How do you get from Star Wars to Ghostbusters?
We don't know either, but we did it!

My friend The Bald Canadian and I talk.  About stuff.  A lot.  So we decided to do a podcast/vlog about it.
The premise is simple: I do not get to see half the movies that Bald Canadian gets to....but I still have a "preformed" opinion on the subject, however ill informed.
ENJOY!

Podcasts coming shortly...until then, you have to do with youtube.

The Pursuit of Happiness.

Scott Adams, that rascally comic strip writer of Dilbert once put words into Dogberts mouth that said “You’re allowed to pursue happiness.  You’re not actually allowed to be happy.”

I’ve never been a happy person, that I can remember.  Yet people often tell me how positive and encouraging I seem.  I honestly don’t know how they come to that conclusion, because anyone who spends an actual amount of time with me finds me disagreeable.

Recently my government employers have decided that they have over paid me, and are wanting to take back the full amount all at once.

At first my thought was If I take out the right insurance policy, I can make it look like an accident, and then my family would be set, and I wouldn’t have to keep going through all this turmoil in my life.
Not a very happy response.  “It’s just money” is a nice little quip when you’re family isn’t about to end up on the street because your pay has been cut off due to a clerical error….(and money that technically I am entitled to, because 90% of the problem was a classification code that was put in wrong).

Even with all of this my phrase was (and has been in dark times) “I don’t know all the details, but I know we will be fine.”
Even with wanting to send the family off to the grandparents and wrapping an extension cord around my neck, I still held on to the concept that I could come out of this okay.
This isn’t a one time thing, however.  I have been in so many situations that seemed hopeless that I’ve ended up culturing an almost indifference to the annoying things that happen around me.  Mostly I get pissed off at bad drivers because my family is in the vehicle.  Driving alone I’m less cranky.  But a rude neighbor, a mean spirited troll calling me names, even a gun in my face, usually illicit at best a laugh and at worst a shoulder shrug.   The horrible events in my life have never forced me into a bed to sleep all day, or kept me up all night panicking over things I can’t change.

So what, if there is one, is my key to happiness?

I don’t know if I have one.  Psychology professor David T. Lykken, author of Happiness: Its Nature and Nurture thinks that trying to be happier is like trying to be taller, and that we have a “happiness set point” genetically, and we can’t move past that.  Yet he also believes that we can pursue happiness by thwarting negative emotions and fostering positive emotions, also pushed as Operant Conditioning.  This conditioning is something I seem to have internalized at some point, but I don’t know exactly where I got the idea from.


Behavior Habit 1
Gratitude.
For me this sometimes takes the form of sarcasm.  I’ll say something along the lines of “You know what’s worse than this?  The Holocaust.”  Or I’ll throw out “At least I don’t have it as bad as Andy Dick.  That guy has to spend his whole life being Andy Dick”.
Most of the time it takes the form of a quick list or litany: I have breath in my lungs, a family that loves me, working arms and legs, opportunities that I just have to look for, and bad jokes.
Just doing this shifts my attitude away from bitterness and gives me motivation.  If I forget to do it in the morning (it happens) I’m usually a total asshole.  Especially since I am NOT a morning person.

Habit 2
Confronting the Downside.
I have a metaphorical giant wolf I call Fenrir living in a cage inside me.  I take him out for walks occasionally, tightly leashed, to show him who is in charge.
How this is manifested in the real world is this: Fenrir is all the powerful thoughts and feelings (mostly unconscious) that drive my behavior.  I am a very angry person, and it has taken years of visualisation techniques to not have my anger consume me, and instead use my anger for me.  “Me”, a man, is so much smaller and weaker than Fenrir, yet I exert control over this beast.  I use the anger, rage, and futility that he tries to instil in me and put it into working out or tackling jobs or situations that I hate or are afraid of.
Fenrir whispers from his cage however, and his ideas are poison.  Whenever he brings up a negative thought or feeling I confront it with facts, taking the truth out of the context and diminishing the rest.
You’re useless!
“Prove it.”
You tried and failed!
“I did indeed not get the outcome I desired.  But what I did was better than doing nothing, and even I can’t see the end of the effects I have in this world.  Also, I learned what NOT to do.”
I sometimes take Fenrir out on other people, but I often try to do that in more deserved ways, such as playing cruel tricks on people who have done obvious and intentional wrongs.

