This is no way to cure a gay man

You have to admire Milo’s dedication to investigative journalism. Talk about suffering for your job! He reviews Mattress Girl’s latest attempt to extend her 15 minutes of fame so we don’t have to see what cannot be unseen:

In preparing for this review, my researcher had to watch Emma Sulkowicz, a.k.a. “Mattress Girl,” perform fellatio on an overweight man eleven times. He tells me that he is now seriously considering homosexuality….  Naturally, Sulkowicz has become a feminist icon. But the activists and bloggers who supported her will be feeling a little uneasier this week, after she peeled back a few more layers on her own deep psychological dysfunction and apparently limitless ego by resorting to that age-old remedy for waning stardom: the sex tape. . . .

It’s telling, I think, that in Sulkowicz’s purported college dorm room there are no books. She has the same lack of interest in aesthetics as she does in intellectual enrichment: both in her choice of sexual partner (apparently satisfactory member notwithstanding) and the grim, bare walls with which she surrounds herself. Though I expect the austerity of her room reflects her barren emotional interior really rather well. You can tell “dad bods” are in fashion because both of the people in this video have one. But you do at least have to give an actress credit for doing nude scenes with a man who has larger breasts than she does. Sulkowicz’s size queendom apparently extends to love handles and leave the viewer sympathetic to the travails of her infamous mattress.

It’s revealing of her vanity that she insists on being filmed from four angles. Every crevasse of her unappealing naked body must be considered. Her congressional interlocutor is a gruesome sight in three dimensions, chosen, probably, to make young Emma look thinner. Which doesn’t work, I’m sorry to say.

All in all, it’s a tawdry, miserable encounter that tells us nothing about sexual assault or sex itself but quite a bit about the quasi-demonic inner workings of one Emma Sulkowicz.

My chief takeaway from all this? DO NOT ACCEPT AN INTERNSHIP AT BREITBART. You might end up working for Milo and who knows what depths of degradation and horror that may involve plumbing.

Also, Mattress Girl may singlehandedly have accomplished what legions of church leaders, upstanding citizens, priests, and moral scolds could not do, and killed Internet pornography. I hear Mercedes Carrera was so scarred by watching the tape that she has retreated to a nunnery and is seriously considering vows.

Wright vs Banks

Or if you prefer, Hugo nominee vs PhD. A few weeks ago, Phil Sandifer challenged me to a literary debate. He suggested we each select a work we particularly disliked that the other individual favored and take turns criticizing and defending it.

He chose the Hugo-nominated “One Bright Star to Guide Them” by John C. Wright. I selected one of the BBC’s top 100 novels, The Wasp Factory, by Iain M. Banks, which in my opinion is one of the worst books I have ever read. We’re doing the debate tonight, it will be recorded and broadcast later on “a lefty sci-fi podcast called Pex Lives”.

Phil is not what you would call one of my biggest fans, but he’s been here on and off of late and has comported himself impeccably, so it should be an interesting and civil discussion, if nothing else. We would appear to be rather more in his wheelhouse than mine, but it’s always interesting to venture out onto new ground.

Anyhow, I’ll let you know when the podcast is broadcast and will link to the transcript when it is available.

UPDATE: We went about 1:45 and while there was an amount of talking past each other, I think the discussion was fairly substantive on the whole. It definitely illustrated the size of the gap, or rather, massive chasm, that separates our opinions of what a good book is, but there was the occasional common ground to be found too.

I’ll leave it to the listeners to decide whose perspective was more compelling, but I was satisfied with both the case I made for “One Bright Star to Guide Them” as well as my case against The Wasp Factory. And while I don’t agree with either of Phil’s arguments, I now have a much better understanding of why he feels so differently about both works.

I will provide the links once Pex Lives provides them to me.

Turbo-charging the award pimpage

I find it amusing that the SJWs obviously know that no one outside their freaky little circles believes them anymore, so they keep repeating the same thing over and over and over and over in the hopes that someone, anyone, will fall for it. In fact, Dela is such a sensitive literateur that she is capable of preemptively judging the quality of science fiction and fantasy work in future years. Now that’s science fictional!

