Category → Family
It’s summer, have fun
Good antidote to miserable politics, your garden. On the left are cut up peaches from one of our trees, destined for the chest freezer. On the right are a potful of ripe tomatoes and basil, plucked from the garden this evening and destined to become a delicious red sauce.
Cucumbers and tomatoes and a pile of peaches came in from the back yard tonight.
I agree with you, politics is sucking all the air and happiness out of people. Whether you live in Ireland, where the government is clearly working overtime against the vast majority of the citizens who live and come from the Emerald Isle, or you live in America, where the government is clearly working overtime against the interests of all of the people who grew up here or who immigrated here legally, it is evident that democratic processes in every single democratic nation were used to achieve undemocratic outcomes that favor big money interests.
If you like your democracy, and you want to keep your democracy, it is now clear that you will not be allowed to have democracy unless you become just as ruthless as the evil people who are ripping you off.
Wasn’t the whole purpose of representative government to avoid physical violence for political control, and use voting as a substitute? For the better of us all? I guess that attempted murder of President Trump opened a lot of eyes… looks like some bad people are desperate to keep him from getting into office like The People want.
Well, it’s summertime and despite the scary efforts to erase democracy worldwide, we can and should still have fun. Summer county fairs are a wonderful place to spend a hot afternoon and cool evening, with live music and naughty food. I am looking forward to the Eastern Traditional Archery Rendezvous, which starts this Thursday in Oregon Hill, at the ski place thing. Traditional Archery people come from all around the world to just fling arrows at targets (my favorite is the 3-D Bigfoot at 85 yards), buy new or replacement kit, get a new bow for a special upcoming hunt, or to listen to the archery greats explain their techniques. There’s also trick shooting demonstrations, which really will take your breath away. Serious talent.
And running simultaneously, unfortunately, is the “new” Kempton Gunmakers Fair, in Kempton, PA. This is the replacement for the very long running Dixon’s black powder Rendezvous in the same area. I intend to take some blacksmithing classes on making traditional knives there, as well as check up on how the 62-caliber flintlock British Sporting Rifle is coming along. It’s been in the works for 18 months, so it must be really taking shape. The man making it is a very well known black powder gunmaker. For those who don’t know, these are the kind of guns that require the old fashioned gun powder to be poured down the barrel, and which often have flintlocks with a real piece of flint that makes a spark that lights gunpowder in a pan (“he’s just a flash in the pan” comes from a flash that failed to ignite the main charge of powder you had just poured down the barrel). These are not real dangerous guns. The last time one killed somebody was in 1812 or thereabouts. Although Mark Twain did have a humorous warning about “safe” old guns hung above the fireplace accidentally bagging grandma in her rocking chair. They are not toys, but they are not weapons of modern war, either.
Anyhow, go on an git, git on out to the local county fair, or to some summertime evening live music. Maybe there’s a park waiting for you and someone you care about to go have a picnic. Summer’s just about 2/3 over, and you better git while the gittin’s good.
I have been enjoying working in my garden and fruit trees, when I don’t have to share them with swarms of vermin. Today I watched birds eat four beautiful peaches, despite my attempts to drive them away. The squirrels are on temporary hiatus, probably scheming to come grab everything tomorrow morning before I wake up.
Harvest time is natural, healthy
Shirey’s blueberry patch in Linden, PA. You-pick for about two to three weeks every summer. Strawberries are across Rt 15
Until a hundred years ago, just about everyone in western civilization had some sort of garden and fruit trees. Growing your own food is as old as human agriculture, roughly ten thousand years. Maybe more. Point being, being self reliant and engaged with Nature in natural cycles is a healthy and natural thing for us to do today.
Our fruit trees have been ravaged by hordes of unnaturally over abundant squirrels this year. So far they have eaten all our cherries, all of our MacIntosh and Winesap apples, and two thirds of our peaches. None of the fruits were close to ripe, but to a verminous feral rodent, they are edible. It’s quite frustrating.