Habit 3. 
Relationships.
This one I am not the best at.  One of the writers of my university textbooks was David G. Myers, and in his own book The Pursuit of Happiness, he writes there are “few better antidotes to unhappiness than close friendships with people who care about you.”
This is difficult for me since my need for love is akin to a cactus.  I need very little love attention.  Too much and I just get uncomfortable and annoyed.  However I do understand that oxytocin is released when people hug for more than ten seconds, and while I may not need that daily boost, I understand that my wife and family do.  I try to be complimentary (though I usually fail since it just isn’t something I desire for myself. I find it hard to understand the need for it in others).  Though I do not understand all the mechanics of the need other people have for relationships, I do still try to foster them.  Like that cactus, plants need water.  My need for water is less than others, but that does not mean other plants can live with less water.

Habit 4.
Forgiveness.
There is nothing like the fine wine of holding a grudge.  It is distilled.  Pure.  It gives the same destructive pleasure as homemade napalm.
Holding onto that napalm affects your physical as well as mental health, according to research.  (Research, I might add, that religious prophets have seemed to know for millennia…but I digress*.)
By embroiling yourself in holding a grudge, or plotting revenge, you carry your anger into every other thing unrelated to the event.  How can you enjoy playing with your children if you’re imagining punching someone in the face?  This fantasy behavior bleeds into your ego, taking the event as a slight against your personhood leading you to believe that if you do not act then your life lacks purpose which leads you into a depressed and anxious cycle eroding your connection to others.
I find this one to have been the easiest and hardest one to do.  Mainly because other people don’t matter to me very much, and by “letting” a moron make me mad, I’m giving them power over me.  What does it matter to me if someone I don’t care about hates me?  Their opinion of me matters to exactly jack shit.  Or dog shit, which I find absolutely disgusting and puts me in a bad mood, but then I just clean it up and move on.  Because there will always be dog shit, and you can’t let it rule your life, mandating if you can play in a park or run through a field.
Forgiveness moves you away from playing the role of victim and releases the power and control the offending dog shit has had in your life.

Habit 5
Choose to be Happy

My son has done this:
“Do you want to be happy?” He yells.
“Yes…”
“Then be HAPPY!” And then he runs off laughing.  He has also been known to say that being happy is walking in nature.
And he’s on to something.  Intention to happiness is the active desire to be happy, it’s consciously choosing attitudes and behaviors that lead to happiness over unhappiness.  Going for a walk over laying in bed all day is a conscious choice to choose an endorphin reward over getting no reward.  Cleaning will get rid of that hated clutter and dirt and give you a sense of accomplishment, even if brief (I have four boys after all).  Make the bed first thing in the morning, and do it as an act of kindness to yourself.  By making your bed, you have done one thing that you know is fully completed, and it also shows you how to take care of yourself.  Challenge the negative thoughts.  For example: when someone pisses you off we often start building a case against that person (grudge) or begin to eat sweets to feel better, but that’s very damaging mentally and physically.
Instead, reprogram your beliefs; instead of candy making you “happy”, explain the truth that if it is true, then your happiness will only last as long as the candy does.  And then you’ll be back to zero.  Going for a walk might take more effort, but it will make you happy for a longer period of time.

Habit 6
Purpose.
In order to get more out of life we need to put more into it.  Or as Fight Club put it, “You decide your own level of involvement.” 
The most common type of leisure time is watching TV, which produces the lowest levels of happiness.
Active leisure, the type that helps a person to grow, does not come easily.  It requires effort and attention before it becomes enjoyable.  Once you are absorbed in a task that is important to you a state of “flow” is reached where you face challenges to your abilities.

