Wednesday, February 12, 2025

the eating of the sacred cows: FEMA

Headline:

Trump Says FEMA Should Be Terminated
President Donald Trump accused the agency of mismanaging disaster relief funds, disobeying orders, and favoring Democratic-led areas.

President Donald Trump has called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to be abolished, saying that states should manage disaster response independently for greater efficiency and cost savings.

He accused FEMA of mismanaging disaster relief funds, disobeying orders, and favoring Democratic-led areas.

“FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry,” Trump said in a Feb. 11 post on social media, adding that the agency under the previous administration was a “disaster” and “should be terminated.”

The agency has faced mounting scrutiny from Republicans over its handling of recent disasters, including hurricanes Helene and Milton, which struck the southeast United States in 2024.

FEMA has also been accused of political bias, with a former worker alleging that during relief efforts, staff were directed to avoid homes displaying Trump signs. Additionally, the agency has been criticized for allocating hundreds of millions of dollars to fund plane tickets for illegal immigrants, further fueling Republican concerns over its priorities and effectiveness.

Trump said on Jan. 24 that he might reform or abolish the agency over alleged inefficiencies, bias, and misuse of funds.

He then signed an executive order establishing a council to carry out a “full-scale review” of FEMA. The order alleged that the agency had “lost mission focus, diverting limited staff and resources to support missions beyond its scope and authority, spending well over a billion dollars to welcome illegal aliens.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said on Feb. 10 that the U.S. government should “get rid” of the agency “the way it exists today.” The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) oversees FEMA. Noem said on Feb. 9 that disaster relief funding should remain in place but that local officials, not FEMA, should control deployment for a faster and more efficient response.

“We still need the resources and the funds and the finances to go to people that have these types of disasters, like Hurricane Helene and the fires in California,” Noem told CNN on Feb. 9. “But you need to let the local officials make the decisions on how that is deployed so it can be deployed much quicker.”

FEMA did not respond by publication time to a request for comment on Trump’s call for the agency to be abolished.

A recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that some FEMA employees lacked proper certification or authorization to oversee disaster-related contracts, violating FEMA and DHS policies.

A review of 15 contracts across three disasters (floods in Kentucky, Hurricane Ian, and wildfires in Maui) revealed that eight had oversight issues, including unqualified FEMA housing specialists assessing contractor performance.

Sounds as if FEMA has to go. And state/local authorities need to update their disaster plans. This was true for DC during 9/11, and true for New Orleans during Katrina.


images


What's the punctuation error, and how do you correct it?

WHOM, dammit

the irony (and the lack of a period... in two senses)

Where does the hyphen go and why?

I'm sure the woke "historians" will see him more kindly. And again: hyphen...?

unh... unh...

Alas, yes. (Fix the English.)

two definite punctuation problems and arguably one stylistic problem

I'm sure everyone was too busy checking out her tits and ridiculously supersized ass. That woman is well past her sell-by date. Why are we still hearing about her? Because people are morons.


PJW on current events

Predatory migrants target schoolkids in the UK.

Germany: "moral panic over the rise of the far right."

Paris: open-borders conference goes wrong.


John Stossel has insights

Javier Milei, one year in. (big success, but a ways to go)


today's sad discovery

I should retitle this post something like, "What I Suck At, Volume 3654." Today, I started doing an extremely basic kettlebell move that is the precursor to more complicated moves; it's called the rack position. You'd think this was a simple and straightforward move, but it's not, and it's broken down into several parts. By the end of the short set I did, uncoordinated as I am, I still didn't feel comfortable doing it. So I might work on it a little more this weekend. Next week, I'm adding heavy-club inside circles to the heavy-club portion of my workout, so I should probably practice those, too.

For those who are wondering: I'm starting with wussy weights: I have a 6-kg and a 10-kg heavy club, and I'm beginning with the 6-kg club. Baby weight for a guy with no muscle in his arms. The inside circle feels to me like the first "real" heavy club move. In Week 1, I did the basic swing, alternating my upper hands when doing sets. In Week 2, I added the heavy-club front press, which is good for the core, the arms, and the shoulders.

