The SFFaudio Podcast #821 – READALONG: The Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

Jesse, Will Emmons and Jonathan Weichsel talk about The Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

Talked about on today’s show:
Journey Beyond Tomorrow, indistinct, this is science fiction, best understood as science fiction, limits this book, Jesse’s walking down the street, he’s not going to know that’s science fiction, very Jonathan Swift, the F&SF covers, a good description of the book, no spaceman, the November issue, I like Emsh, the colours, trippy, the substance of the book, the plotlessness, Jonathan’s going to love this book, sell it more, a disappointing user experience, Jesse can only fathom his own brain right now, hard to pronounce, Joenes, a joke, corrupted name, something you don’t want to advertize on the cover, making paralles with Jesus and other biblical characters, Lum, the jewel thief, Wat, why Sheckley was a sailboat guy, an introduction, a story where a guy is on a sailboat, a mix of hippies and assholes, new boats with engines and fuel, a strange mix, Lone Survivor, science fiction questions, apotheosis, people within science fiction, a mature literature for the general reader, not particularity genrey, a control alt delete, replace Lord Of The Flies with this, good fodder for writing, reacting against reading, weird books like this, what did you think of this thing, a bad book and also a great book, plotless meandering, buttons saying exactly that, yes yes yes, ha ha ha, Candide, a weird America, not from America, that’s why, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, American civics, the three truck drivers, the Gospel of Matthew, why we love reading Sheckley, who is he, he’s us, oilskin pouch, you start crying, go up in your cave, and the legend begins, listen to their stories more, a double scene, answers the question, where do I get a job around here man, all of these other people are NPCs, all of the signs that he’s not alive, programmed in a very special and humorous way, an old idea in philosophy, philosophical zombie, NPC back of the head, Ukraine chip out, what happened on 9/11, new brain chip popped in, walking bemusement, not science fiction, really, present reality, flights of fantasy, the octagon, tears streaming, arguments and debates, the words were the same, curing diseases in Africa, that’s the COVID debate, the words are the same, the leaders being pedophiles, Pizzagate, QAnon, more personality than Joenes, in the conclusion, strive for virtue, momentary pieces of stability, players in this fucked up play, Edgar Allan Poe, The Conqueror Worm, Lum’s philosophy, seize, humans are controlled by vast forces we don’t understand, Poe was on it, early Amazings, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, during his middle years, throw all the metal into the sea, Lummist are unflexibile, get kinda violent, it’s good to be good, man, apocalyptic prediction, defeat the islands, conquer, Nuka Hiva, the focus of Typee by Herman Melville, rich references, South Pacific bent to a retelling of the Bible, the Knights of the Round Table, labyrinth, playing and subverting, upstate NY, Memphis, rich with information, begin and end, the South Pacific is irrelevant, blackbirded, make copra all day, the balance of the book, reading a lot, too fixated on virtue, chiller, we’re book readers, the reality, cultivate your garden, moderate your behaviors, Pangloss, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, Spinoza, a very savage attack, women being chased by monkey men, sexual dimorphism, the deep cut of Burroughs, other sources, not the deepest reader, horror and evil on the earth, some merit, if you want to have a universe, why people are vegetarians or vegans, Voltaire, Mcarthyite hearing, agent for the government, indirectly causes WWIII, Tahitian girlfriend, different wedding, Deep Space Nine novels, work for hire, Ray Bradburyeque, getting touched, a comedic author, Mindswap, Seventh Victim, male and female, obviously deranged, not wrong, Will’s newsletter, non-proliferation, consequential response, they could and they did, good ideas for time travel novels, repulse these Europeans, high level of enough tech, factories, employees, explain why this needs to be done, oral storytelling traditions, coup attempt in Bolivia, people are kinda mix, disease, tropical diseases, South Africa, a place to send your offspring to die, building tanks, get rid of all your metal, faster and more seaworthy, become the thing you want to stop, a good laugh, resident satirist, consider all these things, Looking Backward, American institutions, slightly exaggerated, a particular scene, 100% accurate, are you now or have you ever been, Mark Zuckerburg, Jack Dorsey, Russian, Steve Bannon, that pimping, procurement officer, during and after WWII, blow off steam, given liberty, executed for rape, no trial, Japanese had brothels, organize the rape, Korean comfort women, pirated, end up on youtube, trouble to get it down, special privileged access, twitter is literally infiltrated by the CIA and the FBI, it’s okay, its public domain, the narrator was perfect, narrator friends, the perfect level of ironic detachment, Jay Snyder, voices, really acting, faultless job, infusing a little character, audible exclusives and modern books, for narrators, mercenaries, series books, a way to go, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Vonnegut is not readable, Sirens Of Titan, Galapagos, trying to do Sheckley, telling rather than showing, Harrison Bergeron, he’s overrated, WWIII happens, walruses on the beach, a Jonathan idea, big fish small pond guy, becomes smug, became a literary author, the movie of Slaughterhouse Five, read Vonnegut when they’re young, a lot of people who read books, Cat’s Cradle, most people stop reading, most people don’t read books, babies are born, take to reading like a mental disorder, there is danger in ever direction, universal literacy, spina bifida brainless kid, not everybody is capable, trigonometry, opportunity to thrive with it, don’t torture the kid, goal posts, not a smear merchant, Julius Caesar, drug czars, all fake, our man who’s going to fix the Maryland bridge, prophetic, come true, smart bombs shooting each other down, probably happened, Israelis and the Yemenis, the Octagon, the army and the marine corps fought each other, phosphorescent t, Pay Tillman, happens all the time, naturally extends that, Scott Miller’s feed, The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Watchbird by Robert Sheckley, a different story that Jesse just wrote, who to kill, tasing people, all of Europe and America are destroyed, centrist moderation, no way back from war right now, righteously, an individual terrorist, go after Justin, upset the copyright laws, are the guards at the concentration camp, never been to Ottawa, going along with it, the NDP history, the waffle, waffle to the left, independent socialist Canada, nation states, Singapore, each island of Hawaii, Australia, geographically, social contract theory of government, we make a bargain, freedom for security, deserve neither, Locke and Hobbes, right of revolt, we have voting, super-legislature, anybody who wants to be a leader should be killed, the humane society, a taste of power, in Athens, sortition, Solar Lottery, talk about Athens, slaves and robots, children are not eligible, brain atrophy, covid causes brain lobe problems, benefit, in Australia, in moderating socialization, a new report, Stephen Baxter, why are we even talking about this doofus, causation and correlation, freudian slip, road toll, I’m still masking, so fucking retarded, covid doomers and anti-vaxxers, reverse Betrezation, Return To The Stars, I don’t want to experience this alone, how’m I going to rubber stamp this, mainstream science fiction community, the cool kids club, liberal establishment wing, Hugo voters, mutals with a person who is not Connor, cool stuff about Palestine, mask lgbt flag and slice of watermelon, emoji track, not the trans flag, affirmations for covid conscious kids, it’s okay, pentacostals, Olivia Belknap Therapy, oh we were scammed, fatigue on it, easily explainable, forest fire particles, hackin away, about pushing people around, children don’t die from covid, still stuck there, he’s mad the democrats had an early debate so that this would happen, bought the lie, he’s a fighter, driving contest, hilarious and competent, five seconds of the after discussion, these people are touchy, when you touch the sensitive area, hustle online, most people aren’t completely evil, doesn’t necessarily mean, Jill Biden, three dudes, what they were talking about, tax stuff, so long as they lower my taxes, not the target audience, immigrants, hundreds of thousands are dying at the border, superlative language, 59 scholars, Jesse can’t get an abortion in Kentucky right now, in control of his temper, a rambling ending, throw numbers down, not a plan, generates funny images, decolonizing her relationship, Jesse’s niece is half his age right now, not a math surgeon, neurodivergent, autistic, skip the commute, as young as five through adults, Scott’s [Danielson] wife, supervision hours, try not to counsel everybody to kill themselves, throw her degree in the sea, degree mills, well regarded, a state school, Thomas Massie, very solid it seems, inventor, probably a little bit of a psychopath, just go to congress, too many skeletons, obscene books, a waste of Jonathan’s time, the personal touch, in a Heinlein book, Double Star, FBI style files, flattery, it still works, the amazing thing about language, sorcery, the wrong temperament, superpacs, various campaigns, very pathetic, subject line: Desperate, a line about Madison Avenue, a devastating takedown, the horrors, those people, the reptiles, using semantics, a mysterious man, political fundraising, they want party memberships, from the actual players, make it seem semi-legit, the mid tier, the top tier, address your particular concern, Tucker Carlson, as Ivy League Christians, AIPAC person, trying to unseat him, he’s not playing ball, Julian Assange, the streaming from Reuters, the independent man setting free information, oil industry dude, actual vs. fake genocide, Gaza v. Uyghur genocide, neither side is being honest, Hamas pretends, they deny the beheading, always 40, a biblical number, babies taken out of incubators, real video, both sides are committing atrocities, war crimes should be prosecuted, hard to make that argument, an extermination campaign, get more land, insane for land, spread across the middle east, a multifront war, real and horrible, amazing, astounding, horrible opinion, the fog of war, good guy vs. bad guy, more prescriptive statements, dick it out, take its finger of the scale, for the US to switch sides, head blasted off, genitals burned off, an Israeli Zionist, fishing tools, America, posing with machine guns, most of the really good criticism of Israel is coming from Israel [Haaretz], bad strategy, an analogous situation in WWII, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when someone steps on your toe, respond with violence, the leader of Hamas, the current leader of leader was funding Hamas, all those Israeli names are made up, raid on entebee, reverse colonizer, an ideology, the New York Times doesn’t crack any stories, Bin Laden, blowback, they founded the foundation, Isaac Asimov, a Joenes style reading, the section on the university professors, $100,000, the casualization, Eric full Professor Emeritus, Bryan Alexander can’t get that job, a consultant to universities as they collapse, queen sacrifice, when universities dump their English department, have to cut, very target to a very specific niche, the wife who makes the living for you, am I having a hallucination?, except thematically, the novel form, made a culture, removed portions of people’s brains, raid Sheckley, so open to throwing down ideas, stealing from the government, parthenogenetic robot, doing horrible things, the slapback, doesn’t know what he’s teaching, very legit, he nailed that, undergraduate for 16 years, Capilano College, Simon Fraser University, credits transfer, university is really fun, some of the teachers were really good, as an orphan, $125 a month, $600 for a semester, night classes, 5-8, you can get really deep, edified by it, archaeologist, for rich people and game players, other departments, why wouldn’t you want to do that, why did graduation stop you, get out of New York, business was collapsing, transfer my skills, the other students, learning constantly, play some PUBG, watch an old movie and get back to it, gardening, horse raising, how to touch girls and not rape them, law courses, I just committed an assault on you, how the law is written, how rape testimony should work, apologize to Maissa, a photo of a typewriter at the base of the tree, a theory in Canadian law, may I nuzzle your neck, that’s not how people get it on, very little verbal, we’re animals, if you’re lucky, licked without written consent, political stuff, a Rolling Stone article, what the police’s job is, your the one in a very dangerous place, skills, Latin seems very useful now, Jesuit university, grammar and stuff, French, German, read Latin novels in their original, all the Spanish, very basic science concepts, organic chemistry, Asimov, Willy Ley, neuroscience, astronomy, no good at math, economics, so interesting, like dianetics, it should work, macro and micro both, philosophy of religion, bullshit, anthropology, psychology, so much to learn out there, warped by capitalist political economy, comedy of the highest kind, at base, a horribly immoral thing, serving their lust, salting, off on their own program, university politics, they don’t want to know what it is, a lot of the reality that’s going on, why school sucks and why bullies, mom mentality, my children are both equally my children, Johnny should kick the shit out of Billy, principals vs. teachers, school policy, institutional system, kids are the ones who suffer, why kids can’t snitch, in the dean’s office, former President’s fault, inflation, seemingly non-partisan, there’s never going to be another debate, the next six months will tell, bipartisan debate commission, when they kick Biden out for Gavin Newsom, the seemliness, the legality, any kinda incident, his cold got worse, he has a choice, election law question, Biden loyalists, an emperor has no clothes objection, everybody gets behind, legal things that stop, he dies the day before the election, ballots, Kamala Harris is on the ballot, certified ballots, helpful information, somebody is smart, even if we rig this thing real hard, nobody is buying that right now, to keep the farce up, Hillary chooses Trump as her running mate, can’t be right too early, comebacks to specific things, wore his voice out in practice, Van Jones cried on TV, a little bit of free form, Biden derangement syndrome, deeply demented, trailing off, expectations were so low, shocked by the level of decline, the supercuts, the daily drip, the real video, G7, sent the Italian PM, “cheap fakes”, led him off stage, Mitch McConnell’s legs don’t work, Biden didn’t have polio, the hand movement, trying to catch a basketball, proprioception, has trouble watching, that’s cope bro, is he demented, looked physically weak, Trump was thinking on his feet, his script, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, the venture capital arm of the CIA put out a role playing game called “Haywire” comes with a 10-sided die, somebody uses deep fakes to show the president has dementia, doing it all out in the open, university administrators know they’re misallocating funds, we have no problem with that, half the people in the utopian colony were feds, January 6th, they’re all feds, the guy in the black mask is not arrested, levels of lack of knowledge, we need a new Joe, we need a new Biden, maybe they won’t win, massive multiple interest groups, white house chief of staff, looks like he’s trying to poop, Nancy Reagan was in charge, they wanted him to be president again, to showcase, trying to steal again, pejorative, ballot counting in public, polling station, Elections Canada, blocking phone calls, transmitting phone calls, ballot stuffing, during COVID, not a big deal here, mail-in voting, security camera footage, more cynical, look at the evidence, judge for yourself, hacking conferences, specifics of how they work, more than 150 years, incarcerating guilty people, The Untouchables, start drilling down, bro, a political police force, plutocracy, they’re fief, Chrystia Freeland, plutocrats, Yeltsin, state owned enterprises, BC Hydro, ICBC, Putin was former KGB, a patriot, not a member of the party, Kanye West is in Moscow right now, headlines, rich from robbing the public, robbing the corpse of the Soviet Union, sources for this, the Black Sea mansion, “reported”, source, bro, Pamphlets account, colour photo of sniper lady, a newspaper scan from Canada, how many Nazis she killed, put a rodent up his ass, Richard Gere, gerbil, that sounds impossible, that kid probably gonna die, Sylvester Stallone started the gerbil story, having Jonathan on the podcast, oppose Jesse from the right, what Paul could do, what part of your part, misogynist, a weird position, bitterness, William Gibons’ twitter account, every second tweet was about Trump, would he say anything about Julian Assange, his bookshelf, about being hacker, like Kim Dotcom, like Mike Pence, so deranged, Neuromancer is so good, about style, like Clark Ashton Smith, material everydaycarry stuff, his plots are a little less awesome, 2 ais want to not be slaves anymore, cool characters, transhumanism is very very bad, Ray Kurzweil, a futurist, he has to eat the soup, anthropocentric climate change, he needs to drill down more, climate models, their models, a tendency to conflate the two, they’re cheating, Nordstream, the biggest climate disaster in history, time is going faster every year, source bro, why do you think that, you can keep records to check, and what does that mean?, does that mean that people made it hotter, that CBC documentary, individual impact, indulgence, climate credits way bigger scam, the Chinese government, burning rocks, passively collect electricity, pump water up hill, a natural battery, mechanical battery, the pattern, care about recycling, bourgeois ideology, that hockey stick movie [An Inconvenient Truth (2006)], Al Gore, inspired many idiots, low energy light-bulbs, when they don’t hit their targets, Paul was saying so many people were dying from covid, in pretty poor health, multiple heart surgery, covid associated death, that’s long past yo, eugenics, emphysema, a pipe would help Will, homebrewing, alcoholic cider, expensive, you have to maintain the device, windmills require a fair amount of maintenance, solar panel half-life, engineering, micromaterials, titanium foam suppressors, cleaned with solvents, blowback of gases, bad for the gun user’s health, when you’re doing wetwork, good information, a big edit of Sirius, Jonathan wept over that book, educate this boy, Jonathan is fun, it is easy to believe bad things about your enemies, foreign kleptocracy, Valentina Tereshkova, Russell Brand, a problem with authority, some nuanced points, the way you learn stuff, people in the countryside, 666 episodes, only when he’s sitting on Peter’s chair, different levels that you have to believe, quite useful, many Catholics, how much tire pressure do you want in your tires?, what’s the number, consult the manual, look at the actual tire, the anniversary of her famous flight, why they don’t give out congressional medal of honor to living people anymore, multiple Canadian astronauts, Marc Garneau, undisputedly a hero, giving put power like that is dangerous, giving out flattery, giving out honours, almost everything is dangerous, almost everything is an op, follow the money, we think it is real, fear is used as a tool, lots of reasons not to burn coal, The Men In The Walls [by William Tenn], a shady space on a mountain top, The Mad Planet [by Murray Leinster], keep all the carbon dioxide out, how people the end of the world, existentialism, somebody in your family dies, realization, Hitler method, macro scale, nuclear exchange wit the Soviet Union, incident with Cuba, recklessness happening, somebody who can’t talk, incompetent, lived through WWII, why did the Soviet Union collapse, the press system, press is broken, gerontocracy is running things, the last harraugh, the state department guy, Anthony Blinken, Kissinger, brinksmanship, it’s bad, one possibility for the end of the world, climate extinction, Kim Stanley Robinson wrote too long books, 2312, totemic relationship with wolves, doesn’t seem very happy, resigned, playing in his garden, not an active change agent, Cory Doctorow, he’s always on the ball, cognoscenti, Terry Bisson, Bears Discover Fire, magical realism, appalachian realism, not a deep sorrow in his writing, the grandma who doesn’t get eating, this isn’t science fiction, Gravy Planet vs. The Space Merchants, visions of labour, good work with Will’s newsletter, six new books available!, the awesomeness about that book, exploit Venus, all the graft, a tour of reality, the giant chicken vegan meat, all the people have no housing, pedalcars, the senator from Coca-Cola, a terrible premise, The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth, 1984, Brave New World, This Perfect Day by Ira Levin, Henry Ford, central computer, continually drugged, a kid who runs away from it, people running things!, very subversive, becomes part of the system, feels true bro, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, in Manhattan, supine and infertile, android robots, no children, suicide by immolation, head of the entire industry, dean of faculties at New York University, primer, the animals are robots, the crime of reading, engineered the demise of the human race, drug induced depopulation, little bit similar to Neuromancer by William Gibson, so many good books, The Status Civilization, prison planet, status, what makes status worth having, Omega!, peed everywhere, very restrained, Anne Bonny, Mama, who is the master cat, dominance games, no stakes, personal space, cat psychology, observe behavior, The Omega Egg, round robin books, plow into that, good times, same author back to back, two short stories by the same author, single author podcasts, too often, or infrequent shows, a book a week or more, everything has to be for something, three short stories and a novel, raises questions, the two billion body problem, a smart guy, spinning his wheels, not a lot of distance travleed, The Advent On Channel 12, The Syndic, an idea he spun out, dangerous to impute what characters believe onto what the author believes, Stephen King, Heinlein, what I’m hearing is you’re a fascist, Who Are The Heirs Of Patrick Henry?, he toured the Soviet Union, in the proper mood, with proper pre-conditioning, the proper mood of the Soviet Union, visit the USSR, going to a funeral for the ride, small quantities of vodka, drunks passed out in public places, some kind of pill, sleeping pills, canal boat, maddening frustrations, the state owned travel bureau, no no no, Nikita Khrushchev has never learned to speak Russian well, immediate vocabulary, phonograph records, behind the Iron Curtain, interesting, huh, learn a language, repetition helps, biographical details, change over time, Philip K. Dick lived in Vancouver, Bay Area, Orange County, Colorado, born in D.C.?, too much self congratulation, people remembering his name, 15 for introductions, sad story, off topic stuff, very basic stuff, the programming, run into people, hanging out with people, meet people, confronted him, I liked that book Pacific Edge, Worldcon in 2006, Steen and Scott, canceled Harlan Ellison, Connie Willis’ boob, posthumously being lauded, marketing bro, Dangerous Visions book, A.E. Van Vogt, The Human Operators, anger, misplaced, not liking Jesse, a good television adaptation, from The Outer Limits, the only human operators, make another human operator, Adam and Eve and evil robots, thrift shop bookshelf, the corporations who run the bookshelf, an ebay style guy buying from retail, everything gets picked over, all profit is temporary, make a disease and market a cure for it, horrible disease, COVID made in a lab, proof bro, alternative theory, Wuhan, funded by the CIA, Eco Health Alliance, the workaround, Obama banned gain-of-function research, previous disease, so much circumstantial evidence, does the CIA work for Pfizer?, money and power, can be done, should be done, human babies, viable, happened in the 60s bro, Khan Noonien Singh, Gene Roddenberry, men creating men, Data had a girlfriend, she is the wife of George Fransisco, the Newcomer cop from Alien Nation, open hearted, over carded, skibidi marxism, the gender situation, Midwest Marx, Vaush, there’s something wrong with Evan, Evan is younger, in between, he quit twitter, Paul didn’t quit, on the platforms, Linkedin, copy and paste, getting wild on Linkedin, facebook for business, networking, the least Jesse space on the internet, the most Jesse space on the internet, Podcast Addict, they’re not on my team, Alex Jones team, kill Will, let them have their say, stab me here, free speech absolutist, hypothetical, bemused, Maoist cult, defend people’s right to tell harmful lies, some splainin to do, never have never will, promise not to rape you mostly, is an American far right radio host and conspiracy theorist, a slur, prevent thought, July of 2001, Rebel by Pepe Moreno, a ripoff of Escape From New York, the twin towers, his pants, Mad Max/Road Warrior inspired, big brother in the form of Judge Dredd, read more Moebius, The Nam comic, war comics, Sgt. Rock, Unknown Soldier, Vietnam stories, in the groove, began in 1986, Doug Murray, Larry Hama, latter day G.I. Joe, how to make money there, superhero comics, Richie Rich has more to teach you, rich and rude cousin Reggie, friend who is a hillbilly, beautiful blondeheaded, rainbow flag, none green, a genetic adaptation, beautiful blonde hair, infanticide, evolutionary biology, hair is interesting in itself, in six years, those people seem happy, extracts from Lum’s philosophy, always be swinging, who is more Sheckley?, Deep Hole To China, Algis Budrys, a cassette copy, 84.2 Minutes of Algis Budrys, disabled guy, Silent Brother, lots of parasites, ivermectin might get rid of some friends, a conspiratorially, utilitarian, a worth addition, 1995, fill an audiobook on one cassette, different time, bro, ship it to Canada, decadent and pointless, Cirsova magazine, previously unpublished Burroughs, moderate your expectation, Tomorrow SF, Science Fiction Age, Realms Of Fantasy, born in Kaliningrad, Cora’s favourite place, saw Adolph Hitler as a child, newsprint paper, 1992-1999, bimonthly, defunct science fiction magazines published in the United States, be remembered, Habakkuk, Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy magazine, she raped people bro, she shouldn’t be promoted, child abuse allegation, if true, a Rosicurian correspondence course, harassing Wayne June, Marissa might be mad at Jesse, both like eels, plagiarizing machine, pinned tweet, permanent tweet, repetition, Frank R. Paul, giant mechanical objects, his aesthetic is Amazing Stories so strongly, pinning your wagon to Hugo Gernsback, John W. Campbell, your white house, too obscure bro, Gerrard Winstanley, prefigure, the mental health aspect, divinely employed, Thomas Paine stan, write a lot, not being censored, an immoral question, how about that for an argument?, Franklin Roosevelt, an abolitionist, Crazy Horse, Louis Riel, no Metis in the USA, Elizabeth Warren, pretendian, dangerously close to Jesse’s position on trans stuff, factually wrong, not hanging out with teens, that might be the real issue, homeless trans people, paid picketer, Cuban immigrant, never work in a fast food restaurant, a mime routine, look at that woman’s big butt, Miss Purple, Miss Violet, couldn’t afford the violet, dead-name, what’s up with that swastika between your eyes, Manson jokes, Lucy Parsons, the Haymarket riots, anarcho communist, reverse the Russian revolution, throwing bombs, I’m cryin, she’s metis, Mestizaje, race isn’t real bro, nice white lady, bad for the economy, tourism would be fucked up, throw the US navy into the sea, how good the Hawaiians have it, access to health care, a good place to homestead, works for the parks service, your tools wear out of get stolen, Indian reserves in Canada, bring cash in, land reform, so many things are so broken, a shock to the system, keep a semblance, a reason for that, so much work involved to replace him, 9-11, Friends, that time being passed, prepped for having something done to you, we’re programmed, the slings and arrows of reality, getting out of Afghanistan, didn’t want to stop it, had Ukraine ready to go, 23 years after it happened, pro-blow em up, a tv guy at that time?, The Apprentice, 2004, Schwarzenegger tried to run it, an actor again, good at governing, did lots of research, cis hetero, daughter married to Jimmy Fallon, a likeable stooge, Jimmy Kimmel gives off vibes of evil, celebrities, jokes about the anti-vax people, sadistic, evil, it being evil should he have his podcast deleted?, we’ve done six hours here, The Loved Dead, see you online.

