymeme in general and its relationship with logic would be Aristotle’s rhetoric itself. I think you perhaps have misunderstood the distinction as somehow rhetoric (in Aristotle’s sense) as being utterly divorced from logic. If so then the word you are looking for is not ‘rhetoric’ but ‘bullshit’. Substituting the word ‘bullshit’ for ‘rhetoric’ in your response, renders it a better description for what you seem to be trying to say.

However, Aristotle did not advance the notion of rhetoric as BS or sophistry but as an art of persuasion but persuasion towards TRUTH by rational means.

“It is clear, then, that rhetorical study, in its strict sense, is concerned with the modes of persuasion. Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated.

The orator’s demonstration is an enthymeme, and this is, in general, the most effective of the modes of persuasion. The enthymeme is a sort of syllogism, and the consideration of syllogisms of all kinds, without distinction, is the business of dialectic, either of dialectic as a whole or of one of its branches. It follows plainly, therefore, that he who is best able to see how and from what elements a syllogism is produced will also be best skilled in the enthymeme, when he has further learnt what its subject-matter is and in what respects it differs from the syllogism of strict logic.”

What Felapton clearly fails to understand here is that the fact a highly skilled dialectician will also be skilled in the use of rhetoric only means that the best and most effective rhetoric is constructed in a similar manner and is in line with the truth. It absolutely does not mean that the use of enthymematic arguments that are not in line with the truth are not rhetoric, for the obvious reason that there would be no difference between a syllogism presented for dialectical purposes and an enthymeme presented for rhetorical purposes. But the two related concepts are intrinsically different and we know why. Consider Aristotle’s additional observations:

  • Persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have
    proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive
    arguments suitable to the case in question. 
  • The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such
    matters as we deliberate upon without arts or systems to guide us, in
    the hearing of persons who cannot take in at a glance a complicated
    argument, or follow a long chain of reasoning.
  • It is evident, therefore, that the propositions
    forming the basis of enthymemes, though some of them may be “necessary,” will
    most of them be only usually true.
  • We must be able to employ persuasion, just as strict reasoning can be employed, on opposite sides
    of a question, not in order that we may in practice employ it in both
    ways (for we must not make people believe what is wrong), but in order
    that we may see clearly what the facts are, and that, if another man
    argues unfairly, we on our part may be able to confute him. No other of
    the arts draws opposite conclusions: dialectic and rhetoric alone do
    this. Both these arts draw opposite conclusions impartially.
    Nevertheless, the underlying facts do not lend themselves equally well
    to the contrary views. No; things that are true and things that are
    better are, by their nature, practically always easier to prove and
    easier to believe in.

In other words, Felapton has confused Aristotle’s admonition to use rhetoric in the service of the truth with Aristotle’s definitions of what rhetoric is as well as with his instructions on how to use rhetoric effectively. In fact, Aristotle makes it clear that both dialectic and rhetoric can be used impartially on either side of an argument, although it is much easier to identify the deceptive use of dialectic due to its reliance on complete syllogisms and strict logic than it is the deceptive use of rhetoric due to its incomplete structure and its reliance on apparent truths that are accepted by the audience.

What Felapton calls “bollocks” and “bullshit” is nothing more than what Aristotle calls “apparent truth”. But, as we have seen, rhetoric can rely upon these apparent truths just as readily as upon actual truths. And in this particular application, my rhetoric, even structurally reliant as it is upon apparent truth rather than actual truth, is more persuasive, and therefore more effective, than Slate’s rhetoric, in part for the obvious reason that it is absolutely true.

SJWs strike back

In their own hapless and inimitably gamma way. First, Pedophil Sandifer makes a hash of the time-tested “I know you are but what am I” tactic and engages in the usual SJW projection in libeling the Hugo-nominated GamerGate artist Kukuruyo:

Vox Day Put A Child Pornographer On The Hugo Ballot 

For obvious reasons, I will not be providing links here, however I am happy to provide them privately to anyone with a legitimate interest in the information, including law enforcement.

It was brought to my attention today that “kukuruyo,” one of the artists that Vox Day put on the Rabid Puppies slate in Best Fan Artist and that made it onto the Hugo Ballot recently posted to his blog a commissioned drawing of comic book character Ms. Marvel in which her genitalia is clearly visible and provocatively displayed. Ms. Marvel – whose comic won last year’s Hugo for Best Graphic Story – is a sixteen-year-old girl in the comics. Under US law, this would seem to legally be child pornography.

Although the drawing post-dates Day’s placement of the artist on his slate, the hypocrisy of Vox Day endorsing the work of a child pornographer is particularly glaring given that he continues to throw childish insults like this around:

    #SJW logic: Pedophil Sandifer complains that #RabidPuppies are “bullying fucks” while declaring that they are outnumbered “3,800 to 200”.
    — Supreme Dark Lord (@voxday) April 30, 2016

and has been vocal in accusing sci-fi fandom of harboring pedophiles, including slating two works with arguments to this effect in Best Related Work. 

