Jungle Cruise

I saw Jungle Cruise with my wife and youngest son. The verdict:

Wife: Enjoyed it, mostly, especially the nods to the Jungle Cruise puns and the ride experience (she's a huge theme park junkie.) Was off-put by a handful of culture war nods here and there, but strongly desires to try and ignore those and enjoy movies anyway.

Son: Didn't like it. And he's a huge Dwayne Johnson fan. I didn't talk to him in detail, but I don't need to, I don't think. What put him off was almost certainly Emily Blunt's completely unlikeable "stronk wamman" character, which was so over-the-top that even culture warriors must think that it's a parody. He was also put off by the stereotypically German villain who was a Nazi, even though the movie takes place in the middle of World War I, not World War II. I guess all blond guys are naturally Nazis to Disney or something. Full disclosure: my son has absolutely no German ancestry, but he is blue-eyed and blond-haired.

Me: I certainly noticed the culture war nods, and they had the predictable effect of turning me off, but given that I expected them anyway and they were usually less obnoxious than many other movies have had, does the movie have anything else to recommend it? Not a ton. It was marginally entertaining most of the time, but eminently forgettable. I certainly won't be buying this one, and I highly doubt I'll ever have any interest in ever seeing it again. But that doesn't mean that I thought I wasted my time in seeing it. (It helps that we got our tickets for $5 each, and we had enough rewards to get drinks and popcorn for free.) It came across as desperately trying to recreate, almost to the same beats in many ways, the winning formula of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Which honestly, were more mediocre than people give them credit for being too.

Dwayne Johnson was reasonably charismatic most of the time. He's always been that kind of force on the screen, and I've rarely been able to say that I disliked him in anything he's been in, or any of his characters, even. For the most part, his characters, regardless of what the screenwriters attempt to do, all seem to come across as just "him" from real life anyway. 

Emily Blunt I usually quite like, but her character here was insufferably unlikable, and not really due to any fault of hers. The character was just written that way. I told this to my wife while we were watching the credits a bit. She said she was a likable unlikable, i.e., you were supposed to get to like her over time, just like Mr. The Rock's character does. But I didn't. And no, that's not what I meant. I meant she's just a completely unlikable person, to the point that it ruins the believability of the kinda sorta chaste romance between them, and ruins... well, it ruins a lot of stuff, actually. My wife is talking about a character like Katherine Hepburn plays in Bringing Up Baby, for instance, or Paula Prentiss in Man's Favorite Sport. We're not talking about that kind of likable unlikable. We're talking about just plain old unlikable.

She also could have been determined and strong without being masculine, bitchy and entitled. For a great example, turning again to Katherine Hepburn, check out the African Queen, also a movie about a grumpy old skipper of a river boat in the tropics who's convinced reluctantly to travel upriver by a determined woman. I have no doubt that the river-going German U-boat scenes were greatly inspired by that movie, too.

Most of the rest of the cast was underused and forgettable. Jack Whitehall tries to channel John Hannah from the Mummy series of movies, but rather than making him funny, they mostly just made him prissy and gay. Paul Giamatti is notable for doing what is basically little more than a cameo. I don't know why a much cheaper, generic guy couldn't have done that role just as well. Jesse Plemmons, who notably almost played the role of Finn in the first of the sequel trilogy Star Wars films, was kind of interesting, but criminally under-used for being one of the more interesting characters. The Venezuelan guy who was the arch-assassin who was supposed to kill Jason Bourne in the Bourne Ultimatum played an old conquistador turned into the rivery version of Davy Jones from the Pirates movie was also underused, but given that he was only a vaguely familiar face, speaking Spanish most of the time, that doesn't matter too much. I did notice that he tried to deliver his Spanish lines with a Spaniard accent, but I have no idea if it was a good one or not. Given that it was supposed to a 500 year old Spaniard accent, I don't know if anyone knows, for that matter.

Anyway, I want to get my capsule review in early before the usual suspects start panning the movie as being terrible. Like Black Widow, it wasn't terrible. It also wasn't in the least compelling, or memorable, or likely to be much of a draw. If you're the kind of person who likes going to movies for its own sake, enjoys the theatrical experience, and doesn't care if the movie is anything more than a forgettable excuse to get out of the house and eat some popcorn, it's fine. If you demand anything at all more than that, though, it fails to deliver.

Addendum: It's curious that Scarlett Johansson is now attempting to sue Disney over the Black Widow movie, claiming that they're in breach of contract because of their hybrid release cannibalizing ticket sales. While that may very well be true, and Disney is such a terrible company with such terrible, wicked leadership that they deserve to get reamed in court and more, I also suspect that Scarlett Johansson has been sold a tale of wishful thinking, narcissistic pandering. The movie isn't that good. There's no way that you're entitled to another $50 million because of strong ticket sales. You made $20 million for making it, now sit down and shut up, you entitled, bratty little princess. Kevin Feige is weighing in, acting like a typical slimy, soulless bureaucrat with no more integrity than your typical earthworm. I've also noticed a pronounced pattern of him kissing up to any marginally attractive women actresses too, every chance he gets. What an off-putting beta the guy is turning out to be. The drama around the movie is more entertaining than the movie itself was. But because there's no hero to root for, only dysfunctional villains to root against, it's possible that the only happy ending would be if a combination of The Big One earthquake, wildfires, tidal waves, and rioting Third World imports just burn all of LA to the ground and wash the remains out to sea.