The garden is putting out regular vegetables now. Zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, butternut squash. A few groundhogs have tried to muscle in, and have found themselves in a very new and distant home.
The “Zen” and personal health of gardening is a well discussed subject, and all I can add is that I too find gardening greatly rewarding. Our produce is organic, natural, and the fruit of our own labors. We water daily and constantly fuss with the plants. We eat or can what we harvest. Very natural, and rewarding.
Last week I visited someone else’s garden, Shirey’s blueberry field in Linden, PA. In 45 minutes my bucket had 6.5 pounds of freshly ripe blueberries I myself had picked in the blazing sun. It was 99 degrees in the sun, and I had no more energy to stand in it picking fruit. On a cooler day I have picked roughly twelve pounds of berries, most of which go into blueberry jam I make. Some are eaten fresh, and some are frozen for eating with pancakes.
Being outside is healthy and necessary for all humans. Some sunshine is necessary for creating Vitamin D, critical to the function of our brain and body. Vitamin D is actually a hormone, and a deficiency is a big risk to your health. So being outside gardening, picking fruits and vegetables, cultivating and husbanding your own food, is essential to having a clear mind and a healthy body.
Sweet corn is coming soon.
Wildlife biologist Aldo Leopold said that he knew civilization had ended when people no longer had to split their own firewood to stay warm in the winter, and had only to rely on a tiny switch on the wall to achieve exactly the temperature they wanted. Hard work, self reliance, producing things of use and value, all add meaning to our lives. Growing and picking food is a small but important statement about not being historic roadkill.
One dad’s Father’s Day question to young Americans
Hi kids. Today is Father’s Day, a card company-inspired day for Americans to spend money on things like cards and gifts. It is a blatantly commercial event, but in the grand scheme of things, there are worse things to celebrate than fatherhood. Like an entire month dedicated to a person’s private sexual practices. I can make a strong case for June being Gardening Month.
Along with Motherhood, Fatherhood has been the guiding idea of the healthy and safe human family for probably close to a hundred thousand years: Physical protection from predatory animals and humans, life guidance in a world full of pitfalls and confusion, passing on skills and knowledge in a competitive world where making a living to stay alive and out of poverty is not easy. In short, fathers have been the other half of a successful family since the dawn of our species.
So don’t forget to call, email, text, or send a card to your dad today. Show some appreciation, even if your dad is occasionally foolish, an assh*le, selfish, whatever. The truth is, this man created you (with your mother), and you are here only because of him. Your life exists because of him.
So, in my role as a dad I have a question for the young people in America right now: Why are any of you supporting the main source of uncertainty that you face in the world’s greatest nation?
America went from a powerful and successful economy in 2020 to a continued and purposeful self-destructive free-fall from 2021 to today, with high inflation that eats away at the value of the Dollar in your pocket, fewer and fewer jobs, fewer good jobs, higher fees and taxes, millions of illegal invaders pouring over our borders who impose huge costs directly on you, and a huge amount of uncertainty now facing you.
There is just one source for all of this uncertainly: The political Left, which includes the mainstream media, academia, the government schools, the teacher’s unions, government bureaucracies, and the Democrat Party.
Not to mention all of the censorship, the attempt to control your words, your thoughts, your freedom to spend your money the way you want, your freedom to travel when and how you want. I could go on, but there is just one source for all of this effort to control everything you do and think and say: The political Left.
You say that abortion is your number one issue? Why? What on earth makes you feel empowered about ending the life of another person on demand, on a whim, without any thought or consideration? Don’t you think this is a weak approach to a literal life-and-death issue?
Did your parents treat you like a whim and just tear your little body apart and flush you down a drain? No, because you are here reading these words, probaby because your Father and Mother valued you and your presence on Planet Earth as a living human.
And if you think abortion is a constitutional issue, well, that has been dealt with in recent years. You can choose to live in a state that supports abortion on demand, if that is what is most important to you. As a dad, I find this a confusing motivator, but each to her own…just how many abortions do you plan on having?
