We finished watching Tokyo Vampire Hotel over the weekend, a single season show that follows … well … it’s probably best that I not try to detail a show that was swamped in creativity, ultra-violence, and blood spurting from the walls.
Yea, that quite some humdinger. Don’t watch unless you have an appetite for it.
We’re not the only screwups in the Middle East, as this AL-Monitor report by Fehim Tastekin makes clear:
After losing three soldiers in a bomb attack in Idlib, the last bastion of Islamist rebels in Syria, Turkey pounded Syrian Kurdish targets last week, sending a misleading message of revenge to its public. The episode underscores Ankara’s growing predicament in Idlib, where jihadi forces target Turkish troops even as Turkey’s military presence shields them against the Syrian army.
In Idlib, Turkey has sought to use the dominant Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group to suppress smaller jihadi groups, eager to create the impression that terrorist groups are being eliminated in the region, as its deals with Russia require. Meanwhile, it has kept reorganizing its allies from the Syrian National Army, an umbrella group for various opposition forces. Ultimately, all those efforts have been aimed at preventing a fresh Syrian-Russian offensive to retake the region. This calculus seems to be failing, and tensions in Idlib are on the rise.
Turkey’s predicaments stem from several fronts. Its military and intelligence have sought to create a regular army out of the armed opposition groups that have backed Turkish forces in the regions seized in northern Syria. The Syrian National Army, proclaimed in October 2019, was an outcome of those efforts. Yet factions in that setup have continued to act autonomously, clash with each other, and commit crimes against local civilians.
The best I can figure is that the profusion of ambitious religious groups leads to confusion, shifting alliances, and ass-covering. This is not conducive to satisfying national ambitions, or, more accurately, the ambitions of national leaders, such as Turkish President Erdogan, who appears to long to leave a mark on the Turkish Republic – such as erasing the word ‘Republic’.
If & when fossil fuels become less important to the world economy, it’ll be interesting to see how the Middle East’s lessening importance changes interference and behaviors in the region.
The next in this series of toxic conservative messages, all from the same email, is this:
Which is really quite funny, because it expects its readers to not having paid attention to the last couple of years. The facts of the matter?
The first three claims all came about on the Republicans‘ watch.
And the fourth, so far as I can make out, didn’t occur at all.
This is a classic case of projection, a marked Trumpian trait easily recognized by those who’ve studied the former President. I suppose it’s unsurprising that the conservative email bloodstream has become infected with this fallacious communications strategy, as the former President has become a mythic character to those completely dedicated to the cause – and the propagandists have observed that fact and incorporated it into their strategies.
The purpose of this particular message is to keep the reader both angry at and contemptuous of the Democrats – enough so that rational thought and investigation seems unnecessary.
Constitutionalized:
“… You are easily the most consequential public intellectual of the last 30 years. Hitch [Christopher Hitchens] was a close second, but you actually are the necessary, though not sufficient, guy who got same sex marriage Constitutionalized in the United States. …” [“Andrew Sullivan Returns…After 15 Years,” Hugh Hewitt interviews Andrew Sullivan]
I hardly have to explain that one, do I? But I’ve never seen it before, either.
Mark Sumner of Daily Kos presents the case rate for Covid on a state basis:
Daily Kos and CDC.
And Sumner’s focus is on neighboring states New Mexico and Texas:
The orders from [Governor Grisham (D-NM)] have directly addressed climate change, habitat loss, and the sovereignty of Tribal lands with a plan that would would see literally half the state conserved for environmental purposes. She’s taken steps to move the state away from standardized testing and find measures of educational merit that aren’t saddled with racial and cultural bias. But what’s most obvious in looking at those orders is that, again and again, Lujan Grisham has made the right move in protecting her state. Whether that means limiting social gatherings, issuing a shelter-in-place order in the early days of the pandemic, or instituting mask mandates when recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Lujan Grisham hasn’t shied away from taking action, even when it meant facing protests. It probably doesn’t hurt that before becoming governor, Lujan Grisham served as the state’s secretary of health.
On the other hand, [Governor Abbott (R-TX)] is still out there fighting to prevent schools from mandating masks, and attacking President Joe Biden for requiring either vaccination or testing at large companies. …
Not only are the rates of new cases in New Mexico much lower than in Texas, the rate of positive tests also less than half—a good indication that New Mexico is catching and identifying most of its cases, while Texas simply is not.
Daily Kos and CDC.