My son disagrees. He says The Black Widow was worth seeing because Florence Pugh is hot. I suppose that might be true, although the movie makes a point of never putting her in anything flattering, so it's hard to tell. She kind of looks straight-hipped and man-shouldered to me. Like a somewhat burlier than average 12 year old boy with long hair. Yuck. I vaguely remember thinking she was cute and feminine in the latest Little Women remake a couple of years ago, though.

Angeleyes

I've often had an interesting relationship with Swedish 70s and early 80s "superpop" group ABBA. My dad was my first exposure to music, of course, and while ABBA wasn't really his kind of thing, he did have one compilation album of theirs which we listened to quite a bit. Probably because my mom and us kids kinda liked it. This was The Magic of ABBA on vinyl, and you can follow that link to see the tracklist as well as the booklet that came with it, and all of the pictures, etc. Sometimes in the years since, I've gone through moods where I thought ABBA was merely a fad of the times and that their music wasn't something I was particularly interested in, but I've never really let go of a fondness for it. In more recent years, I've come to deny that opinion entirely, and I now think that ABBA were one of the most truly talented groups of songwriters/performers ever to come out of the pop era. Certainly better than the over-rated Beatles (don't get me wrong; I don't think the Beatles were bad. I just think that they're not that great.) Much of their music is truly timeless. Not too long ago I discovered Abbacadabra, which took a great number of the ABBA songs out of their late 70s sonic context and re-performed them as cover versions in a 90s dance-pop or Hi-NRG. This cemented that view; the songs themselves are great. And frankly, that late 70s sonic context isn't so heavily funky and disco that it sounds bad even now; it's actually pretty timeless itself.

On top of this, the puerile and evil yet sadly kind of charming musical Mamma Mia! also shows that the songs really have legs outside of their context. I've said about the movie version of that before:

So making a musical using their songs wasn't a bad idea, by any means.  Although a handful of songs feel forced, most of them work pretty well given the story structure.  And the movies themselves are fairly charismatic and charming most of the time too.  I laughed.  I felt emotionally tugged.  I had a good time.

Which is why, of course, the Mamma Mia movies are so dangerous.  Because underneath that charming, likable surface is a grab bag of civilization destroying content.  All of the characters are broken and dysfunctional, engaging in behavior that is irresponsible, immature, depraved, debauched, frankly kind of retarded, and to make it all worse, the movie romanticizes exactly all of those things.  I've flippantly (although completely accurately) summarized the first movie by saying that it's the story of a washed up older ho and her bratty princess syndrome daughter jerking around a whole bunch of different men, who for reasons that are completely inexplicable to the audience, they put up with.  The story is awash with r-selected feminism (but I repeat myself) tropes, including the "empowered" women who, like I said, always come off more as bratty and bitchy than powerful.  As always, feminists covet the alleged social and political power that they think men have, but haven't the foggiest notion of the responsibility that that power entails, or where it comes from, or how to maintain it.  It's nothing more than the ability to indulge their narcissistic fantasies, which ultimately, this movie is.

The men are all inexplicably beta, and pine after women in a way that makes no sense, especially because these women make no effort to be attractive, really—in fact, they go quite a long way towards trying to make themselves off-putting and unlikable.  Everybody gives up their dreams to go chase after women that, in many cases, they haven't seen in years or even decades.  Somehow these men still cling to romantic notions after decades—which is clearly nothing more than projection on the part of the women writers (actually, I notice that out of three writing credits two of them are men.  Biologically, at least.)

Nobody should ever watch this film and feel that the characters are anything other than pitiable, broken people, engaging in ridiculous behavior.  As much as I thought the movie was kind of charming, I most certainly do not recommend it.  Do yourself a favor and just go buy ABBA's Gold and More Gold collections on Amazon and listen to them instead. (ed. Since I wrote that I see that a "three disc" version (also in mp3) with 59 songs has come out. This is probably pretty much all the ABBA a normal person would ever need.)

In any case, I had a strange thing happen after I really got into ABBA again and decided that it was kind of criminal that I hadn't loaded up my huge music collection on my phone with more ABBA that I discovered the song "Angeleyes." While it sounded strangely familiar, I had no real memory of this song. This is very bizarre, because I see that it's on the album that my dad had. Somehow, my memories skipped over that song, which is very strange because it's one of my favorite ABBA songs now. Exactly how it came to be that I remembered every single other song on the album except that one mystifies me, especially now that I consider it such a good track.