Dela on June 5, 2015 at 3:55 pm said:
I find all–ALL–of the Castalia House publications on the ballot so badly written, I will never again subject myself to anything from that publisher. The putrid and mostly unprofessional quality of the work was so consistent across CH nominees, all future CH nominees will automatically go under “No Award” on my Hugo ballots, as will “editor” Vox Day. I will never again let him or the Puppies waste my time as it has been wasted on reading the sheer drek that comes out of that company.

Strange, a lot of us reached a similar conclusion about reading books published by Tor Books some years ago. I still have literally piles of dreadful books they sent me when I was on the Nebula Best Novel jury. As it happens, I’d been contemplating following the International Lord of Hate’s lead and recusing myself from the ballot in the future, since I didn’t want to end up with more Hugo nominations than the likes of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov. That would be ridiculous. However, now that I know the SJWs are preemptively planning to No Award me, I think I would be remiss if I did not consider award pimpage for every single Hugo Award for which I am even remotely eligible for in 2016.

Let’s see. In addition to the professional categories, there is Best Fan Writer, Best Related Work, and perhaps I can throw a few doodles together for Best Fan Artist while I’m at it.

Lori Coulson on June 5, 2015 at 9:45 pm said:
I have finished hacking my way through the puppy nominees, thank Ghu.
As I said about most of the puppy entries — there’s no there, there.

When the puppies can produce short stories better than “A Rose For Ecclesiastes” or “Nightfall” and when they can write something like MY type of MiLSF, i.e. Gordon Dickson’s “Tactics of Mistake,” or even an enjoyable potboiler like “The Hunt for Red October,” or a disaster tale like “Dies the Fire” — THEN I might trying reading their scribblings again. Given the current state of their art I consider this outcome highly unlikely.

Something else — merely competent prose is not Hugo Award worthy. If there’s ever a next time for those of you who have some grasp on the basics, I remind you that you must bring your A game. As of right now, I found nothing of theirs that was worth the paper it was printed on. So, I am voting accordingly.

Isn’t it strange how suddenly a Hugo Award requires a work at the level of Zelazny’s or Asimov’s best to merit beating No Award? As I have repeatedly pointed out, every single work nominated this year is better than last year’s winners. The SJWs were the ones who declared that the likes of Redshirts and Chicks Dig Time Lords and “Equoid” and “If You Give A Dinosaur A Cookie” and “We Have Always Fought” were the very best in science fiction, and everything we have put forward are better than those utter mediocrities.

They made the bed. We’re simply stretching out in it. They have nothing about which to complain. But fortunately, one SJW has figured out the massive historical disparity in awards being given out to the /SF Left at the expense of the SF Right:

nickpheas on June 6, 2015 at 5:48 am said:
I see that the Conservatives are bitter and angry and don’t really understand people. While the progressives are more likely to be witty and humane. Is it terribly surprising that the angry bitter writers are less likely to appeal to the general public?

Right, that’s probably it. No doubt all that witty humanity being written about the Puppies has been extraordinarily convincing to third parties. Certainly it can’t have anything to do with the left-wingers running the biggest publisher in science fiction into the ground being insanely biased against everyone to the right of Chairman Mao.

Irene Gallo is the Creative Director at Tor Books. Needless to say, this is libelous behavior we will be obliged to bring to the attention of the management at Pan Macmillan.

Approaching endgame

Is there one last kick in the can? It doesn’t look like it:

Greece admitted its sovereign coffers are totally empty this week when it “bundled” its modest €345 million payment to the IMF along with others, for a lump €1.5 billion payment, which may well never happen.

And the bigger problem for Greece is that after testing yesterday the faith and resolve of its depositors (not to mention the Troika, aka the Creditors) and found lacking, said depositors no longer believe in the full faith (ignore credit) of the Greek banking system.It may have been the Greek government’s final test.

Because according to banking sources cited by Intelligent News, things today went from bad to horrible for Greek banks, when Greeks “responded with massive outflows to the Greece’s government decision to bundle the four tranches to IMF into one by the end of the June.”