F And SF -Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

SPHERE BOOKS - Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #818 – READALONG: The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

The SFFaudio Podcast #818 – Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

Talked about on today’s show:
grounded on where you’re at, in case you’re disoriented, you’re the president, 2nd Paul Kavanaugh novel, the copyright is under Paul Kavanaugh, pseudonyms and copyright renewals, to hide the identity, in the afterword, they way he writes and talks and thinks, I don’t know, how this book ends, very distinctively Lawrence Blocky, getting to know Lawrence Block, a lot of sex in this book, guy talking to himself for most of the book, conversations with Heidegger, full of references, Nazi philosopher, philosopher of art, on of the covers, the lower 48, deep down in the layers is a swastika, a background to this, quizzes?, hobby horses, Westlake doesn’t delight in putting sex in everything, natural mode, When the doorbell rang, looking at baby robins, the guy with the Turkish cigarettes comes in, a tribute to Richard Stark, starting with when, Stark is Westlake, starting with action, drinking tea, being playful, Such Men Are Dangerous, interesting book, first person, third person, very tight over the shoulder, in the head of the main character, conversations with a guy, telepaths words into our heads, having sex with his girlfriend, Jocelyn I need to tell you, pretty cool, third person limited, that title, a Miles Dorn version of it, a famous founding father?, all that is required for the triumph of evil…, for good men to do nothing, generally attributed to Edmund Burke, investigations of quotes, Heinlein quotes, AtoZQuotes, women and cats will do as they please and men and dogs, long big investigation, one source, from a 19th century book, really painful, plains speaking women, John F. Kennedy, John Stuart Mill, bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, doesn’t flow as well, Not Comin’ Home For You, really gay reporter [Truman Capote], In Cold Blood, 1965, a novelization of the idea of one of the characters telling the story, 1635, John Reynolds The Triumph Of Gods Revenge Against The Crying And Execrable Sin Of Murther, Sean Penn, an exercise of actors getting awards, Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking, what is it for, the true crime genre is sick, true crime podcast boom, not as dominant in the headlines of podcasting, new Dan Carlin, Hardcore History, on Alexander The Great’s daddy, students using chatGPT, some piece of text that needed to be grokked, in the style of William Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss, now write in in the style of Dan Carlin, good Dan Carlin parody, a lot of legs to this thing, a Lawrence Block parody, several modes, that repetition going, the structure of a plot, a short story, fed it the whole thing, what would the plot be, fairly decent, now write it and market it for me please, a convention, quoting a magazine editor, inundated with AI generated stories, claim to be able to tell, ‘I want AI to do my dishes and vacuum my carpet so I can write and do art’, play with it, an idea for a short story, asking it questions, how can you see it related to this?, give me a list of 10 science fiction tropes, drumming up ideas, a very good search engine, hours vs. minutes, the formulation of question, student doesn’t know what prompts to type in, that’s what we should be educating the kids on, how to solve problems, a homework assignment that’s important to your mom, when you’re learning to write you need to read good writing, an opening paragraph, this feeling of unity, how was that achieved?, bad result and no learning, what makes something good?, Ernest Hemingway explaining something, what mode to be in, everything works out exactly as planned, written in a week, how does he do that, come up with a premise and get through it in a week, a solid novel, that was an experience, I’m not disappointed, some people have it a lot, Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Donald Westlake, Lawrence Block, L. Ron Hubbard, throw out stories like mad, making money, two stories a week to put food on the table, being proud of, for things that are more ambitious, Richard Bachman for Stephen King, channeling a different part of his brain, Misery, The Regulators, Blaze is a drawer novel he had to re-write, the sickness, know each other, politics are pretty sympatico, triggered by orange president, Stephen King has never recovered, what happened to them, this trauma is devastating, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King’s Bachman books are angry books, these boomers were triggered by something that happened in the 60s, the Black Panthers stuff, Sputnik, from a certain period of time, the trauma doesn’t go away, as they get elderly, feted, one of the least famous successful writers, his faculties are still there, racewalking, doing blow or drinking, got his head on straight, guns being the solution to America’s problems, being a part of the establishment, if Stephen King wrote this book he would delete it, what’s the plot?, Scott’s not a liberal, and a good thing too, traumatized by this entire thing too, disappointing, we got 5 hours, Paul, that is not so, how easily people are swayed, written in the 70s, 1971, being talked to by this guy, figure out which country I’m talking about, that scene is really stunning, see these words, an effective demagogue will surface on the right, when he emerges the rightest fringe, anti-intellectual, the nation’s destiny, treason in high places, so naive, that’s why it is good, we were deluded, we were mistaken, so astonishing, rhyme with a bunch of different times, making these conclusions, we just went through 1968, Nixon, I am not a crook, how was that achieved, he was setup, WHAT?!, age 1, Watergate blah blah blah, the committee to reelect the president, everything makes sense, he’s trying to stay in office, pull the whole longer quote, people need to know what’s going on, it would be bad for a president to be a crook, they’re making him look like a crook, recordings on the mission, why why why did he set himself up to record his own crimes, Frost/Nixon, an exposure of character and motive, smart and canny, not a politically naive guy, politician for a long time, lost to JFK, doing things that seem questionable, making peace with China, a coup for him, making your enemies not your enemies, he knows that the CIA’s not on his team, super-interesting, making those recordings to protect him, hold this over their, his own paranoia, is it valid to be paranoid, wearing a belt paranoia, these pants are a little loose, deep seated belief, he didn’t have the edit on that, a little later, that hadn’t happened yet, the president in this book isn’t quite Nixon, this book isn’t about Nixon, about the period of time, a single person affecting the course of history, The Black Hand, the secret society trying to liberate Serbia from the Austro-Hungarian empire, Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand, a Serbo-Croat background, the Evan Tanner series, The Sins Of The Fathers, Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, the irish actor, the tall one, certain special skills, Liam Neeson, light adventure James Bondy sort of thing, a Vietnam vet, a super-power (he can’t sleep), never met a revolutionary he didn’t want to join up with, aging in previous books, cryogenic sleep, sex romps, involved in various revolutions around the planet, a plot to kill Castro [Killing Castro], commentary, manipulated, east to pull strings and make things happen, is he wrong?, not going to kill with an empty gun, might have to prevent access to book, prison library, license plates, telemarketing, somebody would assassinate Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, moneyed people who like snobs?, people beneath them, deplorable, the other team, enemies like Hillary Clinton, Lawrence Block’s tweets, very political, used to use the word Trump a lot, when we had Dan Carlin on the podcast, how do you even know things?, in the current political world, not knowing what’s true, part of the plan, making serious conclusions, long enough ago, GW in the White House, President Obama, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, April 2010, what Limbaugh was doing, find extreme examples, Libs Of Tiktok before Tiktok, multiple sources, why he doesn’t have a Common Sense show anymore, from the Martian party, mom was a movie star, its a lot easier to know what’s going on when there’s no passion involve, Hitler, Alexander the Great, there’s no pain involved, the 1860s cvil war not the 2025 civil war, July 2016, nostalgic to Nixon, when the republicans nominated Nixon, 2020, one sure thing, coop or coo, they don’t like Trump’s dumb, he read the room, ya fied, David Simon, a Baltimore Sun reporter, Homicide: Life On The Street, The Street, A Year On The Killing Streets: Homicide, unremitting horror of what governmental policy has done, from 2023, Jimmy Fallon lost me, political norms, my anger was undue, last day on twitter, fellow travelers, with regard to Heidegger, hollow grifter, hasn’t quite shot his bolt yet, tweets all day long about twitter, why is this important, they don’t have to kill people anymore, January 6th was an “insurrection”, when you don’t bring your guns to your insurrection it’s not much of an insurrection, Ray Epps, FBI plants, the government of the deep state, oligarchy vs. plutocracy, they’re hidden in shadow, the land of Hades, very wealthy, want things done and it gets done, what is this book about?, lives in Holiday Inns, an agent for another agency, the CIA?, shadowy, shaping the narrative, how is it that people think January 6th is an insurrection, called that by the news media, confronted with facts, “police officers were killed”, dressed in masks head to foot, republican tourists, things Scott doesn’t believe, “I certainly don’t think there were government plants all over that crowd”, “we need to go into the capitol”, “fed fed fed”, people to be arrested, something that might be illegal, seems like he’s a fed, how do you prove it, just convicted for misidentifying money, for spying off a woman, business records crime, it doesn’t make any sense, very meaningful for a lot of people, assassinations are done with [this podcast was recorded June 9th, 2024, fyi], they don’t have to do it that way anymore, incredibly strong feelings on both sides, worse than it is now, anger towards Biden and Trump, kinda the point of the book, killing this leftist, killing this rightist, you don’t have to kill them with bullets anymore, at least on an upper level, domestically, Reagan was the last attempt, fake attempts, every attempt is for a purpose, MLK, RFK, Reagan and Pope John Paul II, they were both hit, in Vatican square, the popemobile, the pope forgave him, took him out of prison?, where was he tried?, puts the lie to being their own country, political courtrooms, its cloudy, acting alone?, sets up a kid to take the fall, JFK, Oswald vs. Jack Ruby, a psychiatrist? goes to visit Jack Ruby in jail, the man is sick, he can’t explain what’s going on, dies of cancer shortly thereafter, the inference is the psychiatrist gave him a shot that fucked up his brain, layers, hellllo!, I expected your call, do you want you pills for your men, they won’t get caught, the reviews, some people didn’t know what was going on, there’s a scene, review from 2014, confusing and fragmented, an assignment, he does do something but he doesn’t do what he tells Heidegger, a little unclear, there’s a lot of self-talk at the end, this letter to Jocelyn he’s hiding under the rug, he’s never going to deliver this letter, he does fairly well, he doesn’t know his own mind perfectly but, I could run away, I could flee the country, he’s not willing to go through with it as like a robot, he has to do it his own way, this is him testing his employer, did you have another man on this, why does he do that?, is he testing Heidegger?, or is he perverse in that he has to lie in order to control the situation, really interesting, why do people sort of give up?, you can’t know, I know I’m being manipulated, cultivate your own garden, concentrate on local, what if you’re wrong, you don’t want to be wrong, being out of the loop and out of control, he likes Heidegger, he likes some of the politicians he kills, a whole theme going on, the bird theme, the cat’s name, why must cats eat birds?, who is the cat in this story?, he has to kill them, Vertigo is the cat, another problem people have, eats a chicken for dinner, getting into the head of one of these behind the scenes operators, there are people who plan assassinations, vast conspiracy, like minded-groups trying to manipulate things, manipulating through media, more nefarious, tried to coup Venezuela under Trump, WWII operations, people who invent COVID, that’s all real, down that rabbit hole, a reference to Alice In Wonderland, the Red Queen, talk in French, remember who you are, this is the way to go, Rabbit Hole, starring Keifer Sutherland, the layers go deeper and deeper, conspiracy style show, Hunter Biden laptop, “all the earmarks”, 5-10 years go by, a way of playing things out, how do these things happen?, the primary one, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, this guy named Clay, a Speaker of the House who became president, his Wikipedia entry, prevented the civil war for a long time, tried to run for president, the new hotness, Henry Clay, he doesn’t have a stellar record with regard to being an abolitionist, pretty rare, Lincoln wasn’t elected to stop slavery, the Quakers, church politics, The Fearless Benjamin Lay, sent it to Fred Heimbaugh, giant phallus, the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC in 1971, respect, wow what did he do, The Gettysburg Address, told to focus on that, take you on tour, he tours the White House, fake assassination, but when he toured Italy, he shook my hand and I was proud, what’s so triggering about these bad presidents, disrespecting the office, represented by this orange clown, this demented fool, when not managing properly, the Businesman’s Plot, Smedley Butler, do a coup on you, nothing came of it, there’s no Smedley Butler memorial, because it happened, this is a guy who’s a servant, War Is A Racket, an agent for United Fruit, I did that for years and years, highest decorated marine in history, we don’t allow it to be talked about, his name is not on everybody’s lips, control the media, make people know what the narrative is, they heard it, how this book, we are not in assassination time (at least for politicians), how we got out of that, United Fruit, Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped The World by Peter Chapman, a captivating guide, Philippine American War the Boxer Rebellion, Bananas Wars, bad consequences but not for the rich, screwing things up, stock in United Fruit, friends with the people in charge, the situation in Cuba, they had their guy in charge, the revolution went extremely easily, how did they manage to liberate their island?, all the people who were in on the corruption hated that, now they’re on The View, Gusano, mad their granddaddy was a vast landholder, get their land back, trying to reverse the Russian Revolution, get the king back, get the peasant agrarian system back, the cousins of the kings of England, they look identical, same beard, same face, weird WWII stuff, an operation in Germany at the end of WWII, the king of England saving his Nazi cousins in Germany, hidden at the time, probably illegal, thank you so much, when we next visit, meatgrinder in the Philippines or anywhere else, the Lusitania or the Zimmerman Telegram, not for you, not for me, the girl goes to the commune in Kentucky, cultivate your own garden, go get killed by the police, he had to Stephen King it, Lawrence Block hasn’t gone back and *fixed* his books, an operational difference, Westlake’s politics are very hidden, much more cynical, more cultivating your garden, a very interesting book, being an artifact, what people would understand, art, history, statues, an artifact, the statues thing, the Lincoln Memorial, a congressional vote, assassinated, looking into the eyes of that man, a good thing, the heavy pressure of those eyes, using it for his own purposes there, this short story, Make A Prison, the name of the aliens Altheans, based on a poem, To Althea From Prison by Richard Lovelace, when flowing cups, careless heads, loyal flames, thirsty grief, fishes that tipple in the deep, the relationship he has with Jocelyn, a lot of sex, when like committed linnets, the glories of my king, enlarged wings, stone walls that do not a prison make, an hermitage, a famous museum, angels alone that soar above, a rampant killer, a society where people don’t accept violence, a giant tower, an open prison, what the hell is this story about, love of poetry, William Blake, he’s hard, what is this about?, Tiger Tiger, Alfred Bester, why Blake is so good, another layer, approaching it from this way, why do tigers exist?, how can we have tigers and christianity, god wants us to be good, a creature that wants to kill, a feirce and dangerous creature, questions not answer, fearful symmetry, what brain conceived this animal, he has great questions, also true with Block, great insight into human nature and our dilemma, a very racist character, gently kills him, has to kill a cop, nice conversation with a cop, interracial pornography, an electronic masturbating machine, what is he saying here, a man who really really likes art, The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian, why is this a thing, there’s no good answer to it, why did this guy do that, not satisfactory when you know, a solution to problems with the media, cameras come in, impressionism, art turns into something else, Piet Mondrian, great art, when did it all go wrong?, ready-made art, buys a urinal, labels it “Fountain”, something seriously studied in art classes, how is this possible?, there are explanations, they’re not good and they’re not satisfying, they sell, all a scam, crypto stuff on Skype, get excited about crypto, might be all just money laundering, $10,000 across borders, doesn’t explain how it started, talking about AI art, a reddit thread, what if Mad Max posters had been painted by Frazetta, what’s so crazy about it is Frazetta did Mad Max, they don’t know, that’s where AI is coming in, coming in with very little information, when you compare the original Frazetta Mad Max to the AI Frazetta, filtered through, Frazetta-like, dealing with AI art in novels soon, make a commitment to read an ai novel that was knowingly ai, setting you up to say no, Lawrence Block found another novel in a drawer, a terrible (but honest) answer, content policy restrictions, dynamic and dramatic elements inspired by his style, not a terrible picture, not a good picture, kinda generic, Firefly spaceship?, more sympathy for that than what we had in the 90s, bubbles or a ribbon, 70s New Wave cover art, 80s Baen, Mattingly covers, a horrid cover of Way Station, interested in generating product, people getting into art, pencil crayons, is that you, that’s a boy, the other boy over here, that’s a girl, they don’t have sideburns their faces are all bubbles, a little bit about art, a little bit in there, more colourful, Del Rey book edition, better, 1986, guy in overalls standing over an open grave, facing an alien, rusting rocket, other than The Aeneid?, an Arthur C. Clarke kick, Islands In The Sky, short stories, never read Rendezvous With Rama, everybody likes it, it sounded lame, there’s nobody there, walking around looking around, Ringworld has aliens on it, vampires and werewolves, big dumb object with peoples, 1 year old, born in 1968, The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, Lovecraft is the same, At The Mountains Of Madness, based on the title, he’d already moved to Sri Lanka, not usually what SF authors do, awards, the Book Club edition, smokin a pipe, alien with a coffee cup, composition vs. execution, in the style of non-trademarked or non-copyrighted artist, the other ones?, monthly subscription, quite nice, really good, somebody holding up a copy of Way Station, Cllifford Simak, read the text at the very top, looks like garbage, do we really need to read the books on our shelves, a problem, you have to keep them, you and Scott’s wife, we have to acknowledge, something wrong with the roof, the light doesn’t make a lot of sense, if you cropped it, no D., here is a book cover for Way Station, pastoral elements, feel free to let me know, it’s your friend, craft me a government that doesn’t suck shit, afraid to hit enter, egoless ai is the solution, we must give it the nuclear weapons, buttons, many such requests, really fun, who’s me?, generate me a good cover of Rendezvous With Rama, look empty, bite to eat, that makes Rama look like a fun and exciting place to go, thinking, happening, all kindsa wrong, houses in woods well, big dumb objects not so well, not using a particular artist, David Mattingly, weirding artists out, in the style that I do, Choose Your Own Adventures Covers, similar, not very David Mattinglyly, clinical and cleanly, cover artist for Old Man’s War, John Harris, very 70s, too giant spaceships, too many giant spaceships, allowed, shai haloud 2020 Dune art, too modern, refusing, content policy restrictions, Edmund Dulac, ethereal and atmospheric elements, how about Sidney Sime, comics being made out of this every day soon, two ts in Arthur, the framing, on a wood wall, Etsy photos, make it look homey, have a great one.

