If a blind prophet shows up in a dystopian setting, should you buy him a drink? Yes, this is a highly rhetorical question and one you need not answer unless you feel the need to wax poetic.
Bullet Points:
** (left) The “Predator” franchise is one of my favorites in Sci-Fi.
** There are now five confirmed cases of New World screwworm in U.S. cattle, the first since this flesh-eating parasite was eradicated in the 1960s. With one case identified outside the original cluster in Texas, policymakers and livestock producers are concerned about spread.
** Most middle and high school English teachers said they assigned at least one full book during the 2024–2025 school year. But full books still play a limited role in many classrooms: 9% of teachers assigned none at all, and about two-thirds assigned just 1 to 4 books. Reading for pleasure is becoming a lost art among the young.
** Podcaster Larry Reid calls for a “mass exodus” of Black Americans to Africa in response to the Karmelo Anthony verdict. “I want you to begin to think about this America and the white people problem that we have,” Reid said. “As a collective, let’s drain this place of its benefits and make our mass exodus and go home and build.” I think that’s a splendid plan. There are some old third-world-flagged hulks we can load onto and sail them “home.” Would Big Mike and Barack consent to be their queen and queen?
** His Beatitude Theophilos III, Patriarch of Jerusalem, awarded President Trump as Great Bearer of the Cross of the Order of Cross-Bearers of the Holy Sepulcher. I’m not quite sure what that means, but it sounds impressive.
** There is a name for the fellow who almost won. We call him the loser.
** British Minister of Defense John Healey, one of the Prime Minister’s most loyal allies, has resigned from government because Sir Keir Starmer and the Treasury have been “unable and unwilling” to fund the Armed Forces. In other UK news, the Royal Navy’s Astute-class submarines are undetectable at sea — because they’re not at sea.
** Mexico beat South Africa 2-0 to win the opening game of the World Cup. Doesn’t that sound racist to you?
** ADMIN – There won’t be a blog on Saturday, but VM will return on Flag Day!
Does the fact that you are old also mean that you’re wise and that people should listen to you, Boron? This is also a completely rhetorical question and can be answered (or not). It accompanies art, which may lend it a false gravitas.
Sci-Fi Reality
Classic science fiction warned us of a future where an overbearing, hyper-rational state would crush individual freedom through mechanical efficiency. It warned us of cold, clinical corporate control. It did not warn us that the state would willingly abdicate its monopoly in order to allow radicalism, tribalism, and historical revisionism to reclaim the public square. “Progressive” elites in their high-rise offices haven’t just detached themselves from the working class; they have weaponized the chaos on the streets to consolidate their own ideological power.
When a society’s leadership class abandons common sense in favor of progressive optics, the result is never a utopian awakening. The result is a multi-tiered feudal state where the rich buy security, the radicalized control the streets, and the ordinary citizen is left to navigate the ruins. As voters watch the political theater unfold across our collapsing urban centers, they are not just choosing the next mayor. They are deciding whether to accept permanent residency in the neon slums of the twenty-first century. The dark fiction of 1982 has become the lived reality of today, and the American public is finally realizing that, unlike a movie theater, they cannot simply walk out.
Identify the Aircraft
1
2 & 3
4
5
End
Identify the Aircraft
1 – MiG-3
2 – Vultee-Stinson Model 74 Vigilant
3 – German Fieseler Fi 156 Storch in British service
4 – Bell Airacobra I AH574 landing on the HMS Pretoria Castle
5 – Piaggio P.32
Outstanding!
(1) I think it’s a MiG-3.
(2) In front, a Storch. Or one of the Storches-by-another-name.
(3) Maybe a Stinson Vigilant?
(4) Airabonita?
(5) I have honestly never seen this thing, before. It looks like what you’d
get if a B-25 got drunk and fucked a Breuget Deux-Ponts.
*
– Kle.
You’re on the right track.
I never thought of it that way 😜
Mass exodus – IS there a Go fund me for this? Asking for a friend
They have to be one-way tickets.
Sending blacks back to Africa has been a hope for more than 200 years. Sadly it will never happen.