In fact, looking at the map suggests that the twin strategies of vaccination and masking are, in fact, effective; the map to the right of state vaccination rates reinforces this observation. Comparing other states, Republican led Wyoming is in terrible shape in both maps, while Democrat led neighbor Colorado is doing far better.
If a friend or a governor of your acquaintance is yammering on how one or the other doesn’t work, show them these maps. They are graphic evidence that they do work.
Spotted in the garden yesterday.
And in his beady little eyes we could reader murder, murder, murder! … she wrote.
Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris (1999) is finally the next progression in this franchise: Gamera is not portrayed by a guy in a rubber suit, but is full-on CGI.
And this makes for a grim, grim giant turtle. It doesn’t help that he’s (insert gender controversy here) apparently a rather clumsy protector of humanity, as a teenager named Ayana claims her parents were stomped by our kaiju in a previous battle in Gamera: Guardian Of The Universe (1995). Now an orphan, she discovers an abandoned temple near her home. Protected by one of the local families, but perhaps without much competence, she breaks in and removes the stone egg she finds, even as, a hundred miles away, Gamera battles and destroys several Gyaos.
The egg hatches, a monster emerges and is named Iris by Ayana after her dead cat (no doubt also stomped by our wayward turtle). It absorbs the girl Ayana, along with her memories and bitterness, and soon it appears to be a sort of Uber-Gyaos, a vision that, in the way it was self-lit, reminded me of the jaegers of Pacific Rim (2013). Extended battles between it and Gamera commence, Gamera suffers the usual indignities, but eventually wins its fight.
But it’s a grim war, with characters we know dying and the government mistaking Gamera as the enemy. It’s an adult story, really, not a child’s tale, and especially not a Western’s child’s fable. It’s well-acted and feels like a move into the modern era of monster movies, but it’s also a little chilling. It makes me glad we don’t have monstrous turtles stomping the landscape for real.
Virginia is having a gubernatorial contest this year, pitting former Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) against businessman Glenn Youngkin (R). The latter is more or less a Trump devotee and has been endorsed by Trump, but I have to wonder if he crippled his already-slender chances with this:
The topic of faith in the security of Virginia’s elections was more sensitive for Youngkin. The Republican made “election integrity” an early centerpiece of his campaign, playing to a belief among Trump supporters that Biden stole the 2020 election. McAuliffe noted Youngkin’s focus on the issue several times, at one point deriding the issue as “the Trump crazy 2020 stuff.”
[Moderator Susan] Page sought to pin Youngkin down on election fraud, noting that Youngkin has embraced an endorsement from Trump, who has raised questions about the integrity of the upcoming governor’s race.
“Do you believe there has been significant fraud in previous Virginia elections and do you agree with President Trump that Democrats may cheat [in this race]?” she asked.
“I do not believe there’s been significant fraud in Virginia elections,” he said. Youngkin sought to turn the tables on McAuliffe, noting that as Democratic National Committee chairman, he claimed that George W. Bush was not the rightful winner in 2000. [WaPo]
The dynamic is how to balance between the biases of the GOP, many or even most of whom passionately believe elections are rigged, as does the former President. But independents, by and large, do not.
So did Youngkin, desperate for votes, just lose some on this rolling of the dice? Or did he pick up some?
Today, while watching Lindsey Buckingham on last night’s The Late Show, I remarked,
When you’re young, bad hair is an experiment.
When you’re old, bad hair is inevitable.
My Arts Editor agreed with perhaps a trifle too much alacrity.
Yeah, black and white, jumpy, bad audio.
And I find it unutterably charming. I probably should get my sense of aesthetics rehabilitated or something.
I’d hate to be a far-right conservative anti-Covid-vaxxer these days, because I think Erick Erickson just tied them into knots using, of all things, poison ivy. Keeping in mind that Erickson’s blog is called Confessions of a Political Junkie, meaning he sees damn near everything through the political prism, he’s decided that the Democrats are really, really sneaky:
The Quinnipiac Poll shows Joe Biden underwater. 42% approval in the Quinnipiac Poll, which tends to lean pretty notably towards the Democrats. President Biden’s polling average has him down four points, 45 to 49. He is in the territory of Gerald Ford in terms of the polling average now regarding popularity. Gerald Ford was the least popular president other than Donald Trump in modern polling time.
I need to submit a proposition to you. What if Joe Biden’s demands for mandatory vaccines at companies of a hundred people or more is not intended to increase compliance with the vaccination rate, but is rather intended to have the effect everyone said it would, for people to dig in their heels and not get vaccinated. What if it’s part of a larger plan by Biden’s strategists who know that people will dig in their heels and refuse to get the vaccine. Biden’s team can then use this message headed into the midterms to make people hate the Republicans.
