Rabbit man is rabbity

McRapey asks for more mancrushing and I am gracious enough to oblige him.  Although I must warn you, if you are reading this, we are reliably informed that risks making you one of my “merry band of racist
sexist homophobic dipshit readers”.  Otherwise known as… THE DREAD ILK!

On the way home from ConFusion today I received a concerned phone
call from a good friend, who informed me that someone had just posted
something about me online that to his eye was entirely libelous; he then
gave me a brief rundown on the piece. It appears the racist sexist
homophobic dipshit who has an adorable little mancrush on me has been
spinning up his racist sexist homophobic dipshit blog readers yet again
with a typically gibbering gout of stupidity, with my name inserted into
it at some point.

I told my friend not to worry about it. Aside from it being just
another example of this particular racist sexist homophobic dipshit
trying to work out his adorable little mancrush issues in public, it’s
probably not libel. One of the pillars of libel is that what’s being
written has to effect material damage on the person allegedly being
libeled. I experience no material damage in this case, because no one
actually gives a shit what this particular racist sexist homophobic
dipshit has to say about anything, other than his merry band of racist
sexist homophobic dipshit readers. And why would I care what any of
those racist sexist homophoblic dipshits think about me? They’re racist
sexist homophobic dipshits. The racist sexist homophobic dipshit market
is one I’m willing to lose.

I imagine that one day the racist sexist homophobic dipshit with the
adorable little mancrush on me will finally figure himself out. Until
then, I suppose his adorable little mancrush on me is cheaper than
therapy. So mancrush on, you racist sexist homophobic dipshit. Because
it’s adorable, and I get a giggle about just how much you can’t quit me.

The interesting thing about gammas is that they don’t realize that what scalds their souls doesn’t bother those higher in the socio-sexual hierarchy in the slightest.  Still less those who are comfortable outside the social hierarchy.  But it’s a lovely attempt at playing “ha ha ha, see if I care cuz I don’t” through the tears.  I have to confess, it stings a little to be accused of homophobia when John keeps putting delectable, mancrushable eye candy like this on display.  Can you honestly blame me for my adorable little mancrush?  I really think he’s created a whole new category of hotness, the “doughy-sexy”!  But I’m very glad to hear that he gets “a giggle” about it, because, let’s face it, we all know that I will never quit him until his gamma antics cease to provide amusement, which should happen right around the time Heimdall blows his horn.  Mancrushes may not be legal in Ohio, but this is a committed one nevertheless.

One should appreciate the way McRapey keeps trying to work “libel” into his responses?  Not that he would ever threaten anyone with it, because he totally believes in free speech… but he’s got to mention it, you know, just because.  This reminds me of the scrawny little seventh-grader who can’t fight his way out of a paper bag, who froths at the mouth and tells the high school bullies not to mess with him because he’s crazy.  CRAAAZY!  But I find the most interesting thing to be how he thinks that simply pointing out the attack on female-oriented urban fantasy covers is a misguided attack on female preferences amounts to “a typically gibbering gout of stupidity”.

In that vein, this comment from a Whatever reader pretty much says it all about the Rabbit People: “I found the RSHD after Scalzi’s piece on the mind of a rapist. The RSHD decided that this post meant that Salzi himself was a rapist. The rest of his thought is on a par with this gem. I’ve been looking at his blog with a kind of horrified fascination ever since. I find him thoroughly dispiriting, rather frightening, and in the end
just inexplicable. He presents as a well-educated, articulate,
functioning kind of guy, and yet he traffics in vile racism, a sexism so
absolute that women seem not to exist as real people, weird conspiracy
theories, and general religious crackpottery. I don’t get it at all. Is
he insane? I wonder. Are all his readers insane as well?”

Frightening and inexplicable stupidity.  That concept summarizes the midwitted limits of this particular warren of Rabbit People.  They literally cannot imagine that their worldview is incorrect or is not in line with observable reality.  Anything that is over their heads or beyond them has to be either stupid or crazy, or perhaps both.  And, of course, scary.  They also fail to realize how their responses and accusations betray their own psychologies. John Scalzi is obviously engaging in satire, but I could not possibly be doing anything of the sort.  I must be the insecure and upset one even though it is McRapey who refuses to link to or even identify the RSHD he is nominally addressing.  He even requests that his fellow rabbits follow his lead, whereas I am content to simply shine a light on his creepy, crawly gamma antics and don’t concern myself with what anyone else does.  He deletes or “subverts” the comments of any of those favorable to me who comment on his blog while I both permit and respond to comments by those favorable to him.