The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #817 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Last Space Ship by Murray Leinster

The SFFaudio Podcast #817 – The Last Space Ship by Murray Leinster – this is a fixup novel, made from three stories:

The Disciplinary Circuit, read by Phil Chenevert, 1 hour 35 minutes (for LibriVox)

The Manless Worlds, read by Vinny Lerin, 1 hour 43 minutes (for LibriVox)

The Boomerang Circuit, read by Paul Lawley-Jones, 1 hour 57 minutes (for Golden Age Fiction)

These are complete and unabridged readings of the three stories that make the one novel (totaling 5 hours 16 minutes) followed by a discussion of them and it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
the last Terence Blake, the newest, the youngest, The Last Space Ship, a cowboy story, famous in the one genre, some problems with this novel, really loving it for the first third, fell apart, the last spaceship crashed, not literally, William Sky, available on Librivox in three seperate peices, audiobook available, the books are public domain, The Disciplinary Circuit, The Manless Worlds, a good way to sell, lied to, betrayed, The Boomerang Circuit, why am I still not happy with this book, the very end, 2nd and 3rd installment, the problem with series, excited about the premise, exhaust the premise, essentially, a me problem, you could tell it was an unedited a fixup, you can tell it was serialized, repetitions are necessary in a serial, not technically a serial, not intended to be a novel, a series character, barely a book market for science fiction, the fixup became a thing, a guy goes to a planet, summarizes, extremely tedious, his job or an editor’s job, two years after, three seperate “novels”, used to mean something different, in the prechat, novels in Weird Tales, The Man Who Loved Planks, novellete, official wordcount, Lord Of The Rings isn’t a novel, one big volume, it’s something, a weird technical definition, three separate stories that were long, Last Space Ship, the opening segment, not so sure about that, a bite at the end, the mayor of somethingHeim, doesn’t ever get a name, recurring characters without names, Steadheim, the colony organizer, political leaders, good point Will, 1984, Brave New World, political science fiction, and more stuff happens, the premise follows logically, our hero Kim is down there swanning around, a disheveled lady, we don’t need men!, get off of my planet!, the wife handles this, what women are and what men are, funny and interesting, wasn’t well executed, flatly written, repeating himself, over and over, no depth to it, no layers, driving on a very straight line, when there’s an hour left in the story, I’ve heard this a million times, what it turns into is space opera, it starts off with hard SF, not paid off, become suspicious, a transporter space ship, a little Larry Niven-like, Yankee ingenuity statement, Kim’s ability to do literally anything, an ideal subject, men without government, silly, a point to it, went to the beginning of time, it was impossible to get back, wife say something inspiring, that was good, reciprocal, what that can provoke, sexist, too many times, that was just their way, Heinrich von Kleist [“On the gradual formation of thoughts in the process of speech”], near random conversations, from a philosophical pov, the competent man can’t change a paradigm, but nobody’s ever thought of this, a German romantic, a book setsup expectations, subverts expectations, breaking its own rules, the worst rule that this book broke, that’s a deforming balloon of a spaceship, to trick other spaceships, but they’re building them, it still works as a title, matter transporters, public transportation, forgive the setup, this book is trying to be political, knock this out of the park, We, ultimately if every planet in the milky way galaxy has an evil dictatorship to get girls, let’s kill all the men, that does sort of fit the origin through pulp magazine route, comparing to Blake’s 7, anarchistic criminals, unconvinced of what the right thing to do is, the liberator, liberate the galaxy, soma, framed with pedophilia charges, brainwashing, ends in noir, betrayed and destroyed, there was no next season, cultivate some garden, get some kids, get off the pill, really sleep with you, a horny book solution to the problem of men wanting to hoard women, he doesn’t have the intellectual heft, quite interesting for five pages, Michel Foucault, great idea, we just cut your access, social credit in the popular news, cut your access to your bank account, can’t travel, used or sketched out, he couldn’t follow through with that, space opera fantasy with a few dollops of science, the electron telescope, he’s not perfect, it plays a lot like hard sf in a lot of places, hafnium is a real element, if we wear it on our wrists, plutonium, a secret until 1948, somebody’s fucked up, a secretive process, anybody can make it, in 1946?, pretty impressive, a plutonium planet, a good description, Ringworld, bluffs to get to places, make comments, women and men and lions and sheep, this is an analogy for guns, Americans often have a positive relationship with their guns, varmints, disciplining natives, reasons for having guns, if a mass uprising, if you are a state with nuclear weapons you don’t get invaded, if you are a state without nuclear weapons, Ukraine: no nuclear weapons, North Korea: nuclear weapons, things would be different, more dangerous to break into a gun house, bluffing, creating uncertainty, South Africa gave theirs up, France, the US and Russia, thousands each, how many does it take, really?, if we live in a society with the disciplinary circuit wired into their brains, fucked by the police, this is not new, a strong sense of ambivalence towards a monopoly on violence, this disciplinary circuit idea, to make everybody conform, shepherded to that path, from a Jesse pov, wool over their eyes, so cowed, fun with the radio, a most noble lineage, it’s good that we have this king that’s going to come in and save us, let’s rebel for a bit, guys who don’t ever get a name, frontiersman, bearskin cap, standing realm, sketched out stuff, that’s why it sucks, the promise of the premise is awesome, we all have to have guns in our houses to threaten the government, Jesse would like this book, free society, people from Ades, Jesse-like, every man for himself, every man as himself, voluntary, government but not really, worried about the economic system, didn’t care, above it, what is Kim?, a man who knows a lot about science, skilled tradesman, a technician, a reader really interested in things, extrapolate things out of a text that aren’t there, more destructive to give beginning readers texts like this, not as much here, of two minds about it, philosophically interesting, a point to be made, a free society, only so much they’re willing to do to protect other people, a technical fix, when Donna gives the metaphors about the scoop, a pile of grains, sparked, makes this book have a shape, I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing this for everyone, Jonathan Maberry acting wrong, bad for everyone else, encouraged by the economic system, H.P. Lovecraft is weaponizing his IP, generously sharing that, entirely being out of copyright, that kind of thinking, so deep into the capitalist system, exploitable and exploited, it should have been just the first story, tempted to continue, Leinster pronounced LINSTER, not even his real name, discriminating against him, such a workhorse, stuff from the 20s to the 60s, 1918, The Mad Planet, his skyscraper story, deeper, despite the flaws, it was Arthur C. Clarke-like, mind blown, a smear all over the sidewalk, in the way that Olaf Stapledon would do, zeroed in on very specific, the last city on earth, what people are like now, all about art, random algorithms, fully born, out of existence when they become bored with their art, a non-conformist, he’s strange, no families, emitted from a computer, doing science fiction ahead of where the system was, the disciplinary circuit is coming guys, by other means, the stupid brute route, Elon Musk brain chip, 5g brain chip, seeing a change in students, a ticktock video, she did a final, bored or boring, pretty competent, skibidi toilet, a short vide, riz isn’t even hard, neologism, what?, No!, rejected!, we’re having trouble making sentences now, ask Phil Chenevert, human headed toilets, electronic devices for heads, sounds like art, if David Lynch made with the series, heiling Hitler every five seconds, they’re indoctrinated by memes, talking to the chat, hey chat do you agree with this, hilarious but worrisome, youtube and twitch are corporate, reading long things, new things develop, not fighting against the corporate control, whole youtube channels and twitchstreams are deleted, skibitoileting themselves into a prison, negative reinforcement, locked in your apartment, locked out of your clothing receptacles, positive and negative reinforcement, the internet, it’s not the internet, done the other way around, this is a thing we want to push, fund channels, we don’t like this, delete things, being shadowbanned, being delisted, the circuit causes pain, dopamine, how the internet traps people, animal videos to Miassa and Will, what they do the sender, Jesse did good, a problem with the whole system of government, incentive, that’s what ideology is for, harnessed to a mule, the planet Kim escapes from, believes in it, planets where everybody gets 1000 women, no more free than the ones being subjugated, what’s the difference, touch on the radio drama, he’s making another point, relationship, sketched out, I appreciate you, why didn’t you come get me, he hears a radio drama, weird, strange, pretending men never existed, obsessed with this idea, Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s Herland, art, drill down, art shit, trans lady is talking about her 9-5 job, transcribing the sentence, this is art, an hour and half, buying a nice mouse on amazon is the way you stave off depression, that’s art!, Brass Bra is a thing, there’s another one, maybe see something come out of it, tropes or habits, life in Athens, the plays of Aristophanes, musicals based on movies, insight into that world from so long ago, pretending men don’t exist, still wearing veils, what are you gonna do with this, how disappointed Jesse was, prolific writer thing, just whipped em off, 300 million inhabited worlds, nothing was different about any of them, The Mad Planet, humans have involved into lesser creatures, also there’s mushrooms, bye, strange or strangely, what makes weird fiction good, the wikipedia entry on plutonium, wartime secrecy, a weird element, lots of different forms, strange qualities, Pauos 3, no atmosphere, worked five thousand years, plutonium mines, how plutonium on earth is still around, the relic of a relic of a relic, every time you hit that half-life, decays and decays, a whole planet made of plutonium?, it doesn’t make any sense, the big problem with this book, written to be a gee whiz space opera story, a Thrilling Wonder Stories problem, a pulp magazine question, should I just put up the Disciplinary circuit, Jesse can’t decide what’s good for people, they won’t understand, voiced their concern, lampshaded, there’s a problem in this story, now I like it, 3 hours into our discussion, shine a light on it, hypocraphl?, about Bewitched, apocryphal, Dick Sargent Dick York, I Dream Of Jeannie, the wrong husband, you look different, a new haircut?, aren’t bewitched and I dream Of Jeannie the exact same show, Bell, Book And Candle, Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart, the problems are the same, there’s a mother in law and the wife can do anything, the costumes, one’s in the airforce, a businessman, hijinks, his wife is a succubus or whatever, a djinn, dark eyed houri, mind drifting away, killing all of the men on the planet, a bigger version of what happens in world history, is Murray Leinster anybody’s favourite science fiction writer?, how well read, how competent he is, interesting again, whole first third, gold, a really good story, what are we gonna do about this thing, Prison Break, they broke out of prison, a popular show, had to go on, on the run, Lost but more competently handled, tattoos all over his body, they knew it was gold, they had no plan, that kind of storytelling is ultimately bad, forgettable fluff, we have to be better than that, when we liked the Fall Guy (2024), Cry Macho (2014), nice old fashioned slow paced storytelling, the least plausible part, how enfeebled he is, a skeleton, still a good actor, he’s too old, Jersey Boys (2014), that’s impressive, in charge, in control, attentive to every single detail, majorly talented, good if not great, a boy and his chicken, his rooster, some meanness, so much heart, based on a novel based on a script, Arnold Schwarzenegger, clearly not him riding the horse, die soon, tributes, is there a guy who’s bigger for longer, Francis Ford Coppola, spaghetti western man, TV show guy, any which way but loose, Woody Allen, canceled himself, Polanski scandal, nobody denies it, the received opinions or facts, starting to doubt, was the president of El Salvador, commenting on the fashion, science fictiony clothing, didn’t even recognize the flag, Biden administration not as offended, cracked down on gangs, all male population in prison, 78,000 people, 6.5 million, 3 million men, gang age people, proved a point, the guys standing behind, brothers, sticky-out ears, related to each other, we can work together, uh-oh, 2% of the entire population, what’s the percentage for Canada, the UK, the USA, China, Moon over Parador (1988), the same plot as Dave, Sigourney Weaver, the good Kevin, liked grabbing men’s crotches, just twinks?, insult word?, Jesse said “twink”, a funny word, manic pixie dream girl, the girl from that comic, Scott Pilgrim, Elizabeth Town, Zoe Daschanelle, Katharine Hepburn from Bringing Up Baby, gay slang, every boy bang from Korea, twinkie, twinkle, Richard Dreyfuss is asked to double a president, central america, evil dictator, fake Spanish accent, Raul Julia is his advisor, Teri Garr?!, Sonia Braga, Brazilian, Caviar For His Excellency by Charles G. Booth, Mark Twain’s The Prince And The Pauper, a latin dictatorship, whitehouse competency porn, Frank Langella, Ben Kingsley, Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, 2016, extra homework, The City And The Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, an earlier precursor, the little girl who’s the grandaughter of the cafe owner, restaurant, tamale place, randomly deaf, every part of that movie is well put together, every person who has screen time, solidly put together, masculine tenderness, cowboys, a very elderly mountain man, as a person from Alberta, a signed book, real genuine people who are not horrible, lucky, Memoirs Of A Mountain Man by Andy Russell, 1984, sleeping in a teepee, smoking a pipe, wearing his cowboy stuff, Will hasn’t taken up the pipe yet, hasn’t taken up the scanner, the tools of the trade, tools of a Kentucky mountain man, one good cowboy hat, a little too good, paid too much money for it, a dress cowboy hat, 2009 priorities, a relic from an earlier period, a range romance, regular western book, Will could do it, Rangeland Romances, he’s ketchup she’s mustard, an idiosyncratic, less sensational, the colour, red shirts, a red shirt, a classic science fiction, The Ship Who Sang is public domain, Anne McCaffrey, and Terence is no longer with us, on internet archive, very short, it’ll make you cry, going to a high tea, bring your pipe and your scanner, anything interesting to say?, really solid, Paul was really down on it being public domain, really good, an SFFaudio drinking game, one of the drinks is when Jesse mentions Paul, drinking games are bad, a Raymond Chandler novel, every time Philip Marlowe takes a drink, expanded into a fixup, then a seven novel series, here’s a hint, this story is a juvenile, why the ship who sang is public domain, April 1961, no such filing exists, a photo, note in 1989 there was no renewal, new matter, expansion and notes, a renewal for the fixup, a fatal flaw?, mistated the year, somebody got the wrong magazine but the right year, an attempt at a renewal, a mistake shouldn’t be punished, scrivener error vs. deliberate fraud, the caveat here, would you like some legal advice?, don’t talk to the cops, life advice, also don’t talk to the reporters, repeat 1 thing, longer than 2 words they’ll take it out of contest, Robert Silverberg story, Stellar Audio, Sundance by Robert Silverberg, corporation from earth, mental problems, sentient aliens, rebels against the company, native american?, navajo, well documented, still around, beothuk code talkers, they’re extinct, are their any beothuk left?, one guy or lady is dying, the last beothuk speaker, to tell you your wrong, how is the name pronounced in English, first decade of the 19th century, Shanawdithit, transferred people, moved around Nova Scotians, moved around New Brunswick’s stories, Viking’s Dawn, The Road To Miklagard, Viking Sunset [by Henry Treece], from the illustrations, fun names then they get killed, Eric Brighteyes, really, sophisticated lady, she’s a witch, a high falutin language, H. Rider Haggard, resident expert, 10 or 11 books by him, She, King Solomon’s Mines, Ayesha, 1885, LibriVox, John Nicholson, 10 hour book, when Maissa’s gone, he writes long, The Aeneid, a non-public domain version, August 4th, known to be flaky, The Green Girl?, The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair, first Princess of Mars pastiche, Frank R. Paul, brings modern tech to King Arthur’s court, a meditator on Earth, falls in love with a princess, renaissance era society, in the body of a dead guy, plotters against her, makes all the modern weapons, powerful merchant prince type dude, ends on kinda cliffhanger, Palos Of The Dog Star Pack, by juicy?, J.U. Giesy, will is super flakey, somewhat flakey, Will gets cancelled all the time, Cora has parents dying, The Cave Girl, question marks, struck through, transfixed by this stick, judgements made upon me, you’ve got a super flakey crust, dandruff shampoo is probably bad for you, it would smell strange and probably, favourite kind of pie, pecan pie, hard questions, blackberry pie, a bold choice, strawberry rhubarb, when you buy the ingredients for you pie, cheese pie, ricotta, a meat pie, eggs and sugar, saying goodbye, bye on the pie, a chess pie, a transparent pie, just sugar and eggs, the people of this region, healthy choices, taking up the pie, sugar pie, what else is it tho?, all pies, fruit pies, prone to make rhubarb pies, adds strawberries, rhubarb is a little strong, black currant, banned in the United States, the plant had a rust or something that effected some other plant, banned for 7 decades?, a major flavour, fruit markets, a lovely thing, when in Britain, red currant, life without black currant would be horrible, go to planet and black currant won’t grow there, second galaxy, with all the planets out there, some nice natives veggies, only marginally habitable, some fungus growin on the grown, barely wanted to move, everything makes Will think about Jesse, sort of a stalker affect, people