SugarFree
Continuing my deep dive into crap horror born of reading Paperbacks From Hell by Grady Hendrix, I read Night of the Crabs by Guy N. Smith.
This scene of erotic crab horror appears nowhere in the text.
A 1976 entry into the “Attack of the Giant Whatevers” genre, the plot follows the plucky adventures of two loving newlyweds on the honeymoon in Wales who are immediately dragged to their watery doom and eaten. Inconvenienced, his uncle, Professor Cliff Davenport, swings into action to solve the disappearances. At his bed and breakfast, he meets the impossibly winsome divorcee, Pat Benson–intrepid, immediately loyal and sexually voracious, Pat insists on helping him solve the mystery of the missing newlyweds. (After they figure out it was giant crabs, the newlyweds are never mentioned again.)
After a sexually charged morning of looking at giant crab tracks and watching a hobo, the couple goes back to the beach later that night to try and see the giant crabs for themselves.
It was after eleven o’clock when they left Mrs Jones’s private hotel. The night was warm and the moon was just beginning to come up over the mountains, casting its silvery glow across the whole countryside.
Cliff Davenport had a sports jacket over his open-necked shirt and was wearing flannels and pumps. Pat Benson wore a polo-necked sweater and jeans. They did not take the car, preferring the lengthy walk to Shell Island through the moonlit countryside.
‘What a beautiful night,’ Pat remarked as they passed alongside the barbed-wire fence which enclosed War Department property. ‘If only we didn’t have to worry about giant crabs!’
A tawdry sex scene ensues while they wait for the crabs to appear.
Her fingers were active, though. Cliff felt that thrilling sensation of his zip being pulled down, her fingers groping inside the open vent and then the coolness of the night air on his warm moistness. He gasped with pleasure. Pat Benson certainly knew what she was doing!
Their lips met again, tongues probing and entwining. Both of them were experiencing the awakening of something which had lain dormant in them for so long. Rapidly they were getting out of control. Nothing else mattered … not even the giant crabs!
Finally building to the crab-haunted climax:
Cliff rolled in between her open legs. She still had a grip on his hardness and now she was guiding it down where she wanted it, bathing it first in her warm river of desire and then sliding it down further until it disappeared inch by inch into her.
After that nothing else mattered. Their bodies bucked and heaved as they murmured sweet nothings in each other’s ear before finally convulsing in a violent eruption that left them quivering and still yearning for each other.
Reluctantly they parted and adjusted their clothing. Pat, her hair awry and her cheeks flushed, looked more beautiful to Cliff than ever before.
‘I’m more than glad I let you come with me tonight,’ he whispered as he zipped himself up again. I’m afraid, though, that we must still keep an eye open for those crabs!’
In their post-coital glow, they watch the hobo from earlier get torn apart and eaten by King Crab!
King Crab! Nobody could have doubted the latest arrival’s right to rule. Half as big again as the rest of those nightmarish creatures, this one was the very personification of evil. It waddled slowly to the front of the others, its pincers waving menacingly as though defying any one of them to challenge its authority. Some of them moved back, huddling together.
After a few more gruesome murders and a couple of chapters convincing the British Army that the giant crab threat is real, the GIANT CRAB INVASION begins. A tank finally engages with King Crab! to pathetic result:
King Crab was thrown backwards, yet did not roll over. For a few seconds he just squatted, dazed, and then he advanced. His army, well in excess of a hundred crabs, followed him. The clicking was deafening, mind-searing.
The large claw waved and came to rest pointing directly at the tank. There was no mistaking his command.
‘Shut that hatch!’ the gunner yelled. They’re coming at us!’
Spoiler alert: The crab army picks up the tank and throws it in the ocean.
The rest of it gets even sillier, with underwater crab kingdoms and a child’s death by drinking weedkiller making crop-dusting the crabs with paraquat the resolution of the plot.
All this in a mere 32,000 words, 7% the length of Stephen King’s It (the yardstick for all book lengths.)
More disturbing than the novel is the fact that it spawned seven full-length sequels and four tie-in short stories.
Killer Crabs (1978)
The Origin of the Crabs (1979)
Crabs on the Rampage (1981)
Crabs’ Moon (1984)
Crabs: The Human Sacrifice (1988)
“Crustacean Revenge” (1989)
“The Decoy” (1990)
“The Crabs’ Armada” (1991)
“Crabs” (1992)
Killer Crabs: The Return (2012)
The Charnel Caves (2019)
JW
Editor’s note: inspired by SF’s reading recommendations, JW sought sexual congress with giant crabs and has been in hospital ever since. We will be supplicating the only god JW knows, Dionysus, by drinking deeply of the vine and fucking goats at a vigil. Details forthcoming.
jesse.in.mb
Flora J. Solomon – Along the Broken Bay. Another Amazon First Read (or whatever they call it now). Set primarily in Manila during the Japanese invasion inf WWII, this novel follows a pampered housewife separated from her husband as she attempts to survive and later assist the American and Filipino resistance. WWII is generally not my jam when it comes to historical eras, but Solomon uses it deftly as a canvas for her protagonist’s journey.
Bryan Caplan (Author), Zach Weinersmith (Illustrator) – Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration. I pre-ordered this when Zach Weinersmith flogged the project on his comic SMBC. I have warm-and-fuzzies for both Caplan and Weinersmith and thoroughly enjoyed both the content and the presentation. While I didn’t find every argument they made completely convincing, they certainly forced me to contend with some of the assumptions I had made on the issues in a new way. Highly recommend.
mexican sharpshooter
I read Compliance 101 by Debbie Troklus. Yes, this is a book I read for work. No, I didn’t actually pay for it. I figured if I had a week with little to nothing to do, I may as well reacquaint myself with the material.
