All posts by Machine Trooper

Fantasy, Politics/Current Events

Marvel Comics’ Insanity

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Maybe you’ve heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results.

But enough about American voters. I’m talking about the comic book industry.

I was a comic aficionado before it was cool. Had quite a collection and spent money on comics regularly. But as the writing became increasingly stupid and the left-wing, feminist, homophile prejudices became more blatant, my interest dwindled until I quit buying them.

Evidently, I’m not the only one. The industry has really hit the skids in the last few decades. Were it not for movie adaptations, comics would be a strictly counterculture pastime for basement-dwelling neckbeards.

Much like the Democrat Party (and their RINO enablers), comic book companies’ “solution” to an economic debacle is to amplify the very same policies that caused the devastation.

So DC decides the original (Golden Age/Earth 2/whatever) Green Lantern should be a homosexual. Marvel decides Thor should be a woman. And surely there’s even more of this crap going on with other characters, but I lack the stomach to get up-to-date on the cesspool comics industry.

Either the creatively bankrupt propagandists at Marvel read our original post about Thor’s sex change, or they’ve heard other people raising the same issues. And just as you’d expect of a self-righteous fanatic, their response was to ignore reason and simply double-down on their own lunacy. You can feel their mangina pride slithering from the dialog in this panel:

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Explanation #2 from our original post is worth quoting again:

Nobody at Marvel is educated enough to realize that the pantheons of mythology are brimming with goddesses they could build another super-character out of.

Marxists (cultural and otherwise) have always preferred hijacking the success of hard-working men, rather than coming up with their own ideas, putting in their own sweat, and building their own track record. This pathology, for feminists, is not even limited to reality–it extends even into the comic universe.

Action, Military, Reviews

Thoughts on American Sniper

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I finally watched it, and some questions have been answered. One of those questions is, “Why are the critics frothing at the mouth over their hatred of this movie?” I can answer that simply with two facts in the context of the film:

  1. Americans are the good guys.
  2. Jihadists are depicted waging jihad as they do in real life.

Any idiot in the cultural elite knows that Americans are the bad guys and Christianity and free market capitalism are what make the Middle East a hellhole of slavery, institutionalized torture/murder and bloody feudal wars. So that little mystery is cleared up.

I know very little about Chris Kyle. I never heard of him until shortly before his death. I still don’t know the truth regarding some controversy surrounding him, and haven’t researched it. Initially I heard the guy who killed him did it intentionally. Later I heard it was an accident. I also heard that he kicked Jesse Ventura’s 4th-point in a bar fight, after which Ventura pressed charges for assault. Later I heard that Kyle lied about the whole thing, and what Ventura sued him for was slander.

The movie doesn’t take sides on those matters, or even bring them up. Nor does the film take a position on whether the Iraq War/occupation was justified (though Kyle, as portrayed in the movie, does obviously believe it’s a just war).

It was wise of the director to avoid preaching from either side of the pulpit about the War on Terror. I’m sure I would have been offended either way.

The movie is about  a guy who believes in what he’s doing, and I can judge it on that.

I was once a lot like Chris Kyle. I loved my country, and volunteered to fight for her, assuming that wherever I was deployed and whoever I fought would be determined by somebody of a higher paygrade who took their oath of office as seriously as I took mine.

Since then, I’ve adopted the opinion that very few foreign entanglements in American history were justified. And for over a century none of them have been about safeguarding our freedom or benefiting the American people in any way.

But hindsight is 20/20. My motives were pure, even though my idealism was misguided and loyalty misplaced. The only way I would wear the uniform again now would be for purely mercenary motives (which is why most people do it anyway, and who the recruiting marketers try to attract). I would join a different branch and choose a cushy MOS that translates well to a civilian career, do my time, and get out to take advantage of the G.I. Bill.

The military is not the place for patriotic Americans. Hasn’t been for a while. In fact, those few anomalies who do love their country are being actively purged, starting at the top.

Chris Kyle was naive in his time just like I was in mine.  This story is about his life the way he saw it (and how others remember it, I guess). Don’t judge the movie on what it’s not trying to be.