He then proceeded to double down and do it again. A few relevant points that collectively demonstrate the utter absurdity of Pedophil’s libel:

  1. Kukuruyo has stated that he didn’t know the fictitious age of the Marvel cartoon character, Ms Marvel, and drew her as a 20-year-old.
  2. I am reliably informed that Ms Marvel was 16 when she was introduced in 2013. That makes her at least 18 now, possibly 19. 
  3. The age of consent in Spain is 16. Kukuruyo is Spanish, lives in Spain, and US law is not relevant to his activities.
  4. The drawing cannot be child pornography regardless of what age the fictitious character is supposed to be. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that drawings and computer representations are not child pornography.
  5. Phil Sandifer has admitted that he was aware of the Supreme Court ruling when he made the accusation.
  6. The Ms Marvel drawing was drawn and posted well after I recommended Kukuruyo, who draws GamerGate Life, for the Hugo Award.
  7. SJWs always project. This is more than a little alarming in this particular case.

The most reprehensible aspect of Sandifer’s attack on GamerGate’s favorite artist is the way he is observably attempting to cast doubt on the undeniable fact that the science fiction fandom community has harbored pedophiles in the recent past, and the very reasonable suspicion that it is continuing to do so now.
In tangentially related news, while Camestros Felapton has gotten himself banned elsewhere in the Puppyverse, he’d always behaved himself here and never done worse than embarrass himself by demonstrating his inability to understand the core difference between rhetoric and dialectic, and between enthymemes and logical syllogisms. However, he’s been blatantly lying about both me and Castalia House at File 770, so he’s now permanently banned from commenting here as well.

I’ve been a fan of Gene Wolfe for a long time. I love the idea of the
work you are doing and from what I have seen the scale of work and
scholarship you have put into is impressive. However, I can’t vote for
your work when your publisher is promoting it by attempting to exploit
issues like child-sexual abuse. There isn’t some neat way of separating
‘Castalia House’ from the actions and strategies of Theodore Beale/Vox
Day and there is a qualitative difference between authors who have been
unwillingly nominated by the Rabid slate and authors who have willingly
chosen to work with Castalia House. I understand that for you it was a
matter of getting your work published and promoted and I understand why
any author would want that for their work – but in the case of Castalia
“promoted” necessarily includes stunts like slating the Hugo awards and
attempts to trash whole categories, and it includes slurs and defamation
of *other authors* people who, like you, have poured sweat &
scholarship and long days/nights into their work. However, I also get
that Vox Day perceives criticism as betrayal and that he has a tendency
to ‘punish’ what he perceives as betrayal. So I am certainly not asking
you denounce Day or withdraw from the awards or any other kind of
symbolic action, but I am saying I can’t vote for your work and I can’t
see it as a legitimate nomination because there is no way of seperating
what is published by Castalia from how Castalia promotes itself and its
published works.

 To set the record straight:

  1. Castalia is not promoting our various works by exploiting issues like child sexual abuse. Being a father as well as the acquaintance of several adults who were abused as children, I take the matter very seriously and I am committed to identifying and exposing every abuser in the science fiction community, no matter how celebrated or protected they are. I do not view the Hugo Awards as a promotion, promoting Castalia’s books is not a primary, secondary, or even tertiary objective of the Rabid Puppies campaigns, and the only book we will be promoting on the subject is the one we are publishing by Moira Greyland about her experience growing up in the science fiction community.
  2. I have not defamed any other authors, as the lawyers for John Scalzi, Samuel Delaney, and N.K. Jemisin, among others, will have informed them if they ever bothered to look into the matter. To the contrary, in the opinion of no less than three UK barristers, two of whom are experts on the subject and have won libel cases I have been legitimately and repeatedly libeled by a number of individuals in the media and the science fiction community.
  3. I do not perceive criticism as betrayal, as pretty much every reader of this blog can testify, having criticized me at one time or another. I have no problem with criticism, what I object to is blatant falsehoods. Third Law. SJWs always project.

Felapton does raise one valid point, which is that “there is no way of seperating what is published by Castalia from how Castalia promotes itself and its published works.”

However, in doing so, he only underlines Larry Correia’s original point about the Hugo Awards, which is that the awards are not given for merit, but rather are awarded on the basis of political approval. If the voters were solely, or even primarily, concerned with literary merit, as the SJWs in science fiction claim, this inability to separate the work from the publisher would not matter in the least.