Corded Ware and Yamnaya

The latest from Davidski:

There's been a lot of talk lately about the finding that the peoples associated with the Corded Ware and Yamnaya archeological cultures were close cousins [...]. As I've already pointed out, this is an interesting discovery, but, at this stage, it's difficult to know what it means exactly.

It might mean that the Yamnayans were the direct predecessors of the Corded Ware people. Or it might just mean that, at some point, the Corded Ware and Yamnaya populations swapped women regularly (that is, they practiced female exogamy with each other).

• In any case, I feel that several important facts aren't being taken into account by most of the interested parties. These facts include, in no particular order: despite being closely related, the Corded Ware and Yamnaya peoples were highly adapted to very different ecological zones - temperate forests and arid steppes, respectively - and this is surely not something that happened within a few years and probably not even within a couple of generations
• both the Corded Ware and Yamnaya populations expanded widely and rapidly at around the same time, but never got in each others way, probably because they occupied very different ecological niches
• despite sharing the R1b Y-chromosome haplogroup, their paternal origins were quite different, with Corded Ware males rich in R1a-M417 and R1b-L51 and Yamnaya males rich in R1b-Z2103 and I2a-L699

I suppose it's possible that the Corded Ware people were overwhelmingly and directly derived from the Yamnaya population. But right now my view is that, even if they were, then the Yamnaya population that they came from was quite different from the classic, R1b-Z2103-rich Yamnaya that spread rapidly across the steppes.

Indeed, perhaps what we're dealing with here is a very early (proto?) Yamnaya gene pool located somewhere in the border zone between the forests and the steppes, that then split into two main sub-populations, with one of these groups heading north and the other south?

I think it's most likely, personally, that Yamnaya and Corded Ware are derived ultimately from separate but adjacent earlier sources that practiced a lot of female exogamy over many generations, probably spoke closely related languages or even dialects of the same proto-Indo-European—in part because we can't yet determine that some of the Indo-European daughter languages of the Balkans in particular didn't actually come from a Yamnaya rather than Corded Ware source. I do suspect that they weren't ever really exactly the same population source, however, as the paternal Y-DNA haplogroups seem to be different, as well as to be rooted in more ancient populations. The paternal split between east and west on the steppe seems to have been quite deep rooted, going back quite a bit longer than the Yamnaya and Corded Ware peoples to their predecessors. However, the latest is that Yamnaya essentially spread from the western edge of its range, rather than developing exactly out of Khvalynsk. While the eastern and western steppe cultures that preceded Yamnaya appear to have had a very similar economy and material culture, and probably broadly similar genetics, we're starting to get enough fine scale structure detail to be able to describe some movement and fluctuations which probably resulted in intrusions from adjacent people's haplogroups, and stuff like that. 

It's important to not be too mesmerized by the haplogroups, though. While the different paternal haplogroups between Corded Ware and Yamnaya are both interesting and probably mean something, the fact that at an autosomal level the two populations were still very closely genetically related means something too. They may have been two broadly integrated cultures that had different male lines in ascension in the different regions. David Anthony has proposed some kind of pseudo-Marxist class-based solution to the haplogroup differences. I think the point is that we don't really know. But as Davidski points out, Anthony's solution is probably not the most parsimonious, nor is it necessary.

And besides, there's more structure yet to come. While Davidski says that Corded Ware was rich in R1a-M417 and R1b-L51, the reality is that the R1b-L51 seems to be a slightly later development, during the Bell Beaker phase. If the Corded Ware themselves were rich in it, most of those samples haven't yet been published (although he hints that he's aware of unpublished samples.) In terms of what's published, we have, rather: 1) Yamnaya rich in R1b-Z2103 and to a lesser extent I2a-L699, Corded Ware rich in Rla-M417 and Bell Beaker rich in R1b-L51. The Bell Beaker haplogroup seems to have been quite rare in the early expansions of the Corded Ware (although, again, hints of unpublished results that will partially bridge that gap are common) and had an explosive radiation after the Corded Ware was already established... but mostly, only in the Western half of the Corded Ware horizon. The eastern half remains heavy in R1a-M417 and its subclade Z93.

In fact, one paper on academia.edu that I've read suggests the same thing; a Sredni Stog origin for Indo-European, through Corded Ware, but also suggests that the WSH element is an illusion of sorts. It represents an admixture (roughly 50/50) between the EHG and the CHG populations, but it does not necessarily imply that all "WSH" admixture later reported actually comes from a single source of that admixture of CHG and EHG. This is, again, in keeping with explaining the structure on the steppes, and promoting the idea that Khvalynsk and Sredni Stog were not necessarily as closely related (or closely tied, maybe is a better word) than has been often proposed in the past. Rather, the paper proposes that the WSH should remain broken out as CHG and EHG respectively. It also proposes that rather than there being a CHG/EHG hybrid in the steppes for centuries or even millennia, that the CHG and EHG components should be seen as representing populations that came together in the region, yet probably retained some coherence as separate populations for some time. The early Corded Ware people are, therefore, on average 40% EHG, 30% CHG, 22½% EEF and 7½% WHG. The admixing between them probably started way back in the Dnieper-Donets phase, since all four populations were on contact that long ago in the western steppe and forest steppe, before even the Sredni Stog, much less Corded Ware were formed. 