There was another movie about a sniper over a decade ago, called Enemy at the Gates. It took place on the Eastern Front during WWII, where there was no “good” side or just cause. It told a similar story, concentrating on the character discharging his duty. As such, it was a good film. So is this one. Clint Eastwood is a great director and was the right one for this project.

Socio-Sexual Studies

Solidarity Is For Women Only

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The myth of a patriarchy is ridiculous for a few reasons. One is, of the two legitimate genders in existence, it is only the females who feel and act on a solidarity to their own sex. In fact, Team Womyn is the only sex ANYONE shows allegiance to.  Even today, men are compelled to compete against other men exclusively, and habitually act against their own self-interest, and that of men collectively. They are oblivious to the organized opposition to their very manhood,

I don’t like video selfies that much, but this clip is really worth a watch–especially starting around 5:40 or so. If you skip what’s before that, I’ll summarize something she shared:

Several men approached Girl Writes What privately to thank her for speaking out, but when she organized a conference specifically addressing the discrimination men suffer, nobody showed up.

And isn’t that just like us?

When Survivor was all the rage, I never watched it. I had cable with all the bells and whistles at the time but just didn’t watch a lot of TV–especially reality shows. But I caught the first episode of one season while a guest at a friend’s house. From what I could tell, the format of that season was guys vs. gals. The first competition was a timed obstacle course, and the men were winning decisively until some dork lost his balance on an obstacle, fell off repeatedly, and added enough time to the cumulative score that the women were able to pull ahead and win.

If your goal is to win a given competition, then it only makes sense to vote the weak links of your team off the island, right? The loser with no balance should have been first on the chopping block.

Instead, individuals on the men’s side conspired to vote one of their strongest members off the island, and they kept the clown (who I heard caused them to lose subsequent events). The females, however, voted in a way that was best for Team Womyn.

Whatever the rules are in Survivor that might justify the men’s actions, it is nonetheless illustrative of western culture in general.

There is organized effort to assign all the responsibilities in our society to men, and all the benefits/privileges to women. Men can be abused, cheated, conned, even killed, but it’s always women who are recognized as the victim (whether or not a man has the audacity to fight back).

Because vagina.

You’d have to be blind as well as ignorant not to be aware of this.

Yet, while nearly all females have an ingrained loyalty to other women collectively, men continue to throw each other under the bus (often for some psychological expectation of personal gain, perhaps?). At least 75% of the male population are white knights who think the situation should be made worse, not better. And this is just as bad on the right as on the left.

I’m very grateful to Girl Writes What for saying what few have the courage to say (her other videos have good info, too). I know nothing about her personally besides what she shares in the clips I’ve seen (and yes, she would probably look better with long hair…now snap your superficial self back to the subject and focus), but I really feel her pain about going through the trouble of setting up that conference only to have nobody show.

It kinda’ reminds me of one of the windmills I’ve tipped at.

I stopped visiting bookstores after the early ’90s when all the men’s fiction disappeared.

Chick-lit and romance dominate the literary world. Even when you find a book which appears dude-friendly on the cover and blurb, the author will sucker-punch you sooner or later with the obligatory feminist-pandering message and “strong female character.” When the book business went online, the pattern remained the same. And as if the gender bias wasn’t bad enough in mainstream, ostensibly neutral outlets, there are bazillions of groups, blogs, publishers and stores which cater exclusively to women. There was no masculine counterpart.

I got tired of drowning in the estrogen, and decided to make a difference.

My quixotic undertaking involved sparking a revival of pulp fiction and men’s adventure in several genres. Those were the last entertainment mediums that catered to masculine sensibilities, so I considered them the perfect kind of vehicle for taking back a small chunk of the literary world from entitled feministas and their white knight enablers. I imagined that whispered phrase from Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.”

This post is already getting long so, to make a long story shorter: after a couple years investing a whole lot of time and effort to bring back male space into the literary world, almost nobody showed up. And they kept not showing up. I stayed at it, and there were modest inroads made. Other authors and publishers thought a pulp revival was a good idea, so there were glimmers of hope.

What pimp-slapped me back to reality was, one of the guys I networked with brought some soccer mom into a mutual project, who immediately began beating her drum to feminize pulp, have homosexual pulp heroes,  social justice messages and so forth. In other words, to make pulp fiction exactly like everything else.