According to banking sources, the net outflows sharply increased on Friday and the available liquidity of the domestic banking system reduced at very low and dangerous levels.

    The same sources estimate the outflows on Friday around 700 million Euros from 272 million Euros on Thursday. The available emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) for the Greek banks is estimated around 800 million Euros. In addition, the outstanding amount of the total deposits of the private sector (households and corporations) has declined under 130 billion Euros or lower than the levels at early 2004.

    The total net outflows in the last 7 business days are estimated 3.4 billion Euros threatening the stability of the Greek banks.

This means 2.5% of all Greek deposits were pulled in just the past 5 days! Indicatively, this is the same as if US depositors had yanked $280 billion from US banks (where total deposits amount to about $10.7 trillion)

Greece didn’t default yesterday because they said they would make the payment at the end of the month. It appears, however, that the government is merely giving the Greek people time to empty out their accounts so that they will not be bailed-in as creditors when the default takes place.

The end of the Diaspora

Martin van Creveld anticipates it. The Learned Elders of Wye see it. David Goldberg sees it. As does Rich Cohen:

The horror of the Holocaust purchased us a 70-year vacation from history, though we didn’t know it. We believed the world had changed, as had human nature. Jews remained distinct in the new dispensation, but in a good way—a near-at-hand exotic, a symbol of exile, which we were told was the natural state of modern man. For perhaps the only time in history, you might actually want to be a Jew. Because of the close families and good husbands and yada yada. Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Mel Brooks. To those of us who came of age in these years, the future seemed like it would be more of the same, the present carried on forever.

We were wrong.

If you go online and read the comments on any story about Israel or George Soros or search certain terms on Twitter, you begin to feel the golden age of the American Jews was just a moment in time. Perhaps the old paranoia stirs in me, but I see ominous signs everywhere:

What changed? Well, for starters, there are just
fewer of us in proportion to the whole. Whereas Jews once constituted
five percent of America, and as much as forty percent of New York, those
numbers have shrunk. We’re perhaps thirteen percent of New York and
around two percent of the nation. In this sense, American Jews are
living with the results of their success. This is indeed the promised
land. It’s where Jews fulfilled the dream which, for many, has been to
stop being Jews and become part of the imagined whole.  Like the caboose
of a train, we’re getting smaller as we go away.

I think Cohen is leaving out three of the more important reasons for the Jewish decline. First, being the most left-leaning portion of the American electorate, Jews are disproportionately affected by the dyscivic and dysgenic consequences of their own social policies. In the traditional 1950s America they so hated, a Jewish man with abnormal inclinations would be heavily encouraged to resist them, get married, and have at least three Jewish children. In post-traditional America, such a man is encouraged to do anything from play house with another man to put on a dress, mutilate himself, and call himself Esther. But whatever non-traditional lifestyle he chooses, his line is going to end with him.

Second, as Cohen says himself, “Jews had re-imagined the nation.” Of course, they didn’t merely reimagine it, they helped remake it more to their liking out of the mistaken belief that a multi-ethnic America would be better and safer for them than an Anglo-Saxon America. This is turning out to be wildly untrue, as the genteel disdain they so resented on the part of the elite White Anglo-Saxon Episcopalians is considerably milder than the way in which they regarded by nearly every immigrant group that the Jews have sought to import, from Central Americans to Eastern Europeans to Asians.

(The same is true in England, for that matter; the rise in anti-semitism in the UK isn’t merely the result of Muslim immigration, but Polish immigration as well. Until I moved to Europe, I had no idea that Poles tend to dislike Jews even more than they dislike Russians and Communists. I’m not sure they entirely distinguish between the three.)

The third is that a number of elite Jews in America have increasingly attempted to use America’s military on behalf of Israel’s foreign policy. This is increasingly resented by Americans across the political spectrum; for example, neither Right nor Left is even remotely interested in invading Iran as the neocons have been demanding for the last 13 years. Their efforts have not yet boomeranged, as Dr. van Creveld fears, but at some point they most likely will if they do not cease.