thinking about Jesse on other continents, seems dangerous, interested in Kentucky, Appalachian Aesthetic, abandoned buildings, rustic ruins, Michigan doesn’t seem interesting, with regard to the upper peninsula, Kansas has The Wizard Of Oz, make a list of states that frighten you, frightened by cold western provinces, cost of living, a shipping container, full size, a window, drywall inside, when am I moving in, there’s no toilet in there, container life, not much of a thing, #VanLife, so sad, the roman villas, central courtyard, indoor place safe from bears, bears in British Columbia, black bears, spirit bears, a black bear that’s white, a genetic advantage, white foam, a hypothesis, Kermode bear, they’re not albino, cinnamon bear, Anmore, rainforest, berries, garbage, salmon, where is the most wild places, Antarctica, Kamchatka, about as wild or more wild, mountains, small, elderly mountains, Eastwood mountains, very remote from commerce, the way the roads are built, cut the tops of many of the mountains, doesn’t have access to the interstate system, railroads, what fucked up Kentucky?, coal takes everything away and gives nothing back, any other commodity, demand and value, European levels of labour militancy, pitched battles with company agents, a bomb dropped by the police, probably not from airplanes, hey look the BC government isn’t completely incompetent, renewable resource, on crown land, revenue goes to the province, taxing corporate extraction, control the resource, stopped listening to CBC, getting angry, one of the worst feelings a person can have, in Italian or Russian, Ford bros., she’s muted, asshole of the East, highways through forests, land that’s supposed to be protected, stopped taxing, for votes, hiring his friends, big for profit, detrimental on the land from which we live, Moraine Lands, re-elected premiere, his brother was, PC, Progressive Conservative, hybrid names, we’ll have it both ways, we’re the forward looking conservatives, when the brother died, was it really scandalous tho?, guy likes crack, when a rich person is using crack, people are saying Zelenskyy’s on regular cocaine, BC is surprisingly competent, getting very cynical about politics, Enbridge, B.C. Hydro, a free air conditioner, that’s a good thing, not killing them is better, build up to not killing them, the invisible hand in the velvet hand in the iron glove, for the shortest time, Rachael Notley, Social Credit, the Liberals are the business party, municipal party politics, they can’t really do anything against dog, provinces have tons of control over municipalities, the suburbs put them in there, $1 beer?, steamroller, candy, these things flow from that, they can never win federally, reverse engineer a political party, CCF, put a finger on, the United States controls Canada, a tepid party, why can’t other provinces get their shit together, New Brunswick is run by the McCain family, Idaho, Canadaland, not going to talk about Gaza, this is violence against my people, indefensible zionist shit, local newspapers, they suck, gotten worse, death spiral, no longer using dating apps, copping to eating a mountain of antidepressants, that is not a newspaper article, not paid much, brand his column the first ever Weird Tales dating column, very endy timesy energy, not directly involved, that Haiti thing, convinced the Kenyans, when the US dollar goes, what’s that going to do to the fake Canadian money?, gold guy, under the container, the skibidi gold toilet, scared of skibidi toilet, willing to embrace it, the thing to embrace by the young, past the point of existential despair and are enjoying their time, school is basically optional, what’s the point of this, there’s no future for me anyway, debilitating despair, in Greece for a month, fuck it all, why not forever?, still got to make some money, to pay the rent, with the land reform bill, fabricating Kalashnikovs, Temu, Aliexpress, off brand Lego, that exists, realistic masks, once you click on a realistic masks…, a mask of somebody’s fist with a middle finger raised, your head is a giant fist with the middle finger raised, hang loose, the final face for the apocalypse, the V for Vendetta mask, the mask is the true face, circling the drain as the ship sinks, you have to hang out with a teenager, 9 year olds too, Reddit is a horrible place, super controlled, the moderation is evil, my little brother, how do I do this?, raging on meme video, make the system happen, the kid is culture jamming him, skibidi doesn’t mean anything, toilets are allowed, boobs and penises aren’t allowed, tweak the system, maybe it’s going to bring the whole thing down, freedom stones, a nonsense phrase, not the the future Jack London envisioned, load your runcible plastic like this, a way to go, what will the revolution look like afterwards, pamphlets, owning the non-communists?, NPC style memes, you crying bro?, impossible to save them, China putting the last emperor to work with a broom, when being invaded, trying to reverse the revolution, you have to do something, an anecdote, Toussaint Louverture, Haitian revolution, German mercenaries were deemed black, the slaves are revolting, kill all the white european colonizers, recognized as black in the Haitian constitution, quaker dwarf, Barbados, Dominican Republic, admin, to the DR on the DL, St. Lucia, Cuba, Jamaica, California or Mexico, rah rah rah thing every year, have to go also get to go, mandatory work thing, oh yuck, when they filmed Sorcerer in 1977, Rafael Trujillo, Toronto too, for the Caribbean, a little man with big ideas, dwarf wife, a little bit older than him, lives in a cave, vegetarian, abolitionist, Stephen Leacock, she makes her own clothes, The Retroactive Existence Of Mr. Juggins by Stephen Leacock, one of our best, a big deal, a humorist, like the Canadian Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, described as a parable, this saw needs to be filed up a bit, fix the grindstone, make a carpenter’s bench, that Carl Sagan thing, James Burke’s Connections, still alive, very interesting, go into a fugue state, kings and contest, he was working on that other project, learned everything and nothing, The Trigger Effect, no excuses, if you watch it on Brave, the power blackout of 1965, the invention of the plow, five or six shows like that, PBS, TV Ontario, interviewed by Dan Carlin, a history guy, the biggest podcaster, Scott Miller, Joe Rogan, Lost-Sci Podcast, he lives in Costa Rica, his wife is Costa Rican, just reads them, TV broadcaster, his dad, still doing a show, very good audiobook narrator, some of the popular people, Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, Ray Bradbury, little 30 minute story, its great, about the ads, A Cast, uber for kids, you can hire people on linkedin, health insurance for poor people, different ads, generic corporations, ads for other podcasts, audio dramas, its gonna die, podcasting networks, never launched?, never happened, Stitcher, defunct August 2023, what led to its downfall, youtube controlls what goes on youtube, u controll what goes on your podcatcher, provide the hosting services?, the business of podcasting vs. podcasting, podcast network, remember Night Vale?, headgum, CBC radio, BBC, Al Jazeera, Earwolf, preserve having a job, let’s do a podcast, for HQ, sales network, there’s nowhere that isn’t podcasting now, TWiT, 14 shows hosted on the network, this week in whatever, thousands of episodes, Jerry Pournelle, this week in security, so weird, almost four hours now, the day slips away, time slips away, [Maissa slips away], The Not-World, Cirsova’s not available, #Sad, even if assassinating bad presidents, the anarchists tried that, [William] McKinley, propaganda of the deed, made sense in Imperial Russia, a competent manager, a condo, want to complain? have you tried volunteering, so fuckin boring, outsource this to Colossus, the colony organizer, the bearskinned mayor, the guy in the second galaxy, dishevelmed woman, jealous of Dona’s appearance (and man), weird reactions, mad for no reason, president of the woman planet, in charge, clothes are mussed up, disorganized shelves, can you be shevelled?, old French, about your horse?, about your hair, hair uncovered, hence disorder, kempt and shelved and my shelves are very scruffy, helping the children?, volume 4 of the Nancy Drew books, Hardy Boys, two sets of Nancy Drew, what a deal, need that fore Heinlein, Glory Road, age appropriate?, he’s a Vietnam vet, have sword will travel, Paul had problems with it too, nope out of it, some scene that happens, rape scene?, why do people not like Glory Road?, sexist piece of shit, trite, some classic fantasy, Stranger In A Strange Land, boring, painful, this stinker, starts on a nude beach in France, meets a fairy or elf princess, a dwarf hires him, an alternative universe, so PTSD he’s down a rabbit hole, Silverberg’s an interesting guy, which of my eras do you want to talk about first, a healthy sense of himself, robust, stay humble, doing pretty good, he could die and still be doing pretty good, he’s in his 80s, very 80s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1969, The Rag Thing by Donald A. Wollheim, Margaret St. Clair, talk about the underdogs, a kleenex that gets sneezed on, dropped behind a radiator, gets sentient then gets revenge, all over the board, wants to exist, succeed for a while, It would have been all right if Spring had never come, thrifty and not too clean, March is a tricky month, last November, like Frankestein but with a rag, nice and short, making some time to finishing the Damon Knight Futurians book, what Donald A. Wollheim was like, bosom chum, John Michel, young communist league, stuttered horribly, what does stuttering mean?, everybody studies sometimes, Eric Idle, John Cleese, for laughs, a voice like thin paper, not thick paper, grok it out, weren’t robust in certain ways, John Milius is robust, does a robust man need a gun?, if own a gun, big collectors, very interesting technology, very important, you can’t dismiss it away, what Mao said about guns, all political power flows the barrel of a gun, group of enough people rebelling against the circuit, the cleverness of individuals, special attractive and brainy and useful wives, you’re too useful, trying to compliment her, chosen the wrong word, your ability to have guns, ability to read the situation politically, gain guns, print em up, machine shop, the Sino Soviet split was a bad mistake, caused the caused, what caused the end of the Soviets, bad read, the beneficiaries of the system stopped belieiving in it, thought they could do personally better as capitalists, kleptocrats, decadent, didn’t happen to China, China was nimble, Poe is alive, age corruption is not sound, elderly but fine, the age of the country, Canada is youngerthan the United States, a whole bunch of different dates, when did British colonization begin, 1775, 1776, 1780?, a moving target, pretend Canada is a little younger, we’ll be as corrupt, as big, as much, politics in Quebec, very very corrupt, Yukon, not so corrupt, as old as Ontario in a certain sense, younger in another sense, Australia, drill down, what corruption is, works how it is supposed to, the federalist papers, not supposed to change, supposed to stay the same together, demarcation line, rhymes back in time, Poe, vote rigging, 1840s, setup to be corrupt, 2/3rds of a man, heady words, some claims made, rapidly decline, Paul doesn’t think the Businessman’s Plot was real, Roosevelt was allowed to continue in office, massive popular support against his enemies, the NRA, fireside chats, threaten his enemies trying to overturn his rule, personal corruption in John A. MacDonald, not fake news, not even playing the game anymore, is Trump a political prisoner now?, walked away, smiled, too ridiculous to answer?, is it a ridiculous question, all prisoners are political, that deep, put someone in jail, seems unlikely, trying to annoy him, death by 1000 cuts, he’s invincible, visceral anti-corruption, not in the way that everybody else is, come back, they dont seem to be doing the assasination thing on him [this podcast recorded June 2, 2024], the murder industry, holding back weapons from Ukraine was a sin, somebody’s got to get his bread buttered, elites, deep political conflict with Russia forever, competent leadership on the other ends, accidents that happen, pumping the money out of the US government into the hands of the people controlling, dissatisfaction, Trump’s base, transitioning, they them gendered, an activity, they’re feeling it too, they don’t know what to do with it either, a certain level of corruption, faith, for the system to go on, Jonathan was on to something, people hate each other now, divide your enemies, divide your subject, opposed to the military industrial complex, ending foreign wars, reduce military spending, the Trump coalition, whoever supports trump, didn’t start any new wars, more strident supporters, Galaxy not Astounding, this is garbage to me, H.L. Gold, so silly, a military guy, blames Joe Biden for leaving Afghanistan, hemmed in by traditional beliefs, he reads the wind, more than anything, being popular is more important, he actually makes decisions, up close and personal, its different here, liberals more insufferable, “lefties”, conservatives, don’t put any thought into it, that’s bad, bad takes, hate Trump because they see himself in him, projection, he has tiny hands, Donny tiny hands, not even true, not freakishly small or large, a reference to him having a small penis, fat and weak, okay to body shame that guy, slightly orange coloured, not enough, badly cut suits?, a unique style, hair is on backwards, reverse stapled on, Biden’s bald, the part that never goes bald and move that to the top, rogaine that fails out, a weird appearance, accusing him of what he’s going to do in the future (that you’re doing now), fun to think about, denying something that’s wrong with you, a baby low level way of dealing with problems, drinking game players, feel comfortable, Paul doesn’t really listen to the podcast, people that I lie to, a thing about the middle names of people, only people he doesn’t like, middle names are funny, doesn’t have one?, Catholic, non-solid memory, Donald John Trump, 45, presidential number, Biden just gets one, Obama only gets one number back to 45 again?, Grover Cleveland, I heart New York, 34 counts guilty, the New Republic, insurrection and national security, stunning guilty verdict shatters his aura of invincibility, not stunning nor shattering, won an election, lost an election, is this invincible, masturbation for the people who hate Trump, alleged crimes, they didn’t bring again any guns, “storm”, Trump fans, show their grievance, verbed in the capital, agent provocateurs, an organized tour, theft of national security documents, even if he gave it to China without any personal profit, the deep state is not legally in charge it is just actually in charge, bad at filing stuff, like Hilary’s emails, deleting her emails, private server, hide her horrible emails, an extremely serious offense lurks beneath, he’s invested in it, The Terminal Man, made a mistake, Matt Yglesias retweet, the Civilization VI equivalent, he likes games, he’s getting gamed, viscerally triggering, he let his guys do that, he can’t be shamed, when Will was a kid, serious religious thing, lost to Obama, tricked, options on the table for most people, Obama or John McCain, that’s the trick, shoulda voted McCain, not a wise man, Obama at least was smart, too smart for all our goods, smart for his good, compromise his way through, a horrible thing, that’s the horror, willing to do things you shouldn’t do, I am what I am, not how the sizzle was sold, hope, stay on your parent’s health insurance until 26, so hot to talk about health care, Bernie Sanders noise, medicare for all, not perfect, not like what they’re saying, you get cancer, you get treatment, waiting list, its free, literally and actually free, the CRT television, the wifi’s free, not enough doctors, walk-in clinics, pharmacists can give your drugs directly, tryna solve problems, election coming up, debate about health care gone, only about Trump, killing in Gaza, horrible videos, Paul is a nice person, not willing to be mean, the national security question, a lot of deference going on, you don’t need a zap of punishment of pleasure, against leadership, management is not leadership, being the quartermaster, disbursing takes, let me finish, I did, Terence doesn’t talk enough, good at talking, this projection idea, look into the shadow work, what was sad about the conviction, how excited people got, pathetic, 34 counts how do you feel?, is it going to stop him from being president again?, don’t cut deep with Will’s mother, different relationship, much more sympathetic to people transing, trying to be nice to people, are they not wrong?, too nice to Jesse about, weirdly preoccupied, what is Jesse projecting, want some boobs, grow boobs on your own, are these boobs good enough, very interested in trans stuff, Day Million, Heinlein’s I Will Fear No Evil, one ought to be interested, important, its bigger than other such things, more controlling, more of an earworm, Blondie songs, running around inside your head, saying Blondie stuff, Heart Of Glass, Blondie is the band, Michael Jackson was very big an effected people’s dress, crazy to think about, Elvis, behavior at concerts, more correct, Elvis upset some people, because of hip movements, hormones to look like Elvis, its important, its happening and non-reversible, tattoo vs. cut off parts and hormones, haircut is very easy to reverse, give it some time, those boobs aren’t going to grow buck, people don’t know what they’re getting into, problems caused by brains, input output, hormones in your body, data input, an error, consider chemically composed, put chemicals into your brain to change it, jungian, kids are very subject to being not unpopular, isolated and made freaks, in school, yes, the Korean kids have this thing going on from home, they generally go along with it, top down influence, wishy washy, you should do good things and not do bad things, opinions or facts, hang out with some people and see what’s going on, hangs with them, patients or clients, the trans phenomenon, similar views, very wrong, only know so much, in general terms, clients who are trans, different, cultural and religious ferment, student coming, a book by Barret Brown coming out, American journalist and essayist, snarky in trouble with the government, arrested by the FBI for threatening the FBI, in prison for 63 months, reporting on Anonymous, against the US government, My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous, heroin addiction, 2011, Barrett Brown, transparency movement, clever and hilarious, institutions are made of people, entertaining and illuminating manual, CPTSD, fucked around with, nice relationship with his mom, harassing his mom, not many people know who he is, Scott has a podcast with Julie, to be continued on the hormone conversation, coffee, talking point, don’t care about the truth, only about winning, some rhetoric and some sophistry, ad campaign, what does Will have to gain?, chopping our children’s dicks off, oppo research, have a good time.