I can say, despite the lack of visible progress, that I can feel my deltoids strengthening since I began dumbbell lateral raises (5-kg dumbbells) in Week 1. I'm doing only two sets of ten reps for the moment; I'll eventually max out at three sets of fifteen reps while using 10-kg dumbbells. That might happen sometime next year if I keep this up. Is such weight enough to bulk me out (the pros call it hypertrophy when you gain muscle mass)? Probably not. But I'm not looking to get hugely muscular; what I really care about is functional strength and flexibility as I age, i.e., the continued ability to do stuff without all of the old-man grunting and groaning and exaggerated breathing. Among the "stuff" I want to be able to do are things like sitting down and getting up off the floor without using my arms—the kind of elementary movement we lose as we get older and neglect exercise.

Once I buy some video equipment, I'll see about filming and displaying parts of my workout, so expect some amusing content in the coming months.


some Decoy Voice

Is Colbert finished? I doubt it. But he has a point about lefties playing the same old game:

Trump shows Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass how to manage:




for one reason only

I'm slapping up this Kentucky Ballistics video for one reason: you get to see Scott doing doughnuts with a limousine. Scott's channel is great for furthering the stereotype of American tastelessness and obnoxiousness. I love it. Oh, and you can learn about firearms and armor.




scary graphic

Seen in a comment at ROK Drop:


Tuesday, February 11, 2025

images

I see at least three mistakes. Fix.

Where's the spacing mistake? And what about hyphens? Any other mistakes?

Insert a comma. And a period.

Wikipedia has more here but seems to classify this as a protest, not an insurrection.

The essential difference between MAGA and neocons... which Trump is erasing with his Gaza plan.

Ol' Joan didn't deserve to be jailed. Now, she can go back to keeling the pot.

only a matter of time

Mitch needs to be trephined. Thank God for JD Vance.

Leftie Time Magazine confirms six houses and half a billion dollars.

It's everywhere!


news smorgasbord

The View knows the ship is sinking.

Tony, the China-based salesman. He's "based" about America, but wouldn't dare utter a peep against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Fact check: what climate activists got wrong re: ocean currents.

Pete Hegseth wants to eliminate all of Hamas.

Amala: on Piers Morgan, a testy exchange re: DEI mismanagement and wildfires.

Using disaster to push an agenda: fires = punishment for neglecting Gaza. What?

Ryan Kinel: L.A. burns, and woke Hollywood tears itself apart.

Mel Gibson reacts to Trump's request that Gibson be an ambassador.

"Trump is gunning for Starmer."

Amala: he's underpaid because of racism. (not bad money management?)

The M1 Abrams versus North Korean forces.

"Rename it the Gulf of America; we ain't drillin'... in the Gulf of Mexico—we're drillin' in the Gulf of America."—proposed workaround for Biden's drilling ban before (finally!) leaving office.

Tracetainment: Pelosi will not be attending Trump's inauguration.

Trump signs the EO to create DOGE.

Sowell: how to shut down an accusation from a liberal.

The hypocrisy of preemptive pardons.


bank information: updated

I thought it'd be a simple data-entry matter to update my bank information, but the process took around 15 minutes and involved me signing one or two forms—once manually, with an actual pen, and once electronically, with a stylus on a touch screen.  I swear, Koreans love la paperasse and bureaucracy. Well, inconvenience aside, all's well that ends well, and my bank information has been updated.


busy little Heaver

I'm pretty sure the cosmically massive and burly Michael Heaver would not appreciate being called "busy little Heaver," so I'm hoping his mild-mannered personality won't give way to any murderous tendencies he might harbor.

Labour is in trouble. (February 3)

Italy takes on the EU.