SP
Escapism, thy name is SP.
I’ve once again been staying up just slightly beyond way too late reading mystery novels. (I had been working/studying until I dropped every night. Not sustainable.) I’m currently working my way through the Vera Stanhope series by Ann Cleeves. The series was adapted for a British TV series, and I’ve watched a couple episodes, but they are necessarily condensed and changed in many ways. The books are more satisfying, if slower-paced.
I’m enjoying the novels, and it’s caused me to look up information about Northumberland, yet another area of England with which I wasn’t very familiar. Judging by the waiting lists for the eBooks and audio versions at my public library, I’m not the only one who likes them.
Mad Scientist
This site. Buy which I mean, the actual articles. Anyway, the articles SugarFree writes. Most of them. OK, many of them. And some of the others too. When I have time. Which is almost never.
Tulip
The Last P.I. series by Richard Bowker. A trilogy set in Boston about 20 years after the US was in a nuclear war. Wally Sands grew up after the war and is fascinated by old, noir P.I. novels and so decides to become one. Excellent world building that avoids the usual cliche of total government collapse which would not happen in my opinion.
The series reminds me a little of Ben H. Winters’ The Last Policeman trilogy. The day Hank Palace was graduated from the police academy, it was announced that an asteroid would hit the earth. What would you do if you knew the date the world would end? This series tries to answer that using Hank’s job as a policemen as a foil. Good pre-apocalyptic world building and an enjoyable mystery.
Sea Smith
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters. NEED MOAR RAPE!
The Judgement of Caesar by Steven Saylor. Cleopatra was one very crazy bitch.
Regulatory guidance documents for work. Yes, it’s as bad as it sounds.
FINMA Regulations…In German. The ol’ Eidgenössische Finanzmarktaufsicht does NOT write anything fun.
Shit, at least mine are in English. Or the bureaucratese that passes for English.
That…that might actually be worse.
Come on – it’s German.
Even the “entertainment” is dense – Der Ring des Nibelungen.
The Bavarians are the fun German speakers.
My Grandmother considered them silly and not real Germans.
I often wonder how much of the Roman Catholic vs Protestant historical divide plays into this.
No idea. She never considered it necessary that she explain herself. Only that we obey.
Yeah, The Rest of Germany seems to hate Bavaria. When the CDU/CSU put Edmund Stoiber up for Chancellor in 2002, the anti-Bavaria bigotry was pretty strong.
Switching between Knowing God, by J.I. Packer, and a collection of mid-century British paperpack detective fiction that came from the used-book table at the library for $1.
Fun fact — J.I. Packer was one of my profs/lecturers at Regent College on the UBC campus during the early 1980s. Very personable, good sense of humour.
I’m making my way through the EU Medical Device Regulation (replaces the old Medical Device Directive) that takes effect in May. What a micro-managing shitshow.
For fun, yesterday evening I was browsing through a 1961 Gun Digest. It’s interesting to see what was hot in the gun market the year I was born. Things have changed a lot.
And holy crap. A Winchester Model 12 Pigeon Grade Trap gun for $345. New. That’s about $3K in today’s dollars (which is one reason they don’t make the Model 12 any more.) That gun would go for between $5K and $10K today, depending on condition.
As I’ve said, I’ve never lost money on a gun.
But in 1961 I was making about 350-400 a month, before deductions. I got married that year, I should have bought a Model 12 instead, I would still have the 12 and it would be as good as new.
Love those old GDs, even they are collectible, for the reason you mentioned.
Of late I’ve been sinking a little of my spare capital into old guns, figuring they’ll retain/gain value better than most things I could buy, and they have the added advantage of being fun. I have my mind on a couple more Model 12s and another Auto-5 or two, and have given some though to shopping for a good Model 97 or two; I’m watching a Model 97 Black Diamond right now.
I really doubt that the current crop of Tacticool horseshit will appreciate like these old shotguns have, but who knows? I could be wrong.
Scarcity and craftsmanship matters, doesn’t it? Too many plastic rifles being produced.
Same with cars. I just watched an Alfa GTV go for $50K. No way a 50 year old Altima will bring that.
Same reason some wealthy collect cars. Chosen wisely they generally appreciate. You can also enjoy them.
Mind you if you buy (most) new and depreciating cars you are simply spending money.
That’s because people can afford to drive an Altima every day. Who can afford the team of mechanics and electricians it would take to drive an Alfa GTV.
Just what I was thinking. And those plastic rifles are bought to be used, possibly in very rough conditions.
Same applies to guns, to some extent. If I’m off to the club to shoot some trap, I’ll take one of my Model 12s, my Citori or maybe one of the Brownings. Same thing if I’m spending a bright, sunny early-autumn day looking for grouse.
If I’m off to spend the day in a muddy goose pit on a rainy/snowy day, the ugly-but-indestructible old Mossberg goes along.
The question was: will the plastic guns become collectors?
I said no. Same reason the Altima won’t. They are fine and often superior tools, but collectability has nothing to do with utility.
Some odd ducks might. See the HK VP70Z.
That being said, I’m still collecting classic P series Sigs.
For real HK91’s, FALs, and a few others have certainly appreciated in value. Still wish I had bought one of those WWII German sniper rifles back when they were $75.
As I’ve said, I’ve never lost money on a gun.
My problem is I’m just not good at selling them.
This. Never even occurs to me to sell them.