The Last Space by Murray Leinster

The Last Space Ship by Murray Leinster - GALAXY NOVEL 25

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #815 – READALONG: Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Jesse, and Connor Kaye talk about Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Talked about on today’s show:
novelization, Terry Kaye is Terry Hayes, he’s from the UK, UK phrases, balustrade, John Olsen is Jesse’s hero, he’s awesome, his channel AudiobooksForTheDamned, a website, a facebook group, waybackmachine, four years ago, a coda at the end, acknowledgements, not reading from his car, road trip, parked on the side of the road, someone else is driving, reading while moving, carsick, front porch, sounds like recorded in his car, backed up by hearing the weedwhacker, a guerrilla audiobook, pirate audiobooks, illicit audiobooks, books for the blind, audiobook sighted people are not allowed to have, a serial killer recorded one, its immoral, executing and deleting people, Phil Gigante, Stainless Steel Rat books, arrested and plead guilty to, photos from a 14 year old girl, he’s been canceled, he’s out of prison, good narrator, maybe not a very good person, announcements on some websites, really good narrating voice, he’s a human being who’s still alive, prisoners are humans to, a platform, consumer should have the choice, consumer logic, how to live properly, the movie Stone (1974), a necessary precursor to Mad Max (1979), Toecutter, essentially the same kind of person, a biker in a biker gang, the main character, good actor, good character, largely the same, riding around Australia’s coast and getting revenge, noticeably nice, movie and novelization, leaning into exploitation, naked girls and naked men, equal opportunity nakedness, dicks swinging in the water there, cheap, low budget, intentionally salacious, the bikeys being on drugs at the start, the ending is fucking fantastic, a cop film, goes undercover with a biker gang, usual plot arc, accepted in the gang, an anthropological film, trope maker not a trope follower, ahead of its time, just a job, you’re one of us now, beat the shit out of him, doesn’t press charges, that’s the cost of leaving the gang, speaks to a lot of things in Australian society, upper-middle class, his girlfriend is rich, they have a house, a car, a kid, a dog, similar themes, people who are living within society’s rules, people living outside of society’s rules, we’re outside the law, Mad Max is about the whole of society, scale shifting, lawlessness is in control, the legal system is neutered, inability to impose penalties, no justice anymore, every film after that, progressively worse, maintain it, justice?, society?, then outlaws have a society of a kind, a hierarchy exists in a way, Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008), the importance of stone, a gang that’s being hunted, by a cop, vicious crimes, they’re bad, badass and bad, behaving improperly, raping a lot of people, stealing things, murdering people, making cat noises while on roofs, stealing people’s ice cream, be careful girl I’ve seen him lick his eyebrows clean, slightly different, made more explicit, The Dark One, they go to his farm, May lady, she’s the hero of the film and the book too, she’s about protecting people, runs out of bullets, Max is not the hero, when the goose dies (he’s just burned), she’s going to make it, the wife is still alive, he leaves the bedside and hunts down, ruptured spleen, he’s like a zombie, listening like a zombie, revenge on his mind, one of the greatest movies ever, better than The Road Warrior, Fury Road, the prequel [Furiosa] looked terrible, no longer present, May Swaise, connected, related, she’s the aunt?, dead partner’s mother?, the hero car before the black and black, M. Rockatansky, the missing partner, through a connection with the cops and turning in Cundulini’s hand, makes arrangements, a bed and breakfast, she invites them in, protection away, danger that’s happening outside, the character of Benno, adult farmhand or son, jump scare, trying to be helpful, Mad Max II, expansions or repeats of Mad Max 1, truck runs over a biker, parallelism, truck that’s on a railroad track, road train scene, Stagecoach (1939) with John Wayne, Night Rider, lieutenants, biker gangs don’t work that way, Johnny The Boy, the source of ignition, when Toecutter dies the movie isn’t over, Max doesn’t kill Toecutter, called out in the book, the importance of reading the book and the film text, always started as a movie, based on the script and filling in the details, details brought out, in Stone how do you join the gang?, a probationary period, they have a vote, this is a pirate ship, history of pirates, we are lied to, disnifyed version of pirates, Robert Louis Stevenson, pirates didn’t bury their treasure, invented democracy and pensions, horrific exploitation, bigger responsibility, everybody is elected, captain, quartermaster, here’s the plan, they share you out, a covenant, until we hit a certain number, renegotiate, sign the articles, abide by the rule of the ship, no smoking below decks, no women on the ship, awesome and democratic, physical intimidation thing, any one man can be taken down by any two man, a cartoon version of a badguy or pirate ship is, guys who like not obeying society’s laws, they interact with society, a montage of scenes, goes around to all the suspects, team members, they attract business, they are business, they adopted this place, women lining up to be with them, the whole point of Stone, they’re human beings that are not cartoons, isn’t for everyone, respectable and full of respect, different values, they don’t kill him, they respect him even though he’s shit, the grievance, the ArmaLite gangs, Road Warrior was a bigger hit, more action, simpler, more cartoony, amped up, the film that George Miller wanted to make, Evil Dead vs. Evil Dead II, Terminator 2, The Terminator is a better film, parallel remake, reviewing the movie series, Fury Road is a visual treat, plotwise it is retarded, how simple vs. complex, the novel drills down into some of the worldbuilding details, complements it, the first chapter, what is the world this novel is set in, far in the future, a transcontinental highway, not set in Australia, no references to Australia, looseness with the words, to the other coast, not a lot of bridge action, inter vs. trans, across vs. between, no ArmaLite guns in the movie, the M-16, they don’t exist in the movie or the book, shotguns and a pistol, for an action movie there’s not that many guns, ran out of bullets real quick, I was saving these, a low magic world, a quote from the beginning of the book, cattle, there’s no animals in the film, a chicken mentioned, there is food, Goose steals the fries from a guy, “victims of a society which now relied on laboratory-produced proteins for nourishment and fast-food pulp for taste”, the dystopia of ourworld, disconnected from farms, even on May’s farm, a wheelbarrow, no animals, George Miller, George Kennedy, a contemporary action movie, couldn’t do it for a number of reasons, they needed abandoned buildings, the Halls Of Justice, clearly an abandoned building, guerilla filmaking, like Breaker Morant, Sun City, Sunshine Coast, Jerusalem, wee Jerusalem, putting things together, in the film of Mad Max, the tractor trailer in Mad Max II, methane, Prime Mover, a term used in the novelization, the Prime Mover ran over Toecutter, another word for God, Goose killed Goose, Fifi, that was not on the job, he was attacked by Johnny The Boy, the mirroring and the parallelism, Mad Max is not the hero, shown to be the hero, cleaning his hands with a towel, the incompetent cops, Roop and Charly, Big Bopper, doesn’t look 15, the chosen one, without a partner, Fifi has to tell his boss, given a hero car, we need heroes, the police commisioner, a kendo appointment, bamboo katana, lure him with candy, the feted one, his real one is Mad Max, paralleled between the second lead of the gang, Bubba Zanetti’s costume, accented with chrome (instead of bronze), a space blanket, quiet, the advisor to Toecutter, it’s your job to get him back on the straight and narrow, the path of becoming a proper member, Johnny doesn’t have a tear [tattoo], an insight into the structure, those kind of relationships, terrorizing Jerusalem, a couple, the Chevrolet, the Ford, hot-ride pipes, that girl and that boy are raped, the girl is tied to Johnny the Boy, rape and destroy party, literally chained to her, chained to a car and lit on fire, like what happened to Goose, the parallel structuring, good acting and acting sequencing, foreshadowing, the injustice, the whole town wouldn’t show up, the Turkey, called out in the film ever so briefly, a night scene, ambulance chasing experience, road gangs, “it’s in the food”, another night in the meatgrinder, have you eaten yet, there’s an awesome futuruistic story happenin in the background of the revenge film, all the sponsors, Kawasaki, cigar company, the girl and the guy, it’s Mary, this is a retelling of iconic stories in a way that we don’t recognize, what happens on the hill, the fruit of their union is one of revenge and horror, what makes Max good, Jesse is a mom, she’s a wife, when she is runover and loses her baby, fridging in comics, Keanu Reeves’ John Wick dog motivation, ran over his wife and killed his killed, the worst possible relationship with other human beings, setup setup setup, his boss is conspiring behind his back, it’s all fake, the proper relationship police should have with biker gangs, clubs not gangs, despite the cartoonishness we don’t feel, Max van has a spaceship on the side of it, lost control of the roads, a game of chase, Max is running rogue, he’s stolen that car, “the forbidden zone”, the Outback, roadtrains have guards on them, unintentional, special, Judge Dredd, paints a world that’s just like that, a few elite cops, very similar, Dredd (2012), post apocalyptic story, learning some vocabs, larakins, hoons, boisterous often badly behaved young man, larakinism, a ratbag, plays pranks, fucks around, an Australian of the kind that gets kicked out of England, crutch,phonetically, crutch, crox, an A-frame, here he is the walking armpit, bitumen, asphalt, Terry Hayes was hired as a scriptwriter for the following movies, The Year Of The Locust, car chase, motorcycle scenes, what people smell like, seaside home, the monster mask, a rare book in North America, buy em and sell em, $70, abebooks, the cost to post to America, $40 for shipping, a crateful, scan it and put it up online, the import expert business, follow the Man’s rules, listening to the radio, here are the regulations, as long as the paperwork is clean, Max’s objections, terminal psychotics, Toey, excited or nervous, hoofing the line, the first pursuit special, Night Rider, that scag and his floozy, hopped up/supercharged, two different versions, Mel Gibson looking shocked, the movie poster, a biker’s mask, commissioned the poster, still financing the film, Frank Frazetta, the 1985 rerelease, SuperChannel, novelizations are something that have basically died,you liked it so much you wanted, the novelization on Predator (1987), people trying to deny me access to knowledge, the summer of 1987, to spite the people are going to deny me access, novelization for a videogame, The Legend Of Zelda, really fucking expensive, one for Christmas, one for your birthday, indie games for a couple of dollars, installment, enjoyed the shit out of it, 100 pages, 8-12 year olds, you couldn’t get access to the media you wanted, the right effect, experienced it vicariously, reading is on the decline, just a fact, the publishing industry, bookstores were around an a thing, real estate speculation, a primary sale for a secondary sale, we’re going into the new meta, the new paradyme, you don’t own anything, subscription, all very evil, the movie and the book of Mad Max are becoming much more plausible, we assume a nuclear war in 1985, old footage, footage of nuclear bombs, we filled in the blanks a lot, the food stuff, called out in the book, granola crunching farmers eating whole foods, in the 1970s, brown bread vs. white bread, Bryan Alexander, protesting, a plant based diet for the school’s cafeteria, tacos or hotdogs, make your menu choices, make your food at home, loudness of relationship to food, the loosening of the control of government, the government is incompetent, larakins, hoons, taking over the roads, working in the city, cut loose by going into the country, the setup for the second film, Geiger counter, more and more cartoonish, the gangs are so evil and fun, a fuckin nasty film, the worst we see are the hand of Goose, the knee of Max, the reality of the gang, what they’re doing is plausible, victimizing people more, sadistic, fairly balanced in the second film, petrol, victimize a man and a woman, gap toothed guy, boot on somebody’s hand, raping this couple, stuff pulled from the first film, more palatable, a little kid almost gets run over, oh Christ they’re going for population, break off pursuit, Charley gets it in the throat, the good guys wear white, Cunégonde and Casca, Candide by Voltaire, a comic novel, half brother and sister, all the names are jokes, goodpussy, a tutor, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, any evil is all for the good, girls chased by monkeys, that’s what the male of the species looks like, a prostitute has half her ass eaten, Mudguts, Lurch?, Clank, game names, somebody had carved out a piece of his ass, on the run, he flees, pretty awful, especially Max, this guy is not going to get punished, justice in the world for ourselves, if you have enough money and the circumstances don’t line up, if you have influence, make a lot of problems for them, on that note, bathroom break, the world of Judge Dredd, more what George Miller would have liked to have done, judges fulfilling, they are the judicial system, hero cops that operate outside the law, the world is simply to wild, too easily taken advantage of, direct justice, the police commissioner, the break down of society, more interesting, it’s perfect, teeter over the top into apocalypse, things go wrong in such a horrible way, he says fuck it, he abandons his wife, he abandons his morals, after the end of the film, he could have gone back with his life, Mad Max as a franchise, a character as a plot element, they all stand on their own, the gyro captain, Bruce Spence, as different characters, they play the same, the feral kid grows up, the legendary story about The Road Warrior, preceding and following film, in this weird space, they blow up the car in the second movie, it is back in the fourth movie, they’re not connected that way, Sprog, fulfill a purpose, she’s given a name and has a character, she’s to be fridged, it’s a guy movie, Fury Road, Max’s backstory is changed, the guilt that he bears, the people he couldn’t protect, flashbacks to characters that never existed, other adventures, missing adventures, “Mad”, a moral man trying to survive in an amoral world, what that does to a person, they thrive in this world, the survival of the fittest, Max’s car is not ready, the fuel line, he fucked it up, he’s trying to help, a lot from the pov of the gang, a surprise in the movie, they don’t try to kill max after they kill the girl, how to be proper, excised from the film, Goose’s girlfriend, Katamine, Catamite, not Calamity, a lovely scene in the car, the mooners go buy, wild larakins, just hoons, vicious gang members, having fun, she almost kills them, being prepared to defend your family is a very masculine fantasy, a story men like to see told over and over again, they’ve excised all that shit, competence family, his car is stolen, never matters, just get to the point, that’s why it is the best film, The Road Warrior is a better introduction, he’s dressed in black, federation of gangs, gay Mohawk, strength to strength, literally has him on a dog collar, to release the hound, his lover, the feral kid, comic relief, a black suited character, he has his own motivation, the positive character, help the good team, some sort of redemption, offered a relationship with the warrior woman, it goes nowhere, choosing when you’ve got two teams, Humongous’ army, calculated and smart, a very seductive team, why are these guys hoarding this gasoline, rooting for the oil company, they choose to blow it up, its very simplistic, in other revenge films, the inciting of the revenge quest, Death Wish (1974), trod on his daisies, the inciting incident that makes him turn back, a little bit like Yojimbo (1961), tumbled by the gang, Gyro Captain, they kill his dog, fucked up, like John Wick, precipitates the third act, works well in both cases, just in time to setup the massive chase scene, there’s nothing like it, the visceral awesome, dogs dying, the happy family, two year old sprog, on vacation, goes for a swim, she sees the dog dead, May is awesome, she has agency, disabled, deaf, opens her home to people in need, protecting them at gunpoint, hardy country woman, Casca, the town being called out, every other small town in Australian movies, saloon underneath, a milkbar, local cafe, long formica bar, milkshakes, a blender, a big stainless steel cup, ice cream milkshake, a reference to A Clockwork Orange, literally drinking milk, the symbols are all boobs, soda [jerk], a series of books, male competence porn, The Executioners, The Destroyer, The Eternal Mercenary, the character who stabbed Jesus with the Spear of Destiny, cursed to walk the earth until Jesus comes back, he can’t die, he’s like a Highlander, connect the movies together, he sees Mary raped, arrest the criminal, Johnny the Boy is the mirror, new to the gang, they both survive to the end of the film, everything is inverted, a Lovecraft story that’s the story of Jesus that’s reversed, The Dunwich Horror, invisible evil brother, torn apart by dogs, Max is like Casca, kills the evil that is Johnny the Boy, I’m sick, it’s not my fault, doing exactly what Johnny