 The Rabbit People think I am obsessed, and yet they rush to call his freaking phone simply because I mentioned him in a post.  And my failure to recoil in horror and flee in terror from the VERY BADDEST WORDS THEY CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE leaves them not only bewildered, but scared.

“He didn’t react to the H word.  And I already called him stupid.  And crazy. What now?”
“Did you try the S word?”
“Yeah, good idea… ZOMG, that didn’t work either!”
“Very well, he leaves us no choice.  I don’t like it, but he totally asked for it.”
“You don’t mean….”
“I do.  The R word.”
“Wow.  I pity him.  I really do.  Here goes… OMFG, NOTHING HAPPENED!”
“What?  That can’t be!  Try it again… TRY IT AGAIN!”
“R word!  S word! H word! Stupid!  Crazy!  R WORD!  S WORD!  R WORD!  DAMMIT, IT’S NOT WORKING!”
“AAAUUUGGH!  RUN!  SAVE YOURSELVES!  WHERE IS THE SAND?  WHERE IS THE SAND?” (thunk) (thunk)

Later that day, sounds are heard emanating from a pair of seemingly headless bodies.

(muffled) “Mmff.  Well, we sure showed him!”
(muffled) “Yeah, now everyone will see he’s evil and bad, and sooner or later, the emptiness and loneliness of the social rejection that will surely follow will make him say he’s sorry and that we’re really good people who only want to help everyone.  Also, hugs.”
(muffled) “Do you think he’ll pat us on the head too?”
(muffled) “That would be nice.”

 I am aware there are a few who still believe I post about McRapey due to jealousy, and it is to them I direct this question: what part of Award-Winning Cruelty Artist do you not understand?  This is not an obsession.  This is a Voxiversity course.  And if you still don’t grasp that, you’re not passing it.

Bernard Pollard: the final mission

As a Chief, he took out Tom Brady.  As a Texan, he ended Wes Welker’s season.  As a Raven, he sidelined The Gronk.  Behind the scenes, he sabotaged the post-New England coaching careers of Romeo Crennel and Charlie Weis.  He whispered in Scott Pioli’s ear and Matt Cassel came Kansas City, destroying a once-promising general manager. Now just one task remains for BKP, the Patriot Killer.  The final mission.  The impossible target.  Bill Belichick.

As I said at the beginning of the playoffs, I expect to see a New England-San Francisco Super Bowl, with New England winning the NFL title.  Barring, you understand, Bernard Karmell Pollard completing his final mission.

McRapey exercises his male privilege

It’s a quixotic choice, to be sure, but I suppose we all have our issues.  Apparently confessing to being a rapist isn’t enough for John Scalzi, as the male-privileged SFWA President has now taken it upon himself to publicly mock women for the sort of covers they prefer to see on the books they write and buy.

“The pose-off, while for charity, has its genesis in Jim taking pictures of himself in the poses that science fiction and fantasy book covers often put women in to call attention to the point that these positions are absurd (whereas the positions men are put in on covers are generally substantially less so).”

The irony, as I noted at Alpha Game, is that what Scalzi and Hines are mocking in their gamma male cluelessness about women is not male sexism, but rather, female preferences.  The book whose “sexism” and “objectification” Scalzi is protesting in the photo above happens to be THE TASTE OF NIGHT, by Vicki Pettersson.  It is described thusly:

“Equal parts Light and Shadow, Joanna Archer must fulfill a destiny she
never wanted. Once a photographer and heiress to a casino fortune, she
is now dedicated to the cause of good . . . but susceptible to the
seductions of evil.” 

An heiress who is susceptible to seduction and bears no responsibility for her actions… does this sound more like a science fiction novel intended to appeal to men or a romance novel aimed at a female audience?  As it happens, THE TASTE OF NIGHT
has 47 reviews, by Jenna, Rita, Angela, Courtney, Phyllis, Jessica,
Patience, Rhona, Kelley, Kelly, Shalonda, Chica, Karissa, Michelle,
Debra, and Susan, among others.  Since Pettersson is, we are informed, a New York Times bestselling author, it should be obvious that her work, and the cover of her book that John Scalzi is lampooning, (which you can download as wallpaper in various formats from her website should you be so inclined), are very popular with women and appeal to female tastes.