Habit 7
Money doesn’t make you happy.
This one is the most difficult for me.  Money would provide a certain level of freedom that I don’t have, and it is the lack of money that has caused a lot of stress for me over the years.  Yet even then I still know that spending money won’t make me happy.
For some people, if they're feeling sad, shopping will make them happier because it restores some control in their lives. It's making the choice to buy or not to buy that helps people feel more in control.
The problem definitely comes when we go into debt buying things.  Then the Fight Club line “The things you own, end up owning you”, becomes readily apparent.  That couch that you bought might make you feel good for a while, but then the bill comes and you have to work to pay it off.  And then it gets something spilled on it.  Even things like vacations will have a fleeting effect if they put you into debt.
Instead, focus on experiences that make you happy; volunteering and talking to strangers are two ways that can actually make you feel better even if you don’t think they will.
Largely because they involve some mix in all of the above methods.
I don’t  often like interacting with people, but every morning I walk my children to school and talk about trivial things with the other parents, sometimes volunteering to watch their kids if they have to leave for work/other.  I get my social fill, people think I’m a nice guy, the day goes by a little more smoothly.

We are the architects of our own happiness. When our lives collapse with sadness or anger, it is because we did not build our hearts with enough patience and joy.


P.S. If you can, please buy a print from Cyril Rolando (AquaSixio).  He is a very talented artist and deserves attention.  Link in the button under the picture.





*mini rant about psychology.  I often encounter psychological research that seems to just want to supplant ideas that have been culminated in religious texts for years.  “Confession is good for the soul” is one such example.  Clergy and priests offer this for free, and its benefits are just as helpful as any $200/hr therapist

I'm over 3 thousand for this video!
WHY?
Oh, well.   I guess I found my niche?
Pump those numbers up if you want to see more of this crap...er...piss.

This last week was a bit of a doozy for our family.  My wife had her Grandmother pass away, and she needed our sole vehicle to drive out of country for the funeral.
Leaving me with four boys.
Alone.
So I did what any father and husband would do: I used my time to clean the basement, and the bedroom, and the bathroom.
Our basement has been a source of contention, with boxes still unpacked from when we first moved in, scattered throughout, piled haphazardly, blocking the path to the washer/dryer that is also under piles of laundry and various bric-a-brac.
But it is not this place that I fear I have overstepped my bounds.
You see, our bathroom is stuffed with lotions and tonics, brushes and pills (of both the legit and snake oil variety) to such a degree that I have a less than one foot cubed space for my shampoo, shaving accoutrements, and deodorant.
Three of my boys' personal grooming is relegated to a bath-time bucket, and suction cup tooth brushes.
My wifes' items fill three shelves, two drawers, and most of the medicine cabinet.
So I took EVERYTHING that hadn't been used in at least six months and put it into a giant Rubber Maid container to be sorted through in the near future (near being ASAP, since if it sits for too long I'm going to be tempted to just put it all into a trash bag this coming Thursday... Garbage Day).
My reasoning is that, well, most of the stuff has either not been used in a long time, has never been used, or we just flat out don't need it.  I don't know why we need ten different shampoos, since the only ones that get used are in a shower caddy.  I don't know why we have antibiotics from two years ago.  I don't know why we have thirty bottles of different nail polish when my wife doesn't paint her nails.  I didn't do this out of malice or anger (though definitely frustration), but because I want a nice, organized, and fresh start for her to come back to.
But I'm sure I went ahead and shot myself in the foot.  After reflection I've come to the conclusion that my enlightened attitude may be seen as a personal attack on her....and that you should never really touch a woman's beauty hoard (also something I find puzzling, since I think she's beautiful with or without the lotions and oils and de-oiling and exfoliate stuff.  I also think she's pretty).
So this may be my last post, ever. 
Honey, if you are reading this I am very, very sorry.  I would like to mention that while you were gone the children were mostly fed and dressed "okay", and the laundry was folded and put away (except for todays), and the basement is a lot cleaner and the grass was mowed and the dishes were done, and and and....

Good NIGHT EVERYBODY!