Kevin's bacon

As a way of torturing myself, I cooked up a huge batch of boeuf bourguignon last night—just the stewy part, not any carbs or faux carbs (e.g., my keto gnocchi). When I sampled what I'd made, I thought it tasted great... but something was missing. Then it came to me: bacon! I'd completely forgotten to buy and add any bacon. Luckily, that oversight isn't a big tragedy; I'll buy a hunk of pancetta from downstairs, fry it up, then let the already-tender boeuf bourguignon cook for another hour to get the flavors to marry. In that way, the awesomeness will be complete. And this time, it'll be all for me, Precious.


the welcome email

HiKorea to the rescue! I got a confirmation email this morning with the following title:

KEVIN KIM님께서 신청하신 등록사항변경신고(여권변경)이(가) 접수되었습니다.(Your application Notification of change in registration information has been successfully received.)

Whew. That was a lot of labor, figuring out how to submit the new passport online. Now, if only I could figure out the Coupang thing. There's the typical "forgot your password?" option, but I'm a little cautious about that because I don't want Coupang to erase my main password; the password I'm focused on is some sort of secondary password that's only seven characters long. I'm stumped as to what password this could be.

More news later as it happens. I shouldn't do anything about shipping and Customs, anyway, until I have firmer confirmation from Immigration that my new passport number and other information have been recorded.

You'd think that the Customs people and the HiKorea Immigration website would share the same unified database in these Orwellian times. Somehow, bureaucracy has managed the paradox of remaining both intrusive and inconvenient despite being right at hand.


saucy and fabuloso



"Are trailers ruining movies?"




Monday, February 10, 2025

images

heh

They never understand the implications of what they say.


This joke's been around for years.

I'm not sure this symbolism is saying what the artist thinks it's saying.

if you're into numerology

and that repair-needing fleet of fire trucks in L.A., too (or let the voters get what they deserve)

little bitch, really... and stop altering/editing old movies and cartoons for delicate tastes

Carlin talked about ever-lengthening PC euphemisms.
Oh, and what's Jordan King's big, dangling grammar error? And do you see other errors? I do.

Dan Price: you need a comma and a hyphen, but where?
Jacob Brunton: all good.


I think I'm becoming a believer

[No idea why this is in boldface. I thought the problem had gone away. On my edit screen, and every time I hit "preview," the post is in normal font. Dafuck?]

Have you ever heard of the "McGill Big Three" for conditioning your core? I'm tempted to exaggerate and say that this is all the Pilates you'll ever need, but I'm pretty sure some Pilates asshole reading my blog will immediately slap me down. So I'll be more sober: in Week 2 of my ten-week physical-training project, I finally started doing the McGill Big Three. I can't do the exercises that well yet, but after having clumsily attempted them, I can already see the trendline should I continue to do the Big Three faithfully.

So who is Professor Stuart McGill, and what is/are the McGill Big Three? Briefly, Stuart McGill is a Canadian exercise physiotherapist and kinesiologist (movement specialist) who is an expert on spinal mechanics, maybe the expert on the subject. I don't know whether he even subscribes to Pilates, but much of what he does is help people with back problems. Over the course of his research and the helping of thousands of patients, he developed what is now called the McGill Big Three, i.e., three exercises designed to minimize back pain and strengthen the core, which is basically the complex of muscles surrounding the torso—back, sides, and front, not including the pecs (front) or the lats (back) but definitely including the glutes. All three of these exercises emphasize the importance of core bracing, and they are normally presented in this order:

1. Modified Curl-up
2. Side Plank
3. Bird Dog

Here's a video explaining the McGill Big Three by Dr. Aaron Horschig of the goofily named YouTube channel Squat University. Don't be fooled by the silly name, though: this guy's got great advice when it comes to physical therapy and weightlifting form, and he always comes back to the McGill Big Three, for which he has a lot of videos. I'm old enough, now, to have back pain fairly frequently and to worry about hurting myself during exercise, so I've been following Dr. Horschig's advice as I slowly progress in my own humble training (baby steps for now). While it's true that doing the Big Three with a frozen shoulder is somewhat painful, it's also true when Horschig says, in the linked video, that if you do the Big Three sequence properly, you ought to work up a sweat. I did. And not just because I'm a naturally sweaty guy, either. Upshot: Horschig and McGill have me convinced, and the McGill Big Three is now a part of my ever-increasing exercise routine (I add one exercise per category per week*). It's safe to say that I've quickly become a believer. What I need to do now is video myself doing these exercises so I can analyze my form and correct what I'm doing wrong in order not to form and reinforce any bad habits. It's the same as when you're learning a language. Drop the bad habits early. Come to think of it, that's good advice for life in general.