For the constitutionally uneducated, abortion is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, mostly because abortion was frowned upon for the vast amount of human existence. Especially in 1787, when the Constitution was being ratified. Children (like you, who were not aborted and are therefore reading these words here and now) were almostly always welcome, not seen as burdens.
But the argument can and has been made that abortion involves some self-rule over one’s body, because the Constitution blocks the government from having unfettered access to your person, place, and things, and it is hard to argue with that on principle. And so abortion has become legal in many places. This is the Yin and Yang of a dynamic America.
Consider how your perception of abortion rights compares to the general mainstream media discussion of self defense and firearm rights, which the Second Amendment expressly says “...shall not be infringed...” while in Pennsylvania our state constitution says the right to own and carry firearms “...shall not be questioned...” Universal abortion rights are presented as absolute and unquestioned, despite being found nowhere in our founding documents or debates, while the mainstream media complex constantly presents private citizens owning guns as completely up for debate, even though this is an actual right expressly enshrined in our founding documents.
This has been a bit of a digression from our initial question above, but the point has to be made, especially for young people: How you perceive yourself and your rights and your freedom and opportunities is largely influenced by the far-Left that has a death grip on academia, schools, and media.
As a loving dad on Father’s Day today, I encourage the young people who have stumbled upon this essay to really consider your future. Think hard and long about the causes of your scary future and the bedrock support most of us get from our family and dad. The political Left and its primary agent, the Democrat Party, is at war with family, with motherhood, with fatherhood, with your economic future and your personal freedoms and choices.
Everyone else is extending a helping hand to you. This essay is my way, as a loving, caring and understanding father, of helping you young people get your bearings. You know this, and you should vote like you know this.
To all the dads out there: Today we all salute you, and thank you, for doing your best to help guide us through our life.
Insurrectionist Democrat Party part 2
In 1865 the Republican Party ended the first Democrat Party insurrection by taking away the Democrats’ African slaves and defeating the Democrats in the Civil War. But instead of putting a stake through the vampire’s heart, and ending the Democrat Party’s culture of lawlessness and insurrection, the GOP got all soft and sad faced for the po widdle Democwats. And despite a hundred subsequent years of Democrat Party Jim Crow, KKK, lynchings, beatings, and voter suppression, the GOP looked the other way.
And the Democrat Party never forgave the Republicans, and so now here we are again, Democrat Party Insurrection Part Two. Not only a stolen election in 2020, and not only the weaponization of the entire federal government against Democrat Party political opponents, and not only opening the American borders wide so that the American people can be replaced by illegals who will vote for more lawlessness, but now we have the first time ever in American history that a sitting president is trying to jail his opponent.
Yes, yesterday’s fake conviction of President Trump was 360 degrees of fake crimes, fake evidence, fake process, a fake and deeply corrupt judge who screamed at the defense counsel, threatened to jail the defense witnesses, and who allowed all kinds of illegal behavior by the prosecution. But the conviction is still very real, because if they can, the Democrats will indeed put Preisdent Donald Trump in jail. These are lawless people who engage in lawlessness for a concrete purpose. They are not half heartedly fooling around.
So what happens if the insurrectionist Democrat Party is successful in jailing their political opponent Donald Trump? Do you really believe they will stop at that person? If the GOP fails to mount a vigorous offense in response, then the entire method and purpose of the Democrat Party will be focused on fake accusations against Republicans everywhere, and then jailing them in kangaroo courts. After that, the Democrat Party gets what it was after in 1861, when they started the first American Civil War – full control.
If you are a normal American and are shocked at the lawlessness you are witnessing, then the real simple response is a) stop voting for Democrat candidates, b) stop donating to the Democrat Party and its many subsidiaries, and c) get involved and fight back any way you can, whether it is running for school board or dog catcher. This has to be a bottom-up response to the attempted elimination of Trump, because you cannot look to elected Republicans for answers. The GOP culture is weak and wussy and timid. So YOU need to succeed, or we will watch this Democrat Party Insurrection Part Two succeed where they failed in the past.