I am not a fan of Harry Potter books or movies.
That said, I like to try and grow out of my own realm.
Here I give you an attempt at a short story (unfinished) titled Witherbrand: Fire of the Walker

“Wake up.  It’s time to save your world.”
The dead muggle sat up slowly, a confused expression leaking around their eyes and down their face.  In life they would have squinted at the burning sunlight, squinted at the blowing dust, grimaced at the heat. In life they had been a shop owner in a nearby town. In death they were milky eyed and mostly unthinking Inferi, weakened by heat and light..
“Is this a good idear, Dry?” a female voice spoke.
“We find the necromancer, we get the bounty.  How is that not a good idea, Trianne?”  Dry, reached out an enchanted gloved hand, and helped the dead muggle to its feet.  It stood on shaky legs that barely supported it.  “Now, I know you don’t know what’s going on, so I’m going to fill you in a bit.  See, this here magician likes to kill people, and then use them as slave labor for all number of things.  Then they get tossed away like a tumble weed.  You know who did this to you?”  Dry tipped the dusty brown Stetson up from his face as he asked, and the sun revealed a creased face like land so parched it cracked.
There was a long pause as the trio stood waiting.  Trianne Deadfeather, dressed in a long black duster that gave off rivulets of mist, the residue of a chill spell that had been woven into the fabric, swayed from side to side in anticipation as she watched the muggle.  She nervously rubbed the handle of her whip, and the subtle rattle of spines responded, seeming to tighten and lengthen its coil.
“No need to be nervous, Trianne.  The magic that raised this fella is fading, and even if it were at full power, you know I could fire off a bunch of spells before it made a move.”  He spat into the dry ground, and that was the only sign that he hadn’t turned into a statue.
Eventually, the muggle shook its head.  No, it didn’t know who had originally raised it.  Trrianne puffed out her cheeks as she gave a slow sigh.  A sound caught her attention and she wandered away slightly to find where it came from.  It would take a long time to get any answers from this dead muggle and it left her feeling vulnerable.  They really should be less obvious, standing out in a wide expanse of dust and  dead scrub grass.
“Do you know where he went?” Dry continued his interrogation, asking slowly.  The dead muggle eventually shook its head “no” again, and then made a slow and clumsy swing at Dry.  “Your juices are all dried up, fella.  You couldn’t hurt  a puffskein right now.” Dry reached into the folds of his duster and pulled out what looked like a wooden revolver that had been intricately carved with runes and symbols. 
To a living muggle, were they privy to see or hear what was going on, what happened next might have sounded like an auctioneer caught in a bidding war between two rivals who didn’t speak the same language.  A litany of spells fired from Dry’s lips, and the wooden revolver snapped out each spell as though it were a real gun, though instead of dull lead it fired magical spells of energy.
The dead muggle began to melt, then turn to dust, and then blew away as the last of the spells fired into it.  When the muggle was gone, Dry blew out the smoking end of the revolver and put it away.
“Well, that was a dead end.  Pun greatly intended.”  He wandered over to Trianne who was still scanning the horizon for whatever had caught her attention.  “Find anything?”
His question was met with a fast rustling of dying grass from several directions.  From out of the grass leapt several Hodags, their horned and frog-like heads snapping in the air.  Normally, these dog sized beasts would have been nothing more than a minor annoyance, creatures that raided muggle farms for food.  Something had disturbed them and they had either become territorial, or made aggressive for darker reasons.
Trianne reacted quickly, her right hand unslinging the whip and going straight into a pig drovers crack, the whip circling above her like a large halo, and then into a forward crack.  Her spell was only a whisper, but lightning flashed and terrible thunder shook the air as several Hodags were shattered from existence.  “Baubillious” she whispered again and again until a dozen Hodags and their toady bodies had been decimated.
With a final flick the whip coiled itself and nestled back onto it’s clip.
“Now, what do you suppose that was all about?” she spat, her thin lips pressed into a grimace giving her normal cherubic face a more fish-like appearance.
“Guess we should head to where they came from to find out.” Dry answered, and began walking in the direction the Hodags had come from.