__________

*By "category," I mean the general types of activities I'm engaging in when I exercise: bodyweight calisthenics, dumbbells, elastic bands, heavy clubs, animal flow, kettlebells, and staircase training. For most of these categories, except for the stairs, I'm adding one new exercise per week for a total of five or six per week. Animal flow isn't going very well because of my left shoulder, but I'm hoping that, once the shoulder gets better and is able to hold more weight, the flow will improve. I'm also curious about rope flow, which is another trendy thing these days. I used to do my own improv version of rope flow without even knowing what it was back when I was young: once you start pretending to be a martial artist and twirling two sticks, the next logical step is to see whether you can persuade a long rope to move in roughly the same way. I may want to get back into that, but we'll see. I've got a lot of activities that I'm doing already. But rope flow is a more tranquil, almost taiqi version of what many boxers do when they skip rope. And like primal flow and animal flow, once you learn the basic moves, you're free to make millions of permutations and combinations.


victory and obstacles

[More unwanted boldface. I don't get it.]

The trip out to the Customs office was easy enough; I ended up taking the subway, then doing the kilometer-long walk in the biting cold (without a hat or scarf) to the government building, which looked like a typical Temple of Bureaucracy. As soon as all the random staffers saw my foreign face, they knew right away that I was there to get a new PCC number, so they all helpfully pointed the way. I had to skip over one building and go up to the second floor. Once there, I filled out a single form and was allowed to retain my old PCC number, which I didn't think was possible when you switched passports (my new passport has a totally different, alphanumeric passport number, unlike the previous passport, whose number was nothing but numerals). None of this cost anything. Oh, and despite my attempts at being friendly, none of the ladies in that office had a sense of humor.

I decided to go off track and celebrate at the nearest Burger King, so I mapped a walking route to it. But about two-thirds of the way to Burger King, I saw a Shake Shack. Shake Shack has been in Korea for a couple years now, so it's no longer clogged with long lines of curious people eager for the Newest American Thing. It was 11:30 a.m., the burger joint had a huge interior, and things looked mostly empty. Of course, the moment I walked in, twenty other people decided to walk in with me. Fuckers. 

Realizing I had no idea how things worked at a Shake Shack (the last one I'd been in was at Incheon Airport in 2018), I first stared at a wall-sized menu to figure out what I wanted, then looked around for a muin (lit. "no-person") kiosk to type the order in. A staffer behind the counter pointed vaguely behind me in that late-teens/early-twenties way of sullen youth who don't want to be there; I turned and saw the two (just two?) kiosks and lined up to use the right-hand one. I was the second or third person in line. 

I got a burger, a hot dog(!), a Coke... and forgot about the damn fries because I ordered à la carte instead of by "set" (the Korean equivalent of a value meal is the "set menu"). It took a second to figure out which touch-screen button was for us old-school troglodytes paying by debit card, but I finally found the button. The next layer of confusion was the stupid customer-call system that this branch used: there was a stack of vibrating beepers next to each kiosk, and I was too dim to figure out what to do with them. Did I have to grab a beeper and just take it, or did I need to sync the beeper up with my order number so that it would vibrate when my order was ready? I shrugged and just grabbed a beeper, which glowed with a "47" on its screen but was otherwise inert.

As it turned out, when my order was ready, a staffer leaned over the counter and waved at me. The beeper, which I'd done nothing with, never went off, probably because I'd failed to activate/sync it to my order number. My burger and dog were both fairly simple but good; I'd ordered cheese and bacon with the burger, and while that was some of the better fast-food bacon I've had in Korea, it still wasn't crisp. I recall Joe McPherson rolling his eyes and telling me that crispy bacon was nearly impossible to find at Korean restaurants. And there are weird Americans who like their bacon a little limp. What the hell is wrong with you people?