And if you think Republicans are all mean and wacist n stuff, nonsense, just wait until these fascist Democrats have their hands around your family’s throat… then you will understand MAGA and Tea Party and NRA etc.
Get crackin’, ‘Merica..
Don’t bite the flag that feeds ya
Tomorrow is Memorial Day, dedicated to remembering the many many sacrifices of military service personnel who from the beginning of America to right now have protected you, me, our kids, our lifestyle, and enabled us to pursue the American dream.
Because we American citizens are not required to serve our fellow Americans in any way, it seems that a great many Americans have forgotten about what it takes to keep this huge country going, or maybe they don’t even care about it.
Extreme examples of Americans showing their purposeful disrespect to America used to be limited to smelly hippies from successful families, who could afford to pose and posture and virtue signal. Today, huge swaths of Americans outright trash their own country and actually call for its destruction. Across America we have daily reports of teachers banning the American flag from their classroom, American school administrators banning the American flag from school sports events and uniforms. We even have a report this week about Brooke Merrell, director of Denali National Park in Alaska, ordering a road construction crew to remove American flags from their vehicles.
This disrespect and bizarre virtue signaling is a sign of a deep sickness taking over America. You cannot possibly hate yourself and also simultaneously succeed. You cannot bite the flag that feeds you, and also expect to have plenty more to eat any time you want it. Americans hating America is suicidal.
A request: Young people who consider the American flag to be all bad and everything, racist and other nonsense, try giving your flag respect today and tomorrow. Take a 24 hour break from being careless with such a powerful and meaningful symbol, full of sacrifice for you, and instead show it appreciation. I guarantee doing this will change some things inside of you. Some good things. Some needed things. The people who died for your comfort would appreciate it, just as you would had you been the one to die in battle for America.
Monument to unknown soldiers at Valley Forge Military Park, 1777-1778. Photo by Author
“Fall Guy” movie review
I did it, I went and saw a movie at a theater. Notify the media.
Partly out of a commitment to celebrate Mother’s Day in whatever way the Princess of Patience-Mother wanted on her special day, and yes, she wanted to see a movie, and in particular this one. And partly out of an almost morbid fascination with the ever more gruesome demise of Hollywood, its actors, its writers, its physical space (I know it well and have hiked from poopy-needly-trashy West Hollywood up to and through Runyon Canyon and back, many times), its culture, its leaders, etc. In general, Hollywood and its dreck movies, people, and physical space is something I avoid on principle.
But what the heck, for ten bucks I could go see the freak show, and also make my Princess of Patience aka Mother happy.
However, I was pleasantly surprised on this now rare trip to Regal Theaters in Harrisburg. Not only were the theaters clean, the employees friendly and easy, and the fellow movie guests well behaved, the movie itself was actually worth seeing.
“Fall Guy” is one of the rare funny, wholesome, entertaining movies to come out of un-natural disaster Hollywood in a long time. If you want to simply be entertained by a movie, without being hectored, lectured, propagandized, indoctrinated, lied to, talked down to, then Fall Guy is for you.
If my rusty memory serves me now, making entertaining movies was really at the core of Hollywood’s business model. Once upon a time. Like fifty years ago or more. With Hollywood both captured/ owned by China now, and also going broke because its actors, writers, et al are at war with America, it was reassuring to see some evidence of sanity there. Someone made this movie to actually appeal to Americans, and make some money along the way.
Fall Guy is done tongue in cheek, deliberately mocking Hollywood and movies in every way, and in one especially (Spoiler Alert) pleasing way: The movie’s two villains are truly villainous, bad, evil people: The silver tongued movie producer, and the secretly dull witted, incompetent high paid big name actor. Ah ha, we knew it already after listening to Robert DeNiro incoherently blab away about politicians and political and cultural issues he doesn’t understand last week, despite the now annual Oscars debacle. But it is nice to see that some people in Hollywood are willing to admit to their sins, in the form of a movie, if not in person.