Sredni Stog, based on so far very limited sampling, seems to show about 1/5th EEF admixture. The earlier Dnieper-Donets culture seems to be almost exclusively EHG with some WHG admixture. The EEF admixture probably came from extended contacts, which are fairly well documented anyway, with the most westerly EEF Cucuteni-Trypillia culture. The Khvalynsk culture has no EEF admixture, but the CHG admixture that it shows is supposed to have happened earlier in the East rather than the West.

Still trying to untangle what all of this means, but I do tend to think that Davidski's models are the best ones for the development of a PIE-speaking population, in part because he's the most inclined to rigorously include the best fine-scale data.

Epic/high fantasy re-reads

Although in many ways I was enjoying the Malloreon better than I expected, and even better than the Belgariad, I was smack in the middle of it, from Interlibrary Loan, when I got to the point where I was too busy to continue. With the travel plans I was having, and other things distracting me, I got pulled away, didn't read anything for over two weeks, and decided that it just wasn't the right time to try re-reading that. So I quit, took the books back to the library, and I'll (probably) get on to that some time later, when things are calmer and different as opposed to now. 

Now that I'm home from vacation, I've got a lot to do at home. I'm behind on work, I've got a number of house projects of things that need to be fixed or replaced, I've got a lot going on with my sons to work on, etc. So I'm a little unsure about diving into another reading project. But I do have a few options, and I want to do all of them at some point:

• I've got Lord of the Rings (including The Hobbit) in print and audiobook as mp3 files. It's been a few years since I've read this. Many years, actually. I'm overdue for a re-read.
• I've got all of the original 80s version paperbacks of the Riftwar Saga again, and since I lost the first three books of that several years ago, I've re-read the "director's cut" version from the library and believe it or not, been kind of disappointed in them. Now that I have copies of all of the versions that I actually want (and used to have) I've been jonesing to re-read them again. It's been quite a while.
• I have the original Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy in both print and audiobook. It's been a long time since I've read those either, and I've never read the highly regarded Legends trilogy which follows it. I'd like to read Chronicles and then Legends.
• I haven't read the Chronicles of Prydain in a long time. I have the first and last of the five books in print, although my copy of The High King is falling apart. But I do have all of them on audiobook.
• I've got several things to read that I've had for quite a long time but haven't gotten around to reading. I've read the first two books, for instance of the Nagash Trilogy by Mike Lee from Black Library, but I've had two abortive attempts to start the third book and it ended up being too busy of a time for me to read it. I'd like to finish that. I've also got the von Carstein vampire trilogy in omnibus format that I've had for years and not read.
• If you get beyond that, I've got a lot of single volume fantasy that I haven't read yet but which have owned for a long time. And if you look at my Kindle library, holy crap, I've got a lot to read.

I also have another trip, this time by myself, coming up in either August or September, or possibly a little later, to go hiking. In fact, I'd like to see if I can squeeze two trips out of that; maybe an earlier one to the one of my Rockies destinations before it starts getting colder, and one way out in the west Texas desert after it's not too hot anymore. Maybe if I do that, I can figure out how to get some of those audiobooks loaded on my phone or something so I can listen to them while driving.

(I don't mean that literally. Obviously I know how to load them. But they will take up a lot of memory, so I'm thinking of alternatives, like having an alternate SD card I can play or something. I'm not sure what car I'll be taking on these trips yet, so I don't know yet what my options are going to be.)

Black Widow

Just got back from seeing the Black Widow movie. I actually wasn't going to see it, both because I'm irked generally at Disney and don't want to support them even indirectly in any financial sense, but secondly because a lot of the folks I follow on YouTube about pop culture, like Geeks + Gamers, Nerdrotic, Critical Drinker, Overlord DVD, etc. have panned it. Not all of them, but I know for sure Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic didn't like it. So, when my wife bought tickets for all of us tonight, I kinda zipped my criticisms and went anyway, because I knew it was important for her to get out and see a movie as a family. Even though I wished she'd asked me what to see before buying them.

Turns out, the movie wasn't as bad as everyone I'd read made it out to be. Oh, sure—it wasn't great either. It was pretty mediocre as far as Marvel movies go, and to be honest with you, that's probably as good as they're going to get for quite some time in the future. Now, to be fair, I've already seen this story. It was called the Street Fighter Alpha series of video games, and it involved a character named Cammy. Here's her complete story. If you get the parts from the Alpha subseries in particular, that's an almost note by note blueprint for the plot of Black Widow. Except, of course, that the villain in the movie was nowhere near as cool as M. Bison. (In fact, it almost seems like he's deliberately a Harvey Weinstein stand-in.) And the Street Fighter plots tend to kind of repeat, so very similar beats were still going on with Cammy in SF4 and SF5 in most respects. 