Trianne had spent ten years crafting the bullwhip.  It was composed of almost a thousand toothpick sized wands, all held together by various enchantments, Acromantula webbing and venom.  Each wand, crafted by her own hand from the slivers of all the wands from her classmates and professors, placed layer upon layer so that it looked like a cross between a porcupine and a black snakes scales, all gave it a rattling sound when it was being used.  Trianne found this noise very calming, like a hard rain before a storm, and she was tapping the whip now as Dry set up the camp for the night.
She had met Dry Witherbrand almost the same time she had completed the whip, and it seemed as though this event, the completion of the whip, had resulted in drawing the bounty hunters attention.  He had captured her attention almost immediately with his deadpan nature and disconcerting bad puns, as though he had been compelled by some hex to always make a joke even though he didn’t want to.
Her own life had been boring before that.  She had barely graduated from Ivermorny School and had returned to her families homestead outside of Texas when she met Dry.  It was there, after her completion of the whip, started before she went to Ivermorny and finished after she returned home, that Dry had crossed her path.
He had come to their home asking if the crops had been good, if the animals were okay, if there had been any odd changes in the land over the years.  He disguised this as a curiosity regarding the purchase of nearby land.  His own questions led Trianne to come to the conclusion that he was actually looking for someone.  He startled her with his blatant honesty and told her that yes, he was searching for a rogue wizard that had a price on his head.
Scourers.  They were the bounty hunters and mercenaries that had peppered the New World, had grown to power, become corrupt and then themselves were chased and hunted until they were all but history.  Dry had confessed to Trianne that most of the Scourers had gone into hiding so deep that they had forgotten their own heritage, but that his own family had merely disguised themselves so well that they had been overlooked.
The intrigue, the danger of it all was intoxicating, and she had been pulled into his life and continued on forevermore.
Brushing her red hair out of her face she plucked a single hair and wrapped it around her finger, her favorite way to think: The Hodags came from the North but the Inferi had come from the East.  Was there a magical location nearby that had drawn the necromancer?
The only major city in that direction was Chicago, and as far as Trianne knew, there was nothing magically interesting there.
The nearby lakes had an interesting history, though.  A lot of dead bodies in those lakes...

Riverdale is quiet popular these days, with it's adult themes and modern day issues (Archie Double Digest pun intended), but there was one film I saw as a teenager that made Riverdale seem like the sweet comic it's based on.
That film was called Hot Times, or A Hard Time For Archie. (link here)
This is basically a mainstream porno film that tried to tout itself as "American Graffiti...with sex!"
The main character (Archie) is a black haired Jewish kid with an afro, his friends name is Mughead, and he tries to sleep withe Bette and Veronica.
You know.  JUST like the comics.
What's really funny is that this movie is available to watch, unedited, on youtube.  That's right!  You can watch seventies twenty-somethings pretend to be teenagers having sex!

As a teenager I was able to  rent this movie from my local video store, no questions asked.  And I rented it a few times.  Many a few times.  For a teen boy pre-internet living in the prairies this was absolute gold for destroying my vision.
The times I wasn't able to rent it I knew that my buddy had rented it, and it was an unspoken piece of information between us, a shameful thing when I would go to the place on the rack where the VHS box stuffed with styrofoam stood and see that it had been rented, or vice versa.
Ahh, memories.

This movie is awful, and even the memories of it are pretty bad.  As a teen I realized that the dialogue was stilted, the film production was super low, the sound quality was atrocious, and had I been of the inclination to voice my opinion of the film at that time I'm sure it would have been a scathing indictment of the genre.
But...there was boobies. There are a few movies that are live action versions of the Riverdale Gang, like Return to Riverdale.  But this one film really appealed to my teen appetites.

The Handmaids Tale.  An excellent novel turned Hulu mini series.
“This is a horror story for atheists.”

I loved this book.  I haven’t seen the new series the book is based on, but the trailer already has me prickling for reasons other than it’s chilling narrative.  It was the anti-Trump comments and the insinuation that this is an anti-Trump series (not that I worry about anti-Trump leanings, I just loathe current political situations compared to books that weren’t talking about the same thing, and I’ll explain in this that the Handmaids Tale and the current Trump presidency are related, but not the way the more liberal thinkers…think.  By forcing a current  political narrative they are actually doing themselves a disservice).  It's not really anti-Trump since they started filming HMT before the elections.