The fact is that it is not men, but women, who are drawn to pictures of women posed in this manner.  Men, as a rule, like to look at young, pretty, naked, feminine, women posing with their breasts and buttocks on display, not thick, thirty-something man-jawed women wearing clothes, brandishing weapons, and striking aggressive and unlikely power-poses.  The urban fantasy/paranormal market that distinguishes itself from high fantasy, epic fantasy, and science fiction by utilizing such imagery is predominantly female.  It is women to whom such covers are designed to appeal, it is women to whom such books are sold, and by mocking those covers, John Scalzi and Jim Hines are exercising their male privilege to mock the women who write urban fantasy books as well as the women who buy them.

Now, there is nothing wrong with mocking the books on the grounds of literary quality or their covers on the grounds of aesthetics.  But to mock them with the mistaken impression that one is striking a blow against male sexism is not only to insult female preferences, it is to betray a fundamental misunderstanding of human socio-sexuality so profound that it should be no surprise that it took a pair of male science fiction writers to do it.

Perhaps the most amusing thing is that even after progressive women questioned their actions, prompting a little belated self-reflection, it is abundantly clear that they still don’t get it. I doubt I’m the only one to wonder if Jim Hines was initially inspired to launch his campaign after getting caught by his wife taking pictures of himself in her lingerie.

“No, honey, I don’t LIKE wearing your underwear, I’m just, um, protesting the objectifying of women in science fiction!  It’s, ah, for charity!”

And just to address the usual suspects, I will freely confess that jealousy is the only reason I am posting this.  I doubt that I could ever aspire to the transcendent gamma sex appeal that shines so gloriously from the image above.

The Criterial Argument for God

I tend to be a little dubious of logical “proofs” of the existence of God.  While I think it is self-evident by virtue of Occam’s Razor, and I think both Pascal and Voltaire presented logical arguments worth keeping in mind, it’s not an area that I find particularly interesting. 

That being said, Machine Philosophy asked if I’d take a look at his argument, which goes as follows:

The Criterial Argument for the Existence of God – Version 2.0

Our most basic assumptions are necessarily used and referenced to be able to think about anything.

Therefore, our most basic assumptions are necessary to recognize and know that certain objects of our experience are persons.

But only a person can arbitrate whether an object is a person.

Therefore, taken together like the operating system of a computer, the standards and fixed values we operate with as running assumptions or control statements, are necessarily referenced, and treated as the unified predicative and adjudicative structure of an ideal ultimate personal mind.

This criterial structure must be applied universally.

Therefore, this non-local rational structure arbitrates all truth about everything including itself.

Hence, there is a sense in which this structure is omniscient as the instrument of all knowledge, ultimately authoritative as the final court of appeal, sovereign as the universally decisive inferential factor, omnipresent in it’s physically universal applicability, and transcendent in being perfectly functional at any point in the spacetime nexus.

Consequently, the characteristics of this structure are just as ultimate and inherently mind-like as any personal ultimate God is conceivable of being.

Treating this aggregate intellectual object as a reality-wide guide in all thinking about everything is therefore unavoidably necessary, even in reasoned denials that this object has that status as an ultimate universal ruling factor.

I often wonder about the reliability of my computer, but not about reason. Without even thinking about it, I necessarily try to approximate to some achievable extent whatever reason is always unwaiveringly indicating as the perfection standard of thought.

Moreover, there is no controversy about the ultimate authority of what it reveals to me, even if I don’t live up to it, or perfectly actualize the rational ideal in some way.

Furthermore, we merely need to contemplate these ultimates of mind such as reason, formal logic, the rule-set of an ordered context of reality, a hierarchy of values, and so on, in order to discover an endless stream of new knowledge when applied to our ongoing experience of the world.

Consequently, there is some sense in which these ultimate decisive rules and ideals of thought actually communicate knowledge and even wisdom by merely thinking about them and their relationship to our belief systems and our world of objects.