In other words, what if this is all part of a larger plan to try to divide people from the GOP and make them hate Republicans so they turn out in the midterms to help Democrats. I don’t like to go there in my thinking, but this Washington Post report and the polling seems to suggest that’s exactly what the Democrats are doing. Their internal summer polling shows that more and more people are disdainful of the unvaccinated. It is obvious, even to Democrats, that if the President of the United States goes out and tells people to get vaccinated or else, they will dig in their heels and not do it. What if Joe Biden’s announcement that he was mandating vaccines was in fact, an effort by design to get people to dig in their heels so that the Democrats could then turn around and blame the unvaccinated and tie them to Trump supporters?
In other words, the student body right[1] cries of Erickon’s comrades – to his credit, Erickson & his family are fully vaccinated, and he does not echo those cries of no vaccination! – from both secular (see: Tucker Carlson) and theocratic circles (see any number of far-right pastors and prophets, such as Robin Bullock) are actually being voiced by those wicked Democrats.
And the only way to own the libs is to get vaccinated.
Obviously, intellectually it’s fallacious. Speaking as an independent, this is clever, but not reflective of reality. That said, the far-right has demonstrated its lack of connection to reality, so perhaps this will work. We can certainly hope. Because I don’t want to see our endangered hospitals disappear further under the mound of Covid-19 sufferers. I want to get back to a normal society.
And I really doubt the Democrats would even think of such a scheme.
1 Student body right refers to power sweeps in American football, in which a number of players would attempt to escort the ball carrier around the right side of the line. I suspect the term refers back to the early days of American football, in which all of the men on the field for the offensive team would form the escort; sometimes, men were killed.
I don’t recommend saying that three times fast.
But, and in the spirit of my last post, Steve Benen’s note concerning “audits” or “reviews” of election results in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin reminds me that these are the next states which may see the Democrats take a stronger foothold in the State legislatures, following an Arizona that has borne painful witness to the stunts of a Republican Party that controls their state Senate. Here’s his comments on Pennsylvania:
Circling back to our earlier coverage, the state Senate’s top Republican, President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, recently told a conservative media personality that he and his GOP colleagues are justified in this partisan exercise, not because there’s evidence of wrongdoing, but because they think evidence of wrongdoing might emerge if they keep looking for it.
“I don’t necessarily have faith in the results,” Corman said last month. “I think that there were many problems in our election that we need to get to the bottom of.”
By all appearances, Corman lacks “faith in the results” because voters in his state had the audacity to support the Democratic ticket — just as Pennsylvania voters did in 2012. And 2008. And 2004. And 2000. And 1996. And 1992. His hunch has nevertheless led to expansive subpoenas for millions of voters’ personal information.
These audits are expensive, and they are a disgrace to the reputation of the State, which, granted, most people don’t care about – but some will.
More importantly, this is a consequence of the ideology-driven voting that has been inculcated in Republican voters: a pack of incompetent zealots who have no qualifications, no clue, and are convinced that they should win for one of several reasons, depending on locality. Reading about some state legislature members or wannabes in Kansas and Missouri suggests that it’s all about being fundamentalist Christian. Others? Just a naked, all-consuming lust for power.
These are not qualifications, to be frank.
How long will voters up with them put? So long as the single issue voters think competency doesn’t matter, that their pet issue of abortion, gun rights, or whatever, trumps an actual ability to do the job, to compromise, all that stuff that drives voters crazy.
But is literally the heartblood of politics. I do mean that. The driven purist is a toxin in the bloodstream of government, not only because people have differing views, but because governance is hard. Compromise is how to begin to solve difficult issues, along with going back and examining the results, etc etc.
Ideologically driven politicians don’t want to do that. It might disprove their beloved ideology. It might get them dumped out of office.
I’m hoping voters will look at their current legislators in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, in Florida and Texas and Wyoming, and realize that the ideological champion is, almost inevitably, a loser and a failure.
And not who you want in your legislature.
Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has not only survived the recall effort which was voted on yesterday, it wasn’t even close, as Newsom picked up well north of 60% of the vote. So much for those who organized the recall effort, which requires the signatures on a recall petition of 12% of the number of voters in the election which put the governor in his seat. And while Erick Erickson tried to claim that If only the front runner for the Republicans had played it differently … I cannot help but see his commentary as a buck-up for his listeners, rather than a truly honest assessment. Even if his suggestions are accurate, the fact of the matter is that the Republicans have lost far too much institutional wisdom, which, as a form of elite expertise, they are inclined to disdain anyways.
