Across Difficult Country

Sad news from Roseville, CA, where S ammy’s Rockin’ Island Bar and Grill will close after a mere five months of business. The grill, owned by Sammy ‘The Red Rocker’ Hagar, was a “major part of Roseville’s Downtown Specific Plan”. After the restaurant closes it’s believed Hagar will redirect his focus to making terrible music, while the town of Roseville promises this one setback will not deter it from centering future downtown revitalization plans around projects owned by butt rockers.

“But it was Lindsey Graham who put in the most impressive performance of the conference…Mr. Graham tells me that he is seriously considering a run for the presidency. Why not? The worst that could happen is to expose GOP primary voters to the views of a foreign-policy heavyweight in an era of encroaching global disorder.” - Brett Stephens , The Wall Street Journal. “Given the obvious motivation for this bit of corporate cooperation—big-budget superhero franchises are all-but-guaranteed moneymakers and studios want to cash in—it would be heartening to see Sony and Marvel take a meaningful risk. Namely, the studios could take advantage of the relative safety that comes with doing a superhero reboot and finally bring a non-white Spider-Man to the big screen…From a PR standpoint, the move could be a huge win for everyone involved if played the right way. More specifically, this is an immense opportunity for Marvel to address growing complaints about diversity and hit the home run Sony mi...

Doomsaying scientists  who believe we are closer to doomsday have reset the Doomsday Clock to Three Minutes till Doom. After learning from a television commercial that people are smearing themselves with grease made from melted-down flightless birds, I wonder if we haven’t passed the Point of Doom already and didn't notice.

Many believe the robot holocaust has begun after a giant robot savagely attacked a gathering of bus aficionados in Whitby . Tiny image of Whitbians about to be slaughtered by an 8 ft. mechanical monster courtesy the Whitby Gazette, which apparently has a limited pixel budget. In other news, gluten free fish and chips are now available in Wetwang . Imagine the above minus the gluten and there you have what your gluten free Wetwang fish and chips look like, for the most part.

Gnostic societies and their leaders will recognize dangers to their existence when they develop, but such dangers will not be met by appropriate actions in the world of reality. They will rather be met by magic operations in the dream world, such as disapproval, moral condemnation, declarations of intentions, resolutions, appeals to the opinion of mankind, branding of enemies as aggressors, outlawing of war, propaganda for world peace and world government, etc. The intellectual and moral corruption which expresses itself in the aggregate of such magic operations may pervade a society with the weird, ghostly atmosphere of a lunatic asylum, as we experience it in our time in the Western crisis.  - Eric Voegelin,  The New Science of Politics .

A Handbook of Greek Mythology , by H.J. Rose.  A scholarly and wide ranging overview, concisely and skillfully written. Do professors like Rose still exist? Kill or Get Killed , by Col. Rex Applegate.  The classic guide to "riot control techniques, manhandling, and close combat". Full of information I look forward to applying in 2015. Lord Byron’s Foot , by George Green. His poems are funny, he’s the contemporary master of ekphrasis, his references range from Pindar to David Lee Roth. The Counterfeiters , by Hugh Kenner. Themes include "[T]he Enlightenment; Buster Keaton (stoic comedian); bad poetry; Albrecht Durer; Joyce; Swift, Pope; closed systems, mathematical and mechanical; Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines; the late history of Latin abstract nouns; Andy Warhol; Gödel’s Proof; horses; computer games; a clockwork duck that suffered from indigestion; and a man who wore a gas mask to ride his bicycle." The History of Atlantis , by Lewis Spenc...