I don’t see it getting as bad for American Jews as it will for their few remaining European cousins, mostly because Americans are much less ethno-nationalistic and there is considerably more space. But I do think Cohen is correct in anticipating the significant decline of Jewish influence in America. Because, at the end of the day, Israel is the Jewish nation and the idea of the functional multi-ethnic society is not long for this world.

Of course, the idea was always bound to fail. It was obvious, on the basis of the assumption on which the belief was founded: “We believed the world had changed, as had human nature.” The world may have changed, for a time, but it will always change again. Human nature, on the other hand, doesn’t. 

Shelving Aristotle

Now the SJWs are openly coming out against Aristotle’s logic at File 770:

Stevie on June 4, 2015 at 6:21 pm said:
Incidentally, had not Athens been Lords of the Sea then we not have their Golden Age. We would not have the works of Aristotle. For one brief moment I thought wistfully of what an improvement this would be, but came down on the side of sanity….

Chris Hensley on June 4, 2015 at 6:26 pm said:
The works of Aristotle are important. Much of it has been replaced by
better knowledge, but we wouldn’t have that knowledge was still built
upon Aristotle. It is time that his logic be put upon the shelf next to
his physics.

One thing that is readily apparent is that they very much resent how we have correctly identified them as rhetoricals incapable of rational dialectic and ruled by their feelbads rather than reason. Consider exactly what it is that they are rejecting. They are rejecting logic for fantasy because they cannot be instructed by information, they are only guided by emotion.

They are, quite literally, irrational. And in the SJWs always lie department, there is this:

Dex on June 5, 2015 at 6:20 am said: 
I think this, more than anything, is the accurate way to approach
characters like VD. The man is a grifter. For all the outrage he
manufactures, it appeals to a fringe group that flocks to him and is
happy to throw money his way so long as he seems to be fighting the good
fight. The entire Hugo situation is nothing but a scam for him to earn
the publicity that his talent can’t, and entice a small group of
hardcore followers to financially support him. It’s Alex Jones without
the audience. I have no doubt that within six months, his publishing
house will include links to buying gold coins, Prepper food packs and
herbal cures to diabetes.

It’s interesting that he makes such claims, in light of the email I received just two hours ago from the company with whom I tried an advertising experiment about two years ago.

We’ve been working with you some time ago and I believe we can make a good partnership again. Since last time we worked we have grown up a lot and made a lot of improvements for our publishers. Get back to me if you are interested and I will help you to resume a campaign according to your needs.

Anyone want to see those ads for celebrity feet again? I certainly don’t, so I politely declined. It’s a strange sort of grifter who turns down over $1k in advertising money per month just because I prefer to not annoy my readers. And considering that I have written more than 500 columns and 15,000 blog posts, and Castalia has given away over 32,000 free books in the last 18 months, I daresay I’ve provided more free content than anyone else in the entire science fiction field in recent years. Even Brainstorm has a not insubstantial free component to it.

That being said, I very appreciate the willingness of my hardcore supporters to support me and Castalia House. And because I appreciate it, I try to make sure that every time anyone pays for anything, they feel they are receiving substantive subjective value.

Transcript available

From last weekend’s Brainstorm event with Dr. Martin van Creveld, Israeli military historian and the author of The Transformation of War and A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind:

VOX: Speaking of the US, I am curious to know what the general opinion in Israel is of the American neocons who, like you said, have been trying to overthrow Assad. They have overturned the Ukrainian government, the Libyan government, the Iraqi government, etc. What is the general view of the neocons in Israel?

MVC: Oh, we love them. The Israelis are very happy to fight the Arabs and the Iranians with American blood. During the first Gulf War, Israel was then under Yitzhak Shamir and did whatever it could to encourage an American invasion of Iraq. I wouldn’t say that this was decisive but they tried. It was the same when the Americans invaded Iraq for the second time. It was the same when Americans clashed with Iran over nuclear weapons. Each time you can see this very consistently. You can see the Israeli Right and, to some extent, even the Left say okay, this is lovely, we are going to let the Americans put the chestnuts in the fire for us.