No, it won’t. And if they’re US citizens, they’re free to come and go.
Speaking as a former African, unfortunately, it won’t work. That’s not because those of African descent would look out of place, but because Africans in general are heartily sick and tired of American liberals coming over there and telling them that Americans understand more about their problems than Africans do, and Americans have solutions that will solve all those difficulties – provided they can pay for the solutions, of course. I won’t repeat words used to describe the Peace Corps and other American volunteer groups in central and west Africa. They’re largely unprintable.
.
Of course, if Americans want to emigrate to Africa notwithstanding those difficulties, then I wish them the best of luck. This former African is going to stay right where his naturalized, now-all-American rear end is planted!
BRM – You, Elon, and Charlize Theron are my favorite Africans.
X2 to all comments on this subject…shows the hubris of American blacks commenting from their cheap comfy seats. (Incidentally, they are not ‘African-Americans any more than I’m a PolishHungarianGermanScotsIrishEnglishCech-American.)
Btw, the Czech part…dad used to tell us…with a gein on his face…we might actually have some Russian and not Czech because “they never knew where the borders were back then, always moving depending on who was fighting who and winning”. Heh.
My grandfather’s birth certificate says he was born in Kiev, Poland.
See! Dad was right! …and I can still see the grin on dad’s face every time he’d say that, and mom would tell him to stop scaring us kids, then turn to me (specifically, musta been that ‘middle child’ naïveté) and explain we were NOT Russian. Then my cousin got ahold of his great grandparents birth certs…Russian on one side, he was led to believe he was motly Polish. Said his whole life was now a lie. 🤣
“His whole life was now a lie”
My grandfather was Polish. Maybe Russo-Polish.
But a couple years before he died, my dad told me the family secret.
We are probably not Bonderenkas.
My Grandma divorced Bonderenka and married Chachick.
Everyone in the family thinks my dad was a product of an illicit affair before the divorce and remarriage.
My dad was temperamentally and physically more like his younger brother Roand (my middle name) than his older brothers.
My cousins also think this is true, I just discovered at Roland’s widow’s recent funeral.
Ancestry says Roland’s dad was born in Poland, but at the moment I don’t know where in Poland.
I’ll just continue to live the lie. :)
^^^This, so much this!
Reading
We had to read one set novel and three out of a list of ten for English every semester through high school. So 8 books a year minimum.
I usually read all ten unless I couldn’t get it from the library.
Plus text books for all the other subjects.
I read a LOT of books when I was in school, but times have changed.
Our junior high Eng-rich teacher badgered us all into some kinda paperback book buying program for which she may or may not have been getting a commission and if she was, and however much they paid her, it wasn’t nearly enough for the good it did me. I have a few of those, now yellowed and fragile with age, tucked away still yet. Mary Jane Chamberlain (R.I.P.) was a saint.
There was a Bookmobile (rolling library) where I grew up. It was a state-funded lending library, and I read through it. If your life is miserable enough, you can live your young life through books. Today the young have the Internet and Tic-Tok, which is not the same thing.
I, also, read a metric poop-ton of books when I was in school. Of course those were books I chose to read.
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Never liked the ‘approved’ American Classics like “Moby Dick” or “The Scarlet Letter” or “The Great Gatsby” or the like. Did I like early American literature? Sure, love me some Edgar Allen Poe. Or for turn of the century, some HP Lovecraft. But English teachers didn’t appreciate those authors, nor Heinlein, Asimov (well, I understand Asimov now as the guy was a conceited ass-hat,) or other great sci-fi authors, nor Mitchner and authors like him. And they really didn’t like Cornelius Ryan or the US Army ‘Green Books’ (history of WWII.
In colonial times 14 year olds were to translate from Greek to Latin and Latin to English.
But they didn’t have to master trig.
😄
But many mastered the art of surveying. Which… uses math, including trig and geometry.
Has anybody besides me saved some of their school books?
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I have my Physics, Chemistry, and several others. They make good reference books.