Fall Guy is about a stunt man who loves a woman on set. He screws up, they get separated, and they end up back together on another movie set. The movie plot deliberately zigs and zags between serving up touchy feely girl feeling scenes that left my head uncontrollably lolling about like my spine had been snatched away from my neck, and death defying action and fight scenes, outstanding stunt scenes, and physical comedy that had me sitting erect in my seat, alert and happy enough to forget all about the sappy girl stuff that had been putting a wooden stake through my heart just moments before.
It is two hours long, which worked fine for me. An evening out should be worth it.
When we left the theater with the other couple also watching Fall Guy, it was well after midnight. The entire Regal Cinemas Theater building was shut down, the lights were out, no other movies were playing, no staff were visible or heard, and we were completely alone. We had the entire place to ourselves. For a moment I had this instinctive impulse to run amok in there, in personally gratifying ways that are not destructive. But alas, I am almost a responsible old guy, and was reminded of this by Mother, bless her matronly always responsible way, who gently led me by the elbow out the front door and into the dark and rainy night on my sudden discontent.
My heart sank when I heard the theater door lock shut behind me. No more fun for you here, the klatch locking sound said. I don’t recall having experienced that feeling at a movie theater in many years.
Congratulations, Hollywood and Fall Guy makers.
“Higher Education” is dead
What was over-generously called “higher education” since the 1950s, when a college degree became the American standard and cultural norm for most coastal kids and the middle-America elites, has died. Also known as “the academy” and “academia” and the “ivory tower,” colleges and universities across America have just collectively rolled over, died, and begun to stink badly like the unburied rotting corpses they are.
How did this entire nation-wide network of institutions suddenly give up the ghost? Because of a known but unanswered, unaddressed, uncured cancerous rot inside of it that began in the 1920s, and hit its zenith in the past few weeks. The cancerous rot metastesized, spread throughout the body of each college and university, and finally killed the host. We who are reading this essay now have with our own eyes just witnessed the mass die-off of the species once known as higher education. We have seen it happen on the news, in first-hand documentary reports by participants and observers alike, on social media, and in the first-hand experiences college kids have relayed back to their friends and families.
What happened?
To start with, “higher education” became neither higher, nor education. Instead of having quantifiably elite thinkers spending time carefully training students measurable skills, especially critical thinking skills designed to have well-trained students capable of unemotionally resolving complex problems, colleges long ago began indoctrinating students with toxic cultural slogans and bullsh*t political narratives.
Such indoctrination strips away the thin veneer of Western Civilization, and appeals to the most base animal instincts all humans have, and which Westerners have long since buried deep and far away from our daily lives. This indoctrination taps into the most raw feelings of hate, anger, and a sadistic desire for personal retribution that people can have. We saw the full results of this indoctrination in the Nazi gas chambers and concentration camps, the Socialist Soviet gulags, the killing fields of Cambodian communist Pol Pot. Nazis and Communists alike enjoyed the help of children denouncing their own parents, because the toxic indoctrination was so deep.
This indoctrination in America began in the 1920s with the penetration of Marxists and communists into education at all levels, as they appealed to normal people’s acceptance of strange versions of “fairness” and “compassion.” And after that, the cancer simply metastesized and spread. Sure, we had some heroes like Senator Joseph McCarthy who tried to warn Americans about what was happening. But McCarthy and other patriots like him who tried to diagnose and treat the cancer were shouted down and shamed by the mass media and entertainment industries, which before the academy had already been penetrated and quietly occupied by Marxists and Communists. Who spread the indoctrination in their own way.
So over the past few months and weeks, Americans have watched the result of all the indoctrination in every single academic field, to the point where even math is said to be “racist.” The premier, most elite, “best” examples of so-called higher education literally emerged in the past weeks from decades of politicized hiring and indoctrination as living examples of Lord of the Flies. Amid hysterical shreiks of young women and mooing noises of young men, civilization is tossed overboard while students, faculty, and administrators alike contort into a frenzied violent orgy of racist hate and anti-American slogans.