I’m making my way through the EU Medical Device Regulation (replaces the old Medical Device Directive) that takes effect in May. What a micro-managing shitshow.
Good old MEDDEV 2.7.1 Rev 4. Essentially a regulatory A-bomb dropped on the medical device companies doing business in Europe. I imagine it will be coming here soon after being pushed by the larger international companies.
And the MDR ratchets things up.
Don’t you love the free market in health care?
“Shattered Sword” by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. Highly recommend if you like military history. It is a minute by minute account of the Battle of Midway primarily from Japanese sources and focusing on the IJN. The book shatters multiple myths that have grown about the battle.
“The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind th myth of the Scandinavian utopia” by Michael Booth. A fun read even though the author is a lefty Brit. If you have a Scandi in your life you’ll be able to relate.
“The Stoic Challenge: a philosopher’s guide to becoming tougher, calmer and more resilient” by William B Irvine. Just started I will report back/
https://youtu.be/Bd8_vO5zrjo
This has been in my YouTube recommendations but I haven’t got around to watching it in full. The Battle of Midway fascinated me as a kid.
I feel like I’ve been waiting FOREVER for him to do part 2…
I just finished Seneca’s letters from a stoic. Took me longer to read than some book. Good, just not a page turner. Then I read Epictetus & Epicurious to round out the philosophy. Finished slaughter house five yesterday. Weird, but entertaining. Next up some Camus & Sartre, mostly as a goof because of a scene in bedazzled.
Ok, seriously who thought it was a good idea to start out with SugarFree’s submission? I’d have read the rest except I had already clawed my eyes out by then.
You know the old newspaperman adage: “If it bleeds a creepy blue color that’s weirdly medically useful, it leads”
It’s a real “crab bites newlywed” sort of story.
I’m reading The Weekend Navigator, 2nd Edition Robert Sweet and USPS Piloting so I can get my Piloting certificate.
You fellas with all your “boating accidents” and losing your firearms! {Taps temple} At least I will know exactly on the chart where I lost mine.
Next step: get SCUBA certified
Smaht. Very smaht.
But does it have Smaht Pawk!?
You and all yo fancy readin and yo fancy readin frenz!
Lately, I spend all my reading time playing computer games. Or writing code, preferably playing games.
Mo’s book, 1520 Main.
As I’ve already mentioned, it was way outside of my normal genres, but I really enjoyed it. Good pacing, excellent characters and nicely constructed plot twists. Highly recommended.
I finished off books 6, 7 and 8 in James Oswald’s Inspector McClean series. Good stuff, but book 9 isn’t available yet on Kindle, so I’ll be reading some others for awhile. We’ll see if I go back to it.
Per Chafed’s recommendation, I’m nearly done with Can’t Hurt Me by ex-Seal David Goggins. He does an excellent job of laying out strategies to not allow your mind fuck up your goals. He argues that most of us “max out” at a small fraction of our potential, and he’s pretty compelling. His backstory is absolutely insane, too. You almost couldn’t make it up. Good book.
Tulip, I liked the first Last Policeman novel, but stopped there. It’s been in my “I could see continuing this series, but don’t feel super compelled to” category. How do you feel about the other books?
Not Tulip, but I enjoyed all three of them. Without giving away spoilers, I really liked the very ending scene of the series.
I liked them a lot. It’s been a while since I read them, but I still occasionally think about them.
I finished Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and Beyond the Edge of the Map. I’m working my way through the Tarnished Sterling series, almost done with book 3.
UCS, I’m really enjoying your work and I’m looking forward to reading more. Travis’s encounter with Uth-sk, however, is going to give me nightmares.
I am sorry about the nightmares.
It was supposed to be a horrifying scene, so from a writing perspective, excellent job!
You can’t have nightmares if you don’t sleep.
?
What you did there, it was seen
Sorry, Mods. Triple-linked. If one of y’all could help a brother out, I’d appreciate it!
Muchas gracias!
*enacts labor for Tundra*
*mixes G&T for jesse*
Ooh. I haven’t had a good G&T in a while. What’s your current go-to gin?
Haven’t since summer. If it’s a G&T, I still like Hendrick’s.
Roku is a very good gin. Also empress if you like pretty colors.
For G&Ts? Or martinis?
Roku for martinis and empress for G&T.
Thanks!
There are a bunch of local ones I want to try.
You people got me going on Negronis, so summer can’t get here fast enough.
Wow Tundra, you have a ton of choices. Surprisingly we don’t have very many distilleries. In Jacksonville there is a company called manifest that does a really nice barrel aged gin. Good enough for straight sipping.
http://www.manifestdistilling.com/spirits/barreled-gin
We purchased the Prairie Handcrafted for Kibby. She thinks it’s tasty.
I’m a Solveig fan.
Gin Mare. You’ll thank me. I’m also partial to Uncle Val’s and The Botanist.
Roughing It, Mark Twain. Sometimes the old stuff is still good. OTOH, its only 1/2 old to me.
night air on his warm moistness.
Transgender porn.
Night of the Crabs
This title makes me want to scratch myself… for some reason.
Or he just has a really wet penis for some reason. It is never mentioned later in the text, but maybe one of the sequels deals with it.
Maybe it’s leaky.
Well he has crabs, often that goes with clap
Impermeable underwear.
Which would confirm the leaking.
I went on a Crichton kick again here recently. My previous Crichton kick having been in high school. It turns out I actually hate Crichton. Only because he can’t write a fucking ending to save his ass.