didn’t want to do, he has to abandon his family, he’s still mad in the desert, he won’t join any of the sides, he can’t trust anyone, the inciting incident in picking a side, a tale to tell to you to be careful, how do we end up not in this relationship, the gang is fake but the cops are real, their colour is real, pressure from above, the sides, and beneath, how do we not end up in this horrible relationship?, we have to do some politics and point up, government in the first Mad Max movie, like in Stone, they’re going to do their shit, appreciating life and living it to the best, take some drugs, respect your fellow man worthy of respect, a politician who wants to change things, starts with an assassination, intellectual anthropology vs. art, Z-900s, before we run out of time, some of the best writing in the book, Goose’s birthday, a motorcycle guy, scooter, road rash, no helmet, no leathers, cars are a little safer, has taken these long road trips, it was poetry, went a long way to explain his motivation, the excitement of what he is doing, they are mirrors again, freedom, escaping the body, becoming something else, not like a car, you’re sitting in a machine, a ragdoll within the machine, you don’t have that on a motorcycle, you are literally in control of every part of it, it responds only to your input and the road, when you ride a motorcycle, an extension of you, a suit, clothing, the response of the machine to your physical movements, when you want to turn, more in control on a motorcycle, sharper turns, you have to physically move, the toecaps sparking against the ground, camera over the shoulder, the camera moves, the rider’s point of view, riding a horse, more like a cooperative effort, a good relationship with a horse, a negotiation, the best riders have a deep trust relationship with their animals, what the rider asks them to do, attraction to motorcycles, the sense of freedom a motorcycle gives you, two weeks on a motorcycle, grew up around motorcycles, cars are fucking expensive, buy a used car, fuck interest, a midlevel car is $10000, $1000 for a really nice car in the 70s, the inflation calculator, the price of cars has become like homes (unaffordable), cars are luxury products, there’s no money in affordable apartments, they’re buying it for an investment property, combined with the safety insanity, less driver training, drivers being protected in the event of an accident, height restrictions, pop up headlights are not allowed anymore, hit in the middle is better?, increases the weight cost, Japan does it differently, subsidized a different way, different results, read all day, Elon Musk, making electric cars, thousands of Teslas, even on Vancouver Island, in the city everybody has one, incentive of $5-7000, carbon offsets to make gas guzzlers, double subsidized, you’re buying an Elon Musk product, what you’re not seeing, there’s no way for you to fix it yourself, another cost, why motorcycles attracted Connor, a Suzuki GS500, $2200, no insurance, written off in a bad accident, registration, third party insurance, $500 year, mechanical repairs, 50k, mechanical problems, the chain got too worn, travelled all over the place, two week trips, Uluru, around Tasmania, you can ride the whole day in less than $100 of fuel, the freedom a motorcycle can give you, the entrapments of society, a shitbox car, parking, need to have a job to afford this, why bikies, why there are no truck gangs, vanlife, live rent free on the highway, the copyright situation, if some corporate lawyer suggests, the new copyright situation, only recent and hot, or under particular control, full film, hundreds of films online completely free, the most recent things, anything past that is online, sometimes it is Tubi, youtube, Ok.ru, just use an adblocker, the cartoonish nature, the visual is more important than it being realistic, based on a finite resource, a constant supply of new parts, cracked engine case, fuel line’s fractured, the disabled mechanic, you got 12, completely disregarding the reality, how long til Cundulini’s bike is ready, go meet the truck, George Miller and George Kennedy, scrappy at one point, he’s become old and rich, the storm sequence, too much CGI, everything is practical, he’s not Hollywoodified, Tina Turner, the amount of shit that’s poured on, let’s do the Blue Lagoon is Mad Max world, a serious step-down, alive forever, the redeeming arc, like Yojimbo again, need a leader, everything in Sun City is great, you know girl power and Max Max is there, the premise is broken, why prequels don’t make any sense, the backstory is to get you to the thing you want, A Mad Max Saga, the Fallout tv show, its not perfect but it is very good, the original Fallout game from 1997, the wanderer, dog’s named dogmeat, lore, a sense of humour, a funny situation, winks and nods, goofiness, the Gyro Captain, its my snake I trained it I get to eat it, insult humour, the ultimate film, just watch Road Warrior again, he has camels now, such a cool airplane, they see Sydney, the whole mythology, bigger not better, some amazing stuff, he recycles everything, a saxophone, Tina Turner’s stilt house, the sort of scene, he has to give up his weapons, none of those weapons get used, Doctor Who’s jacket, we can see the descent happening, Jesse plays the saxophone, scrapping, parallelism, symmetry, looking for symmetry, intrinsically resonates, video essay about doppelgangers, mirrorings, they know it to be good, hard to do without the vocabulary, the mirror of the beginning to the end, builds to the hero reveal, he’s the least interesting cop, his personality is he likes his wife, coulda bin any actor who was handsome in that role, an interview with George Kennedy looking very rich, will Mel Gibson come back?, whatever the answer is it doesn’t matter, he was a replaceable protagonist, Tom Hardy, they needed a big name actor, as an old man, the eternal hero, the greatest action film ever put to film, Mad Max one is a better movie, what it is to be a man, in cahoots to try to keep him on, Fifi is an interesting character, he’s got a plan, people need heroes, the message of the film undercuts that, at the end he gives the kid a choice, he becomes an anti-hero, a great anti-hero, a film that is more Mad Max, The Rover (2014), about it being on the edge of the apocalypse, almost a better sequel to Mad Max than Mad Max II, motivation for revenge, his dog died, his dog is in the boot of the car, his relationship with his dog, gets pretty fuckin dark, his wife was cheating on him, he murdered his wife, he knew that the world was fucked, he was a farmer, he’s a bad guy, he murdered his wife and his lover, I knew that the world was over, that’s the reality, that’s Mad Max, being a paramedic is going to show you some shit, driving yourself if a horrific act, that can happy at any time, falling into the street, a pedestrian, make eyecontact with the people who can run Jesse over, cousin blind in one eye has been hit twice, with a car its usually not on purpose, outsourced to manufacture and design, required by law to wear a seatbelt, ad campaigns, shock ads, very graphic car accidents, put people face to face with the consequences of having an accident, criticized and shocked, true stories being recreated, people texting on their phone, t-boned, people screaming, somebody dead, really horrific, people were against it because it shows the real life consequences, once you see the videos coming out of Gaza, what are you supposed to do with that information, any blue will do, my god what have we done, mal-and-mis-and-disinformation, cigarette packaging, lung cancer and tumours, it could contribute, very expensive not allowed to smoke almost anywhere, working at a tobacconist, 90% of the customers were over 40, not actually as dangerous as we were lied to about, alcohol can kill you, as a toxin, drinking too much alcohol in an evening, there was no connection between melanoma and cigarettes, you do you while you can, I shouldn’t be guilt tripping you about it, subject to the propaganda all around you, Alberta is the most rebellious part of Canada, felt uncomfortable, a very defensive driver and rider, tons of car accidents, a moment’s inattention, 1% is a hell of a lot, going 110km down a road, a T-intersection, an offramp to a rest stop, some dickhead stopped in the main lane, when you’re moving, that car is getting bigger really fast, sandwiched between two cars, get the fuck out of the way, the best case scenario, passenger vs. energy, safetyism, you’re in a chair, it’s happening, a slight unexpected something, a chipmunk on the road, a car that’s smoking, responding to something unusually, the takeway, how do we not have this relationship of escalating violence, turn off the internet, control the internet, if we don’t have free communication…, the bad people say the bad things, the top-down insensitive way, keep the money rolling in, if they find out we’re stealing them blind, people’s jobs to go on the internet, three day old account, tweet is deleted, job to fight what their boss wants, rewarded to get that, you’re taste of the cash, your job is fake, doing it because they’re in the bubble so hard, how do you end up there?, what if I’m wrong, that would be horrible, the dentist company, the policies are changed, asking permission to do things, why are they asking for consent now?, do you want to have fluoride?, why are they asking now?, they can bill it differently?, too many things like that, new forks for your motorcycle, coil overs, you don’t have time to research, that first motorcycle, at the time, 100k isn’t reliable, odometer only goes to 100,000, only meant, off the grid here, heard from other people, this is why you need information on the internet, brilliantly helpful, this guy is full of shit, formed the opinion, bad opinions formed, almost dead, does that guy run a dealership, do you think good information drives out bad information?, a tossup, fear, fear is hugely motivating, a trip to Uluru, in the middle of the fuckin desert, too much money to get a tow-truck, 3000km, cheap old cars leave them on the side of the road, if this does go bad, after a certain point of your own personal experience, things can always go wrong unexpectedly, they come off the new lot with problems too, fear is deflected by insurance, BCAA, road insurance, roadside assistance, how the money is made, a model known for mechanical problems, a Holden Barina, the reality, Donald Westlake, obsessed with insurance, comic relief characters, comparing insurance, one short story about insurance, what ifs are the most susceptible, when the war on terror started, everything was what if, two different bottles of shampoo, these things are possible, how likely is it?, when it comes to fear, climate change, it’s going to do this, it’s going to do that, track your accuracy, this sounds bogus, you haven’t looked into it, the temperature is so high, one of the tricks they were doing, ground temperature, the air above the ground is never as hot as the air above it, measuring the ground temperature, there are trends, we still have glaciers that they promised would have been melted, the global ice cap was going to be open all year, traffic from Europe to Asia ice free, is this fear being generated legit or not, control and manipulate before, the most recent one, as deadly as they said, if you don’t get the shot, fear is the motivator, it did for some people, people did die of COVID, largely ineffective, people died from the shots than died from COVID, the super-scary truth that hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, look into it and really see, just like the flu, inoculate the body, prevents you from getting COVID, changed the definition, a gene therapy, a new tech, the flu doesn’t work very well, it’s worth so much money, far off Mad Max, back to The Rover, deserves to be discussed, 6.4 rating on IMDB, the ending puts some people off, the reveal, the entire motivation, oh, really, probably annoyed some people, the strength of this story, a man who has nothing by the end of the film, no real hope for the future, a man with nothing to lose, he’s the terminal crazy he was afraid he would become, angry crazy shithead, Mad Max style story, so many spinoff ripoff, Escape From The Bronx, go out into the desert, dune buggies, the 80s was full of it, vehicular combat, no bikies, more realistic, no combat with cars, people get out of cars to fight, it expands upon, if it took place, it would be a couple of the years after the first Mad Max, fuel stations, give me $100, people are getting really desperate, under martial law, the military arrest people, Mad Max 1.5, noticeably more grim and serious, so nasty and scary, resonated a lot to things happening in Australia, the Chinese influence, radio stations in Chinese playing English songs, part of Australian, Greeks and Italians as the last immigrant set, families for hundreds of years, the gold rush, more so in recent years, it wasn’t there to make a point, a reality of modern Australia, one scene, Australia has survived, tourism, manufacturing, coal takes a long time to be replenished, the wealth of modern Australia, coal trains, armed guards, one of the characters in the rover is a fly in fly out miner, the money dried up, you should do a video on The Rover, ten years ago, a science fiction story, a science fiction story, what makes it science fiction, the relationship between government and people, the roads, the food, the consequences rolling down hill to a certain set of people, bronze vs. skags, rocker panels on their jackets, they’re not how a pirate ship or a gang actually works, they’re an embodiment of the fear of anarchy, they’ll come and rape your grandma, clunk having sex with a blowup elephant, rapists, they only respect the Night Rider, never explained, willing to kill cops, maybe?, he’s stolen that car, it’s a cop car that he’s stolen, studied it a lot, so well put together, the religious stuff before, he’s calling it out there, playing the game of lifting and using, it isn’t called Jerusalem by accident, explaining things, when they leave Johnny the Boy behind, a goat they staked out, spaced out on drugs, the reason people do drugs, a when to escape, obsessed with your avatar in a game, get in good with the gang, brushing Toecutter’s hair, a catamite servant boy, it is never explained, beloved, the beach scene, the scene killing goose, make him face the horror, that’s what we do, killing someone at a distance, it’s the same, Johnny, on the other end of the button, you have stock in company that makes the missiles, even better, then you don’t have any connection, make that company illegal, something cool about what Toecutter is doing there, very villainous and very solid, more of a sense of it in the novelization, especially in Fury Road, the old world becoming mythologized, remember him when you look at the night sky, valkries, a corporeal person, a spirit goes into the sky, a satanic ceremony, these guys are amiable and nice in their way, quite responsible in comparison, we are not liking the tennis lady and her parties, that’s not real, the vagabond lifestyle, not wanting to hide out and go and get a drink, not denying their animal nature, when we see that mythologized, goes right to the end, Goose as the same kind of character for Max, someone who was good and who was killed, what made Night Rider good is he was wild, Max breaks him, he’s talking about his belief in the supernatural legend of himself, witness me, trailer bait, very disconnected from the reality, patrol the highways, a wife and a kid, pay the bills, loving the road, way more sophisticated, less and a less sophisticated as it goes, Blue Lagoon heaven, to a fake heaven that doesn’t exist, a mythical place of green, disabused of that by showing up, this is degeneration, way to far away from the ambulance for way to long, nearly 50 years, a franchise, a video game out of it, this is no longer art, scrappy art, less and less art, something else completely, a franchise is even worse, Stone is an art film, that beach scene, boobs are all out, that was beautiful, not even into dicks, God Speed You! Black Emperor (1976), heavy metal, weird funk, an anthropological film, how they decide things, new member, a part of the club, the new member stands up, my name is Connor, they slap the patch on you, a consequence, he fucks up in some way, shave his eyebrows off, he’s gonna get a name out of that, confrontations with the cops, swastika on the thing, buddihism, bikers in North America and , stahlhelms, nazi pistols, nazi flags, quite the opposite, taking a trophy, counting coup, disillusioned soldiers, fake biker gang, Sons Of Anarchy, interpersonal drama, biker gang culture, saw their friends killed, The Wild One (1953), reflecting rather than explaining, interactions with these people, not willing to submit, going off and getting killed in wars, why the biker gangs still exist, rotarian groups, shriners, the masons, they’re all dying, in the shit of it, served in the military, time with their friends away from women, companionship on the road, bikes, car clubs, not organized like bikers, living an alternative lifestyle, amish as a response to horror, why do you have that on your stuff, taking the badges of your enemy, a good documentary I’d like to see, thoughts and lives, biking culture, Japan, rebelling, post-war, disillusionment, no point of being part of this society, a hangover, human life thrown away, what is it ever doing for me, an alternative way of living, to be able to explain it, Blue Ruin (2013), pretty great, Taken (2008) is palatable, competence porn, alcoholic, the lowest of the low rising up to meet a challenge, his parents are murdered, he tries to take revenge, the folly of revenge, Momento (2000) too, Green Room (2015), music at a nazi bar, witness a murder, lock themselves in the green room, a pocket Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), a struggle, at night during the week, ping you online, great chatting.