If you know the story of Cammy from Street Fighter, then you pretty much know the story of this movie, because it's almost exactly the same. Except with a few Marvel references thrown in here and there, although fewer than you'd think. It's also got a notable resemblance to the story of the Jason Bourne stories. And also, it makes me wonder why Captain America was so special and everyone was after the super soldier serum, when it seems quite obvious that people with super soldier serum knock-offs were kind of a dime a dozen in the current version of the Marvel Universe. Even if this Red Guardian is as much a knock-off of Zangief as he is of the comic book version of his character.

It also occurs to me that some of the guys who complain about pop culture ruination... well, that's kind of their thing, and what brings the audiences to them. So, while I kind of tend to agree with them on general principle, sometimes it's worth taking their trashing of a movie with a grain of salt.

So I don't necessarily recommend this movie, but I don't exactly disrecommend it either. The feminist "oh noez the poor victims, now they're getting their revenge" line that I feared that movie would lean into didn't really materialize too much; it felt more like a personal story of the tragedy of individuals rather than some agitprop to make people feel bad about themselves and that the world owes them something even when they're already the most spoiled, entitled bratty little princesses that the world has ever known. So, that's good, I suppose. David Harbour's Red Guardian didn't end up being very effective, or smart, or anything else like that in the end, but he also wasn't really the butt of every single joke either, like I feared he would be.

The idea that pretty little lightweight women would be these awesome combat machines is kinda silly, and while I'm starting to get tired of that idiotic trope, it is kind of integral to the plot here, and it does predate Marvel really having much hint of wokeness. I mean, the Black Widow character was first published in 1964 fer cryin' out loud. And I am deliberately comparing it repeatedly to Street Fighter, which is probably the franchise most responsible for pushing the idea that tiny little women could be capable in hand to hand combat because of speed and agility.

The only thing I didn't like that really merits a total call-out, and Nerdrotic really went on about this too, was the pointless complete reimagining of the Taskmaster character to make an attempt to get a cheap "a-ha!" moment. Which fell pretty flat because they've done exactly that same a-ha moment several times already. It's, if anything, a very tired attempted reveal, and kind of insulting. Plus, it was handled very ham-handedly. Look at the stuntman who played Taskmaster for the action scenes, with a mask on. Screenshot from Nerdrotic.

But when the mask comes off, it's .... Olga Kurylenko with scar prosthetics on half of her face? C'mon. I know Kurylenko hasn't had a high profile much of anything going on since... what, Quantum of Solace in 2008, but that's kind of insulting even so to misuse her so. She used to be somebody, by golly! Anyway, sex swapping of minor characters that they think that they can get away with without causing too much of an outcry is so overdone, and actually, people are mostly just irritated that it happens at all nowadays. Although race swapping is probably even more insulting (speaking of which, saw the Eternals trailer before the movie too. I've seen it before, of course, on my phone, but this is the first time in theaters. Also saw the new Suicide Squad. They're hyping the involvement of pedophile James Gunn, so Hollywood is obviously anxious to declare him forgiven for tweeting about pedophilia, rape and AIDS. He is half Jewish, after all. I mean, they even brought monkey-spanking Jeff Toobin back to the air only a few weeks after his fall from grace. Then again, he's full Jewish, so the time that they had to pretend to be mad at him was much shorter. And he's not as high profile, so they probably thought that nobody really cared all that much about him personally.

Hollywood really is Sodom & Gomorrah.

One last model railroading post...

I do have my Ruritanian States of America Railroad blog up and running, and I've been filling a pipeline of probably dumb, meandering, rambly posts, just like I do here. But because that's (so far) been specifically about my plans for my own future model railroad, I didn't want to muck it up with this kind of post. This will probably be the last one that I post on this tag on this blog... I hope. I do have another home for this topic, after all.

Here's a video from a channel that goes around looking for model railroads to feature, and he does these videos of them. This is a pretty nice layout in many respects, and I hate to find fault with it, but it does a couple of my real pet peeves. Probably because it's a club layout and they have no choice, but I dunno. I suspect lot of people don't seem to care about these things.

First, what's good? One of my pet peeves is ghost town railroads, and this isn't one of them. It's swarming with little HO scale figures, and everywhere you look, there's more of them out and about doing stuff. You could probably spend hours just looking around at little vignettes here and there, asking yourself what this guy is doing, and what those guys are doing, and what's with that car accident, and the hazmat suit guys in the foundry, etc. It's great to see someone pay attention to that detail, because all too many times people don't.

The layout looks a little old in places. There's dust and cobwebs that haven't been kept clean, and some figures and models have their paint chipped and stuff. That's inevitable, I suppose, but it's occasionally pretty noticeable.

Sometimes the scenery isn't super well done, and you really notice it. The foundry was a pretty cool idea, but something a little better than obviously splashed on orange paint needs to be done to make a convincing effect. Kathy Millatt, a prominent YouTube diorama and scenery builder showed us a Tomb Raider themed diorama with lava that looks much better than this molten steel does.