When I read the novel over fifteen years ago I noticed a stark and possibly unintended motive of the author.  Atwood, while overtly  trying to criticize Christianity (and to a lesser effect fundamentalism) uses misapplied quotes from the Old Testament.   But the methods of the theocracy resembled the actions of another culture that I was teaching myself about. The fallacy of the premise falls in its belief that Christian religious belief will lead to the Handmaids future.  Yet Atwood has stripped all the Christianity OUT of the religion itself and left something resembling more of Sharia Law.  When in reality our current democratic rights and freedoms were planned out by religious people that felt that religious freedom and freedom from religion were fundamental to belief. This also paved the way for the moving away from slavery, sexism, and other beliefs that current western religious people hold to be inviolable, as well as the separation of Church and State, something every good atheist should be thankful for.


We can sum up the books actions like this: The story is told by Offred, a handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a society in which women of a lower caste are the concubines for the ruling caste and provide babies for the women. In this society, sexual intercourse is considered degrading to women so only the lower class women have it. Men and women are very strictly segregated, according to their gender as well as to their class.
(Sound like a certain ideology today?  Segregated swimming pools, victims of rape are accused of seducing men, etc)
The book takes its biblical references from Genesis, Job, and Enoch, which actually have their similarities with another religious tome. The Qur’an and Bible have over 50 people in common, typically in the same narratives. The Qur’an identifies the prophets Job, Enoch, Imram, and Ishmael, but they are never given a story. In the Bible, all these men are identified as righteous people but not prophets — except Ishmael who is not written of favorably.


Now, I want to correlate certain real life situations that have happened that happen in the beginning of the story, since the trailer of the tv series does imply a current political correlation:

In the novel, after a military coup (Rosie O'Donnell supporting Martial Law to take down Trump) and the assassination of the President (Madonna and other celebs calling for assassination), a group of right-wing fundamentalists takes over and establishes the Republic of Gilead, a theocratic state of absolute control…

The Right Wingers are already in power, sorry, and so far they have not paved the way for a theocracy (I say "so far" because while I don't believe it could happen, nothing is impossible), and with the dismantling of many government branches seems to be introducing LESS government, not more. Whereas the Bernie Sanders supporters encourage MORE government (meaning more LAW), censorship of language and ideas, as well as the issue of the Liberal support of radical Islam (See a nice Muslim Woman explain this here).  The trailer makes it seem like terrorism is the cause of the beginning of the story and the lead to the theocracy.  It would actually be more believable for the left to assassinate the current President under the belief that they are protecting a religious minority that has a set of laws that it feels are superior to the U.S. constitution.  This is evident in such situations as the Democrats in Montana reportedly voting against a bill that would ban the use of foreign law in state courts, claiming such legislation targets Muslims.  The ban was to prevent a two tiered legal system from developing such as is happening in Germany currently: If you get married to a 9 year old in an Islamic country, that marriage will be recognized by the German government even though it goes against its own pedophile laws.


Whether Atwood was aware of it at the time or not, Afghanistan was emulating the western world in its progression during the 1960’s and up into the 80’s.  What Atwood could not have known at the writing of her novel(1984 at the time of writing) was that a mere twelve years AFTER her warning of the Christian/Right Wing dystopia, Afghanistan became a theocracy with the Taliban seizing control and Sharia Law being put into place.
Even the most ardent Right Wing supporters do not support the basic tenants of Sharia, and you would think neither do the Left Wing.  One would think that a rational Westerner would balk at child brides, gays being thrown off of rooftops, death sentences for defecting from the ideology, regardless of being left or right wing.

Here is where I see the greatest failing of adapting the book into a tv show: One of the plot catalysts in the book is caused by a sterility virus severely reducing the population....
I want this point to be made clear; the fear that induced the rise of the republic was caused by existential fear or threat.  An existential fear is really an unanswered question that leaves the asker with anxiety such as “If we can’t breed, how will the human race survive?”
The construction is strange because "existential threat" means ‘threat to existence’, rather than ‘threat that exists’. And it’s the threat of ceasing to be that worries people now. I don't really understand why, since from an atheistic perspective you will never remember anything that happened in your life after death. Or to put it the way the internet mocked Michael Moore recently in his tweet of:
"Historians in the near future will mark today, March 28, 2017, as the day the extinction of human life on earth began, thanks 2 Donald Trump".
I don't know how historians are going to document or research this, unless historians are free from extinction....
That is another point I want you to remember.