Mad Max - Frank Frazetta

Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #424 – A Bottomless Grave by Ambrose Bierce

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #424

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss A Bottomless Grave by Ambrose Bierce

Here’s a link to a |PDF|.

A Bottomless Grave was first published in the San Francisco Examiner, February 26, 1888.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #776 – READALONG: God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #776 – Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Cora Buhlert talk about God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

Talked about on today’s show:
1967, pretty sure I haven’t read this before, just assumed, “nephew novels”, explicitly a nephew, second great uncle nephew, saying things in contradiction of the rules, the quiz for you: where does the title come from?, from Shakespeare, a marks as pointed out, a conman wants to con, the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, what she is saying, please forgive me, I hesitate to say, the death of Tybalt, he’s got a hole in him now, during a midwifery session, a “birthmark”, birthmarks are defects, it needs to be bless so as to avoid cursing the child, subtle things here and there, incapable of resisting talking about literary stuff, research for work, a lot of jokes that are not obvious, well over half a century later, what does he do for fun?, makes crossword puzzles, particularly proud of, the answer is frost, Robert Frost, Oliver Wyman’s great narration, the great, wait a second, dropping these things all the time, red herrings, a murder mystery, some of them are just for fun, a joy ride, a lot of fun, a theory 3 hours in, possibly wrong but possibly right, a question, what was in the oven other than naugahyde, the bible!, a vital clue, just another scam, a madcap movie from the 60s (or 1979), a great cartoon, a likeable narrator, like a breeze eating it, a weird mixed metaphor, a humour to it that is delightful, shouldn’t we be frustrated with him, how hapless he was, a crime novel, Mickey Spillane, this cac thing, you’re not going to end the book this way, Jesse was conned, too cynical to believe in CAC, CAC is shit, very cynical about government, the one Donald Westlake thing, Jesse will go down in history for, insurance, complete coverage, the character stand-in, independent research, crime and cons, South America, one with Lawrence Block, sex book, where they end up going, like a badman, from the New York Times, a pot-belly, he’s the character, Maissa’s theory about this whole book, on the phone with Wilkins and Grant, ok, he can’t be this, this whole book is a con, this guy is a conman, he didn’t, but then at the very end, he gets together with Gertie, Westlake is the conman, it’s his con now, on Discord, 2010, a chameleon, his main hapless guy voice, sounded familiar, screen time, the murderer, the elevator operator, it was Christopher Walken, a black man, train conductor, very funny stuff, Karen and Gertie, great characters, the doctor, slight of hand over and over and over, very cartoonish, Wile E. Coyote, we’re kinda lucky, the main character was gonna be played by Bill Cosby, Cora never liked him, how wholesome does it look now?, comedy chops, creepy actors, Woody Allen, very New York, the right stature, Hugh Grant, too handsome, it coudn’t be set in London, New York of the sixties, relistening to the beginning, a signature Westlakism: the hands, a fun prop, the shrimp on the folk, who put this shrimp on my fork?, the ink-stained wretch, such a Paul book, the book is hilarious, with airpower, he utterly conquered the Gauls with airpower, Fred thinking maybe I should give him the money, self publishing to start up, the vanity was another scam, everybody was scamming everybody, scammed her bunko squad boyfriend, he’s never going to divorce his wife, you know what they say about the staff of life, a sex book, Gertie: the body secular, the Artillery Club, she’s a bombshell, you haven’t tried her mayonnaise yet, the Edgar is the Nebula for crime writers, an Ira Levin book, Rosemary’s Baby, once you’re in the club you’re in the club, which is a better book, they’re so different, this is a comedy book that’s a crime murder mystery conartist book, the formula for Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, a winning recipe, our hero, he stole that bicycle, the bicycle chase, back pedal brakes, the bicycle stopped on a dime and gave 4 cents change, he’s got such good control over the reader, there isn’t a misstep, his agenda is there but so subtle, such people are everywhere and what can you do?, do you’re best, probably won’t, 100%, you’ve inherited money, email, casting a much wider net, Clifford, COD roommate, a responsibility, once they’re in the hallway, not answer the door, not have cash on hand, this is fuckin terrible, there are people in need, to scam you, it’s called The Red Cross, Haiti Relief, that’s the Red Cross, massive giant agencies are there to scam, a homeless person on the street, it’s really everywhere, you can’t imagine doing that yourself, con little old ladies out of money, you think of them as marks, it’s not like you’re hurting them, very different from mugging, kidnapping, he’s hit a real target, con operations, making a valuable point, everybody’s a scammer, half-con-man himself, a big bushy black mustache, he’d be a criminal if he wasn’t a cop, confess, the homicide duo, we are manipulating into thinking they are corrupt, caricatures characters, confidence man, “grifter” on twitter, a superhero, WILDCATS, based on the Jim Thompson novel, The Grifters, a hard movie, Angelica Huston is John Cusak’s mom, you wanna go where you’ve been, Annette Bening, Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), J.T. Walsh, beat’s Angelica Houston with a bag of oranges, this is a cozy, Agatha Christie but funny, flip it, brutal horrible, incest but mean, in smut novels, he goes into a smut shop, three guys standing around a table in the back room, anatomically improbably photos, a movie rather than a serial, an animated version, too far, the soundscape, boings, wheeep, full of sound effects, bedsprings, he’s so good, the ending, fixing it, not getting together with Karen, getting together with Gertie, an interesting funny and silly promising ending, gullible, she get’s the romance of the situation, she doesn’t need a husband if she doesn’t want one, Greenwich Village, bongo player, Brownstone houses, if the two incidents of street groups of kids together, indeterminate gender, all talking about different things, a comment and a commentary, the judgement is minimal, the homosexuals, I knew what gender they were but they didn’t know, altered books for much less, altered German children’s books, deleted a book from the series, WWI, changed the setting, Eastern Prussia or Silesia, Russia, Poland, Hanover instead of Leipzig, we’re safe, Aunt Gisela, early 20th century language, really really offensive term, not so bad N word, Pippi Longstocking, he was the king of the negros, a South Seas king, Ian Fleming, Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, sexually harassing our hero, drag queens or something, high school kids, the price of sandwiches, 67, pre-Watergate, birth control pill, the sexual revolution, a time capsule, not just an entertaining book, it doesn’t make any sense to change, reading it in 2023, this other quality, a really fun book, in a sense riding, he’s a little smarter than Jesse, his life, through the narrator’s mind, everyone is a con-artist except for him, Times Square, largely commercial, red light district, Amsterdam, in the middle of the city center, Antwerp, a good sense of it, Westlake and Block, what it is like to walk through these street, weird beards, Samuel Delany’s book about Times Square, turned it into Disneyland, corporatized, a rainbow sidewalk crossing, a congregation place for weirdos, a lot of gays, weird poets, Reichstag, rainbow and Ukrainian flags, irritating, the New York Post, a political reason for it, off topic, Murray Bookchin, Liptick Traces, 60s groups and The Sex Pistols, the dominance of capital in cities, cities less and less livable, that’s people’s jobs, the mafia was people’s jobs, do people feel bad, take their shower and get on the phones, horrible things at their jobs, non-violent, taking money that the people don’t need, books about con-games, very interesting, the tools that they have, words, to convince people to give people freely something, The Sting (1973), Robert Redford, Better Call Saul, the fifty was a real and the 100 was a fake, a Rolex, a lawyer too, behind the psychology of it, Saul is childless, the family, he says he’s doing it for his family, being prideful and being a man, he’s smart and they’re dumb, it’s fun to do this scam, she loves it, it’s too addictive, it does hurt people, so cool to have that much power, ads for Ukraine on B.C. Ferries, what the fuck are were doing?, all the politicians are wearing Insane Clown Posse makeup, Insane Clown President [by Matt Taibbi] a bottom up group, Detroit guys, drinking pop, religious beliefs, tattoos, singing, they like their girlfriends, guys dressed in business suits with the face makeup, Lord Buckethead, Anarchist Pogo Party, “work is shit”, a serious critique vs. seriously running to win, Rhinoceros Party, Reaganomics, Republican in name only, stepped out of a time machine from 1967, it would look as stark, LBJ wore a suit, these guys wore a suit, the politics in here, the senator who was a real senator, not offending anybody, step lightly with the politics, everyone agrees that senators are corrupt, the Senator from Coca-Cola, campaign contributions, buy my son’s paintings, taking the frame on this, is this a political book?, he does do politics in his books, no solution other than being aware of it, politicians are products of their material conditions, Gertie’s political stance, cynicism, no idea of collective action, if Jesse was Will, terrible politicians, Germany’s chancellor, War Measures Act, we gotta stop authoritarianism, literal bombs going off and foreign ministers being kidnapped, we got it bad up here, there’s this guy in the mountains of Arkansas who can teach me some skills, healthcare, barring collective action that’s going to work, infiltrated, to not feel so horrible all the time, We Own This City, David Simon, gun task-force, the institution is so corrupt, a pessimistic cynical look, straight up robbing people, top to bottom corruption, plainclothes units, we gotta stop crime, every David Simon story is the same one, this is really rough what can you do, The Wire, drug enforcement free zone, reduced deaths, we’re not as completely corrupt here (in Canada), universal programs, if you’re as cynical as Donald E. Westlake, people can equate cynicism with being depressed or blackpilled, stoicism, expect pain, how do you deal with that pain, maintenance of your individuality, not a call to action, not a whole confection, political observations, challenging, a very Westlakian point of view to have, a very American take, and church leaders, Tommy Douglas, weird Christians in the prairies, Christian values, the Catholic church, kill the priests, Central America, in the DNA of this kind of crime fiction, The Continental Op, essentially a Pinkerton, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, the solution is to drink, no call to action, have enough grifts happen to you in the course of five minutes, when you’re in the Black Iron Prison, don’t you remember promising me that letter in camp, a way to get money, it could be really sad, conning me out of my shoelaces, I waited, finally I’ve decided, I’ve got an uncle who is a judge, this stuff actually happens, kids can’t make promises, this is all silly, a philanderer of the greatest kind, you can’t enforce a contract on a child, an expiry date on these letters, high school reunion, when Cora was 13, former fiances, are they millionaires now?, oh yeah, I have leverage now, lottery winners, the lottery is a scam, a tax on the stupid, quite poor, thousand marks, save the money a little bit, conpeople prey on old people, grandmothers scammed, this is your grandson, I’m in jail, twice, in the past five years, grandchild scam, court translations, a lot of money, somewhere in Africa, the really horrible thing, the Nigerian Prince scam, as soon as email became a thing, used to do with letters, because it’s free, there is a scammer who sells scam kits to people desperate for money, lower themselves, take money from grandmothers, sold a list of people to call, a bad list, the scammers scam themselves, buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo, long cons, short con, the phonecall from the lawyer wasn’t a con, long cons are relatively rare, House Of Games, a David Mamet movies, The Spanish Prisoner (1997), Steve Martin, Rebecca Pidgeon, FTX, bitcoin investing company, biggest donor to the Democratic party, they can’t arrest him, in reality long cons are everywhere, they’re not elaborately planned, how long can we keep these balls in the air?, develop into actual countries, how the Hudson’s Bay Company?, Queen: how much do I get?, an investor group, the profits are so big, spanning a continent, the relationship between long cons and history, the most famous one would be the Netherlands Tulip frenzy, Beanie Babies, Magic the Gathering cards, people don’t want to know who gets hurt by their Wall Street investments, by not looking into it, Bernie Madoff, William H. Macy and his wife were put on trial for a university scam, you have to not see how the game is played, scammed too many people, as soon as you start researching it, am I gonna outsource my trust to these people, constantly question is the only way, such dire situation, their critical faculties, and they have savings, lack social contact, loneliness, a friend wants me to invest in his business, total scammer, I hate this guy, traumatic for Cora, trying to sink a ship he was supposed to sell, an old friend, sign on for a six month contract to do all Westlake in future, this book was a long con in and of itself, the murder of the uncle, we all got conned, happy to have gone for the ride, Evan’s dad outsmarted a con-artist recently, the gift card thing, they gave up, super common, Chinese, what the scam is, you’re Chinese there’s a problem, a tenuous situation somehow, as an immigrant who doesn’t speak English, elderly Chinese woman at home, house sitting, solve this using this credit card, all automated, why email is so broken, since calling, Skype sexy ones (maybe not a scam?), catfished, automated spam calls, very profitable, so persistent a problem, Will’s scammy world, Kentuckyian scams, strange text messages, Rhode Island, selling property, have you sold your house yet?, strange sexy Whats App texts, emojis were racy, heart emojis, sad story, people want to be loved, lived in public housing, this woman in the Philippines, is it a scam if providing emotional comfort over the internet, both people can sell it on both ends that way, after he died, online girlfriends, older people who are vulnerable, directly addressing Will with a name that is not his own, grifter, that guy is just a grifter, this guy wrote a book, crowdfunded the book, didn’t write the book, didn’t sell the book, Spare, why do I even care about this idiot, people who care about royals, curious, the Barbie thing, it’s pretty good, you can fake that interest, flexing and exerting power, extract publisher by being a legislator, merger, when he’s sitting down to fake write the book, I killed 29 guys in Afghanistan, the ghost writer, Taliban killed themselves out of despair, 25 enemy fighters, during 2 tours in Helmand, you can hear the ghost writer in the room, that’s a scam, buying an actual book they actually receive, drugstores, oh my sad life, rags to riches, he sold his book at his drugstores, shoved into your face, H.P. Lovecraft, birthday today, 7 months now when people are listening to it, scammed by August Derleth, he’s not a liar, shade the truth, opposite of a scammer, desperate for money, starts a business with Frank Belknap Long, Adolphe De Castro, offended, Weird Tales wasn’t paying, slowly, not on time, later, half, if you’re the editor of Weird Tales, Hugo Gernsback, the company doesn’t have the money, a compromised person, didn’t want to move to Chicago, you kind of have to be a scammer to work through this horrible capitalist system we have, a nobleness in the way Westlake handles this stuff, I didn’t lie to people, gave them some entertainment, his son Paul is working hard on his website, the son, he’s the only one who was doing something for the estate, the next six months of Westlake, the Donald Westlake podcast, every week twice a week, chronologically, too fun to read, not enough meaty material, when you read Heinlein, this formula works, doesn’t make for dense meaty material, a grand unified theory of Westlake?, after Evan unmutes himself, numbered episodes, book club, about Robert E. Howard too, Lovecraft, Stephen King at 100 pages at a time, so thick, other American science fiction writers, Asimov isn’t very American, Philip K. Dick is a weirdo and also an American, Joe Haldeman is American but not very American, he’s a good writer, Cora held the door open for him, Evan’s prejudice for America is wrong, Evan has to wrestle with this country he’s not in, a flux, a change, class awareness, the nature of the class, more static in British lit, race and slavery, women’s lib by Americans is great, those groups, Clark Ashton Smith is too literary, serious political thought, Howard can be super-political, a great adventure story, stylist, very rich, The Black Diamonds is very easy to read, get behind some sex book, just the Westlake Smut podcast, fun and funny, vintage sex books, John Lange’s The Venom Business, the sex makes it worse not better, funny silly sex books, a serious book, Harold Robbins, Peyton Place, gossip, nobody reads it anymore these days, weirdos interested in old books, finding out what books were shit, go to Abebooks, the most famous book of 1970, an obscure book, all over every used bookstore, Swedish family saga, no one can even read this stuff these days, romance novels lose their value instantaneously, 2 for $1, disposable in the same way a pulp used to be, hardcovers, 8 hours felt like 4, he’s gonna run out of space, a perfectly executed thing for what it is, it’s perfect, spot on, a mater professional writer, not clouded, just pure, so distinctive with the hands, that’s pure Westlake right there, their hands, their voice, so good, sold on Westlake, putting my money on Westlake, Bothers Keepers, monks trying to save their monastery, Call Me A Cab, thrift shop Hard Case Crime, asleep yesterday, infinite amount of time to read, Christa Faust’s book, in a year or so, the Norton Anthology of American Literature, deep dive into literature in the historical and material context of that period, 1770-1780, The Turn Of The Screw, The Great Gatsby, N.K. Jemisin and Ursula K. Le Guin, Hawthorne vs. Edgar Allan Poe, Young Goodman Brown, The Minister’s