One of the subplots of this story was the projected reaction, prior to the vote, to the expected Republican loss, especially that of said front runner John Elder, described as a highly conservative radio show host. It was reported that there were claims of electoral fraud posted on his website prior to the beginning of voting, indicating intent and preparations to scream foul at the loss.
So the surprise of the day?
Larry Elder, the leading GOP candidate in California's recall, tells his supporters to be "gracious in defeat" after they boo Gov. Newsom's name.
"By the way," he adds, "we may have lost the battle, but we are going to win the war." https://t.co/cagDpkFQdS pic.twitter.com/ifStV5RLLx
— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 15, 2021
Yea. He acknowledges the loss without screaming foul. It’s not quite the same as saying there was no fraud, but perhaps he affirms the sentiment elsewhere.
Importantly, this stands in stark contrast to the notorious “audit”/fraudit in Arizona, along with allied efforts in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as the repeated claims from the former President himself.
Does this mean that Elder, who has already said he’ll be running in the next election, finally saw the fraud claims to be a double-edged sword? If he won the next election, that he’d be spattered with the mud of such claims? There is little prestige in winning a position in which the entire process has been discredited.
Even falsely. Especially if you are the leading proponent of the position. It just screams hypocrisy.
The recall vote was a major effort by the national Republicans, and if Elder refuses to deploy an element of their national strategy, that may mean that at least a few leading far-right extremists are breaking with the former President. If there are any more prominent special elections, it might be worth paying close attention for screams of “fraud” from losing and even winning Republicans. If they don’t appear, especially if the former President encourages them, that would be highly significant for Republican Party culture.
And the former President is well-known for his intolerance of allies who refuse to toe the line he lays down. His repeated attempts to discredit our elections are a central element of his strategy to, well, soothe his ego; fellow Republicans refusing to repeat that particular mantra, so central to his narcissism, is a very good reason to toss the traitors under the bus.
So I’ll be keeping an eye out for Republicans, even prominent Republicans, becoming enemies of Trump, if only in his mind, for refusing to affirm that, when Republicans lose, the elections were stolen.
The intra-party wars that may be initiated by his wounded ego will continue to repulse independent voters, even if it makes the excluded Republicans look good to a few independents – after all, Why did you wait this long to reject Trump? is a very uncomfortable question. Worse yet, the very act of conducting the audit in Arizona has been revealed by news reports to be little more than the mad scramblings of partisan zealots, not the disinterested operations of experts dedicated to accuracy and truth. It is costing taxpayer money both directly through fees to the companies doing the work, however badly, and by rendering the voting machines untrustworthy. They will have to be replaced. And the results? Completely untrustworthy.
In other words, the Hell of fourth- and fifth-raters that I’ve been predicting, for years, that the Republican Party would descend into has become a nauseatingly public spectacle of utter partisanship, entitlement, theocratic-wannabes, and shared delusions, the latter in the form of the most of the movement refusing to take the vaccine for Covid-19, thereby arguably crippling the economy of the United States – or at least trying.
The next election cycle continues to look quite intriguing.
Colliery:
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a ‘pit’, and the above-ground structures are a ‘pit head‘. In Australia, “colliery” generally refers to an underground coal mine. [Wikipedia]
Noted in “Why the UK doesn’t need a new coal mine,” Mark Peplow, NewScientist (4 September 2021):
The colliery’s coal wouldn’t fuel polluting power stations. Instead, the mine would supply “coking coal” to the steel industry in the UK and Europe. Coke is a dense form of carbon that plays three vital roles in steel-making. Inside a blast furnace, carbon chemically removes oxygen from iron oxide ore to create crude iron. Burning coke also raises the temperature to 2000°C or more, allowing molten iron to be tapped from the bottom of the furnace. Finally, a dash of carbon in the iron strengthens the metal, helping it to become steel inside a second furnace.
Nothing spectacular, but I felt quietly inspired – and completely intimidated – after watching this video.
The idea of immunity from vaccination, which had been taught to me as a binary, and the reality of the situation, in which taking the vaccine may not completely prevent infection, but does suppress symptoms to a variable extent, has been bugging me for months. While WaPo documents definitions that don’t support what I was taught, I still have mixed feelings, and wonder if they should have started out with some other bit of medical terminology which would have better suited the situation.
Except, of course, they were trying for complete immunity.