Shortly after that, it became evident that the guys I networked with to revive pulp didn’t share my Quixotic motives. They echoed the sentiments of the homophile soccer mom.

I had no allies.

It wasn’t the only time I bowed out of a creative undertaking because I  refused to conform. Other than working with cover artists, I’m not sure I’ll ever try to collaborate again.

I didn’t get it when I watched that episode  of Survivor, but now I do: for women, “the battle of the sexes” is a team sport; and they do and say whatever they think will benefit their team. For the male of the species, it’s every man for himself.

Non-Fiction/Documentary, Socio-Sexual Studies

Lessons in Masculinity From an Unlikely Source

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Bill is right, I have to admit: as horrible this series was as a whole, the early episodes (in black & white) were not that bad, as TV science fiction goes.

My sophomore year in high school, this show was on the air when I got home on weekdays. My family never had cable, so choices were limited. I watched it most of the time simply because there was nothing else to do.

There was an upperclassman I changed next to in the locker room that year. He obviously watched the show a lot. His favorite character was Dr. Smith, and he hated Don West.

On the surface this seemed idiosyncratic because the guy was a loud, egotistical blowhard whose behavior bordered on bullying. In other words, what most people would assume to be alpha male traits.

Looking back, though, I realize the “alpha traits” were just part of the guy’s defense mechanism. It was a facade he put on, probably because he’d been victimized by the sort of males he was imitating by the time I met him. Peel the facade away, and he is pretty representative of males of my generation (and later ones). It makes perfect sense why he would choose Zachary Smith as a role model.

Thanks Bill Whittle, for your analysis.

Politics/Current Events, Satire

Guide to Social Justice Newspeak

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This is long overdue, and might turn out to be only Part 1.

You may have noticed that language is evolving, and words used by certain people don’t have the same meaning they do in the dictionary. Similar to individual rights vis-a-vis government regulation, what was perfectly acceptable yesterday might be forbidden today. So bookmark this post and keep it handy for reference.

 

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION – A policy to encourage compliance with the Civil Rights Act, which says employment decisions shall not be made based on race or sex. Wait…um, nevermind…

AFRICA – A utopian paradise where slavery and prejudice don’t exist and never have.  You can be sure any evidence to the contrary is the fault of a greedy, oppressive American.

AMERICA – A dark, sinister entity that invented racism, slavery, greed grimlibertyand poverty. It is still such an oppressive blight on the planet that millions from around the world take whatever action necessary, legal or illegal, to get within its borders and join their voices to those already shouting down its villainy. The final solution to the American problem is to transform this reprehensible nation into something more like the utopias all those millions of immigrants are so desperate to escape from.

“CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE” – Effective safe words to use when a fascist (see definition below) is oppressing you with inappropriate facts.

COMMUNISM – A trigger word (referring to an imaginary boogeyman invented by right-wingers) used by the enemies of progress, who try to make others believe that a system of government proposed by Karl Marx has been instituted in other nations, and failed miserably despite being subsidized via foreign aid and other handouts from U.S. taxpayers for half a century.

CONSERVATIVE – Anyone to the right of Rachel Maddow.

CONSPIRACY – A doublethinkparanoid fantasy fabricated out of whole cloth by the vast right-wing conspiracy, used to justify their hateful, reactionary opinions.  We enlightened leaders should meet privately and decide what to do with dangerous individuals who entertain such notions. IT DOESN’T EXIST, understand? Exceptions include The JFK assassination, Tailhook, and the Patriarchy.

FACTS – clusters of data which are only relevant if/when they support an SJW position. They are invalid when they fail to support a current SJW argument, even when previously cited to support another SJW argument.

starwarsracismFASCIST – Someone who not only destroys an SJW argument (see “racist”), but does so via rigid, inappropriate use of facts.

HATE – Worldviews and ideologies that are a hindrance to progress. The worst is one particular  religion which teaches “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

HATE CRIME – A crime which makes a victim out of someone from a Recognized Victim Class. A murder of a homosexual, for instance, is hateful; whereas other murders are not.