These schools are not institutions of higher thinking, high principles, or anything else rooted in Western Civilization. They are now hives of terrorist training. And the shreiks and moos of bratty, spoiled children.
Best representative examples include former Harvard president, Claudine Gay, engaging in pathetic moral relativism in Congress, only to then get outed as a serial plagiarist and lose her president job, but then keep her $900,000 a year job “teaching” utter garbage and subjective nonsense at Harvard. To save her feelings, if not her students. Everything that happened around and after the Claudine Gay Incident revealed Harvard to be the exact opposite of an elite institution. Claudine Gay’s humiliation was months ago, before the nationwide college campus hatefest and orgy of violence began.
Another example is the nationwide college campus hatefest and orgy of violence we all get to see every day now. It’s not just that a few radicalized young people are doing this destructive assault on our civilization. It is that large portions of the students are enabled by their faculty and administrators alike to act like savage wild beasts. That is, those adults (the college professors and administrators) who are supposedly the best embodiment of elite education and higher values are themselves actual Nazis and communist Stalinists, all rolled into one angry, bizarre, gobbledigook speaking and acting person.
(To say nothing of the daily neo-Nazi Islamofascist violence visited upon major capitol cities worldwide. Especially on bridges and major city streets, and often filled with the same students, faculty, and administrators that are seen and felt on campus.)
Instead of using their leadership roles to diffuse the illegal and policy-breaking violence and racism, the college professors and administrators enable and promote it, usually joining the overgrown children themselves. And often repeating or teaching the overgrown children the indoctrination’s disinformation, lies, and fake political narratives at the core of the “protest” activities. And so, we see a total vertical breakdown of almost all “higher education” institutions, from the highest overpaid and underworked administrator to the untenured part time adjunct faculty to the first year middle income spoiled brat: Everyone involved in college today is a useless windbag with no discernable skills or value to larger society, but full of disinformation coming out of their ears.
But boy, do those “higher education” institutions sure charge a lot of money! What a scam!
Now that the mask is off, and we Americans see what a load of horse crap a college “education” is, here is what we can learn and apply:
- Parents: Don’t send your children or your hard-earned money to college, unless your child has a high aptitude for math, science, or technology, and will only study those subjects.
- Parents: Don’t expect your college graduate children to be able to do much for themselves or for society or for you, but to actually be a liability.
- Parents: Explore trade school for your kid. And if your kid does not have an aptitude for math, science, or technology, then teach them yourself how to work hard, save money, forego immediate gratification, and to plan ahead. Help them find a job where they can be themselves and succeed.
- College-age kids: Question authority and motive, especially of your teachers and their administrators, and always respect and appreciate your parents. And whatever you do, don’t go to college, because your brain will end up as dead and useless as those “higher education” institutions have become, and you will end up as a dumb loser with high debt for something that did not benefit you. Yes, you might feel that being throw-away cannon fodder for the anti-America movement is exciting, but this is only a flash of a moment. After this is over, your reputation will be in tatters and your future will be a big question mark. Your future will be as dead as the college that made it.
The “getting old sucks” saga continues
Yesterday, while trying to support local businesses that employee people, I tried out some bricks and mortar stores for size. Looking for a shower brush or large loofa, in several stores I was directed by the nice employees to the shelves containing the toilet bowl brushes. Not one to be easily deterred, I moved on to a store promisingly named “Bath and Body.”
In this store many women happily paused or even languished among pyramids of pretty soap bars, assortments of scented candles in all shapes and sizes, containers of liquid bath soaps and gels, including one in the shape of an elephant. Which I will admit caught my fancy. After I had bulldozed through to the back, without stopping to smell the roses, so to say, I asked a very nice lady employee wearing an apron where I could find such uncommon items as back scratchers, shower brushes, loofas and so on.
Quite seriously, she instructed me to go next door to Marshall’s, and she practically gave me the precise coordinates for what she promised would be the shelves containing exactly what I sought. I thanked her profusely and scurried next door, and followed her step-by-step directions to the correct shelf.
