Monster Hunter Vendetta
by Larry Correia
This is book two in Correia's Monster Hunter series. To recap, just about everything that goes bump in the night is real. The government pays mercenaries or "hunters" who kill or capture (mostly kill) monsters. The government also keeps a watchful eye on these mercenaries, often interfering with their activities for "national security" reasons. At every incident with monsters the government is there to clean up the mess, provide cover stories, handle the media and "convince" witnesses that they didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Particularly stubborn witnesses might find themselves "disappeared". The primary mercenary group is Monster Hunter International. They are overseen by the federal government's Monster Control Bureau. Owen Pitt is the hero of the series. He's a former accountant of rather large size, much like the author, who having survived an encounter with a werewolf with his body and soul intact, joined Monster Hunter International. Monster Hunter International is run by the Shackleford family. This includes Julie Shackleford, Owen's love interest and soon to be wife, and her great grandfather Earl Harbinger. Earl is an all around bad$$$ who also happens to be a werewolf. Earl is not eligible for any bounties, not that anyone would be stupid enough to try. In the first book Owen and his team, Julie, his buddy Trip and former stripper Holly, saved the world from being devoured by those beyond. As part of this process a nuclear bomb was detonated in the dimension where the evil Lovecraftian god The Dread Overlord existed. This didn't kill the Dread Overload. But it did make him pretty upset. And Owen Pitt has moved to the top of the evil god's sh**list.
In this book the Dread Overlord has sent its cult and wizards after Pitt. It wants Pitt brought to its dimension. Preferably alive, but not necessarily with all of his limbs. To this end the cult has pulled out all the stops to get Pitt. This means destroying Monster Hunter International and going after Pitt's family. But Pitt is a surly wisea$$ at the best of times. He's not going to sit still while anyone threatens his family, even if said someone is an apparently invulnerable wizard known as the Shadow Man
Humans cause a lot of problems for animals, deliberately and otherwise. But humans can and do save animals' lives, even when there is no direct benefit to doing so.There was a recent example of this human beneficence in Texas, where a golf course superintendent by the name of Craig Loving recently saved a Great Horned Owl that had gotten tangled up in a fishing line that someone had stupidly left around.
Given the size and fierceness of this particular owl it's a good thing that apparently the owl realized that Mr. Loving was trying to help it. Loving is not any sort of animal handling professional, just someone who stepped up to do the right thing.
When Craig Loving heard that there was a frightened Great Horned Owl trapped in the local golf course pond, he sprung into action. Without thinking twice, Craig jumped into the water and waded out to the helpless bird. Craig noticed that the owl's foot was entangled in a heap of fishing wire and knew that he had to work fast. But he also had to proceed carefully and use extreme caution.
The Lost Creek Country Club in Austin, Texas, posted the rescue online and praised Craig for his bravery. Numerous people chimed in, thanking him for what he did.
"The owl had been sitting in that location all night and into the day, when two of our employees, Devin and Dora, realized the owl was caught on fishing line. No wildlife rescue professionals were available, so Craig saved the day. Lost Creek Country Club cares about wildlife, and we are so thankful this owl was saved! Great job, Craig!"
Watch video below.
As we have discussed previously I do not think that every last single person who voted for Donald Trump as President is a snarling Neanderthal racist. Although it is tempting to think so sometimes, if that were really the case then people who did not and do not support Trump would be giving up on the possibility of ever convincing Trump supporters to vote for non-racist candidates. And given that Presidential elections are decided by winning a majority of state electoral votes and not by winning the raw majority of voters, a Democratic Presidential candidate must figure out how to at least staunch the Democratic vote losses among whites, particularly in the Midwest and South and maximize voter turnout among Blacks and Hispanics Often those goals seem to be impossible to reach at the same time. The problem is that some unknowable portion of the people who voted for Trump indeed are snarling Neanderthal racists or nihilists who are perfectly happy to drill holes in the hull of the ship and drown as long as their hated liberal rivals also drown with them.
Neither of these types can be reached by reasoned debate or political horse trading. And on some level it's dangerous to try. After all their issues are not so much political as they are cultural and racial. They do not really accept the legitimacy of the political system or the legitimacy of non-white citizenship. I was reminded of these two subgroups of Trump voters by two separate incidents.The first involved a North Carolina Klan Leader, Chris Barker.