I cabbed back to my place and immediately tried to update my Coupang information with my new passport number, but I'd forgotten there was a password that I needed in order to edit profile data. In looking at the password field, I saw seven asterisks, but I don't recall ever making a seven-character password. So I'm stymied. Since my new PCC number is my old PCC number, I might still be able to order international products with no problem, but it's also possible that I need to tie the PCC number to my new passport number. So I skipped away from Coupang to work on registering my new passport number with Immigration. It's not going so well. There are at least two sites that offer passport-update services: visa.go.kr and HiKorea (hikorea.go.kr). The first site didn't work for me: I inputted my information correctly, but the site told me that my records didn't exist. So I went over to HiKorea, which is the site I'd used last year to get a date to visit Immigration. It seems that February is all booked up, but the site helpfully offered an e-application option, which I was able to fill out about 99% of the way. I'm stuck now, though, because the last part of the application involved uploading, and I'm getting a Spinning Wheel of Death that's been going on for hours...

Update! I switched from navigating the site in English to navigating it in Korean, and guess what: I uploaded the images of my old and new passports just fine. All I needed to do was switch to the Korean version. See, this is one of the reasons why life as a foreigner in Korea is often nonlinear: as my boss and Charles both remarked, each in his own way, the country doesn't really consider foreigners' needs, so if you're an expat, and you get stuck in an eternal loop while navigating the poorly designed English section of a Korean website, well, tough titty. You should know Korean (which is normally my attitude)! I can slog my way through the Korean version of the HiKorea site, but it's slow going, so I prefer to do it in English. Well, all it took, as of a few minutes ago (i.e., 6:30 p.m.), was to switch over to the Korean-language side of the site for everything to go smoothly. This is what desperation pushed me to do. And that's a lesson for language learners: sometimes, the best way to learn the target language s to put yourself in situations where you're forced to use it. That's certainly how I got fluent in French. I've been lazier about Korean.

Anyway, I've now submitted my information to Immigration. I don't know what kind of confirmation I'll be getting, but the site says it can take 3-4 business days to process an application. I won't update any mailing/shipping information until I get some kind of confirmation from La Migra, as buddy Tom likes to call it.

I forgot that I need to visit the bank tomorrow and give them my new passport information. Yet another thing to do. The paperwork never ends.

Two ways you don't want to be found dead: (1) with your underwear around your ankles and porn plainly visible on your phone, and (2) slumped over a pile of fucking paperwork. God, if I die either of those ways, I'll kill myself.

(And what if you die while whacking off to paperwork?)


you feeling any reMorse?

I swear, my blog titles are turning into McCrareyisms.

Even woke celebrities hate Newsom and his policies.

Pam Bondi flips the script on Adam Schiff.

Dem leadership crisis.

Attempts on Trump's life (pre-inauguration).

TikTok: did Trump manage to do the impossible?

Bill Maher: busted.

"All of the dirty laundry is beginning to air out": Biden wasn't leading the country.

Matt Morse is not a fan of Vivek. I am.

"Woke activist" hijacks national prayer service.

Tulsi goes nuclear on the Deep State.


a mass of Tracetainment

Pam Bondi receives great news.

Kamala's insult (non-invitation) to JD Vance.

John Fetterman "did the unthinkable."

Jim Jordan's announcement: Trump v2.0 is not playing around.

Tom Homan re: what's to be expected.

Jail time for Fauci and Cheney? (probably not—they got pardons)


agenda

I'll be taking a bus around 10:30 or 11:00 this morning to the Korean Customs Office on Eonju Street (Eonju-ro, 언주로, near Gangnam District Office Station) to see about getting a new PCC (personal [Customs] clearance code) number for my new passport so I can order international stuff from iHerb and Coupang. When I'm home again and benumbered, I'll go online and book an appointment with Immigration for later this month (hopefully sooner rather than later; this is to register the new passport).