I have Airframe sitting in the hopper. I haven’t read Chrichton in a while and always enjoyed the pacing of his stories, but haven’t revisited him in a long time. Now you have me worried.
I don’t *actually* hate him. in fact I also love his pacing and just-techno-babbly-enough-to-be-plausible shtick. But his endings do generally suck. He’ll spend 300 pages pulling you into a story you can’t put down and then end it in such a way that you get the impression he simply got tired of writing and decided to mail it off on his way down to pick up his drycleaning.
In particular I’m thinking of Sphere and The Andromeda Strain, but even his good endings aren’t great.
I’m not sure I’ve read Andromeda strain, and I read Sphere in middle school, so my memory of it might be rosy just because I didn’t have that much reading under my belt at that point. My parents went to see the movie (I still haven’t) and they hated it, but also when I explained the book they hated it less.
Andromeda Strain ends just like the film. “And then the virus mutated and everything was back to normal. THE END.”
And Sphere had the same problem as all BDO SF: either you figure out nothing and are frustrated or you figure out everything and the revelation can’t compare to the mystery.
The books that manage to walk the tightrope are rare.
Well he did write that impeccably terse 4 sentence epilogue where it gets into the upper atmosphere and keeps eating up anything polymerized going in or out of orbit
Oh, crap. It’s been a few years since I read the book, so I forgot that.
That movie was bad, and not like Congo where it was bad but Tim Curry and Ernie Hudson were awesome and it was a lot of fun.
Yes, Congo is fascinatingly bad. It goes from a modern-day resetting of H. Rider Haggard to bloom into a degenerate relict ape frenzy of diamonds and screaming.
I haven’t picked up one of his books since I read Congo. Not out of any principle, just I had read him pretty avidly and after tha lost interest.
The first one I read was Congo.
Didn’t have any desire to read more.
However, I really liked the movie The Great Train Robbery which he directed.
Just finished the House of Assassins, (Correia’s Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, #2). It was a good story, although the writing seem a little stilted in places. I remember that in the first Monster Hunter book, but it seemed like Correia had grown more comfortable writing and smoothed out in the later MHI books. Not sure what happened to the House of Assassins.
So many Glibs recommended the The Dresden Files that I went ahead and grabbed most of them in a lot off ebay. About to start on the first.
The first and second Dresen Files are like the early MHI: cool characters, cool plot, execution is a little so-so. It gets better. The first one he actually wrote in a creative writing class, and it very much shows. I’ve never gone back and reread it, even when I have reread the whole series.
That’s good to know. Most of my go-to book series are older (CJ Cherryh, Simmons, Pournelle, Niven). Sanderson has had some good new stuff with the Stormlight Archives. I’m looking forward to adding Dresden to the rotation.
The TV show was better.
Just started reading a beta copy of On Unknown Shores, sequel to UCS’s Beyond the Edge of the Map. (Thank you, sir!) So far, in just a couple of chapters, he’s deftly reintroduced the major characters from the previous book, introduced some new characters in a new setting, and also introduced some tension between a couple of the major characters. Looking forward to continuing.
In other personal O/T news, I just returned from The Medical Exam for Which the Prep is Worse than the Procedure, and the results appear to be satisfactory enough to free me from enduring that torture again for another five years. (I was hoping to get more reading done last night by pulling an all-nighter, but I hit the wall pretty early and conked out on the sofa. Then after the wee-hours dose of the Joy Juice, it was all I could do to lie down and refrain from regurgitating it. This afternoon will be a duel between reading and napping.)
I had said procedure recently (unless its something else) and got a 10 year reprieve.
I wrote this in the last thread when people were discussing Garrison Keillor, but it might be more appropriate here:
I read for the first time a culture novel Consider Phlebas. Not impressed at all. I don’t see the popularity. The prose is not great, the dialogue is weak, the scifi is meh the characters are not memorable. I don’t get it…
Try the next one, The Player of Games. It is more in line with the aesthetic that made the Culture novels popular. If you still don’t dig it, jump ship.
jump ship
This is how you get erotically torn apart by megacrustacea, bro.
The sea takes. It is its nature.
Interesting, I thought The Player of Games was a much weaker novel, because it was so… normal.
Consider Phlebas was very difficult, but it was just so different that I loved it.
I love them both, but I think Player is more along the lines of what he tries to do overall in the series. I never start people out on Consider or Use of Weapons.
I put the Frank Belknap Long short stories book back on the shelf. Maybe I’ll try getting into it again later.
I started Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon after that.
Long is difficult. His writing style never really evolved past the pulps. His best stuff is his early Mythos material, but a pastiche of Lovecraft rarely becomes more than what it is.
I am rereading Snow Crash, for some reason.
The upcoming TV adaptation, which will surely be a shitshow of epic proportions?
Sure, lets go with that. I think its because I referenced it last week.
Keeping an eye out for crabs after sleeping with a stranger is just good sense.
I’ve just finished a re-read of John Brunner’s The Sheep Look Up and am part-way through re-reading Stand on Zanzibar.
They’re good stories, but man does he muck up the politics and economics. It was useful, going through Sheep, to consider the possible how’s and why’s of the events, and how markets vs politics would handle them. Much as with William Gibson’s Bridge novels, the economics are fantasy & the politics are not considered.
The only Brunner I have read is The Tides of Time. It was okay, I guess.
I’m trying to make my way through:
THE NIGHT LANDWILLIAM HOPE HODGSON
Has anybody here succeeded? Here’s looking at you SugarFree!
*raises hand*
I did. It did take me a little bit though.
Overall, I liked it. Some of the repetitive phrasing did wear thin.