68 Kill
directed by Trent Haaga
Violent indie movie with great acting and obvious yet important message
There are two things you need to know upfront about this low budget award winning independent film. The first is that it is a very violent film. People die. People get very badly hurt. The camera doesn't shy away from that. In some aspects this is like a depraved live action adult Looney Tunes cartoon adaptation. So if a person whacking someone else upside the head or in the kidneys with a golf club because they are admittedly a sick evil individual makes you queasy, then you know what to do. The second is that by making most of the female characters more compelling and far more aggressive than the primary male character this film reverses the usual gender stereotypes and assumptions. Combine that with the fact that most of the women are also morally depraved and physically dangerous then you have a film that, if it had mostly male villains, would likely be cheered in some quarters as honest truth telling. But because the women are mostly bad some people called the film misogynistic. I didn't feel that way but that's just me. I can only call it like I see it. The film doesn't posit that women as a group are better or worse then men. It did very strongly suggest that one particular man needed to make better choices about the women he trusted and which body part did his thinking for him. I didn't expect the story to be as strong as it was. So that was a pleasant surprise.
Women in 68 Kill use sex to mark territory and express dominance. If you appreciate works by people such as Tim Dorsey, Bill Fitzhugh, and yes Tarantino then you might be able to accept some of the film's choices This was an adaptation of a novel by Bryan Smith. It's an absurd pulpy cheap romantic crime caper film. It also has elements of horror, comedy and strangely enough a coming of age storyline.
The Dark Tower
directed by Nikolaj Arcel
This film is both based on and in some aspects a sequel to Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. King has alternately described the series as his magnum opus and stated that sequels to many of his other works can be found within. I haven't finished this book series though it is one of my sister's favorites. King has placed references to and explanations of this series in many of his other novels. This series, or at least the books I've read, combines King's gifts for both High and Low art. In fact you could even say that it blows away those arbitrary distinctions. It's pretty complex stuff with dense plot, conflicted characters who don't necessarily fall into neat boxes of good or evil, detailed universe building and intricate mythologies with lots of backstory. As with the Gormenghast or A Song of Ice and Fire works, some people thought that The Dark Tower series was essentially impossible to adapt to the screen. Almost by definition someone working in the visual arts would be unable to translate the soul of King's words to the big screen.
Because I have not completed The Dark Tower series I didn't have a solid idea in my head about what should be included in a movie adaptation. I had no fierce feeling about which characters should be included or dropped or how they should look or act, with the exception of the primary good and bad guy, Roland and Walter O'Dim. Probably if I had read all of the books I would have much stronger ideas about what the director and writers should have done with the source material. But in this case ignorance was bliss. Or at least it could have been.
An umbrella grouping of right wingers, including but not limited to college Republicans, neo-Nazis, Alt-Right supporters, neo-Confederates, white nationalists, and others descended on the University of Virginia campus at Charlottesville over the weekend to protest the planned removal of the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, military leader of the most violent rebellion in U.S. history, and proud slave owner and white nationalist. This was part of their Unite the Right program, which as you might imagine is designed to rebuild the Right into more of a pure expression of white nationalism and separatism. Some would probably argue that the Right doesn't have too far to go in that regard anyway. Shouting such catchy slogans as "White Lives Matter" and "Jew will not replace us" along with all of the normal racist and anti-Semitic slurs which are common for them, the white nationalists scuffled with police. But of course the police were not the true target of their hatred.
The white nationalists had come ready for a fight, or had rather come ready to hurt people since almost none of them appeared interested in a fair fight. They assaulted counterprotesters of all colors with bats, sticks, fists, and poles, apparently particularly the black ones of course. In a move that was grabbed from the ISIS playbook one of the terrorists, James Alex Fields, also deliberately drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, wounding several and killing one Heather Heyer. Despite all of this violence coming from the right, President Trump could not and did not manage to specifically condemn the white supremacist violence. He only mumbled something about condemning the bigotry coming from all sides.
As you may have noticed President Trump and North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un have been trading insults and threats over the past few weeks about just how bad they're going to curb stomp the other country. Kim has made threats to attack Guam while Trump has said that any North Korean bad behavior will be met by fire and fury the likes of which the world hasn't seen. Trump says that the US military is locked, loaded and ready to go. Many people, both intelligent and not, attacked Trump's statements as unpresidential. They were. But at the same time if someone is threatening your country you're probably going to threaten them back. There tends to be an expectation among some experts that whatever Trump says will be wrong. That's usually a pretty good expectation. But in the case of the North Korean regime there has been a decades long bipartisan failure to prevent what the U.S. sees as bad behavior by North Korea. North Korea has nukes. North Korea isn't giving up its nukes. North Korea has been continuing to test missiles. Those missiles have been getting better and better. This is simply not a problem that Trump created though he is certainly capable of making things worse.
There may have been, sixty years ago, a small window to settle the North Korean question militarily on terms favorable to the United States, as Douglas MacArthur would have told you (and did tell other people), but in the current day with a nuclear armed Russia and China, that window has likely closed.