An especially prominent and somewhat surprising failing of this type is that weathering is hit or miss. In the sense that sometimes it hasn't been done at all, making the models look like little plastic toys rather than a realistic, eye-fooling diorama. This is especially true when plastic mold lines aren't trimmed away, and the model is still shiny. Many of the figures have this failing; they really are quite shiny and plastic looking. I'm really kind of mystified as to why this was done. The other pet peeve of mine is buildings (and figures) that float above the scenery, because they were just placed on their base, and then set down on top of the ground cover. It does take a little more effort and planning to make your stuff look like it wasn't an afterthought, but actually belongs on your miniature world the way real buildings belong in the real world and sit on top of it convincingly and with some degree of solidity, but it's a pet peeve of mine when just because it takes some effort, modelers don't always do it.

I'm more impressed all of the time with John Olson and his Jerome & Southwestern layout. Although it bills itself as a beginner layout, and in some ways it is, it's surprisingly sophisticated, surprisingly well planned, and surprisingly well-executed. Many much bigger layouts, made by many modelers, and with a long vintage, (i.e., they've been in operation for many years) quite honestly aren't nearly as good still. Then again, shortly after his experience with Model Railroader, he went on to work at Disney, where he designed and built much of the scenery of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. He was clearly quite good at that kind of thing, and he was also a really good photographer, who knew how to make his models, dioramas and whatnot look really good under photographic conditions. But man, how the industry has fallen. Reading Model Railroader now compared to even when I was a kid in the 80s, is a major step down in the quality of the images. Given the vastly improved techniques we have for not only making scenery but also lighting and photographing it, that's just kind of inexcusable.

And it's a major condemnation of the kinds of people who have taken over the official "voices" of the hobby, i.e., the people who print the books and magazines. Quite honestly, you can often get better content from amateurs on YouTube. Check out Luke Towan, for instance, or Jason Jenson Trains.

Just a quick note

I'm back from my extended vacation. Although I'm young to be in this position by today's hedonistic standards, the reality is that by simply doing things a relatively old-fashioned way by getting married in my early 20s, having kids fairly quickly, and then having kids who did the same, I'm a second-time grandfather now while still in my 40s (admittedly, not for much longer, though.) Sadly for us, although happily for him, my oldest son lives halfway across the country out in the West, where I always wanted to live but during my career, I have so far not managed to be able to do so. My little grandkids are pretty awesome, so you can see why I haven't been updating this last two weeks while I spent the majority of my time with them. But I don't want to talk too much about personal things like that when the purpose of this blog is to talk about my RPG setting. 

Having been out in the West, and in the last little bit I've spent a significant time in South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Montana and Colorado, missing only the significant states of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas (although I grew up in the latter and lived there until I was in my mid to late 20s, so I probably have that covered. You'll note I'm excluding the Left Coast states from consideration as in scope for me.) I've found that my setting needs to reflect that part of the world. Fantasy is so often Eurocentric, and that makes perfect sense that it is so. The majority of the market for fantasy has been white males, who have a European Medieval heritage and therefore an interest in fantasy that reflects (to a greater or lesser degree) their own heritage, about which they feel nostalgia, and not the heritage of some alien peoples from some alien continent or lands. I've somewhat narrowed this focus, or rather, I've homed in on a subset; my attachment is less to the ancient homelands of my ancient ancestors, but rather to the newer homeland of my more recent ancestors here in the Promised Land. I'll defer references for now, but suffice it for now for me to say that the American West is what I consider my homeland, and any fantasy that isn't set in a fantastica analog of it, at least to some degree, couldn't possibly be one that I feel connected to enough to actually create myself. Sure, sure... I'm not saying that I have cowboys and homesteaders of the American West in fantasy analog, because I do still prefer fantasy that's somewhat Medieval in its culture, or at least the superficial cues of its culture. I'd say rather that the land itself is the American West, the peoples are superficially Medieval Saxons of the Robin Hood and Ivanhoe variety, but plenty of American frontier attitudes and standards are applied to them nonetheless, in a more subtle fashion.

Anyway, I've said all that before; mostly this is just a check in. I'm back, and once I get caught up enough to actually generate some new content, I will.

Hasta la vista

I'm leaving tonight to go visit my son, my daughter-in-law, my 1-yo grandson and see the birth of my new grand daughter. Needless to say, blog posts will be thin and infrequent for the next two to three weeks as I'm either coming, going, or catching up from having been gone so much. I thought it an appropriate time to reflect on my blog(s) and their organization. Let me make a brief list of all of the blogs that I claim either total or partial ownership of.