Lastly, the necessity of our referencing of these principles itself implies both purpose and value, which are equally ultimate in this comprehensive set of guiding operational principles. We reference inferential factors for various purposes, and those purposes are based on a hierarchical set of values.

Consequently, I believe in God because my thinking already necessarily assumes and references an unchanging and enduring god-level object of mind that arbitrates all things including personhood, makes inquiry of anything and everything possible including itself, and is indistinguishable from an ultimate personal mind or God.

I’ve been wrestling with some feedback mechanics today, so I haven’t gone over it in any detail yet, but a cursory glance suggests some apparent logical flaws.  The one that bothers me most at first glance is the claim that only a person can arbitrate personhood.

Anyhow, he’s looking for criticism, so I thought I’d throw it out to the Dread Ilk before seriously attempting to punch any holes in it.  Do your worst.

The last days of US empire

And both its soldiers and its enemies know it:

During lunch, as my hosts casually pointed out the site of the holly-oak barrier and other places in the village where the British had been massacred in 1842, we compared our respective family memories of that war. I talked about my great-great-uncle, Colin Mackenzie, who had been taken hostage nearby, and I asked if they saw any parallels with the current situation. “It is exactly the same,” said Jagdalak. “Both times the foreigners have come for their own interests, not for ours. They say, ‘We are your friends, we want to help.’ But they are lying.”

“Whoever comes to Afghanistan, even now, they will face the fate of Burnes, Macnaghten and Dr Brydon,” agreed Mohammad Khan, our host in the village and the owner of the orchard where we were sitting. Everyone nodded sagely into their rice: the names of the fallen of 1842, long forgotten in their home country, were still common currency here.

“Since the British went, we’ve had the Russians,” said one old man to my right. “We saw them off, too, but not before they bombed many of the houses in the village.” He pointed at a ridge full of ruined mudbrick houses on the hills behind us.

“We are the roof of the world,” said Khan. “From here, you can control and watch everywhere.”

“Afghanistan is like the crossroads for every nation that comes to power,” agreed Jagdalak. “But we do not have the strength to control our own destiny. Our fate is determined by our neighbours….”

The following morning in Jalalabad, we went to a jirga, or assembly, of Ghilzai tribal elders, to which the greybeards of Gandamak had come, under a flag of truce, to discuss what had happened the day before. As Predator drones took off and landed incessantly at the nearby airfield, we chatted over a pot of green tea.

“Last month,” said one tribal elder from Gandamak, “some American officers called us to a hotel in Jalalabad for a meeting. One of them asked me, ‘Why do you hate us?’ I replied, ‘Because you blow down our doors, enter our houses, pull our women by the hair and kick our children. We cannot accept this. We will fight back, and we will break your teeth, and when your teeth are broken you will leave, just as the British left before you. It is just a matter of time.”’

“What did he say to that?”

“He turned to his friend and said, ‘If the old men are like this, what will the younger ones be like?’ In truth, all the Americans here know their game is over. It is just their politicians who deny this.”

“These are the last days of the Americans,” said the other elder. “Next it will be China.”

Americans who still contort their minds and imaginations to justify their foreign empire are ignorant of history and blind to historical patterns.  Now what was obvious to a few skeptics like me is becoming increasingly obvious to everyone around the world.

The collapse of the Soviet Union led to an unwarranted hubris on the part of Americans, particularly the pro-empire ruling class, because the “Morning in America” of the 1980s was a false dawn funded by credit expansion, not genuinely increasing wealth.  In retrospect, the retreat from Vietnam and the Iranian hostage crisis appear to have marked the true inflection point.

Guns are for fighting government

Americans haven’t completely forgotten their rebel heritage:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 65% of
American Adults think the purpose of the Second Amendment is to make
sure that people are able to protect themselves from tyranny. Only 17%
disagree, while another 18% are not sure.

The problem is that  those who want a government monopoly on guns are constantly in everyone’s face about it, so they leave the false impression that they are more numerous than they are.  Remember, the left is essentially rhetorical and feminine in its tactics, so to them, silence equals consent.  Don’t ever keep your mouth shut when someone starts talking about “the need to do something” or making anti-Second Amendment cracks.