HATE SPEECH – Something written or spoken with terminology which is not current; like saying “illegal alien” instead of “undocumented worker” or “socialist” instead of “liberal.”

HOMOPHOBE – Anyone who doesn’t automatically add the clause: “not that there’s anything wrong with that” after a reference to homosexual behavior.

HOMOSEXUAL – An outdated term (which should probably be classified as a trigger) for those who use the body parts they were born with in ways they were never meant to be used. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

LEFT-WING – A trigger word used by fascist hatemongers for an ideology that doesn’t exist. (We know it doesn’t exist because the term is never used on TV.) It doesn’t even exist in Marxist countries, where genocidal tyrants are merely “Stalinist.”

trueleftrightLIBERAL – An enlightened person or policy which recognizes that individual rights  should be infringed upon; that government should dictate how the proletariat spends their money and uses their “property” (an outdated concept); and that all this should be enforced with Executive Orders, unwarranted searches, drone strikes and indefinite detention without trial or charges.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE – A prestigious award, all the more prestigious in recent times now that it’s awarded for such achievements as leading terrorist organizations and being born a certain skin color.

PATRIARCHY – A conspiracy by men to oppress women (by forcing them to pay for their own birth control, for instance) which arosieriveterccounts for every female failure, and male success, in history. Its height of power was in the Dark Ages of the 1950s when most children had both a dad and mom; men opened doors for women; and females were safe walking alone at night nearly anywhere in America.

PRIVILEGE – Something enjoyed exclusively by those who disagree with SJWs.

PROGRESSIVE – (See “liberal”) A person or policy which marches forward to hope and change by gradual increments. Kind of like how you boil a frog, comrade.leftistargumentcycle

RACISM – A state of mind which often goes undetected until the one guilty of it effectively dismantles an SJW argument.

RIGHT-WING – A broad-brush umbrella term, under which fits all the dastardly villains who have ever lived. Including guys like Stalin and Mao (if they truly are dastardly villains; if not, then they are still left-wing…er, progressive).

womenstudies

SEXISM – The narrow-minded insistence that there are differences between males and females.

SOCIALISM – A brilliant, equitable form of government which results in utopia. Not that anybody here believes in it, of course. We are “liberals,” not “socialists.”

SOCIAL JUSTICE – An enlightened mindset which helps one understand that every rape accusation by a womyn is true; that a fair, equal society can best be accomplished by institutionalized discrimination against white male heterosexuals (see “Affirmative Action”); and that any criticism of someone in a Recognized Victim Class is motivated by bigotry.

TRIGGER WORD – A clue that you’re dealing with an enemy to progress. Examples include words like “the Constitution,” “free market,” “liberty,” “founding fathers,” “individual rights,” “personal responsibility” and “republic.”

TRUTH – A trigger word which refers to invalid data (see “facts”) used to oppose progress. It can sometimes be invoked (with caution) by SJWs in its older definition: information which advances the progressive agenda.

Non-Fiction/Documentary

50 Shades of Hoopla

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What is so bleeding “hawt” about an S&M chick-lit novel, anyway? Haven’t those been around since Victorian times?

As authors (and aspiring full-time authors) here at VP, we take an interest when success stories are waved in our faces. Whiletemp3 getting work published is easier than it’s ever been; the writing racket is also tougher than ever before. Fewer and fewer people read; yet there’s more and more competition from other authors to capture the (mercurial) attention of that shrinking pool of readers. And those readers, by-and-large, don’t necessarily care that much about the quality of the material.

It’s worse than that when you’re a man, writing books for other men. Why? Because men have never been the avid readers women were (on average). Fewer still read fiction. Here are a few distractions contributing to this imbalance:

  • Work (even in this age of “equality,” men still put in more hours than women).
  • Movies (they’re everywhere, now–you don’t need to visit a theater).
  • Video/computer games (often they’re written better anyway).
  • The Internet.

When the New York Publishing Cartel abandoned male readers in the 1990s, the male population abandoned literature in a mass exodus.

temp1(Anybody remember how J.A. Konrath snuck by the NYPC gatekeepers to get published in the first place? The fact that he used the androgynous “J.A.” in lieu of a first name was no mistake. Neither was the “strong female character” orthodoxy.)