But, as Felapton admits, since he can’t separate the work from the publisher, the merit of the work does not matter and he will not vote for any Castalia-published work on the basis of this genetic fallacy. That is certainly his prerogative, of course, but in explaining his reasoning, he has also proved the Sad Puppies original case about the Hugo Awards, which is that they are awards given out on the basis of political approval, not the pretense of literary merit the science fiction community presently affects.

Third, and more or less unrelated, but not meriting a separate post, Greg Hullender estimates the number of Rabid Puppies:

I’ve run the numbers using the power-law estimator, and from that I calculate that about 270 rabid puppies voted the slate this year, and that they kept fairly good slate discipline. I only get two anomalies:

“Hyperspace Demons,” by Jonathan Moeller should have been a finalist for Best Novelette. If we assume that he quietly declined the nomination, the numbers are a perfect fit.

Similarly, Bryan Thomas Schmidt should have been a finalist for Best Editor, Long Form. If we assume he too declined the nomination, those numbers are also a perfect fit.

That sounds about 60 percent too low to me, although it’s higher than Felapton’s estimate of 200, but we’ll find out in due course. My guess, and it is nothing more than a logical extrapolation from last year’s vote, would be around 650, as I thought we’d need at least 750 to run the table this year. In any event, I’ll leave Kukuruyo with the last word, because the salt must flow.

Chuck Tingle contemplates Hugo withdrawl

 After NK Jemisin demanded Chuck Tingle withdraw his nomination for the Hugo Award for “Space Raptor Butt Invasion”, Dr. Tingle gave the matter some serious consideration.

Chuck Tingle ‏@ChuckTingle
cant sleep. lots of thoughts i will be addressing tommorow morning. i will be very forward on where i stand and make important annoucement

Chuck Tingle ‏@ChuckTingle
i am very sorry sometimes things just have to come to an end. this has to be done and i will be as upfront as i can

Chuck Tingle ‏@ChuckTinglestill not sure if im ready for all of this to end still sorting though feelings about this annoucement. more very soon

Chuck Tingle ‏@ChuckTingle
in five minutes official announcement of withdrawl and difficult ending

Chuck Tingle ‏@ChuckTingle
PLEASE UNDERSTAND i have decided to WITHDRAW my support of taylor swifts and unfollow her. I now follow KATYS PERRY

LOVE IS REAL! Chuck Tingle’s nomination is not a joke. Well, all right, it is. But it’s arguably less of a joke than N.K. Jemisin’s affirmative-action reward for hating the “beardy old middle-class middle-American guys” who created the field.

Calling out the ADL

On Twitter:

ADL ‏@ADL_National
@realDonaldTrump: Reconsider your use of the phrase “America First” as a slogan.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
So exactly WHAT should Americans put first, if not America?

ADL ‏@ADL_National
For many Americans, the term “America First” will always be tainted by its anti-Semitic use in months before Pearl Harbor

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Even more Americans look forward to seeing the repatriation of those who refuse to put America first.

If the members of the ADL are not willing to put America, and Americans, first, then obviously no American should support them or listen to anything that they have to say.

It is no more anti-semitic for Americans to put America, and Americans, first, as a matter of foreign policy, than it is anti-American for Israelis to put Israel first, or anti-Canadian for Germans to put Germany first.

No one gives a damn about the Holocaust these days. It’s ancient history. The British newspapers notwithstanding, virtually no one outside the media gives a damn about anti-semitism anymore. There are now many more important problems around the globe that concern considerably more than a paltry few million people living more or less at peace in the United States.

Not even the Israeli government cares about someone painting a swastika on a wall somewhere in North America. They, too, have far more pressing concerns to address.

An actual conversation

Other Guy: I don’t really know anything about this Rabid Puppies thing. What’s up with that?

Vox Day: Oh, it’s just related to this science fiction award. Last year we took a bunch of nominations, so they made a big deal about it and vowed it would never happen again. Then this year, we took a few more.

OG: So that’s why they’re pissed.

VD: Yeah, pretty much. But also because we got things like “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” nominated.

OG: What?

VD: There’s this guy, Chuck Tingle, he’s a complete lunatic and he writes these crazy gay dinosaur erotica stories.

OG: Doesn’t he have a book about boyfriend who is a plane or something too?

VD: There’s one called “My Gay Billionaire Plane Boyfriend”, something like that, anyway.

OG: Yeah, I read it! It was pretty good.

VD: I’m a little alarmed to hear you’ve actually read that.

OG: Yeah, well, you’re the one who knows the guy’s name.

VD: Touche’.

A summary of 2015

While we’re on the subject of music, one of my old NoBoys bandmates runs though the 2015 pop roundup with his a capella group, Face Vocal Band. One of these days, I’ll post a link to the first song he ever wrote, which is a bizarre one about a fish in love with a little girl who visits the sea shore.