I did, but I’m not sure if it was worth it. I find the entire Dying Earth genre pretty boring, honestly. Especially given its penchant for fantasy trappings.
Even Jack Vance? I love his dying earth stories.
They are great, but the far future setting doesn’t really do anything to jazz up what are essentially fantasy stories.
Have you read The Forge of God by Greg Bear? I thought it was a great one in that genre.
I have read it and liked it, but the Dying Earth genre is more about the Far Future, like the Dying Earth stories by Jack Vance, The Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe, or Aldiss’ Hothouse.
Forge of God is more in the Planetary Scale Disaster sub-genre, like When Worlds Collide or Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
But the Earth survives in Lucifer’s Hammer.
But the comet still affects the entire planet and all the people on it in some way.
Did you read the followup to Forge, Anvil of Stars?
Yes. Blech.
I’m with you on this. There can be poignancy in the Dying Earth idea, but I find that it reduces drama. It’s like making the protagonist of a suspense novel terminally ill. “Man Struggles for His Life, or at least for to die in bed not battle…” That was my issue with a particularly A list video game, and why I never finished it (avoiding spoilers by naming it since I doubt everyone here has played/ finished it)
Well shit
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson
RIP
Oh man. He didn’t live long enough to see the marvellous sphere I was constructing!
The Dyson Turd was something he discarded early on.
So I read the first in an alternate history series called Drakes Drum, which is an alternate history of the 20th century where Great Britain doesn’t falter and decline. The author uses multiple different divergences, which he exhaustively documents in footnotes. I respect the sheer autism of it. Its kind of clunky, but if you’re someone who enjoys absurdly intricate alternate history type stuff, you might like it. We’re talking about a book that has appendixes with the authors alternate version of the Washington Naval Treaty.
I’m intrigued.
I learned some stuff I didn’t know. One of the major points of divergence in the book is in 1930, Oswald Mosley, then a Labour MP, proposes a radical new economic program of high tariffs, nationalization of key industries, and big public works projects to fight unemployment. In real life, Labour rejects the program, and he resigns and drifts into being an outright fascist. In the book, its accepted, and Mosley becomes the Prime Minister in the 30s.
Do you ever watch Peaky Blinders? Mosley features in the most recent season. The entire series is a bit of a caricature so I’m not sure how accurate the portrayal is, but he is definitely a fascist in the show.
research.
Instead of reading I am writing but I keep lying to myself that I am just taking notes in case it goes nowhere.
What I have been reading includes a comment on a (usually) non-political forum where someone referred to the corona virus effects on the stock markets as “the Trump market crash”. I couldn’t leave that one alone. I think I’m going to regret that. Presumably I’m about to be accused of being a nazi, and being stupid, and some sort of Fox news enthusiast, or something. Hooray!
I was wondering when that would start.
Every time the Dow improves, it’s because of Obama. Every decline is on Trump. Get with it.
That kind of stuff was inevitable.
Last two weeks I’ve read every Tom Clancy book. Found myself upset over the 2nd season of Jack Ryan on Amazon, so I cracked open Hunt for Red October. My OCD kicked in, and found myself reading the rest of the series. Popcorn reading, but damn fine popcorn.
Patriot Games still rocks.
Just to fuck with a film professor I didn’t like, I argued the movie was racist against the Irish and won most of the class over to my side.
Totally racist against the Irish.
Of course the Micks deserve it…
*slips a bomb under Tundra’s car.*
*steals Jimbo’s new bike and pedals away*
Pedaling is gonna be a little difficult after a kneecapping.
Geez. Micks are thick on the ground today.
It’s payday.
*drink!*
Amateur Irish Day is just around the corner.
Jimbo got a new bike?! Don’t let SP know.
Loved without remorse. Great fun book has everything pros with a heart of gold and baltimore drug dealers.
They’re making a movie, with Micheal B Jordan as John Clark.
awesome.
Yeah, he looks Irish-American.
I’m assuming its also adapted to modern day. Probably Jordan is an Iraq vet, not a Vietnam vet. They will probably write out the whole POW camp story as well, it will just be KILL THE DRUG DEALERS, and I’m sure at the end the real villain will be Trump all along.
If it worked for Red in Shawshank Redemption…
Well, I’m listening to “Medicus” by… I’m not really sure. It’s about a roman medical officer in britain at the time Hadrian ascends to the throne. Supposedly he’s supposed to solves some murders at some point, but those seem like background plots. This next comment may sound strange on the surface given the crowd, but hear me out. It’s refreshing how none of the characters apply a modern sensibility towards slaves in the setting. The Romans were utterly unappologetic about the institution, and it would have rang false if “everyone but that odius guy” was decrying it and signalling modern virtues. Instead, they’re as matter of fact as you should expect for the time period. Too many writers can’t seem to just present their period pieces in the period picked.
I’m circling back to being productive in writing, and should be able to at least get Dug to the Imperial library.
I think we’ve all been pretty vocal about our dislike of modern sensibilities applied to past peoples.
Well, what I was rambling at was this book is pretty good about avoiding that.
I shouldn’t type and eat lunch at the same time.
And this is a pretty late lunch due to offsite meetings and all that work stuff.
Hey Mo! (LOL)
In your book there was an open season on Mormons. Did that actually exist?
Yep. It wasn’t repealed until 1976.
Now, the relationship amongst the Mormons, Mafia, and Machine didn’t exist (although it’s not exactly out of the realm of possibility).
However, one of the pillars Vegas was built on was the “Mormon Mafia,” which were folks who were so honest and teetotaling that the mob could trust them with their books and booze. The Extermination Order was the perfect way to get Albright cozy with Lazia and Pendergast.