This kind of thinking leads to a kind of form of marxism*, where the fear of loss of continuance leads to the severe curtailing of personal rights and liberties under the rubric of giving meaning to the meaningless in a circular logic of "we exist to continue our own existence". And if you do not support a particular theory of continued existing and the "Destiny of Humanity", then you are the enemy.

This existential "threat" that people keep talking about is really about forcing others to clamp down on resources by distribution controls (socialism/marxism) due to fear of...dying. Therefore, every resource and occupation MUST be in service to everyone else, at personal cost, for the perpetuation of the species.
And there is something inherently wrong with that kind of thinking, because it leads to a life of existing, and not to a life worth living.


Part of the problem with the premise of Handmaids Tale, and I'll spoil the ending for you, is the historians speaking at the end of the novel talk of the Gilead regime faltering and failing.  Yet the goals of the theocracy are the perpetuation of the race, something that might not have happened if the theocracy hadn’t turned women into breeding factories...(I don't condone or support this, but it is an outcome of the novel).


And that brings about the conclusion that was entirely missed by Atwood: that it isn’t religious fundamentalism that will bring about a theocracy such as hers portrayed in The Handmaids Tale; it is that in a purely biological way it is effective, and therefore the ends justify the means.


I’ve said before in other posts that evolution does not care about your rights and freedoms.  If it could be anthropomorphized, at best it could be summed up as : whatever yields offspring in a continuance of genetic material is “good”.  This is further exemplified in Richard Dawkins the Selfish Gene.

That means if chaining down women and raping them produced offspring, this would be genetically advantageous and “good” as opposed to extinction which would be “bad”.


The result is that it is very easy  to see how a religious theocracy can take hold of a country, as we are seeing in places like Sweden, England and France.  Western left wing culture is one of biological control, such as birth control and abortion and reproductive rights.

Dogmatically religious people breed more, less rule based religious people don’t; think of the Meaning of Life by Monty Python and the Protestants vs. the Catholics.  The Pro’s can use any number of contraceptives, the Catholics can’t.


As the historian in the novel says: our aim is "not to censure but to understand."


So what we have here is an easy calculation:

Existential fear leads to a thinly veiled theocracy that’s actually a Marxist ideology of the people committing to the “greater good”, with religion as a means of control and not the control itself.

Historians would not be around to “understand” anything if the actions of the theocracy hadn’t happened.  They are benefiting from the biological results of the theocracy.

My point?

If you ignore the narrative and pay attention to the details, the Handmaids Tale is more representative of the fall of Afghanistan under Sharia Law than of the religious fundamentalists of Western culture taking over America, and about the biological imperative to continue and that it will use any means necessary to accomplish this.


This show is about the Left taking over by using the Right.

But maybe that’s just me.
I’m open to discussing it politely.

*(I left it uncapitalized)

Sorry. I'm not supporting this (But I won't try to talk you out of it....it's part of my counter argument). Partly because I'm Canadian, but also because I don't believe in government funded arts. The whole idea of a funded artist came from...patrons; Rich people who kept artists as pets.
Freedom of expression is not under threat. No one is stopping you from putting brush to paint to paper, or hitting keystrokes.
“The idea that civil society is going to step in and take up all these shortfalls is far-fetched,” said Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of PEN, an organization of writers and editors that focuses on free expression.
That's the idea. No more running to your government. The responsibility falls on us. No more of this "Can't somebody else do it!"
Real art, real culture are going to HAVE to go back to their roots; the people.
Real artists have day jobs.
Volunteering is the only way to actually improve your community.