So when 50 Shades or some other literary fad comes along and makes big money, we pay attention, but generally don’t learn anything useful from it.

What this bestseller-turned-blockbuster(?) movie teaches us has more to do with the state of our culture than anything else. And I’m not even referring to the kinky sex fetishes. I’m referring to the fact that 50 Shades of Grey is just a hyped, edited work of fan fiction derived from the Twilight series.

 

 

 

 

Sports

Great Moments in Stupid Coaching

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Wow. Just, wow.

What a wild finish to an epic see-saw battle where the outcome was always in doubt.

I have not been pleased with the NFL for a while now, and hadn’t watched a game for a few years.  The league’s agenda conformity of late has pretty much guaranteed I will never be a fan again. So normally I wouldn’t have watched the Superbowl. If it wasn’t for an invitation from friends this year, I probably wouldn’t have.

So because of my NFL boycott, I knew nothing about Seattle running back Marshawn Lynch. But based on what I saw last night, he runs a lot like how I described John Riggins and Natrone Means in my last post. He’s a bigger, stronger Bronko Nagurski.

Which brings us to the play that will be talked about for years to come, that Seattle’s offensive coordinator may never live down: You’ve got a back who can gain at least three yards a play regardless of how a defense is stacked against him. Certainly you just hammer the line with him until he punches it in, right? No, as it turns out you call a pass play and your talented young quarterback throws his only interception, a hockey-style brawl breaks out on the field, and the repeat championship is ripped from your grasp in the final seconds.

I submit that the pass play was not the most stupid play call ever. I don’t know what the most stupid of all time is; but I know which one takes the cake that I’ve seen.

You are head coach Denny Green. Your team has gone 15-1 in the regular season, easily marching to the NFC championship despite some horrible officiating in the playoffs. Your key defensive player, John Randle, is hurt and won’t be able to anchor the defense in the game, but you’ve kept that a secret. You’ve got homefield advantage and the crowd noise in the Metrodome is a potential extra player. Up to this point your boys have blown out everybody except your one (close) loss to the Buccaneers around mid-season. But your defense is especially porous in this game (you’ve lost five starters to injuries), and you’ve botched a few drives by throwing deep down the field incomplete instead of just getting first downs. Now you’re tied at 27-27 with 49 seconds left to play. It’s first down in the Red Zone and you’ve got the most prolific offense to ever play the game. The formidable weapons your red-hot quarterback has at his disposal are Chris Carter, Randy Moss, Jake Reed, a healthy Robert Smith in the backfield and an offensive line like the Great Wall of China. You can put the game away by a score–all your mistakes and the uncharacteristic flubs by your players will be forgotten. What do you do?

You have your QB kneel on the ball to end regulation. At least that’s what Green chose to do.

You could have put the game out of reach with a chip shot field goal in your last drive, with a kicker who has been perfect all season. That’s right–he has not missed a single FG or PAT all year. Guess when he decides to miss a kick? The other team’s kicker doesn’t miss in overtime, and they advance to the Superbowl.

That missed kick is the only thing people remember about the game, saving the coach from scrutiny when it should have never come down to the kick in the first place.

Back to Seattle-New England. So far as stupid calls go, I wouldn’t even put it in the top ten. In fact, it may not even be a stupid call. Had the right guy come down with the ball, it would be considered a stroke of genius. The same people bitching about the call now would be trash-talking about how the Patriots were punked by the potential threat of Lynch, giving up the pass while focusing on the run. Oh, how brilliant a strategy! Oh, how clever!

People will also probably forget that the only reason Seattle got to the red zone in the first place was the ridiculous bobbled bounce-off-the-knee reception. It even reminded the commentators of the helmet catch a few years ago that ruined New England’s perfect season. New England fans were sure that the jinx was still in effect.

But Lady Luck was a fickle, two-timing slut last night.

Sports

Life Lessons From the Superbowl

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The Washington Redskins first Superbowl appearance was in VII. Under head coach George Allen, with a team roster infamously called “the Over-the-Hill Gang,” they were dominated by the undefeated Miami Dolphins.