I HAD to do that because in The Proviso, Trey (the main characters’ grandfather, who in that book is long deceased) is referred to as having been a bigwig in the church. So I had to get Trey into the church SOMEHOW, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of making him a true believer (at first…or ever? You decide). That was way too tidy. I was going to make Marina a true believer, but she was really too cynical (by nature) to do that.
I liked the fact that they weren’t true believers. I don’t trust certainty.
I really enjoyed the Mormons employed by the mob as bookkeepers. It was inspired!
LOL What you did there, I saw it.
Also, I do reference Albright’s “Two Rules Sermon” in The Proviso, and I wanted to work that into the plot as to where it came from (as in, it wasn’t Trey’s). As Alice and Dot told Marina, she didn’t have to like it or believe it, she just had to do the job. That’s what I went with as the motivation.
A client who does a lot of self-help and mindfulness work wants me to create a little book for him, the tiny gift (mini)books you find in the greeting card aisle (or used to). Barnes & Noble has whole spinners of them. They’re about 3″x4″.
Anyway, I was actually at Barnes & Noble last week and they caught my eye. There were a whole bunch of them spouting go-you and you’re-awesome stuff, all of which were a little gross to me in my current mood. But one caught my eye. It’s just a collection of sayings, but it’s not how you’re awesome and “find joy in the little things” and “happiness is a choice” and all that bullshit. It’s a little book of nice things about the beach.
The illustrations are adorable. The quotes aren’t all ra-ra-sis-boom-ba abracadabra you’re empowered! type stuff. I do not know why it hit the right chord for me. I don’t live near a beach and while I like it, I don’t miss it.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been reading. Quotes about the beach in a tiny picture book.
Should order that for my girls. We are beach people.
Thanks!
I somehow read that as “We bleach people”
How the hell else are you gonna get rid of forensic evidence?
After several months I am closing in on the end of Dostoevsky’s “The Possessed”. I think there have been more than a few parts that have gone over my head, but on the whole it’s kept my attention. I switched to the audio book about halfway through (while still reading along), and that’s been a big help – I think there are a handful of parts that are more ‘light-hearted’ than how I initially read them.
I am freaking sloooooow with fiction, though, so when I finish, I think I am going to get through either Tom Woods’ book on the Catholic Church, or Sowell’s “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” (both mentioned here in of these previous threads).
Ok. So I spent an inordinate amount of time on this, but i had an itch and so decided to do some number crunching. Bottom Line, Super Tuesday is going to be a massacre for the DNC. I looked at the Numbers of delegates each candidate has already, and what the average amount they need to win subsequent contests in.
Currently it looks something like this:
Candidate Del Percent Average Needed in following contests to secure Nomination
BERNIE 45 45.00% 50.17%
BUTTIGIEG 25 25.00% 50.68%
JOE BIDEN 15 15.00% 50.94%
WARREN 8 8.00% 51.12%
KLOBUCHAR 7 7.00% 51.15%
BLOOMBERG 0 0.00% 51.33%
So the race is still open. However I then looked at the Super Tuesday (plus South Carolina), and used FiveThirtyEights projections of number of delegates each candidate will win, and adjusted the cacluation for after that and this is what i get:
Candidate Del Percent average Percent Needed in subsequent contests
BERNIE 619.1 38.24% 58.13%
BUTTIGIEG 96.4 5.95% 80.28%
BIDEN 527.7 32.60% 62.00%
WARREN 142.5 8.80% 78.32%
KLOBUCHAR 38.1 2.35% 82.75%
BLOOMBERG 195.1 12.05% 76.09%
My take aways:
1. Unless it becomes a two way race between now and the Convention, i think the convention will be contested. If the convention is between 2 People and all the delegates vote for one of the two, their will have to be a winner. Even that is not guarenteed as some delegates could still vote for someone else if the become unpleged due to a drop out by one of the candidates.
2. Klondikebar and Buttigieg will drop out after Super Tuesday. Right now they are going to get delegates to try to Parlay for VP.
3. Warren looks like she is spliting the progressive vote, but she really isn’t that much. Even if all her votes went to Bernie, he wouldn’t have enough to win outright.
4. Bloomberg may doom the DNC to having a contested convention. If he performs as well as expected, then i think he will stay in to ensure a contested convention and play kingmaker.
5. The problem of the contested convention is not that Bernie is super popular among even Democrats. Its that the Mainstream establishment failed to find a single candidate that was suitable. Biden has Dementia, and without an endorsement from Obama. All the other Heavy weights already dropped out (Harris, Booker) What is left is a Mayor from a small town in Indiana and a Frozen Senator. And Bloomberg.
Yup. And it will be glorious.
*grabs popcorn*(
You left out a name and the likely choice at a brokered convention. It won’t be Bloomy, you’re correct about Biden, and the powerbrokers don’t like Sanders. Just guess who it is.
SHRILLARY!!!
Oh I can’t wait to see her trounced again, only worse this time.
Nominating her, At the convention, to spite Bernie would be the DNC see saying “Not only do we want to loose this election, we don’t ever want to win ever again”.
Though i’d love if she (or any of the Dems for that matter) ran an ad saying “Donald Trump promised he would put Hillary Clinton in Jail, and failed to keep that promise. Vote for someone who will get it done.”
The wookie.
I didn’t dare say that. Might make it come true.
I was thinking HRC but your guess is good too. Somewhat moderate compared to the unelectables running now and very viable. I hope you aren’t a Democratic strategist.
