Must see TV

Or rather not. I didn't watch it, and now that I've seen summaries and reviews, I almost certainly won't. I wasn't the target audience. People who are really paying attention and are pretty current events savvy and politically/socially aware weren't the target audience. There literally wasn't anything for them in this speech. As Vox Day says, (who apparently didn't watch it either—but he lives in Italy now, so it would have been quite late local time for him):

Reading the reviews of the God-Emperor 2.0’s speech to Congress proved to be a bit deflating. While it was a good summary of what has been accomplished so far, it didn’t really provide us with any new information. Still no arrests. Still members of NATO. There is still a Department of Education, an Internal Revenue Service, and a Federal Reserve.

No one cares about a mineral deal with Ukraine. Everyone wants the US military out of Ukraine, out of Europe, and out of Japan.

There’s nothing wrong with a victories lap. There are certainly more victories to celebrate than anyone was expecting so soon. But everyone was expecting something more, something big, last night. And that speech was nothing big. Frankly, reading his executive orders is more exciting and encouraging.

Yeah, we were certainly hoping for some big announcements along the lines of pulling out of NATO, major arrests, the FBI files on Epstein, or something like that. But I wasn't really expecting it. (I think it's funny and kinda irritating that in Spanish there's only one word that means both hope and expect. Personally, I think they mean quite different things, and as highlighted here, the contrast between what I hope for and what I expect can be quite large.) 

Frankly, although the accomplishments of the speech itself were pretty modest, I think it still had some value. Cementing for a new audience who isn't paying enough attention what he's actually done, which the American people generally want him to do, in the faces of the mainstream media who're desperate to spin his presidency so far as something terrible, was valuable. Trashing the Democrat and progressive brands publicly and thoroughly is valuable. Allowing the petulant, entitled bratty little princesses of the Democrat party, like Al Green or whatsherface Slotkin to own goal and trash the Democrat brand publicly and inadvertently because they mistakenly thought that they'd be hailed as "stunning and brave" was even more valuable. 

But it was a bit deflating. I felt like I was bait and switched just a bit, being told to tune in for something amazing, and then being told stuff that I already knew. But, like I said, I wasn't really the target audience after all. Apparently the approval rating of the speech was quite high.

I suppose that's probably sufficient justification to do it on its own, in spite of what people like me think of it.

Sigh

Work is crazy this morning. The tariffs went into effect effective today after all, in spite of my hopes that Mexico et al would come to an agreement with the administration. Specifically because... I do Procurement professionally and because everything that I buy currently is pretty labor intensive, it's all located in the maquiladora region of Mexico. While I'm in support of the tariffs, and recognize that after China, Mexico is the country that will most lose if it engages in a trade war with the US; they simply absolutely cannot afford to do so because of the value of the trade deficit.

That said, just because I'm in favor of the tariff strategy from a big picture standpoint, it is certainly a major headache for my current work situation. One guy, who clearly isn't an economist, is really dropping a lot of passive aggressive crap in our group IM. It's been hard to ignore it, but that's the best approach. At his age in his 60s, he's not going to be interested in a dialectical discussion about it. He just clearly wants to snipe at the Trump administration, as if people agree with him. And maybe most people do, I don't know. I certainly know that I don't. I'm willing to put up with some frustration at work for long term benefit for my country, my people and my posterity. Putting Mexico in its place is one of the most important foreign policy initiatives that America can do; they've been waging de facto war and invasion against us for decades.

So, instead I'll leave with a portion of the Z-man's latest post for the day.

[I]it is fair to wonder if what we are seeing and have been seeing for the last few decades is the death of the last remaining ideology, progressivism. Populism seems to be an end of cycle phenomenon. It is, after all, a disorganized revolt against the current order, which has reached its maturity and is entering decline. What follows a populist uprising is either a replacement of the old order, a reform that replaces the old elite or a reform effort by the elites themselves.

The assault on the Blob by the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk, is clearly an assault on the old managerial order. Elon Musk is the face of the new technological elite, so it is fitting that he is the point man for this task. Managerialism is the traveling partner of ideology. It was a feature of both fascism and communism. Its looming demise at the hands of the Trump administration, which was powered by a populist uprising against it, fits the historical pattern.

Progressivism has had a long run, but for most of the 20th century it served as a bulwark against fascism and then communism. Its social reforms stopped making any sense by the latter half of the 20th century and either disappeared from the agenda entirely or morphed into bizarre sexual fetishes. Its main reason to exist was to fight communism, but once communism was gone, it was left without a devil, so it has gone insane over the last decades in search of Old Scratch.

The populism that brought Trump to the White House in 2016, sustained him in his wilderness years and then returned him the White House was driven by the excesses and insanity of progressives. Populism is usually framed as the people versus elites, but in this case, it was normal people versus crazy people. The best way to describe the first weeks of the Trump administration is the return of normalcy, unless you are a member of the hive we call the left.