Ten years later the head coach was Joe Gibbs, but the scenario was similar. The team had to defeat the Dallas Cowboys in the NFC Championship, just like 1972, and they had to face the Miami Dolphins in the Superbowl. Not only did the AFC dominate the big game (the NFC had only won twice in the 1970s), but there was the psychological disadvantage of playing a team that had beat them the last time they met in the championship. This is a difficult disadvantage to overcome (Dallas had failed in their rematch with Pittsburgh; Cincinnati would fail in their rematch with San Francisco; and more recently New England would choke twice against New York).

Psychology is a huge factor in team sports, and not to be underestimated. It can be a little like morale in a military unit. That’s probably worth a post of its own, so I’ll move on.

The game Didn’t go well for Joe Gibbs. By the Fourth Quarter the Redskins were down 17-13 when a pass from QB Joe Theismann was deflected into the air by a Dolphin defender. An interception at that point might have crushed team morale–we’ve seen disastrous plays crush morale many times, and one of those I’ll talk about in this post. But Theismann himself kept the pop-up from being grabbed by Miami.

It would become obvious in retrospect, that was the turning point in the game. Why? Because Gibbs was forced to adjust his tactical doctrine. The Miami defense was shutting down his passing game. He was lucky Theismann was able to break up that play, but he needed to use a different weapon if he was going to change the momentum of the game, and avoid the sort of catastrophe his team had so narrowly escaped.

Fortunately, he had another weapon. The weapon was named John Riggins.

Riggins was a veteran, in what would normally be the twilight of his career for a running back. In days of yore he probably would have been called a fullback. He ran like a tank–not record breaking fast, but he routinely went through defenders like an 18 pound ball though bowling pins. Not many ball carriers have his kind of power. Natrone Means and Adrian Peterson are two rare backs who did (Peterson having the speed, too). Behind a formidable offensive line called “the Hogs” or “Riggo’s Rangers,” Riggins set the scoreboards on fire during the playoffs of that strike-shortened season.

Theismann began to call “the Diesel’s” number play after play, and #44 romped down the field, putting Washington in the lead to stay. It was like watching a bulldozer plowing Volkswagens. Riggins was voted MVP for the game, and the Redskins finally won the Lombardi Trophy.

Behind Theismann and a still-strong Riggins, Gibbs generalled the Redskins through an impressive season and back to the Superbowl the following year where they faced the outclassed Raiders. Up to this point in Superbowl history, no defending champion had ever lost.

Early in this game, though, Theismann failed to convert on third down, and the punting unit went in. The Raiders blocked the punt and went in for a go-ahead touchdown.

The Washington Redskins fell completely apart. The psychological damage was instant and visible on faces and in body language. After that it didn’t matter which team was better. The Redskins were doomed, and played like it. They only managed one touchdown the whole game (by Riggins, who rarely got the ball, since Theismann went all-pass, trying to catch up), and were crushed 38-9.

It was ugly.

Upsets are nothing new. It’s always been true in the NFL that on any given day the worst team in the league might beat the best. And that day the superior team was so psychologically destroyed after the blocked punt that even a high school roster would have given them a pasting.

How could a team of champions, so full of talent and confidence, crumble so thoroughly because of one play? There are so many variables, perhaps the best we could ever manage are wild guesses.

The next time Gibbs brought his team to the Superbowl, it was against the Denver Broncos and their cannon-armed QB John Elway. It looked like Gibbs would be a victim of another hopeless shellacking when, on the very first play from scrimmage, Elway threw a long strike that went all the way. The Redskins sputtered on offense (predictably, after a devastating play like that), and the First Quarter ended with Denver leading 10-0.

But something was different this time. At some point since that embarrassing loss to the Raiders, Joe Gibbs had taught his team to overcome adversity. Or, as we put it in the Airborne, “Suck it up and drive on.”

The Redskin defense didn’t allow Denver to score another point. Meanwhile, they lit up the scoreboard in a record-setting Second Quarter in what turned out to be a convincing blowout victory.

I’ve decided that the greatest teams are not those who win championships; but those that can rebound off stunning setbacks to win championships. It’s fighters like Joe Louis and Evander Holyfield or the glass-jawed Tommy Hearns who get knocked into queer street, but push themselves off the canvas and fight through the fog of pain and shock and fear to hammer the other guy until he goes down…they are the champions most worthy of admiration.