Michelle Obama.
What is left is a Mayor from a small town in Indiana and a Frozen Senator. And Bloomberg.
“Loading…”
In 2016 people were talking about a long primary in the Republican party and a contested convention. Then unexpectedly to most and especially to FiveThirtyEight Trump was the last one standing. The MSM and NeverTrumpers continued to fantasize about a brokered convention for another month or two but nothing came out of it. So, my bet is sooner rather than later Sanders will become a prohibitive favorite, many in the DNC will accept him hoping that he will lose and damage the far left wing of the party or if he wins then it’s not the end of the world and at least Trump is out of office.
This seems likely to me.
I think the X factor is Bloomberg and to a lesser extent Steyer. Their campaigns are halfway between a legitimate trial balloon and a public favor currying tour. They have the money to run through the convention, and they will benefit from running that long, even if they have no legitimate hope of winning.
I think its a fair counter, but that is why i really only focused on Super Tuesday. It 4 days away, so barring some crazy drop, not much will change how that vote will come out. Nate Silver has been wrong before, but i still like using his numbers as a “He’s got a better info than i do” kind of look over. If the numbers pan out the way Nate says they will then after super Tuesay Sanders will only have 38% of the pledged delegates. He will need to win 58% of the remaining delegates. That really means he can’t stand to not come in first in many more states. If Biden does as well as he is projected to in Super Tuesday then it will give fire, and really solidify him as “The Candidate” of the establishment. If not, he’s done and i think Sanders will power on to a Slim victory.
The big wildcard is Bloomberg. Why is he in the race? He has no chance of winning outright. He’s smart, he has to know this. His only hope is to spoil and push for a contested convention, and i think that is what he wants. If Sanders does not cream everyone on super Tuesday, it will actually show that he may not have a chance to win outright, and the incentive to stay in becomes stronger. The longer you stay in the more delegates you will have at the convention.
Of course all of this is contingent on Super Tuesday playing out the way we expect. But bottom line, i’m really not sure that this is Sanders to Win, as much as it’s the DNC’s to loose.
The big wildcard is Bloomberg. Why is he in the race? He has no chance of winning outright. He’s smart, he has to know this.
I think Bloomberg’s ego is overcoming sense. He was humiliated in his first debate and barely did better the second time. I read that he spent a great deal of time preparing for both debates, which indicates to me that his prep wasn’t based in reality (the mock debaters wouldn’t risk offending Bloomberg’s ego like the real contenders did). Just a guess though.
True, you can never tell how much someones ego is going to get in the way of good sense, and it could be here.
And there are still a couple of states with large black populations after Super Tuesday for Biden to carry, notably Georgia and Maryland.
Oh, and the latest polls suggest Sanders might not hit 15% in Florida with its 248 delegates.
https://babylonbee.com/news/controversy-as-a-desperate-biden-resorts-to-malarkey-to-save-failing-campaign
https://babylonbee.com/news/badly-beaten-bloomberg-rushed-to-tiny-hospital-in-tiny-ambulance
https://babylonbee.com/news/don-lemon-joined-by-flock-of-monocled-geese-in-tophats-for-extensive-belly-laugh
Come on, monocled hate birds, and we are supposed to believe that someone here doesn’t submit a few things for them?
Man’s Search for Meaning – Victor Frankl
Reading it in advance of giving it to my eldest as an assignment. I’ll probably follow that assignment with Alexander Dolgun’s book, since they both carry similar themes.
And in case anyone here is interested I was cleaning out my old bookmarks and this is an appropriate place.
10 Famous Japanese Ghost Stories
These are in English and quite well known. The idea being that you tell “chilling tales” in the summer months to cool down.
Without clicking the link, I bet the ghost with an eye in his butthole is on there.
https://hyakumonogatari.com/2012/08/19/shirime-eyeball-butt/
Sugarfree’s Spirit Animal
Leave me out of this.
SugarFree’s Spirit Butt
I suspect SugarFree’s spirit animal has teeth in it’s butthole.
Apparently Sugar Free has always been with us.
Me and my horned Cheshire Cat monstercrotch.
Thanks sensei!
This whole baby thing has put a crimp in my reading.
I finished the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. Without giving too much away, the second half of the series–the Endymion books–lost a lot of credibility with me by pulling what I thought was a kind of cheap, lazy recalibration of the plot, but the world and story was interesting enough for me to get past it. The end of the book had a nicely bittersweet feel that I think suited the series well. I have yet to read anything by Simmons I don’t like. That said, I’m taking a break to catch up on other reading…
…such as the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. I’m on House of Chains. I can’t tell if it’s an easier read or if I’m just used to the style of the series, which is notoriously difficult to get in to.
Connie Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog. Read it three times previously, and still enjoy it.
Do audiobooks count? We listened to Red Headed Stepchild on CD during our recent road trip. Fantasy story about a woman who is half vampire, half magician. In this world vampires are redheaded, strawberry blonde for newcomers becoming more auburn as they age.
The day we finished the book our server at dinner had dyed red hair, pale pancake makeup and very dark lipstick. We joked that we were being served by a vampire.
Also this month I re-read Heinlein’s The Number of The Beast. Normally I love his work but this one I loathed. Won’t read again.
On my phone I’m reading The Count of Monte Crisco for about the third time. Wonderful, wonderful book if you can keep track of all the names and titles.
I remember enjoying the Number of the Beast, even though it wasn’t typical of Heinlein.
Maybe because it touched much of the Sci-Fi stuff that I read as a kid, and was kind of a love letter to some of that stuff.