After I get the PCC and Immigration squared away, I'll book a flight to the States, probably in late March when the weather is a bit warmer. With the new PCC number in hand, I'll also update all of my mailing/shipping information on various websites so that shipping proceeds smoothly. We'll find out soon enough how smooth the shipping will be.

On an unrelated note, my blanket arrived yesterday, ordered from Coupang (local order, so no passport trouble). I can now turn my ondol (floor heat) down to almost nothing and sleep comfortably. And when I'm not in bed, I've got foot-warmers for the feeties.


little scamps

This is too cute (credit: John from Daejeon):

Moral: some kids learn to lie very early in life. Almost as if lying were hard-wired. But is the instinct to be a vegetarian hard-wired or merely a function of the "animals are cute" phase?


no country can




vowel? consonant? semivowel?




tar-baby strategy




sorry, no new keto bread

Sorry, no keto bread. Another promise broken. I'm too engrossed in rereading The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. I just got through the second novel in the trilogy, The Illearth War. There's something very comforting about revisiting these books right now—more comforting than keto bread, apparently. I should probably write a review of the trilogy when I finish it, then plunge into The Second Chronicles.

Donaldson was my first foray into high-fantasy literature, years before I ever embarked upon JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books get a lot of shit for copying the Tolkien template, but the resemblance is only superficial. Yes, there's a Ringbearer burdened by his ring; yes, the devil-figure (Lord Foul the Despiser instead of Sauron) lives off to the east, and much of the adventure is about trekking across great distances to get to the devil-figure. Yes, Donaldson's Stonedownors and Woodhelvinnin are rough equivalents of dwarves and elves, but their stonelore and woodlore are markedly different, as is the nature of the central hero: in Donaldson's universe, Thomas Covenant is an antihero who is hard to like until the very end when he finally finds himself.

Donaldson's books are also much more about interior struggle although they do also feature Tolkien-style land wars (which Donaldson actually depicts rather bloodily instead of just skipping to the aftermath). One of the central issues in the first two trilogies is that of fate versus freedom, one of my favorite philosophical issues. Donaldson's stories don't offer simple answers to these questions, and that's another difference between him and Tolkien: whereas Tolkien is a bit more classically good-versus-evil in his stories,* Donaldson's stories have murkier moralities and a lot more paradoxes.

I suddenly got curious to see whether GRR Martin (of A Song of Ice and Fire fame) was at all influenced by Donaldson since Martin also hates black-and-white morality tales, and while the evidence of influence is unclear, the two writers, both of whom live in New Mexico, are apparently friends, with Martin even suggesting that anyone who's never heard of Stephen R. Donaldson "has been living on Neptune since 1978." I'd say that's about right. Donaldson, part of a wave of post-Tolkien fantasy writers, was huge back in the day. His fairly recent Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant tetralogy was a huge disappointment to me, but the third book in that tetralogy does begin with a magnificent passage about what it means to go from deific status back to being a mere, enfleshed human being (Linden Avery, out of a combination of love and desperate need, calls Covenant back from his role as Timewarden into his mortal form). That passage may be my favorite in the whole Final Chronicles.

Rereading the first trilogy has been refreshing, almost giving me a "life has come full circle" kind of feeling. I went fairly quickly through Lord Foul's Bane, the very first book, then just finished The Illearth War, and I'm now starting The Power That Preserves, which finishes out the first trilogy. Donaldson has talked about how he has no hope his trilogies will ever be put to film; Thomas Covenant is a leper from a time when leprosy had no cure (it's curable these days); Covenant also enters an alternate universe, the universe of the Land, where he is healed by a magic mud called hurtloam. With the return/regeneration of his nerves, he loses control and rapes a teenaged girl who had tried to befriend him, thus starting a chain reaction that echoes throughout the rest of the trilogy. (Reading about rape as a junior-high student wasn't something I was prepared for, I admit. Coming back to that aspect of the story now makes for very different reading.) The rape alone, along with how the people of the Land generally tend to forgive Covenant or look past his sins because they hope he'll save their world, would be severely un-PC these days; I can't imagine gun-shy Hollywood greenlighting the Thomas Covenant series without performing Netflix-scale surgery on it, swapping sexes and races, and making it clear that Rape is Always and Forever a Bad and Unforgivable Thing. I also think that most of the non-fantasy-reading public would misunderstand Donaldson's repurposing and subversion of Tolkien's major tropes; more likely, the public would see Donaldson as an unoriginal copycat, as many (especially Tolkien lovers) did back in the day.