One of the most tragic teams in history were the Buffalo Bills under Marv Levy (that should also be a future post of its own, perhaps). They attempted to use this sort of psychological devastation (Raiders blocking the punt; Elway’s long bomb; etc.) on Dallas in their first Superbowl showdown, blocking a punt deep in Cowboy territory and sending Thurmon Thomas in for the first score on the next play. But Dallas never lost confidence, turning the tables in an ugly one-sided game forcing a storm of turnovers. Then in the rematch the following year, after leading 13-6 at the half, the Bills succumbed to emotional collapse themselves when that same Thurmon Thomas (so rock-solid dependable on a normal day) fumbled deep in his own territory. The Cowboys took it in for the score and never looked back. The Bills didn’t score again and lost 30-13.

You could argue that Chuck Noll, Vince Lombardi or Bill Walsh were the greatest head coaches in NFL history, and numbers would back you up. But to me the most inspiring were guys like Tom Landry and Joe Gibbs. Especially Joe Gibbs, who not only redeemed himself, but taught his players to do the same.

Non-Fiction/Documentary, Politics/Current Events

Volunteering For 1984

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George Orwell’s dystopian novel is still frequently referenced today by those opposed to privacy infringements and the other lifestyle features that accompany a socialist police state. But the “It Can’t Happen Here” crowd in the USA has long ASSumed that those who want such a system would try to force the population at large to accept their telescreens in each room of our houses.

They never considered the possibility that the population at large would ask to be put under surveillance, and in some cases pay for the privilege.

For the oxymorons who want to keep their privacy and other rights, yet vote and support the very socialist transformation which will obliterate those rights, you’d think the last entity they would trust to make it happen would be a capitalist market research corporation exploiting consumerism to multiply their own power while subjugating the proletariat. But that’s exactly what they do.

In the early years of the Internet, I used Netscape Navigator’s built-in search engine when I needed to find something online. But I kept hearing about “Google” increasingly, until it had become a common verb in our lexicon, and was the default search engine on every browser. Google not only tracks everything you search for from their home page, but every single site you visit when you have their search bar in your browser. They compile and keep this information, and charge advertisers for the benefit of their spying on you. And nobody seems to mind, because you get to use their search engine for free.

Then Google got into the email business. Why? Because they also want to snoop through all your written communication. (Read the fine print when you sign up for G-Mail.) Up until G-Mail, you normally had to pay for an email service. But after G-Mail launched, everybody got in the free webmail business, monitoring all your communication in order to build a profile for you which third parties are interested in knowing.

Those third parties aren’t just businesses that want to sell you stuff. In the United States of America Google (and Facebook) are selling all your private communications and web travels to federal agencies which evidently consider American citizens a much greater threat than the terrorists, drug dealers, child molestors, Ebola victims and God knows who else swarming across our borders. Some police organizations appear to be preparing for a war against the citizens they are paid to protect.

And now Google’s in your smartphone, too. At least one judge has ruled that spying on you via your cellphone conversations is not a violation of your privacy because you volunteered to carry around a device with a microphone and GPS tracker in it. Cellphones can be turned into listening devices without you knowing it, because you think they’re turned off.

Without any warrant or probable cause, the NSA and other gestapo wannabes can read all your email, listen to everything you say, watch you through your webcam, track all your online activity…oh, and thanks to Google Earth they’ve got both satellite and street-level imagery of your home, too.

Those of us who are aware of this don’t want to do anything to change it, because it all makes life so doggone convenient for us.

But what if you leave your cellphone in the car, or the batteries are completely dead, or you’re not where you can be seen via your webcam? How can Big Brother hear what you’re saying and see what you’re doing inside your house, then? Google’s got a solution.

Now you can PAY a monthly service fee to have cameras/microphones installed inside your house, and the footage from them uploaded to the Cloud. Ain’t that dandy? And yes, some people are paying for this “service.” One day it might be free. One day it will probably be mandatory.

Big Brother is more slick than Orwell ever gave him credit for.