And for some perspective, if you factor that I have read 2 books a day over the span of 20 years the amount comes to over 14,000, ranging from every topic, field, and study (yes from libraries. I'll touch on that), of those books I have never read the following Pulitzer Prize winners (The NEH has supported the creation of 16 Pulitzer Prize-winning books and Ken Burns’s iconic documentary The Civil War):
Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787
Dumas Malone, Jefferson and His Time (Little, Brown, 1968-75).
R.W.B. Lewis, Edith Wharton: A Biography
The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (Oxford University Press, 1978).
Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860
Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1923-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1979).
Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, The Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford University Press, 1992).
Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life (Oxford University Press, 1994). (Though I have read biographies of her)

I doubt many of you have even read any of those listed, and if you really think about it it isn't a lot to show over fifty years even though I stopped at 94.

The N.E.A. helped get the fledgling Sundance Film Festival started (Founded by Robert Redford, an "actor" that I don't care for. He plays the same smug "I know better than you" character in everything he's ever done). Sundance is just another big corporation like everything else, making a buck off of the filmmaker. As the site says, 6 people can’t watch 10,000 films. The $500,000 “prize” is a crap shoot, and I’m sure they make more than they award. I wouldn't be surprised if Redford ends up in front of a committee in DC. Sundance Film Festival is and has been responsible for stealing millions of dollars for over 25 years from filmmakers from across the world for 'submission fees'.
Of the list of Sundance winners I liked one movie (a movie I saw as a child. The Brave Little Toaster. I watched it as an adult recently and I loathed it). In Canada we have CBC and Bravo who play independent movies and critically acclaimed movies late at night, often this was my Sundance channel before having the Sundance Channel. I've seen a plethora of these films and loved some, disliked others, wouldn't have paid for most of them, and I don't feel they've contributed to the arts at all (unless it's to show how NOT to make a movie)

Sesame Street MADE 121 million in profit last year. Now, of course, Big Bird and the gang have flown the coop to HBO in their own controversial maneuver—leaving the arts and humanities without as compelling a mascot for votes to rally behind as Trump and the G.O.P. stand over the federal budget, axes ready.
Seems like Big Bird had the right idea, though. And even though HBO will be making the show for it's paid network....it will be "donating" those shows to PBS six months after the original airing. That actually CUTS PBS's cost of procuring the show.

With regard to Libraries, I do love and support libraries. However, more than anything I have found over the years that while I do get value from it personally, I feel they are underutilized or spread out in ways that they don't need to be. If you want the library to stay relevant, you have to make it a better resource than Google, and explain why.
I think it would be a move in the right direction to start the inclusion of book sales and coffee houses IN libraries. Perhaps a "Chapters" nook near the checkout. Why? Well, demand for certain books is going to be higher than others (such as "Fast Reads" with a checkout time of three days or so), and some patrons might be willing to shell out the money for the book they want, or after reading a book decide they want a copy for their own or to buy someone else. THAT money can be funneled BACK into the library itself with lease fees and other incentives. And everyone likes to have some kind of beverage while they read (have the "common" book area and the "antique" book area separate, of course). Other such incentives could be a tiered membership: pay a nominal yearly fee and never have to pay late fees. Or if you donate over a certain amount, you get "preferred" treatment, like bumped up a waiting list for a book. That might seem abhorrent to some of you, and that's fine. I liken it to the online games I play for free....the paying members totally dominate me and sometimes it seems really unfair, but then I remember that I'm only sacrificing my time for this, and not my wallet, and then I feel fine.

Government funding should not be seen as an absolute; life happens. A good organization should always be looking out for other sources of income in case they run out in one area, or want to actually grow in other areas.
Think of it as creating "Book Privilege", where a system is made to perpetually benefit books.

But that's just me.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel, really.
The event promised, “Great vibes, good ratchet music, amazing food and swangin balls!”.
Atlanta men paid $175 to attend the event which had promises of women but NO WOMEN! 
Turns out it was a psychology experiment, and the designer (I'm tracking down the woman now) kept the money and is allegedly getting an "A".
Good for her on getting an easy grade.  I mean, getting horny men to shell out money is pretty easy.  It's why strip clubs exist and why porn is so prevalent on the interwebs.

It just goes to show; a female can simply ask a man and he is ready and willing.
Who has the power?