Being presented with the Pet Care products, which in the lady’s defense do contain an assortment of unique brushes and special pet tooth heavy tartar toothpastes for especially bad dog breath, I had to ask myself if, in my dotage, I now really do present a feral image. Or did that nice lady just have a wicked sense of humor. One thing for sure, getting old sucks.
Where men in their late fifties are now supposed to shop for personal care products: Marshall’s pet grooming and care section
DUNE 2 review
Dune captured my young imagination like no other book- not Tolkien’s trilogy, not Starship Troopers, and like Tolkien’s books and Starship Troopers, Dune shaped just about every subsequent sci-fi book, movie, comic book that followed.
Several attempts have been made to capture Dune’s magic in movie form. Prior to the latest two movies, the best known and best produced was the 1984 version with all-star cast Kyle MacLachlan, Sean Young, Sting, Jose Ferrer, Brad Dourif, Richard Jordan, Patrick Stewart, Jurgen Prochnow, Kenneth McMillan, Sian Phillips, Freddie Jones, Linda Hunt, Jack Nance, and other stellar actors. Look up any of these names and you find a talented lifetime actor with lots of real acting gigs to their credit. And as expected, the 1984 Dune movie was very well acted, much better than the latest versions.
Where the 1984 movie was deficient were some of the special effects, and yet some of its special effects were so good that they are repeated in the latest two Dune movies. Fact is, special effects have really improved since 1984, and of course this is where the 2021+2024 Dune movies shine.
If the 1984 Dune movie struggled to get everything just right and onto the screen in a logical flow, which sometimes left it congested, Dune 2 simply ignores certain critical story elements and throws scenes up on the wall, take them or leave them. There is a lot of character and story development in 1984 Dune that is absent in Dune 2.
One scene I was hoping to see is where Fayd Rautha is confronted by the last three Atreides warriors in his gladiator ring, and one of them is not drugged. That fighter just about kills Fayd in the knife fight. In the book that scene takes time to play out, and one gets the impression that Fayd is too used to mock-fighting drugged opponents who cannot possibly bring their full skills or physical power to bear against him. In Dune 2, Fayd just rolls right over his opponents 1-2-3, and there, it’s done. No suspense, no close calls, no embedded darts being painfully but artfully used as improvised armor against Fayd’s quick blade.
The Mentats are pretty much nowhere to be found in Dune 2, which is odd. Dune makes it clear up front that computers and artificial intelligence were banned from human possession, because the computers tried to kill off all the humans and take over their planets. Which gave rise to the Mentats, human computers whose loyalty is first and foremost to fellow humans. Dune 1984 does an outstanding job showing the central role of the Mentats, whereas Dune 2 has none.
One of the biggest deficiencies in Dune 2 is the final battle between Paul and the Fremen, and the Emperor’s forces. Little of the battlefield set-up is explained in Dune 2, and the action just kind of rolls along. The sand worms show up, but not grandly. Maybe the director expects the audience has prior knowledge of the storyline? Plus there are way too many lasers used in Dune 2, because as we do already know, if a laser hits a personal shield, an atomic explosion happens at both ends, killing both parties. Thus, knives and swords were much more handy. I guess lasers look too cool on the big screen to pass up, even if they are not in keeping with the book.
Or Dune 2 could have incorporated the original “weirding” voice module, the Atreides’ secret weapon that is both super high tech and weirdly organic. Dune 1984 did a great job showing how the weirding module greatly enhanced the Fremen fighting ability, thereby enabling them to take on the fully armed Harkonnens. None of this is in Dune 2, strangely.
The 1984 movie ending is far, far superior to the ending of Dune 2: Paul’s raw power is displayed in his fight with Fayd Rautha, whereas in Dune 2 a lot of stuff just doesn’t make sense. Like how does Fayd stab Paul so many times, and why doesn’t the scene follow the book, which is so good, and why doesn’t Paul cut loose after killing Fayd, crushing him and the stone floor with just his voice, thereby demonstrating his overwhelming physical/mystical messianic power…instead of just kind of standing there looking over his defeated enemies….? Curious minds want to know.