I've also heard college-professor criticisms of the songs and poems that appear throughout all three of these Chronicles. Many professors of literature think Donaldson has no ear whatsoever for poetry; in my most recent rereading, I actually wonder whether they have a point: Donaldson's verse is often clunky and unwieldy, and when it's metered, it tends to follow the most basic of schemes, like iambic tetrameter or pentameter. That said, even the poetry retains its charm, probably because I started reading Donaldson in junior high and have built up a sentimental connection. One poem that I quote often is a lament by Lord Mhoram, first recited or sung when his parents die: 

Death reaps the beauty of the world—
bundles old crops to hasten new.
Be still, heart:
hold peace.
Growing is better than decay:
I hear the blade which severs life from life.
Be still, peace:
hold heart.
Death is passing on—
the making way of life and time for life.
Hate dying and killing, not death.
Be still, heart:
make no expostulation.
Hold peace and grief
and be still.

I think this is one of Donaldson's better poems, and I've sometimes quoted it on the occasion of the deaths of loved ones among my friends and acquaintances. And tough, old Lord Mhoram is one of my favorite characters from the first Chronicles.

Another reason the first Chronicles might be unfilmable comes from The Illearth War. Covenant comes from "our" world, the "real" world, and time movies differently between our world and the world of the Land. A day in our world is a year in the Land, so when Covenant goes back to the Land after forty days in our world, forty years have passed in the Land—enough time for Covenant's daughter-by-rape, Elena, to be born, to mature, and to become the new High Lord of Revelstone. The Illearth War toys with the idea of incest: Elena has been raised by her increasingly insane yet forgiving mother Lena, the girl who was raped in the first novel, and by Triock, the man who in his youth had wanted to marry Lena and to kill Thomas Covenant (he refrained because of the Oath of Peace that every dweller in the Land swears). So as Elena tells Covenant, she sees Triock as her "true" father, making her, in her own mind, free to fall in love with Covenant, much to the horror and disgust of those who know the story of her brutalized family. How would a movie or TV series portray this aspect of the story? While Elena and Covenant never have sex, they come dangerously close to it a few times, with Covenant finally settling into a father-daughter relationship by making a duplicitous "bargain" in his own mind, one he doesn't tell Elena about: he decides he'll help her on her quest to gain the Seventh Ward of ancient High Lord Kevin Landwaster's lore because that will leave him off the hook, i.e., no longer responsible for saving the world. There's something thematically similar to The Last Temptation of Christ (Nikos Kazantzakis) in this idea of shirking cosmic responsibility for the sake of a pedestrian existence, but I'd hesitate to label Thomas Covenant a Christ-figure. For most of the first trilogy, he's a despicably selfish coward, partially turned that way by the fact that he contracted leprosy, resulting in a divorce and his being shunned by his fellow townies, who hope he never has any reason to come into town.

Anyway, it's especially the first Chronicles that are queasy in this way. The Second Chronicles and the Final Chronicles both move past the rape since the heroic Thomas Covenant who has come to love the Land and not dismiss it as a delusion is now front and center. The latter two Chronicles arguably focus more on another protagonist named Linden Avery, a doctor in the "real" word who gets pulled into adventures in the Land. She has an adopted son in the Final Chronicles, and rather tragically, Linden and her son are both killed in the real world (Covenant had been killed in the real world at the beginning of the Second Chronicles, stranding him forever in this alternate universe), and this is where you can see the influence of CS Lewis on Donaldson's writing. In the Narnia series by Lewis, the Pevensie kids have adventures in an alternate universe, and by the final book, all the kids are killed in a freak train crash, which flings them into heaven, where Lewis gives what I found to be one of the most touching modern descriptions of the afterlife ever put to paper. Time in the world of Narnia also moves more quickly than it does in the real world, and the mass tragedy of the Pevensie kids shares deep DNA with the tragedy of Linden Avery and her adopted son Jeremiah. So as much as Donaldson was influenced by JRR Tolkien, he was also heavily influenced by CS Lewis, among others.