I kept my original, and dad’s 1945, Boy Scout Handbooks, and a few others…all other books, like my college physics and MrsPaulM’s veterinarian tomes, went the ‘give away’ route the move because, usually, they stay in a box in the garage and we didn’t feel like carting them around.
I have my first trig/calculus book, and I think some chemistry texts and a physics text are way out of date.
Identify the Aircraft:
1. Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3
2. Fieseler Fi 156 Storch
3. Stinson L-1 Vigilant
4. Bell P-39 Airacobra
Very good, Surly.
One should always give the gibberings of the elderly the respect they are due.
BTW: that’s not a bad likeness – too much hair. Many of the elderly these days (particularly those with a V on their ID/driver’s license, even the REMFs) keep it shorn/close-cropped.
One problem I see – the audience all have(has?) ears with which they do not hear/process and eyes with which they do not see; so just an idiot gibbering to the seven winds.
I do hope that’s a bottle of Blue Spot on the table.
***
AB and I went out to dinner with her young friend who’s long married to a very rich man twenty years my junior; it’s not just the elderly that gibber.
I do ‘thinking out loud’ to myself…working out the next build project in the open air…luckily no neighbors in close proximity. Guess that means I ‘gibber’…and often. Upside is I don’t argue with myself when gibbering, which I consider a win. 🤣
New World [Order] ScrewWorm: DrMrsPaulM, former Senior Pharmacovigilence DVM for [unnamed Big Pharma] who handled ‘outbreaks’ as part of her wheelhouse, had one word: ‘Mexico’ …hence the first case being in Texas. She then added this is no different than TB in cattle, or heck, Measles and Small Pox coming back around, carried here from (as the MSM calls them) ‘undocumented asylum seekers’. Curious how this happens with all manner of CBP border Ag checks…dried fish and fruits… bad. But hey, infected cattle…c’mon in! Mexico is in America’s basement, one of those dank dark places that we need to keep the door shut and locked to keep us safe from what haunts the place.
The answer is simple: Stop importing cattle from 3rd world countries [you morons]! Yet…the Democrats have been systematically destroying cattle ranching and farming in this country to force America’s reliance on ‘other countries’ that the Unicorn Utopian Left pines over. Same demented mentality with that quoted clown saying all blacks should move “back” to Africa…have at it pal, good riddance (btw, only those blacks, and some whites to be fair, who are the type screaming at an obvious murder conviction, not the ones who made something of themselves.)
***
School Reading: Kids will protest, tell you they are reading A LOT…on their devices, about all manner of things (some…ahem… half of us never learned about until we were 30). We had The World Book and Encyclopedia Britannica for our information, they have the world in their palm. But nothing substitutes for sitting in a comfy chair reading a proper book, even better for your eyes and neck muscles.
***
“Great Bearer of the Cross of the Order of Cross-Bearers of the Holy Sepulcher”…need to wrap the text on that award plaque….Geez, that’s one heckuva title bestowed on ‘The Best President Since Washington’.
Considering how many on the left have no real moral compunctions at all, why aren’t we assuming the eco-terrorists are intentionally infecting the cows for their version of the greater good. I saw an article where the outbreak of meat allergy ticks, is being orchestrated. This would track with that.
Thought the same, especially when Google/Gates released ‘safe’ mosquitoes into the wild with that side fully supported effort without so much as a single cognitive thiught this might be yet another Covid Bravo Sierra. Nah, designed mosquitoes are not going to do anything, they’re safe. how the hay does anyone ontend those weren’t manipulated like the Bat Virus, fully designed to continue the culling they started on 2019 ( for them of course). Watch, ‘new’ mosquitoe borne viruses will emerge and the sheeple will never make the correlation as to the root cause.
Listeing to age.
—
“When I was a young lad of 14, my father was so ignorant that I could barely stand to have the old man around. By the time I reached 21, I was amazed at how much he had learned in seven years”.–Mark Twain.
—
The above quote varies depending on the source. I’m doing my best from memory of watching Hal Holbrook.
—
Yes, I’m old, and I drink (wine and beer). I know things. More importantly, I know how things used to be. The only person younger than me who is genuinely interested in what I know is our five year old grandson. Thus endeth the lesson.