Myself, I must say, that I dislike this policy very much. But certainly most Israelis like it. They like to be on the side of the strong as I see it. They push America as much as they can into these ventures. Just today I saw a famous t-shirt that says “Don’t worry America, Israel is behind you.” I also know that some Americans, like Pat Buchanan, have been writing that these lousy Israelis have been trying to use American for their own purposes and have unfortunately they have succeeded. So, personally I am not happy about this policy. I think that it may well one day act as a boomerang.

 VOX: Do you think it is bad for Israel to be dependent in that way?

MVC: Yes, because, as we say in Hebrew, “the one who’s got the money has the say.” It’s bad in several ways, it is bad in the sense that we are tilting too much in the Republican direction. That is a bad thing in my view. It’s not bipartisan. There is a danger that one day support for Israel will probably fade and people will say enough of this. They will say Israelis are exploiting us with American-Jewish help. They are exploiting us for their own purposes. Let them go and fight their own wars. I have been warned more than once by my American friends that this is one day going to happen. It hasn’t happened yet but it is going to happen one day and it worries me. Frankly, it worries me.

VOX: Yeah, you don’t want to use your allies on a war that you don’t need and then not have their support when you actually need it.

MVC: Exactly.

In the event you are not a Brainstorm member but happen to be interested in obtaining a transcript of the interview with Dr. Martin van Creveld, it is available in EPUB and MOBI format at Castalia House.

We haven’t scheduled the times yet, but William S. Lind has agreed to do a future event, as has Dr. Helen Smith. I’ve also contacted Ann Coulter’s publisher and am expect to arrange an interview with her at some point about her new book, Adios America. If there are others you might be interested in seeing on Brainstorm, feel free to make suggestions here. The objective is to maintain a consistently high level of intellectual discourse for the open and closed events alike.

You can join Brainstorm as an Annual or Monthly member
to receive free transcripts as well as taking part in the closed
events. Now that we have 500 seats in the virtual auditorium, there
isn’t much risk of not being able to attend the open ones. On which
note, I should mention that there are still 240 seats left for next week’s event with Roosh V.

A juxstaposition

If there is one lesson, just one, from all of Martin van Creveld’s books, it is that technology does not guarantee military victory. Here is a vivid comparison that shows why things are looking rather grim for the US military if it is ordered to intervene in the Middle East for a third time in three decades in order to take on the Islamic State there:

  1. Let Transgender Troops Serve Openly by THE EDITORIAL BOARD. The Pentagon’s ban on transgender troops is based on obsolete policies and must be rescinded.  The Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, which researches gender issues, estimates there are about 15,500 transgender troops serving in uniform.
  2. Using Violence and Persuasion, ISIS Makes Political Gains. Amid punishing American-backed airstrikes, the Islamic State militants have advanced in Iraq and Syria using a dual strategy of purporting to represent Sunni interests and attacking any group that vies to play the same role.

Military history clearly demonstrates that the side that executes homosexuals, whether throwing them off buildings or having their fellow soldiers beat them to death, reliably defeats the side that allows its soldiers to dress up and pretend they are women.

Yes, wealth and technology are on the side of the crossdressing military. But attrition, geography, and history are on the side that does not tolerate effeminacy.

It’s true that the US military roundly defeated the Soviet-trained, Soviet-equipped Iraqi army twice, the second time largely without a fight. But then, the Islamic State has defeated the US-trained, US-equipped Iraqi army.

If You Were an Award, My Love

“If You Were An Award, My Love”
by Juan Tabo and S. Harris

If you were an award, my love, then you would be a Hugo™. You’d be a big one, five feet, ten inches, the same height as human-you and twice the height of Regular Size John Scalzi, You’d be made of brass, and wood and plastic, and difficult to take on an airplane as carry on due to enhanced security precautions. Your eyes wouldn’t exist, because you were a rocket, stupid.

If you were a Hugo®, then I would become Taller, Stronger John Scalzi so that I could spend all my time with you. I’d bring you raw chickens and live goats, if you were into that kind of thing.  I’d make my bed right under the trophy case, in the basement where my wife lets me sleep. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d sing you lullabies.