And that's my lengthy explanation for not baking any keto bread this weekend.

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*Not to imply that Tolkien's morality-scheme is somehow simplistic: we've talked about the role of Gollum a few times on this blog, most recently here.


Sunday, February 09, 2025

images

I like his policies but didn't vote for anybody this time around.

This whole "fake Heil" campaign is so stupid.


Sniff-sniff, grope-grope...

I imagine Jill likes "taking care" of her decrepit man too much to be distracted by President Meatball.

Unfortunately, still true. And I prefer that to which.

Nazi: We need to talk.
Pet children: We need to talk.

Sure, I trust that. Especially these days.

And the other team's work has just begun. Thanks a lot, fucker.

I'd get this for my buddy Mike, but he's never been a Trump fan.


we had an earthquake

I forgot to mention that, very early on Friday, my phone screamed out an emergency-alert alarm, which prompted me to activate the screen and see the following message:

In the province of Chungbuk (short for Chungcheong-bukdo, or North Chungcheong Province), 22 km northwest of Chungju city—a city I walk through every time I do the Four Rivers trail*—there was an "M4.2" earthquake (I assume the "M" means "magnitude" on the Richter scale... if anyone knows better, please leave a comment). There were falling objects, as well as a caution to be careful of aftershocks, and to refer to the National Disaster Safety Portal. [National Weather Service]

Frankly, up here in Seoul, I didn't feel anything when it happened. It's a good reminder, though, that even though the Korean peninsula sits just outside of the Ring of Fire, we do get occasional seismic activity. Not as frequently as Japan, though (more than 100 earthquakes a year), which is why most Japanese buildings are more earthquake-proof.

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*Chungju is the start of the Saejae portion of the trail; this section ends at the city of Sangju. From Sangju, if I'm doing the Four Rivers, I head along the Nakdong River to Busan. Otherwise, I can turn east along the Nakdong River trail to head straight to Andong.


how do you Dao? (more from Vince)

The new DNC leadership shows the Democrats have learned nothing:

Bill Maher versus Gavin Newsom re: wildfires.

"Just like for the last 20 years, CA's gonna run to the government and ask for money."

(1/15, before Trump) Biden freezes re: CA wildfire response.

Hegseth hearing highlights (alliterative!).

Pam Bondi hearing highlights (less alliterative).

Anti-Trump DC protest draws low attendance. Haw haw.

FBI shuts down its DEI office just before inauguration. (Is it really closed, though?)

Gavin Newsom the failure.

Once again: JD "I don't care" Vance versus... Margaret Brennan.

Dao's take on the Colombian president's cave-in to Trump.

CNN anchor resists the idea of Trump's high approval rating.

RFK Jr.'s contentious hearing.


rapid response




you are now beChappelled

China can't save Russia.

Trump has been busy.

New virus could ruin China's economy. (And we won't be fooled again.)

China: much weaker than you think.

Trump: Week One. This whole volleying back and forth with executive orders is stupid since executive orders can be easily nullified by the next president. Unless Congress somehow makes these orders into actual laws.

Xinjiang and the glorious truth!

Trump shakeups, expensive eggs, Chinese AI, and more!





open wide




Ave, Herr Gilleland!

Dr. Mike Gilleland quotes from this old text (and I learn a few new words):

Virtue! you runagate; what have you or your family to do with virtue? How do you distinguish between good and evil report? Where and how did you qualify as a moralist? Where did you get your right to talk about education? No really educated man would use such language about himself, but would rather blush to hear it from others; but people like you, who make stupid pretensions to the culture of which they are utterly destitute, succeed in disgusting everybody whenever they open their lips, but never in making the impression they desire.

Sounds to me like a reply to senile, corrupt Biden and the current left.