… the CDC had updated a definition of “vaccination” on one of its webpages. As of late August, the page described vaccination as “The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease” (emphasis ours). The definition has since been changed from producing “immunity” to producing “protection.”
Naturally, the whack-jobs came out, as if on cue:
Check out @CDCgov’s evolving definition of “vaccination.” They’ve been busy at the Ministry of Truth: pic.twitter.com/4k2xf8rvsL
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) September 8, 2021
Which, for particular reason, reminds me of the title of a projected novel concerning a demented cult leader and his followers, which would be entitled TEMPEST IN A CRACKPOT.
Too bad I never got around to writing it.
When you don’t want to spend money on special effects, this is what you get, young squids.
Monster From The Ocean Floor (1954) is one of those weird collages of competent acting interweaved with a dubious plot, era-specific chauvinism, and some really awful special effects.
And a really cool human-power submarine. I mean, I want one of those, and I don’t even have a backyard pool or anything to carry or pull it to a local lake! Too bad this one was left stuck in the monster’s eye.
But this study in insular provincialism isn’t worth recounting, or seeing.
Unless you have a need to see legendary director Roger Corman on the screen.
Metonymy:
Metonymy is a figure of speech (or trope) in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it’s closely associated (such as “crown” for “royalty”).
Metonymy is also the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it, as in describing someone’s clothing to characterize the individual. Adjective: metonymic.
A variant of metonymy is synecdoche. [ThoughtCo.]
Noted in “Ballot Box, Jury Box, Cartridge Box,” Quote Investigator:
The ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.
This statement employed metonymy: the “ballot box” referred to input from the populace via the electoral process; the “jury box” referred to oversight via the judicial process; and the cartridge box referred to control via firearms.
If Earth is going to have its revenge on us, here’s how it should do it:
Climate change may increase the risk of viruses becoming capable of infecting new hosts in the Arctic, suggests a study of genetic material from a Canadian lake.
Canadian scientists found that an increase in glacier melt at Lake Hazen, the Arctic’s largest lake by volume and a location in George Clooney’s film The Midnight Sky, was linked to a greater risk of viral spillover, where a virus infects a new host for the first time. Melting glaciers were considered a proxy of climate change, which is causing their retreat globally.
The team from the University of Ottawa, led by Audrée Lemieux, gathered soil and sediment from the lake and sequenced the RNA and DNA in the samples. The researchers found signatures of viruses and their potential hosts including animals, plants and fungi. They then ran an algorithm recently developed by a different research team, which assesses the chance of coevolution or symbiosis among unrelated groups of organisms. The algorithm allowed the team to gauge the risk of spillover, and suggested this was higher in lake samples nearer to the point where larger tributaries – carrying more meltwater from nearby glaciers – flow into the lake. [“Climate change linked to risk of viruses jumping species in the Arctic“, Adam Vaughan, NewScientist, (4 September 2021, paywall)]
Doesn’t sound up front enough? I’ll just be glad I’m not living on the eastern seaboard, because it appears glaciers are double-barrelled:
The rapid melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet is likely to trigger catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis powerful enough to impact the North American and European coastlines.
The weight of the ice sheet is reduced from the loss of ice from melting and the calving of tidal glaciers, which impacts the earth’s crust, unleashing intense seismic activity.
Calving glaciers is already causing tsunamis in Greenland. But, they are localized and not a regional threat.
So warns Bill McQuire, currently a Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at the University College of London.
The original article is in the Financial Times, which requires I yield up some cash, so I shan’t quote them; the above, with more, is from Pakalolo on Daily Kos here.
While the balances are hardly delicate, overwhelming them could have a price we’ll regret.
Kicking off a non-partisan series concerning the crises that continually surround us – according to some:
And the fundraising begins pic.twitter.com/EEYgG1doYR
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) September 10, 2021
Quick! Before the pandemic is ended by Biden’s “authoritarian” directive, SEND US MONEY! – your friends at the Republican National Committee.
The crisis being a tool lost to lever money out of wallets, of course.