Remember Breitbart’s advice.  Punch back twice as hard.  If they try to blame freedom advocates for Sandy Hook, blame them for Stalin.  If they compare the US firearms homicide rate to Europe, compare it to Latin America and ask them why they want to leave single black women living in the city unarmed and vulnerable to predators.

Never give them an inch, because they are looking to take a mile.

Middle Earth misogyny

Since Tolkien came up in the interview, I would be woefully remiss if I did not provide a link to this spectacular example of why feminists should probably not be asked to review anything, but especially not anything written, filmed, or otherwise created by men.

I did not read The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings
trilogy as a child, and I have always felt a bit alienated from the
fandom surrounding them. Now I think I know why: Tolkien seems to have
wiped women off the face of Middle-earth.

Has there ever been a movement more powerfully committed to self-parody?

Interview by Speculative Faith

E. Stephen Burnett interviewed me for the Speculative Faith Blog about A THRONE OF BONES and various aspects of the novel that some Christians apparently consider to be controversial.

ESB: What’s different between Summa Elvetica and your newest novel, A Throne of Bones?

Vox Day: About 650 pages, for one thing. Summa Elvetica could be considered a long chapter in the life of one of the perspective characters in A Throne of Bones, the military tribune Marcus Valerius Clericus. In fact, it explains his agnomen, Clericus, which means “priest”. But the real difference is that I learned to stop being clever and to focus on the story instead of the subtext. The Wrath of Angels, for example, is a subtextual spin on the single European currency and the failure of the European elite to replace the pound sterling, but no one has ever picked up on that. I’ve found that the depth of the subtext tends to detract from the natural flow of the story, at least when written by an author of my admittedly limited talents.

After A Dance with Dragons came out, I was talking with a friend who was as disgusted with that epic disappointment as I was, and he was lamenting that with Martin having gone south, there wasn’t anything worth reading in that genre. I always wanted to write a fat fantasy and figured I couldn’t do all that much worse than Martin had, so I decided I would return to the world of Summa Elvetica. This time, however, I would throw out the intellectual fireworks that no one seemed to notice or care about anyhow and focus solely on writing a good story with strong, memorable characters. I assumed I’d have to self-publish it, but I needed to get Marcher Lord’s permission first since it could be considered a sequel of sorts even though there is absolutely no need to read the earlier novel. All I was looking for was a release and I was shocked when Jeff said he wanted to publish it, even after I warned him that I intended for it to be around 300,000 words. He didn’t blink, not then, and not later when I turned in the 297,500-word manuscript.

Despite being longer, Throne was much easier to write than Summa. It was exactly 494 days from that first conversation to publication on December 1, 2012. I figured that taking six years to write Dragons hadn’t done Martin any good, so what was the point of dragging the process out? Also, if it was going to be a spectacular failure, the less time I wasted on it, the better.

ESB: Now for the controversial parts. Last week, your editor/publisher Jeff Gerke shared the story behind the novel. In part: “The author felt very strongly that the book needed to have vulgarity (which, he informed me, is different from profanity), nudity, and even sex.” To you, how are vulgarity and profanity different? Which Scriptures have informed your views? Do you think you can write a character saying something you would try not to say?

Vox Day: The distinction between profanity and vulgarity is not original to me, anyone can look up the etymology of the words. To be profane is to attack the sacred. To be vulgar is merely to be low and common. Even the most uptight, eagle-eyed Churchian will not find any blasphemy or taking the name of our Lord and Savior in vain; such profanity wouldn’t make any sense in the world of Selenoth. To me, the idea of writing a book where legionaries are anything but low and common in their speech and behavior is so ludicrous that it would be more credible to give them jet packs and laser guns than to delicately avoid showing them drinking themselves insensate at every opportunity, whoring in brothels, bitching about their officers, and jeering at those who betray a physical response to being terrified in battle.

The verses which influence me on the subject of literary language are Leviticus 19:12, Colossians 3:8, and 1 Peter 3:10. Particularly Colossians 3:8. I find it absurd and bordering on the delusional to see Christians who would never think to object to angry, malicious, and slanderous speech in fiction nevertheless try to use the Bible as a basis for objecting to vulgar language in the mouths of fictional characters. I write about life in a fallen world and I do so as honestly and accurately as I can. I believe that to do otherwise is to be deceitful.