Nothing in Dune 2 shows Paul’s slow discovery and then development of his messianic powers, despite that being the entire purpose of the Dune story. Nine hundred generations of careful breeding and genetic modification were supposed to result in the messiah, who could bend space and time on his own, and in Dune and the 1984 Dune, those responsible for creating Paul are amazed that he actually happened. I am amazed that Dune 2 shows its audience almost none of this important part of the overall story. Paul’s emergence and ascent as the universe’s messianic all-powerful super-being leader is the entire point of Dune. How did it evade the producers of Dune 2?
Dune 2 should have just taken the 1984 film and used every scene, every prop, every script and line, and simply updated the actors and the special effects. Oh well. Opportunity missed.
Well, I paid fourteen bucks to go see a Hollywood movie. First one of 2024 and probably going to be the only Hollywood movie I see this year. Regal Cinemas now has assigned seats, which in theory is a nice thing, and which in the theater itself bore no resemblance to the seating map offered on the computer screen when buying my ticket. I did get to sit up front and enjoy the effect of a full size movie screen, which is a lot of fun. It is a shame the movie was not what I expected, or what it could have been, or should have been.
Nice consolation is that I can watch my 1984 Dune DVD at home, as well as watch the excellent cut scenes on YouTube. Hate to say it, Dune 1984 is in many ways much better than today’s Dune 2, but Dune 2 is worth seeing, if you have any affinity for the Dune story. It’s all fun.
Fayd Rautha (Sting) having fun biting Paul (Kyle MacLachlan) in the 1984 Dune last knife fight
Easter & Passover = Time for American Renewal
America as a representative, constitutional republic run by The People is being purposefully killed by the Biden Administration. In case the horrible inflation and scary economy and ATF cold blooded murder-execution of Bryan Malinowski in his bedroom did not grab your attention recently, maybe today’s headlines will: Joe Biden declared today to be a “transgender day of visibility,” despite today actually being Easter.
A more grotesque and purposefully evil statement could not be imagined, but then again, what evil haven’t we seen with Joe Biden. Sorry to the transgender people out there, but today is a major Christian holiday, and to flaunt hypersexual nonsense at the expense of America’s founding belief system is a major slap in the face of all Americans.
If Biden’s bizarre effort to outright ignore Easter and flaunt hyper sexuality seems to you like a big political risk for very little political gain, you are correct. What you are forgetting is that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election and has not felt accountable to voters ever since. This first-ever bizarre day of trans whatever nonsense is what politicians do when they believe they are not going to experience electoral pushback. And if you steal elections, you don’t feel accountable, and you just do whatever crazy crap you want to do. Like tyrants everywhere else.
America is in huge trouble. Enormous trouble. Who the hell ever saw a president so deeply committed to destroying the foundations of America, as well as its national defense, the rights of its citizens, its economy, etc? Joe Biden is not some aberration, he is being inflicted on America in order to destroy us as a people and as a nation. Joe Biden’s constant assault on America is not sustainable, and you should not think that America is too big to fail. You are watching America be failed on purpose right in front of your face.
Easter is based on Passover, which is right around the corner. Easter is more theological and Passover is more about national identity, and I think this year, these two holidays can, and must, together, mark an American spiritual, cultural, and political renewal that is borne out at the ballot box this November. Christians can pray that a free constitutional America rises again, and Jews can pray that a lawlessly brutal and sadistic federal government is defeated by The People, so that The People can go free and live their American lives as was envisioned from the beginning in 1776.
Hopefully enough Christians and Jews recognize that Easter and Passover of 2024 are uniquely placed to prompt them, you, us, to have a spiritual and national renewal, and that such a renewal allows us to throw off Joe Biden’s slave chains, so that we Americans can be a free people once more. This renewal must be implemented at the ballot box this November. The rejection of Joe Biden’s bizarre un-American/ anti-American values must be so overwhelming that there is no hope of his election cheating again this November.