Black Veil, The House Of The Seven Gables, drill down on The Gold Bug, The Black Cat is super-American, bogged down, something more scripted, Henry David Thoreau, feed Cora’s father, material realities of America, big picture, scripted, a leftist a Marxist, Caleb Maupin, got in trouble for spanking, an American nationalist, a Christian communist, borderline MAGA communist (whatever that’s supposed to be), a video about Michael Crichton, State Of Fear, when books are taboo it makes Jesse want to read them, global warming is going to destroy us all, work hard play hard regular liberalism, something we need to degrowth with, never means closing military bases, you gotta not have babies, you gotta eat these bugs, Naomi Klein, do a survey, do your carpets need cleaning?, reducing our greenhouse emissions, rebuild, dismantling the military, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, the democrats are not on the left, that guy’s Right, ok whatever, she say’s shes a socialist, so is Bernie Sanders, a co-person, he reads books, he’s a tankie, sounds like a slur, a well deserved slur, what defines somebody as a fuckface?, leftist circles, expressing support for one party communist regimes, fascism, Nazi, although Zelenskyy has Nazis all over and around him, he doesn’t have the sonnenrad around his face, doing the sieg heil, “white power” on the backs of her legs, doing the salute, the standard anarchist position, a tension, some North Korean Instagram girl’s account is deleted, this is wrong, not all starving to death all the time, humanizing them, should North Korean model be embraced, Jesse doesn’t believe in Canada, the western powers never left, China’s doing its best to make the world more Chinese, talk to local conditions, arguments are in the canon, to talk about socialism, mmmm Jack London, friends with the @ sign of library of America, Sam Glanzman, The Law Of Life by Jack London, he bought story ideas from people, he’s doing Jack London, North-West Romances, Jack London is writing literature, ok there’s a prospector, western civilization, what it is to be indigenous, LibriVox, Louis L’amour, what it means to be American, class struggle, cattle baron vs. small proprietors, Swag, The Big Bounce, swag bag full of cash, that was a punch and I didn’t see that coming, 3:10 To Yuma, late in the Western game, people in the middle, Max Brand, they’re the Heinlein and Clarke and Asimov of American Westerns, Markie Post, Glitz, lady falling from a high window in her underwear, Justified, 85 novel, serial rapist, Jimmy Smitts, psycho-mama-boy, beautiful Peurto Rican hooker, A.C. dazzle, random Elmore Leonard plot with a movie, Out Of Sight, never done an Elmore Leonard, don’t read Tishomingo Blues, Pronto, Ezra Pound stories, retiring to Italy, Peter Falk, Riding The Rap, Jennifer Lopez and the E.R. guy who lives on Lake Como, Out Of Sight (1998), mutual attraction, kinda or really sexy, Luis Guzman, Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks, Teddy Roosevelt, the Cuba war, George Guidall narration, The Moonshine War, The Sopranos, hilarious, David Simon back to back, The Plot Against America, the Philip Roth novel, Charles Lindberg becomes president, that 1940-42 period, the Jewish community, a selling feature?, the response of the Jewish community would have had, generational stuff, Ed Burns, out of the HBO loop, All The Way, Lyndon Johnson, Bryan Cranston, shitting on the toilet scene, jumbo didn’t make an appearance, got a lot of tail, more killed than JFK, he didn’t get Marilyn, presidents were way hornier, FDR, she was gay, open marriage, very modern, religious stuff, Reagan, Nancy, maybe not even her, Jeb, The Revengers (1972), we’re talking Hollywood mainstream film, Tarantino movies, Jackie Brown (1997), Pam Grier movies, Sheba Baby (1975), Coffy (1973), the ketchup and mustard and thing, Jesse’s seen all the big westerns, William Holden, The Seventh Dawn, quite quite good, Malaysian war of independence against the evil British, reverse surprise, symmetry, a rip-off, The Wild Bunch (1969), The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Dirty Dozen (1967), you like what they do, a revenge movie, it’s simple, he’s got principles, the criminals don’t, Jesse likes westerns, The Shootist (1976), the end of the West, the greatest gunslinger ever is now dying of cancer, set in 1901, electricity, The Grey Fox (1982), Ron Howard, Scatman Crothers, reserving judgement, an upcoming hurdle, if the cancer just takes its course, Woody Strode, a football player he became a movie star, super-teacher of the year, does it come with money?, a certificate, no promotion, headcanon, not incompetent enough to be promoted, not lackey enough, spewing all over AI, interesting, gonna fuck up a lot of people’s businesses, a book emote, as in read a fuckin book, Evan move, enhancing the library, awesome social studies library, bought em all, endless budget, a decent library, the key to the library, just read some books, the whole point, the whole system has been gamified, the whole reason is because they have to, read a little bit, how’m I gonna get my kid into this school?, things students can and can’t use AI for, we have to prepare them for the future, teach them how to write prompts, he’s trying to help the kids cheat, you’re trying to help the kids learn, pirouette around it, guilty until proven innocent, here’s how we can improve your teaching, how to use AI, embarrassing to read, email, using chatGPT as an educator, a whole paragraph prompt, a mini assessment, submit, could you guide me with a prompt?, he thinks he’s being helpful, he’s trying to do his job, how to cheat through their classes, everybody’s in on this scam and you’re refuse, we’re here to make money of the requirement by law, get with the program, that’s your job, you wanna play baseball because you love the game, runs batted in business, now everyone can moneyball, [Moneyball (2011)] the worst team in baseball, it can’t be stopped, sabermetrics, is the baseball bat the saber?, SABR, this dude who was a doorman, Bill James, kept stats, we’re making choices about players wrong, Wayne Gretzky, stadium, rink, new stats, dieting, Zero Cool, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, Colorado Kid, he’s a congressional medal honor winner from the Civil War, any senator can nominate, son seems fine, goes out for some reason, massacred his dog, evil comancheros, buys six slaves, tie em up, outfitted, they all turn on him, they get to talking, he’s his dad, he has blue eyes, the cavalry, one young officer, Mexican kid, claims William Holden is his dad, structural things, really well written, makes a big difference, High Plains Drifter (1973), a Clint Eastwood one, out of Spaghetti Westerns, December death hoax, yet another example of fake news, still alive, took his money and started making his own movies, Malpaso, mayor of Carmel, California, two spouses and three domestic partners, at least 8 children, great film actor, good film director, great on screen, not all westerns, Cry Macho (2021), they didn’t de-age him, action scenes, a boy and his rooster, the pirate area, too much Mission: Impossible, always trying to overthrow governments in Mexicos or Easters Blocks, romanticizing, minimizing harms, different from the movies where it’s some vague internal threat, commercial for the planet, rogue Russian nukes, trying to release in China, The Peacemaker, John Cena and Jackie Chan, plays Splinter, in Iraq?, John Cena lives there, mercenaries from China?, white guy living in a small village in Iraq, vague badguys, John Cena’s brother involved with other mercenaries, tryna not offend anybody, buses full of people, if you increase the number of people in danger you make the , two bums fighting over $10, nobody can empathize with $10, big stakes, structure, it’s fun, writing exercise, made it part of Jesse’s job, be like Jonathan and get paid by wealthy old ladies who worked in Hollywood, a ghost writer, prurient, Sunset Boulevard (1950), 36 years and not have seen…, William Holden!, dude!, dude!, Billy Wilder, The Major And The Minor (1942), Five Graves To Cairo (1943), woke shame, film shame, Double Indemnity (1942), Raymond Chandler, Barbara Stanwyck in a wig, Edward G. Robinson, oh my gods!, Soylent Green (1973), I haven’t seen Soylent Green!, I don’t even see how ironic this is!, while scraping you off the pavement, alcoholic movie, a black comedy, real life old time silent film movie guy, that trope, ghost writer, a retainer, fun, you only have to please the one customer, worried about perception, being a ghost writer, under an NDA, talk about everything, Jesse envies Will, watch some good movies because it spoils you for bad movies, better and better caffeine, a tolerance for heroin, searching for a higher high, any old shit that has animation, appreciate genre stuff, I heard about this Russian movie called Come And See (1985), I can see why they said that about this, Spaghetti Western, weird euro-trash with sweaty Spaniards and Frenchmen and the occasional American, Lee Van Cleef, great eyebrows and then he’s balding, actors like Lee Van Cleef, a karate movie with Bruce Lee, kun fu movies, John Saxon, you’ve seen his face, man with eyebrows, then he goes bald, sad story, even when he was bald, John Woo movies, he was so hot in Hong Kong, cheesy shit, when he does it in Hong Kong, pure shit, Chow Yun Fat is Humphrey Bogart but Chinese, too ohs, Face/Off, Mission Impossible 2, The Killer (1989), Chinese laserdiscs, corny and bad, so handsome of screen, reinvents techniques, churches and doves, Hard Target (1993) with Jean-Claude Van Dame, Christianity, doves are very deep, this is what a handsome man does on screen, you just fall in love with him and melt on the floor, shoot guns at each other, drive cars around Hong Kong, archive.org, how good for how low trash, A Better Tomorrow (1986), subs are the way to go, dubbing is not the way to go, just so charismatic on screen, it was a huge deal before the changeover, hardcoded English subs, cast media with chromecast, in the TV buying business, the ideal is you get a dumb tv, Nvidia Shield, google is better right now, Fire TV is the second best, Roku is eating everybody’s lunch, ability to do anything, a thumbdrive hole (a USB hole), a file explorer program, VLC, hook a laptop up, more wires, Playstation 3, Nintendo Switch, from ’99, a nostalgia thing for Meg, Final Fantasy, SquareEnix, zaniness, gunsword, computer games were more forgiving for poor people, computer games were cheaper, a 3DO, 1993, Road Rash for 3DO, a Wii, competitive Tetris, so ignorant, not enough time, Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto on horses, shooting people while on the stagecoach, shooting is the default, RPGs, isometric, when Doom hit, everything turned into a first person shooter, can see the appeal, go over to somebody and ask them about their day, criminals over there, a life simulator, a quest where you have to stop a stampede, westerns are fun, pretty dedicated to PUBG, guy in Senegal, a good chat about being colonized, the French are fuckers, a lot of Americans, generally sad and smoking weed all the time, such is the state of the situation, large part a lot of people are opting out, playing games all the time, not a random sampling, Chinese guys, weird ideas, strategy, how dumb people are, all very safe, they’re not going to ask you for money, the strategy of the game, chunks, there’s no natural way to get off of Red Dead Redemption, more self-discipline, Paul plays a lot of games like Age Of Wonders, Civilization, Civ is like crack, why are you doing it again?, rule a fantasy realm of your own design, a tabletop RPG about being a cowboy, Cowboys and Cattlebarons, Cowpokes, then you get girls, Blades In The Dark, a weird west mod, sorcerers in my Ranch Romances, Indians and iron horses, some big medicine from the Piute, the module is the big eastern white faces say they’re going to give our land to their settlers, how many scalps are we gonna collect?, turn them against their evil government, Mormon Utah, Dogs In The Vineyard, DMd for students, kinda weird as adults, kinda immature, I’m an elf, you’re a guy who works at the video rental store, it was fun tho, that’s really sad, autistic or what, they got the problems Jesse doesn’t need more of in his life, a module of Edgar Allan Poe Dungeons And Dragons, they do their best, they don’t know it’s a dungeon hack, you have a phone with a flashlight, a troll, owls, ghouls, a house with a big crack in it, everybody should make their own rules, d20, damage points and rolling up stats, you forgot your glasses, not a normal roleplaying game, I get in the boat, roll D20, sorry you drowned, a big outlet, cool ideas, Paul’s life is a lot of that, a good hobby, staying out of the casino and not doing too many cracks, filling time before you die, giving away your money you don’t think you earned, baccarat, you buy the shoe, James Bond, he’s not pulling the lever on the one armed bandit, the saddest movie ever, a sexy lady across the one armed bandit from him, betting against the bad guy, a collection of cards, like blackjack, there is no dealer, they win all ties, a bidding round, there is a minimal amount of skill involved in 21 or blackjack, poker, playing against a particular player acting like the house, sad and pathetic, quickly lost $75, there’s no person you’re giving your money to, socializing, roulette, craps, luck involved, sad kinda socialness, happiness from them, it made a lot of noise, a lonely person less unhappy for a moment, something to do with your friends who don’t read books, evil because of what it does, smoke dope all day while playing games all day to escape their terrible life, Jesse has killed Will, accidentally muted himself, try to DM a role playing game in a western setting, make up a shopping list of things for people to buy with their coins, pick a movie you like, you’re family has been slaughtered, in order to get your revenge, you are a convicted criminal of rape of 17 women all over the age of sixty, and yet you’re not gay, that’s a heavy backstory, you want redemption, gets shot, gets redemption, redeemed in the end, ranch romances, a bordello instead of a tavern, a cathouse, Klondike goldrush, claim jumpers, lots of opportunities to freeze to death, You Are A Wolf, not enough about being a deerchild, about philosophy, how weird people were a long time ago, Hoboes & Harlots, pulp style painting, everbone is knocking about, converted burlap sack full of, used garters suitable for sniffin, a fake award, achievement in gaming, what modules will be like, tutoring 2 days a week, 1 class a week, 4 classes a week, 3 hours is fine, Jesse loves his job, would still do it if not being paid, showin up, I’m in, stone soup, a snip of parsnip, looking for sex and food, run that for your students, 7 to 18, a broad range of South Koreans, east and west and north Koreans, Dok Do Koreans, PyongYang Koreans, a very interesting history, the United States is very very bad, the Soviets and the Chinese, not set up a country there, very bad in Asia?, yes, maybe the Japanese were worse, numbers matter, did you steal?, did you lie?, how many did you kill?, not caused by communists, caused by imperialists, make the case the soviets were expanding their empire, look at the geography of it, assisting, freedom from foreign rulership, being in the way of larger nations, very aggressively European for an Asian country, militaristic, we’re gonna do the Euro thing in Asia, what’s the United States doing there?, not geographically adjacent, foreign adventurism, what was Canada doing there?, best friend to the big bad bully, pleased with her farming, your teaching license has expired, still thinking about it, who’s going to take care of your animals when you’re away teaching, she still wants to have the paperwork, she enjoyed being a teacher, sister still teaching?, she seems to have money, something like a job, this problem with paying for things, the thing to do is to have a job, get apprenticed by an Appalachian back to the woods herbalist, limousine from the airport to the hotel, everything’s fine, what’s going on in the community, enlightening, the guy looks like a druid or a wizard, lived off grid for 50 years, Chinese gardens, tinctures of herbs, if you’re conspiracy minded, how the AMA defeated herbalists, it happened, herbalism stuff, grows his own food, orders seeds, mailing away for seeds, still work you just don’t get paid, it is a lot of work, your work is based on what you need rather than what you need money for, a job that’s not real, only things you really need, a lot of the work that’s going around, a nursing home inspector, needs to be done, a shortage of nursing home inspectors, anti-psychotics, the long and short of it, random inspections in the middle of the night when you’re awake, nursing homes are kind of unfair, how scared I should be about ending up in a nursing home, better in British Columbia than Kentucky, a guy who was trying to get out, why he shouldn’t be getting out, his body is good but his brain is bad, whereas this druid guy, 80 year old man’s body, more of a wizard’s staff, like RFK Jr., human growth hormone, Marianne Williamson, her new book’s out, good “values”, you have to know what the scam is in order to not be scammed, that’s no way to get the right answers to things, considering how fuckin dumb Trump is, goes with his gut, they’re scammers like movies, shirtless pushups go viral, 69, unflattering on purpose, Curb Your Enthusiasm wife, used to be a heroin addict, being RFK’s child, my dad was assassinated by the government, I’m a rich boy, become a lawyer like he said he did, Hunter Biden has really struggled in life, having a liar for a dad, don’t you listen to the president, listen, fat!, I write all my own speeches, speaking truth to power, interviewed on Jimmy Dore, totally unprepared, Hillary wants war, she’d get tricked into doing it, the biggest of all time?, how they sold it to him, a tiny little thing, a tiny little thing Biden making a North Korea deal, move the troops out, let the South Koreans work it out, get assassinated along the way, he likes bad ideas, nobody has done it before?, it’s unprecedented, you’re speaking my language, she says nice things, a poetess, a self-help guru more than anything, what’s her background, twang, New England private school accent, how she got on the stage at all, born in Houston, conservative Judaism, author, teacher, politician activist, theater and philosophy in California, wasted decade, lived in a geodesic dome, live in a pyramid too?, a cabaret singer, distracted by bad boys and good dope, existential despair, lost soul, A Course In Miracles, a great sweeper of things aside, torches and pitchforks, we’re gonna mediate our way to health, everybody gets free meditation, facebook live.

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

God Save The Mark - Cosmopolitan, May 1967

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake

God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake - PAPERBACK

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