Same here, RHT. One of ours is 9, and his little brother is 5.
So much to think about from today’s post, LL.
1. The aircraft in the Predator artwork looks like a futuristic evolution of an A-10.
2. Some of the youngun’s still read. Evidence, my grand-daughter who read early, launched into the Warrior Cats franchise, and now at 15 reads voraciously.
3. Re: podcaster Larry Reid’s idea: DLTDHYITAOTWO.
4. Re: sci-fi reality… I don’t think the American urban public is realizing anything. Have they changed their voting habits? F the lot of them….
5. Paul M, the reason blacks wish to be called African-Americans is to keep us from calling them worse things. When one gets stung enough times by yellowjackets, one learns to be wary of them.
Re: #5…Solid point.
We do have ‘wasp spray’ available to eradicate the hive swarm running amok…start with Welfare/EBT/Medicade etc…give them a sampling of what they wouldn’t get over there that they get ‘free’ here.
Heard Musk just became the first trillionaire due to Space X valuation…waiting for The Communist Bernie and his cohort Sandy ‘Yorktown Heights’ Cortez to come out and revise their (formerly millionaire) ‘billionaire’s shouldn’t have that kind of money and should pay their fair share’ statement to now include trillionaires. ‘CommieEnvy’ of those who actually produce things, instead of leaching off the system like them, is more prevalent than ever before on that side of the chasm.
Musk owns stock options so he pays no taxes until he exercises them and cashes out. Smart.
Good on him…that’ll send the envious-ones into full Scanners mode having no clue that the inexplicably complicated tax code nebula their heroes created affords him that loophole.
bernie is the counter argument to “with age comes wisdom.”
💯
I read something on Breitbart where 4,000 or so SpaceX employees had a million dollar windfall.
.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2026/06/12/spacex-ipo-creates-4000-millionaires-including-cafeteria-workers/
The rising tide floated all boats, including those of cafeteria workers who are also millionaires.
Predator-
saw it in the cinema, back when they were worthy.
have seen it 6; 7; 8 times since.
Always as if the first time (similar to Alien).
Never seen the follow ons, but per your comment, I shall. Starting Saturday.
Along those lines-
Has anyone yet seen- War Machine?
Juan
War machine isn’t bad – but it’s very low budget, and it shows.
I liked it. It was fun.
The cartoons Larry’s linked about getting through SpecOps training reminded me of War Machine.
On a different note, I really enjoyed Spider-Noir.
Your article “Sci-Fi Reality” is well-written and paints the societal picture well.
Plus, I am a sucker for Apt Alliteration: “cold, clinical corporate control.”
Thanks, David – Blade Runner and other Sci-Fi hellscapes are remarkably prescient.
Soylent Green is people!
Back to Africa? Fat chance.
Fat shaming?
“If a blind prophet shows up in a dystopian setting, should you buy him a drink?” Sounds a bit like the premise to the movie The Book Of Eli. Great movie by the way and the answer is yes i would…
Good catch! 👍
Ed B is on a roll today!
Glad you’re doing well.
Thanks for the comments.
I saw none of the Spider movies nd assumed Noir is yet another, but I shall check it out.
Juan
My immediate thought as well, Denzel was great, and loved the premise: the One Book that held ‘the power’ that everyone wanted after the fall of civilization…what a concept.
♥❤
Good plot, solid acting.
the black africans that i’ve run into have all asked me the same question: what is wrong with the blacks over here? and they don’t want them over there either. i’m conflicted b/c several i served with i’d take a bullet for, one i almost did. that said, i think we could take up a collection and send “the 13%” home pretty easily. their “war” threats have normally laid back folks i know saying “okay, let’s do this.” they and i are quite tired of their bs. same for libs…..the clock for buying assault weapons is drawing down in va. jokes on them, i bought five since the law passed, and still a week left. sadly, the one i want won’t be available until after the “law goes into effect? affect? john and sam adams were smugglers i hear. hmmmm.
Most of the black Africans I know, and I’ve been friends with some over the years, are people I have the highest respect for. The inner-city Americans- not so much.