I had previously read almost everything he referenced back to, less the L.Frank Baum stuff.
Job A Comedy of Justice is my favorite, though I haven’t reread it in a long time.
On my phone I’m reading The Count of Monte Crisco for about the third time. Wonderful, wonderful book if you can keep track of all the names and titles.
Agreed, it’s wonderful. I should read it again. I almost never re-read books, but I make occasional exceptions for the great ones, and this definitely qualifies.
It’s permanently on my Kindle. Always worth reading, even if it’s just a part.
In that one he escapes by greasing up his body and slipping out, instead of the “switching with the dead guy” thing, right?
Pretty sure he switches with the dead guy.
So what’s the Crisco for?
Yep, I missed that.
smelling dead?
More Guy Gavriel Kay, and fuck it, read Children of Earth and Sky. Why is Gurm a fantasy icon and not a superior writer who started the ‘like history but on fantasy earth’ schtick three years earlier, just shows that world is run by Satan, who is the Devil.
Also from the same author, Under Heaven and River of Stars, that make me want to look up Fall of the (northern) Song Dynasty and An Lushan’s Revolt, as I know sweet fuck all about China.
Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities by Anthony Kaldellis was a delight, a collection of weird, funny or insightful fragments from 1000 years of Eastern Roman Empire. I learned that infidelity, madness and leprosy were sufficient grounds to divorce your wife, but not demonic possession. Infidelity on the part of the man was not, unless he forced his wife to watch. And a foreign princess had a body to die for, lovely hair and something so horribly wrong with her face that her husband would not consummate marriage. The populace described her as “Lent from the front, and Easter from behind.”
Justinian’s Flea, about the plague pandemic that hit Mediterranean in mid-6th century, its impact and spread into Persia, West Europe, British Isles and even parts of China. Interwoven with it are attempts of Emperor Justinian to recover the western provinces and balance that with keeping the Persians at bay.
Reminds one of John Ruskin’s wife:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effie_Gray
Wasn’t Ruskin a pedophile?
Yes and kinda no.
There’s supposedly no evidence he ever had sex with anyone. But he also expressed a preference for young girls, as young as 8. He said he fell in love with this one girl when she was nine, but didn’t approach her romantically until she was 18. She said she wouldn’t marry him until she was 21, he agreed and then she died.
It’s a grey area of weirdness and English repression.
“circumstances in her person”
A new euphemism for “no penis”?
Armpit vaginas. It’s always armpit vaginas.
Friday Funbags gives you a nooner.
http://archive.is/V0JPJ
https://babylonbee.com/news/woman-uses-airtight-judge-not-defense-beat-murder-case
Judge Not!
OT: I’m currently in the ER, gonna be checked into the hospital tonight.
I am experiencing sudden extreme swelling all over. I started at Urgent Care, but they took one look and said I’m in the wrong place.
Wish me luck.
Ugh. You have been certainly having to deal with more than your share of health issues lately. Hope it goes well.
I think there’s probably a single underlying cause. Hopefully I get a correct diagnosis so we can get on with treatment!
Do you think it’s related to the auto-immune thing you mentioned the other day?
Yeah I do. They are wanting to rule oft congestive heart failure
I have no history of heart issues.
They also said my hemoglobin is so low they might do a blood transfusion.
Make sure and get them to add vodka.
Good luck!
I have a feeling I’ve had my last drink.
Ask if they’d get the transfusion from a recovered Wuhan donor.
/knocking out two birds
I’m not keen on strangers blood in my veins
WAIT WHAT?!?!?!
Prayers, ‘Splosives.
We have way too much troubles going around. Stop it, y’all.
Ditto.
Hope it’s nothing serious and you recover soon.
Yikes.
Prayers for you, J.
Yikes!
Good luck.
Good luck. Sorry.
Dang. Feel better.
Oh no! I hope everything turns out OK quickly.
Yikes. Hopefully, they’ll figure it out quickly.
Damn, good luck and feel better soon.
Hang in there and get well!
Luck, Hayek. Or in keeping with the post topic hoon!
Rand Paul and Mike Lee have the only testicles in the Senate.
‘Clean’ FISA Renewal Moving Ahead as Key Spygate Reforms Are Pushed Down the Road
Fucking Barr wants business as usual, naturally. The Turtle agrees, as do most of our small-government, constitution-championing Republican heroes.
Note that this whole thing is tucked within a fucking emergency spending bill.
Fuck.
Fuck that. Take responsibility for it yourselves, you lousy worthless assholes.
It’s unreal. These swamp creatures are so brazen.
They are partly enabled by voters who say “if you don’t have anything to hide, what is the problem?”
The problem is people poking around in things that are none of their business.
Yep. And once you’re a target they WILL find something
The DOJ are hiding things; therefore, they must have a problem.
If the mechanisms are constantly violated with no penalties enforced then what the hell good are they?
“We’ll change the rules, pinky swear”
“But think of the fun we can have using on the Democrats…”
Lee, My Favorite and the only senator from Utah.
The secret FISA court should be forbidden from allowing spying
on political campaignsever again—period!FIFY, Rand.
That sounded like an appeal to Trump.
Let’s face it, this shit is never going away. Imagine if President Sanders gets ahold of this apparatus.
It’ll be interesting. Some say sanders is being thick by not calling the Deep State out for saying the russians are supporting him, but i wonder how much of it is that he has seen what has happened to Trump and he’s willing to play ball as long as they let him do what he wants domestically.
That commie son of a bitch has wanted economic power for so long that you know he will compromise himself to get it.