Polygenic scores:
In genetics, a polygenic score (PGS), also called a polygenic risk score (PRS), genetic risk score, or genome-wide score, is a number that summarises the estimated effect of many genetic variants on an individual’s phenotype, typically calculated as a weighted sum of trait-associated alleles. It reflects an individual’s estimated genetic predisposition for a given trait and can be used as a predictor for that trait. In other words, it gives an estimate of how likely an individual is to have a given trait only based on genetics, without taking environmental factors into account. Polygenic scores are widely used in animal breeding and plant breeding (usually termed genomic prediction or genomic selection) due to their efficacy in improving livestock breeding and crops. In humans, polygenic scores are typically generated from genome-wide association study (GWAS) data. [Wikipedia]
Noted in “Emerging Cracks In The Woke Elite,” Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish:
Similarly, it was quite a shock to read in The New Yorker a fair and empathetic profile of an academic geneticist, Kathryn Paige Harden, who acknowledges a role for genetics in social outcomes. It helps that Harden is, like Freddie DeBoer, on the left; and the piece is strewn with insinuations that other writers on genetics, like Charles Murray, deny that the environment plays a part in outcomes as well (when it is clear to anyone who can read that this is grotesquely untrue). But if the readers of The New Yorker need to be fed distortions about some on the right in order for them to consider the unavoidable emergence of “polygenic scores” for humans, with their vast political and ethical implications, then that’s a step forward.
I couldn’t help but wonder where these are located:
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) said he was prepared to fight Biden’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposal to “the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian.” His office didn’t respond to a request for more information about his views on whether there are instances when vaccine requirements should be put in place. The governor has encouraged residents to get vaccinated against the coronavirus but said that decision is up to them. [WaPo]
Are the gates of hell located at Governor McMaster’s (R-SC) home? The South Carolina legislature?
Mar-a-Lago, the residence of the former President Donald Trump? The home of the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna Romney McDaniel? I’ll note that Senator McConnell (R-KY) has strongly endorsed being vaccinated, so the gates of hell opening into his office seem unlikely, though not completely out of bounds.
Maybe Florida’s governor’s mansion where, presumably, resides Governor Ron “Death” DeSantis (R-FL)? Texas’ governor’s mansion where, presumably, resides Governor Abbott (R-TX)? Or would it be more likely that Abbott’s Lt. Governor, Dan “Let’s sacrifice all the seniors on the altar of the Economy” Patrick, would host the gates of hell?
My goodness, there are just so many options, and many more if we cast our net to sexually abusive conservative clergy. My oh my.
And I’m being informed that Rolly the Ghostly Red Octopus was never paid for her role in this Shakespearean drama, because, you know, Shakespeare.
Gamera 2: Attack Of Legion (1996) is a step back in the progression of the Gamera franchise. In our last breathless episode, you’ll remember, it was clear that the producers had come into a few extra bucks, which they spent mostly on the scriptwriters and the actors, with just a couple of extra dollars invested in the special effects. The result was a story that felt more adult and less silly than the average Gamera episode up to this point.
In the current episode, I fear the story is a little less interesting. Part of the problem is the reversion to a space-based monster, Legion, which is basically a giant insect with a tremendous swarm of electricity-sucking, mosquito-like children. There’s some chemistry involved in their birth and eating habits, but it didn’t add to the tension. The acting was maybe a little worse, and definitely not a further upgrade. For those who remember the character Asagi Kusanagi, the girl with the connection to Gamera in Gamera: Guardian of the Universe, she makes an appearance, maybe acting as a communications conduit for a pack of children to beg Gamera to wake up and fight, but it’s a triviality: we could have had the kids throw rocks at the giant turtle with equal dramatic effect.
It is true that the storytellers reveal one more Gamera capability after he (she? it? – do bioweapons – see previous episode – have a gender?) has been utterly skewered by laser beams, but this had the repulsive taste of a deux ex machina, and not a legitimate plot machination.
So, two guys in rubber suits have a tussle. Watch out for the kids, who make gory messes out of a few humans. My sense of More improvements? was disappointed. Yours may be, too.
The next pic from the toxic email is deceptively this:
The hidden reference is to the changes happening in society today, such as the decision to retire certain books written by “Dr. Seuss” (Theodor Seuss Geisel) by the owners of the properties, the private Dr. Seuss Enterprises, for supposed racist or sexist imagery, or the offering of a gender-free Potato-Head toy by toy maker Hasbro. Both of these changes were seized upon by conservative media, not to bring forth a conservative intellectual response, but to stir the emotions of the conservative base.
Add in the conservative belief that mankind would not work if it does not have to, i.e., that the unemployed are just too lazy to tolerate, and this is an adroit spoon in the bowl of batter that is the conservative base, and that liquid being drizzled in is contempt, with a leaf of moral superiority.
A moral superiority that is hardly earned in the face of a leader like Donald Trump.
And so the point is to up the hormones of the conservative body – and not let it think.