• Dark Heritage. This one. It was initially created to document my forays into role-playing games, especially the Dark Heritage fantasy setting, but later also the Ad Astra space opera setting. It's also on topic to talk about general science fiction or fantasy topics. I do have a lot of interests other this this, though. Sometimes those other interests take up enough head-space that they crowd out the initial topics of the blog for a time. Usually I don't worry too much about this, but sometimes a topic starts to grow enough so that it threatens the primacy of the on-topic themes of this blog. When this seems like it might be an ongoing, or at least off-and-on yet sufficiently frequent occurrence, I'll make a split and create a new blog. Sometimes these topics end up running out of steam and these new blogs lie fallow for long periods at a time, and sometimes when this happens if the mood is a passing one, I'll still talk about topics that are more convenient to another blog on this one. But I want to do a better job of keeping topics in their appropriate lanes, I think.
• Flipping Fetching Fiddle-dee-dee. This was one that I left fallow for a long time, but it now seems to be my second-most commonly used blog. I initially created it to talk about religious topics, albeit ones of speculative, fun pseudo-doctrine like the kinds the RMs in their BYU dorms would talk about late at night when they're feeling like they want to talk about things that you can't talk about in Sunday School. It later started to pick up a number of social and political topics as well. I do still mention those kinds of things here more often than I should, but I'm going to migrate them to this other blog where they more truly belong going forward.
• Lone Star Hiker. More because I'm an ethnic Texan than because I'm hiking in Texas; most of the hikes I document are in the Rockies or the intermountain deserts. This blog used to be quite a bit more active, but lately I haven't given much thought to hiking because of idiotic lockdowns, difficulty in traveling, and just a bazillion other things going on. However, I do have underutilized vacation this year, so I think I'm probably going to get out. In fact, I just ordered a Cloud Peak Wilderness map on Amazon (Trails Illustrated) so I better get cracking if I really think that I might be out in the mountains in August. 
• Synthpop80s. I initially used this to review synthpop songs, albums and groups, starting with both the 80s New Waves guys as well as the 90s (and later) underground movement that did the same type of music. I still listen to plenty of this, but the blog later became a documentation of hard EDM; hard trance, early hardstyle, some hard house, some borderline trance, etc. Y'know, the stuff that is so intense that it melts your face off and kicks you in the butt so hard that three days later you're still trying to crap out pieces of it's shoe. I've occasionally still hit a music topic here and there on this blog instead of over on Synthpop80s, and I've long ago given up any worry about "Hard Trance Track of the Day" or whatever. In fact, I haven't blogged over there at all in quite some time. I still listen to plenty of music, and mostly the same kinds of music, although my "mania" from about 2018 or so over hard dance has relaxed, and I'm back to my more esoteric and eclectic mix rather than being stuck in a single style. In fact, I'm even going through a major project where I'm sorting my music on my hard drive (and I'll then replicate that folder sorting on my micro-SD card on my phone too.) In spite of that, I just don't feel very inspired to talk about it much. I don't have any plans to "retire" any of the blogs, but this one is still in hibernation and likely to remain so for some time.
• SFKOFFF. Another blog that's in deep freeze and is unlikely to come out of it soon. The acronym is Street Fighter, King of Fighters, and Fatal Fury, referring to the three series of games of the type that this is most especially meant to discuss. I actually haven't played much since very early in the year when I was still playing a bit of Street Fighter V. I have an extra old monitor, and if I can get an adaptor for the old RGB cables to HDMI, maybe I'll make it a PS2 monitor and play more of these games again. I still believe that Street Fighter IV (which I have for steam on my regular desktop that I'm making this post from) is good enough that it almost invalidates the entire rest of the genre. Anyway, since I'm not really working on whatever fan fiction I thought at the time I was going to do, I doubt I'll have much to say about these games even when I'm playing them. I doubt this blog will get more than a handful of posts a year, if even that.
• Adventures of Elder Dyal. This is where we documented the letters sent home by my younger son from his missionary service. However, given that now (as opposed to when I went, or even when my older son went) he can talk to us every week, so he quit sending letters a long time ago. My wife really owned this blog, although she had set it up so I could post too, but realistically, neither of us has posted anything in a long time, nor are we likely to. Maybe when my youngest son goes out early in 2022, we'll revive this blog. Otherwise, it'll just become archive stuff.

There are three other topics that I wish to talk about with some frequency. One of them is the related interactions of archaeology, linguistics, history and genetics. I think those topics will still fit here on this blog when I choose to talk about them, which is usually only when some new development that I hear about comes to my attention anyway. The same is true for paleontology. Dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals like sabertooths and mammoths are always on topic for me, and actually fit better than you'd think with my RPG interests anyway.

Next, we have model trains. I haven't exactly talked about this a ton on this blog, until very recently anyway, but I don't see that interest going away anytime too soon, and it may well grow. Perhaps if I create a new blog for it, it'll end up being a dead zone blog like SFKOFFF and Synthpop80s have become someday down the line. But I'm going to take that risk, because I see this as a potentially ongoing topic. Model railroading is, as I've said, the big hobby that I never quite had but always kind of wished that I did. I'm not about to start spending money and time on converting my basement into a model railroad any time too soon (more's the pity) but I'm going to continue (and in fact embrace in a new way) armchair model railroading. When I'm done "armchairing" I'll have a good plan to actually build a real model railroad sometime in the future. If I ever get around to it. If I don't, well, OK, and I don't want to clog up my blog anymore talking about model railroading. For that purpose, I've created the new Ruritanian States of America Railroad blog. I don't have any posts yet, or even a banner or format for the blog, and I probably won't until I get back from being out of town, but I anticipate that I'll continue to do more with this in the near future, throughout the remainder of this year at least.