In the fullness of time, what this period may be known for is the death of the last ideology, knocked off by the same forces that spawned it. American populism has always been a check on the excesses of the elite, not as a physical or even political force, but as a cultural force. Ideology is always about changing culture, so it is ironic that the last ideology will be vanquished by a cultural phenomenon. The ghost of the People’s Party has finally called progressivism home.

Also, how about this?

https://x.com/realdogeusa/status/1896395104937476110

Wouldn't it be interesting if it turns out that they're Mexicans? Or Israelis? Who are your friends, and who has been waging covert war against you while pretending to be your friend, and guilt tripping you anytime you get close to noticing?

And how about this?

https://x.com/Real_RobN/status/1888722651893694672

The 80s still surprises me sometimes

This last weekend, for whatever reason while I was browsing my YouTube homepage on my TV, and it started showing me some 80s music videos. First, it showed me a quiz, a "name that tune" kind of thing. I did very well. 80s pop culture, especially 80s pop music, is really kinda my thing, and there are very few songs that I don't know. Out of a good 50 or so songs, I missed one, although I know both the one that I should have picked and the one that I did pick; I just don't really care for either so I didn't recognize them on just a deliberately vague five second sample. And I completely whiffed a Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers duet that I don't remember ever hearing, but I had little to no interest in Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers or anything country during the 80s. Although I'm sure this was a crossover on the charts. 

I listened to some Wang Chung and The Cars, including the entirety of the Hearbeat City album, by far the Cars' best work. Then I got a recommendation for The Hooters "And We Danced." I didn't think that the Hooters were an 80s band at all; I probably was mixing them up with Hootie and the Blowfish. But for whatever reason, I played it, and the song seemed quite familiar, and certainly very 80s. I was shocked to find that, even at this point, there are still 80s bands who actually had genuine hits even, that were kind of not on my radar. 

Coincidentally, they're originally from Philadephia, and I spent the week last week in Lehigh Valley myself, having flown into Philly and traveled by rental car to Macungie.

I listened to a number of their songs, and "And We Danced" was the only one that sounded familiar to me, and the only one that I thought good enough to make sure that I grabbed and and added to my collection. What a great song! I doubt that I actually missed this one, but it had fallen through the cracks and I forgot about it in the meantime. The nostalgic, even at the time it was filmed in 1985 or so, music video, with its kind of pseudo-50s Americana at the drive-in vibe is also fantastic. Just a great song all around. I can't believe that didn't already know about it and didn't know who the Hooters were, even... even though I recognized the song when I heard it.

Another great song that I think has been overlooked, although at least I hadn't forgotten it, because I had it on an old Rhino collection, is Charlie Sexton's "Beat So Lonely", which has a similar kind of sound to me, even though it's not really the same kind of song. You can hear it in Some Kind of Wonderful even though it's not on the soundtrack album released for the movie, oddly. He recorded that thing when he was 16, co-written by him, sung by him, and great guitar licks performed by him too. Talented guy. And a fellow Texan! I won't even gripe about his Austin upbringing; it was early enough that Austin wasn't too crazy yet in the 70s and early 80s, and he wouldn't have been in the music industry if he hadn't been in Austin, no doubt.

Movies and Books

I had to spend almost the entirety of the work week out of town for work last week. Flight home was delayed, so I didn't get home until late Friday evening; bedtime really. I was supposed to intercept my wife on her way out of town and take her to the airport, but because of my delay, she had to go on her own. Now, her flight is delayed and I'll be in bed when she gets home, because otherwise I'll start the week off already short on sleep. Not a good plan; I've been pretty tired all weekend because of the travel. Sigh.

So, when I have a week in a hotel (in the evenings, anyway) and a weekend at home by myself, what do I do?

In my case, I:

• Reread the original 3e version of Privateer Press's Monsternomicon vol. 1. Still one of my favorite game books. It's just a joy to read. Even the boring monsters, like the moon moths and stuff give you a reason to potentially care about them.
• Started reading The Game Master's Book of Instant Towns and Cities. I think this one may take me a little while to read. It's a little cringy. It's very 5e cozy weird high fantasy in feel, with a kind of "ambient wokeness" that you can kind of feel intuitively moreso than point to anything super substantial (other than all of the girlboss "mayors" and whatnot). It's got lots of pop culture cringy in-jokes too; a seaside town called Inz which is kind of a silly joke version of Innsmouth, for instance, or the place that literally has a talk like a pirate day. Nothing's actively offensive or too ridiculous much, at least not so far, but I'm glad I got it for half price. Even so, I imagine I'll feel ripped off when I'm done.
• Pondered that with the "vibe shift" that lots of people are talking about since the election, that kind of stuff has become very low status. I mean, people like me always felt at least a kind of quiet contempt for wokeness, but because woke was in the halls of power, they could delude themselves about their status and popularity. Now, it seems not only like super loser and beta, but also cringy and legitimately creepy. People who haven't caught on and are still talking about woke topics like everyone else takes them seriously, or even pretends to, are outing themselves as really low status. It's hard not to look at people like that and wonder where they went really, really wrong and how they lost their complete and total sense of situational awareness. That was probably overthinking a book that's only "ambiently" rather than overtly woke, at least so far. But I saw a stream that mentioned the whole "low status" label of wokeness, and that probably primed the pump as soon as I picked up a D&D book that has even hints of wokeness.
• Read about half of a pdf copy of Exemplars of Evil, which I'd heard really good things about. Had a crazy sense of deja vu after a while. At one point halfway through, was convinced I'd read it already. Looked at my reading log, which I started keeping in 2023, and saw that I'd already read it back then. Sigh. I guess the book wasn't all that, since I had to read it again halfway through to remember that I even had read it at all. Gave up and took if off my Sumatra pdf reader history.
• Was about to read Paizo's Villain Codex. Just a few pages in, thought it looked really familiar too. I read it before I kept a log, but I did find an old blog post or two where I referenced having just read it, from about six years ago. Actually, some of the basic framework of the SHADOWS OVER GARENPORT campaign, or at least the eponymous column, were clearly built on ideas that I was inspired by from here. Stopped reading that one too. I do actually plan on re-reading two books that I read in 2023 though; The Pirate's Guide to Freeport and Five Fingers: Port of Deceit. But I have way more gaming books on my docket than actual fiction books, so I need to read some novels here too. Many of mine are still in boxes in the garage from my move, though.
• I had not read Paizo's Horror Realms before, but I have a pdf copy of that too, so I started that. Already have a couple of ideas of things to use, although they're just minor little details. Signal to noise ratio with a lot of modern RPG products isn't super great, but there are good ideas in them. Sometimes you just have to pan for them for quite a while before you get enough flakes of good ideas to get something really useable.
• Read Arthur Machen's novella "The Great God Pan" as part of a gigantic ebook collection of all his work (it's all public domain.) Pretty sure I've read this before a while ago, but it's still interesting. Apparently, in 1894 when it was first published, it was considered pretty racy, and wasn't a great start to his reputation as a writer, which is kinda funny given that anything that may have happened in the plot was innuendo-ized so strongly that you almost aren't even sure what you're supposed to infer happened (I suppose the late Victorian and Edwardian era Brits who read it might have had more context to see it than I do). Also, of course, in the 130 or so years since then, we've become so decadent that it seems tame anyway, even if it had been spelled out literally and explicitly. But it's since become a real classic of horror, and many horror writers consider it one of the best early horror stories, before the genre had really crystalized. Stephen King certainly said so specifically, and Lovecraft's own "The Dunwich Horror" borrows so much from it in some ways that it's almost a pastiche.
• Watched Predator and Predator 2, which I have owned for many years. But I hadn't watched either of them in some time, so it was nice to put them back in and go through them. For various reasons, I've had Predator themed stuff pop up at me off and on repeatedly over the last few weeks, including the soundtrack of the second one on YouTube, some reaction videos (again on YouTube) of people watching the whole Dillon/Dutch arm thing, etc. Even Black Lodge Games talked about Schwarzenegger movies in a recent stream, and of course they mentioned that Predator is probably his best movie (although they were particularly fond of Commando and Total Recall. Poor Running Man gets no love. It's a good one too, though). Predator 2 is one I remember quite liking when it came out (I saw it in theaters) but apparently it took some time to find its audience. Too different from the first one, and no Arnie, I guess. But it's since become a well-regarded "cult classic", so quality always outs eventually. Predator 2 also seems to accidentally—in retrospect—look like a cautionary tale against mass immigration of third world savages.
• Listened to some hardtrance, early hardstyle and even a bit of hardcore and gabber, which I don't normally listen to.
• Listened to some Darkest Dungeon and Graham Plowman Lovecraftian soundtracks, as well as some classical music.
• Took a nap on Saturday. Tried to take one on Sunday, but didn't actually do more than doze for a few minutes. Ultimately, that was probably for the best. 
• Was supposed to have a D&D session. Our DM was burned out after only a few sessions, really (perils of DMing 5e. But I don't know that he knows any better; apparently, he's only ever played 4e and 5e.) His wife was going to take over on the same campaign, and he'd either play his wife's character, or make his own replacement to take her character's place. But she got kinda sick or something, and they canceled kinda last minute. Honestly, after a week out of town, having an excuse to just stay at home wasn't so bad, so I wasn't too broken up about the cancelation. The only time I left the house all weekend was 1) walk to the mailbox and get the mail, 2) take a couple of trash bags out to the trash, 3) go to church on Sunday. I'm not really read to go in to work tomorrow. Especially since my wife probably won't be awake yet. I will have just missed her several times over the weekend, and will finally be able to see here again on Monday after work. Sigh.