If I sang you lullabies, I’d soon notice how you were still a statue. You’d just sit there, because you were still a statue. When you thought I was asleep, you’d still be a statue, and I would still be Taller, Stronger, John Scalzi.

If I were still Taller, Stronger John Scalzi, I would rage against Puppies, Sad and Rabid, and my friends the League of Social Justice Warriors would rally to fund new research into defeating Puppies. Money would flood into the World Con. Biologists would try to figure out how to give rabbits jaws with big sharp teeth. Then I would know that I lived in a world of magic where anything was possible and a story with no fantasy and no science and very little fiction could be nominated for a Hugo©.

If we lived in a world of magic where anything was possible and a story with no fantasy and no science and very little fiction could be nominated for a Hugo™ then you would be an award, my love. You’d stand for everything progressive and PETA© and transgender and carbon-neutral and GMO/peanut free and latina and pro-Palestine and LGBT friendly and you’d miss the Soviet Union in a melancholy kind of way. Your Social Just-Us Warrior supporters would intimidate your foes effortlessly through coordinated campaigns of doxxing and public hateshaming. Whereas you—fragile, lovely, human you—must rely on threats and intimidation and troll-like slow-writing George R. R. Martin.

A Hugo©, even a large one, would never have to end up in the hands of John C. Wright or Jim Butcher or Steve Rzasa or Vox Day because they are insufficiently progressive, and are likely soaked in gin and malice.  A Hugo®, my love, would eschew gin and malice and instead be soaked in Grand Marnier® and love©.  A Hugo™ would bare rocket engine and liberal pedigree and they would cower. They’d hide in the Internet instead of crashing our party. They’d grasp each other for comfort and shout “Remember Heinlein and Campbell” instead of seizing the ballot and not letting anyone at all but the Puppies vote for the nominations and would then vote again in a completely democratic process on the nominated works as we slipped in the pools of our aggregated tears.

If you were an award, my love, I’d teach you the scents of those men. I’d lead a large herd of rabbits to them quietly, oh so quietly. They’d laugh, and probably not be scared since they are feelbad hurtspeak people. Your nostrils would flare as you inhaled the night and then, with the suddenness of prey, you’d run and cry. I’d cry, too.

If I cried, cried, cried, I’d eventually feel shame. I’d promise to change the Hugo rules so no one could ever do something like that again through voting. I’d avert my eyes from the newspapers when they showed photographs of the Hugo nominees, just as they must avert their eyes from the newspapers that show my crying face. How reporters adore my face, the face of the writer with his half-written acceptance speech, tickets to Washington, green chiffon bridesmaid dress.  The writer who sits by the bedside of another writer who wrote about tribbles and is hurtbad because our insular community is not now sufficiently insular for my taste.

If you were an award, my love, then no one could take you, and if nothing could take you, then I would be externally validated as my persona requires. I would bloom into the most beautiful Socially Just Warrior Flower. I would stretch joyfully toward the left. I’d trust in your shiny brass and wood to keep you/me/us safe now and forever from the feelbad hurtspeech men, and the tally of the ballots and the internet, and the shuttering of my empty trophy case.
 
UPDATE: I just what can’t words wow just wow…. 

UPDATE 2: Yeah, we’re going to need a bigger harpoon.

He REALLY likes rape

George Rape Rape Martin explains that books without rape are “boring and “fundamentally dishonest”:

Martin, 66, said that the characters in his novels using rape to get their way is legitimate because it reflects European history, which inspired his own fantasy novels.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Martin said: ‘I’m writing about war, which is what almost all epic fantasy is about. ‘But if you’re going to write about war, and you just want to include all the cool battles and heroes killing a lot of orcs and things like that and you don’t portray [sexual violence], then there’s something fundamentally dishonest about that.

‘Rape, unfortunately, is still a part of war today. It’s not a strong testament to the human race, but I don’t think we should pretend it doesn’t exist. I want to portray struggle. Drama comes out of conflict. If you portray a utopia, then you probably wrote a pretty boring book.’

Sure, but one has to question his devotion to historical realism when there is one rape every twenty-four pages, while children apparently spring into existence without married couples ever having sex.