Locomotive power

Just a quick post to document what I'd like to have for my Ruritanian America Western Rail Road (RAWRR!!!)? Because it's a combination of Ruritanian fake geography as well as alternate history, this railroad represents an America that never got overly corporatized. While this may have slowed down the roll-out of some luxuries and conveniences, it also means that none of those luxuries and conveniences were allowed to sweep the country without there being a more controlled and organic social reaction to them. Anyway, it means also that I'm handwaving a lot of details about the era I'm modeling away; generally I'd prefer not to use anything on the model that's more modern than 1940 or so, but in reality it means that I can do whatever I want within reason and just handwave it away as an artifact of the alternate history. It also means that with a number of non-corporatized railroads, all kinds of railroads will tend to be esoteric in terms of their equipment and operating patterns, depending on what the railroad in question needs and what they were able to get their hands on. 

Anyway, the RAWRR uses very small locomotive power, and short, multi-use trains and operates much more like a hardscrabble short line. I'd like to use some geared steam locos, because I'm going to be in the mountains a lot, either in Rockies analogs or desert mountains, either one, but I'm also thinking of using small switchers, like 0-6-0s as regular engines. If I ever get to the point where I have three 4x8 "railroads" connected by 2xsomething bridges, I'd probably want up to about half dozen locomotives. I may want that many anyway, just because I like locomotives and want options. Keep in mind, I don't ever intend to have the kind of railroad where I invite a bunch of friends over for operating sessions, it'd almost certainly be just me most of the time and occasionally a guest or two. 

Anyway, first link: some Bachmann 0-6-0s. https://shop.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=258_276_286

I'd probably have more than one of these, even though other than the paint scheme, they're all the same, it looks like. The only difference I can see is the tender type. Maybe I'll get three so I can have one of each tender type? That seems like a lot, unless I can think of other ways to customize them too (different smokestacks or something, I dunno) but I'd definitely like at least two. A Vandy tender and a short haul, maybe. The slope tender would be the third choice if I get three of them.

Two different 2-truck Heislers: https://tonystrains.com/product/rivarossi-hr2882-ho-heisler-2-truck-std-dc-curtiss-lumber-co-2 and https://tonystrains.com/product/rivarossi-hr2881-ho-heisler-2-truck-std-dc-pickering-lumber-corp-3

The differences between them are subtle; obviously the color scheme is a bit different, and the smokestack, but I really like geared steam, so I'd love to get my hands on some of these. There are three truck Heislers out there too, but I like the smaller ones.

Speaking of which, here's a two truck Climax. This seems to be one of the easier options to actually get your hands on too. I think there may be three truck options, but they seem harder to find. Again, I prefer the two truck anyway. https://www.hobbylinc.com/bachmann-50-ton-2-truck-climax-ritter-ho-scale-model-train-steam-locomotive-80602

The last one seems to be the hardest to actually consider getting your hands on, because everywhere I look, if I can find them at all, they're out of stock, out of production, and unavailable. Even the used market seems to be totally dry. Heck, even the link I did find doesn't have the right pictures (these are Climaxes.) Why in the world can I not find Shay locos? They don't seem as hard to find in N scale, for some reason. https://hogtrainz.com/BACHMANNTWOTRUCKSHAY.htm

Although the Shays were originally my go-to in terms of geared steam, given that I don't seem to be able to get any, let's just say that if if came down to ordering my locomotive power right now, I'd get two Climaxes, two Heislers, and three 0-6-0s for a total of seven locos. Then, along with installing battery powered RC dead rail capability in them, I'd also look for ways to customize them and make them stand out from each other, given that I have more than one of each type. 

Poking around on the Hobbylinc page, I even see some super cheap 0-4-0s and tank-type 0-6-0s for a little variety, although they're listed as "currently unavailable". (Besides, a tank engine can hardly be used to haul anything anywhere; after a couple of miles, it's out of fuel!) But that would give me a bit of variety. There's some other smaller, but not quite as small options; like 2-8-0s or 4-6-0s if I wanted that variety, but I dunno. I've always had a thing for the "baby steam locos" like 0-4-0s and 0-6-0s. And they seem to fit the idea of the very small railroad business model that's run more like a mom-and-pop than a giant national corporation.

UPDATE: Better deal on the 0-6-0s. Also, found some Shays. They're expensive brass, but I expected that.

https://www.modeltrainstuff.com/bachmann-ho-50406-0-6-0-steam-locomotive-with-tender-boston-and-maine-406/

https://www.brasstrains.com/Classic/Trains?searchtext=shay&showsold=True