And yes, I absolutely assert that I can write something that I would never say or even think for myself. The writer is not the character. And the writer whose characters are little more than various reflections of himself is one who lacks imagination, creativity, and basic powers of observation.

This is merely an excerpt from the interview; read the rest of it at Speculative Faith.

Correction(s)

In my post at Black Gate in support of Amazon’s decision to forbid authors to review works in their genres, I erroneously stated that Catherine Asaro was the SFWA president at the time she was awarded the 2002 Nebula for Best Novel.  Michael Capobianco, another past SFWA president, corrected me thusly:

“The Quantum Rose won the Nebula Award for best novel on April
27, 2002. Catherine Asaro was not an officer of SFWA at the time.
She was VP of SFWA from July 1, 2002 to June 30, 2003 and
President of SFWA from July 1, 2003 to June 30, 2005.”

However, a little research showed Capobianco’s correction to be a little on the disingenuous side, which I suspected given his misleading answer concerning the justification for changes to the Nebula award process.  The SF Site reported in 2002:

SFWA Elections 

The results of the SFWA officer elections were announced
on April 27 at the SFWA Business Meeting in Kansas City,
MO. Sharon Lee defeated incumbent Norman Spinrad for
the Presidency. Two other authors received write-in
votes. Catherine Asaro defeated Lee Martindale for the
Vice-Presidency, again with two other (different)
authors receiving write-in votes. Chuck Rothman
(treasurer) and ElizaBeth Gilligan (Secretary) both ran
unopposed. Because of the closeness of the race for
Eastern Regional Director, the election committee has
decided re-balloting will take place in that race.
 Nebula Awards

Only hours after being named Vice President of SFWA,
Catherine Asaro was honored with a Nebula for her novel
The Quantum Rose (Tor).

In other words, Asaro wasn’t the President, she was the Vice President-elect.  Which underlines the point that I was making, which was never that Asaro had somehow abused her position as President, or, as more accurately, Vice President-elect, (I don’t even know how it would have been possible in either case), but  rather that the award that year was a simple popularity contest which led to a mediocre novel being unjustly awarded the Best Novel award.

Gun bans don’t work

A prosecutor from Washington DC recounts his experience with one of the strongest gun bans in the country:

As a former prosecutor in Washington, D.C., who enforced firearms and
ammunition cases while a severe local gun ban was still in effect, I am
skeptical of the benefits that many imagine will result from additional
gun-control efforts. I dislike guns, but I believe that a nationwide
firearms crackdown would place an undue burden on law enforcement and
endanger civil liberties while potentially increasing crime.

The D.C. gun ban, enacted in 1976, prohibited anyone other than
law-enforcement officers from carrying a firearm in the city. Residents
were even barred from keeping guns in their homes for self-defense.

Some in Washington who owned firearms
before the ban were allowed to keep them as long as the weapons were
disassembled or trigger-locked at all times. According to the law,
trigger locks could not be removed for self-defense even if the owner
was being robbed at gunpoint. The only way anyone could legally possess a
firearm in the District without a trigger lock was to obtain written
permission from the D.C. police. The granting of such permission was
rare.

The gun ban had an unintended effect:
It emboldened criminals because they knew that law-abiding District
residents were unarmed and powerless to defend themselves. Violent crime
increased after the law was enacted, with homicides rising to 369 in
1988, from 188 in 1976 when the ban started. By 1993, annual homicides
had reached 454.

As I’ve already shown by citing the international firearms homicide statistics, guns are quite clearly not the problem.  It is absolutely impossible to reasonably claim, with a straight face, that the Obama administration’s push for gun control has anything whatsoever to do with reducing gun deaths in particular or the violence in general.

This is obvious because regardless of whether one looks at Western Europe, Latin America, Australia, the UK, or US cities such as Chicago and Washington DC, gun bans have reliably led to more violence, and often, more firearms homicide.  The logic is not compelling, it is conclusive and inescapable.

And it leads one to the next question.  Since reducing the rate of gun deaths and criminal violence is obviously not the objective of pursuing increased restrictions on firearms and further infringing upon the Second Amendment rights of the American people, what is the real objective?

Now, I know what I believe it to be.  But I’m interested to hear the claims, and the supporting arguments for those claims, from those who believe it to be anything but the eventual disarmament of the American people.