Monday, July 04, 2011

Book Reports:

Read over the last couple of days:
  • If you liked Them, by Jon Ronson, (which is totally worth it for the description of sneaking into Bohemian Grove with Alex Jones) then you'll want to read his latest: The Psychopath Test, a look at crazy people and the crazymaking industry. You know, the one that has expanded the DSM from a thickish booklet in the fifties to the NYC-phone-book it is now, chock full of all the new ways to go nuts invented in the last fifty years.

  • I also read Matt Bracken's latest, Castigo Cay. And when I say "read", I mean straight through at one sitting. It's that kind of a page turner. Sort of OhJohnRingoNo's Ghost meets J. Neil Schulmann's Alongside Night. The pacing rockets along like a blacked out 38' Cigarette boat headed for the Florida coast at 3 AM. I read it until I couldn't stay awake any longer, and then woke up and finished it before sunrise.

11 comments:

Fiftycal said...

Please don't ever reference Alex Jones. He is a nut case supreme. I live in Austin and have been seeing his antics for years. The last whacko "plot" he came up with was the U.S. was about to launch a "preemptive strike" on "dissidents" because ICE was having it's border patrol trucks painted at the Bastrop Federal prison. Which, oddly enough, has a paint shop, being a minimum security prison.

I would not believe Jones if he said the sun rose in the east without at least 2 verifiable backups.

Mark Alger said...

Oh, Them.

I thought you mean Them.

Source of one of the best lines of '50s atomic monster movies. "THEM!"

M

(Ya hadda been there.)

Anonymous said...

Happy 4th Tam. Thank you for this blog. You and the other like minded bloggers show me that all is not lost. Ya'll show me that there are still good, decent people in the world who are as mad about the way this country is being ruined as I am, and want to change it back to what it should be. Thank you for the information and entertainment you provide. Your blog is often the high point of my day. May the Good Lord keep and bless you and yours.

Rabbit said...

The more I read and hear about Gunwalker, the more convinced I become that Matt Bracken is a prophet.

Castigo Cay is on order.

Lanius said...

Psychopathic traits are greatly advantageous... and psychopaths are more free than other men, therefore, they can accomplish more, they have more latitude.

People constrained by consciences have a harder time doing stuff.

Lanius said...

@Tam

If you wanna know the real deal about the witch-tests,

read sociopathworld.com or maybe notablepath.blogspot.com

First one's a blog of a harmless sociopath, the second one of a quite erudite sadistic psychopath. They both hold rather scathing opinions of the professionals and are not shy about sharing them..

Tam said...

I have, thanks.

Lanius, my mind contains yours. Do you think you could have an original thought I have not already pondered?

;)

Lanius said...


Lanius, my mind contains yours. Do you think you could have an original thought I have not already pondered?

No fair. You've had at least eighteen more years during which you've been pondering things.

Anyway, if your mind contains mine, how come you're not an engineer, or a software developer, but rather a writer and a former store clerk?

I'm fairly sure that by the time I'm your age I'll be earning money doing one or the other...

So, do you know why it's impossible to build a caseless gun that'd have caseless bullets consisting of a bullet glued to a block of propellant and where the propellant would be fired without a primer?

Primers are expensive, cases are expensive too, and methinks changing chamber seals every 1000 shots would be cheaper. If chassepots seals lasted 200 shots, I bet modern ones could last much longer. Materials science today is far ahead of 1870...

Tam said...

Lanius,

My mind contains Tyrone the Crackhead's, too, and you don't see me rockin' down in the alley behind the Kwik-E-Mart. ;)

If climbing on the credential merry-go-round is your ticket to happiness, then go for it.

Me? I'm happy to be pretty much retired and living off my investments for almost ten years now, working as and how I want to for a bit of extra walking-around money. If you're going to retire in your early thirties, you'd better get cracking. :)

Lanius said...


If climbing on the credential merry-go-round is your ticket to happiness, then go for it.

It's not a credential merry go round in engineering or the sciences, but the absolute basics needed. And I'll hopefully be jumping out next year and then it'll be learning by doing.

What use is living off your investments, if you're not doing anything except living and well.. snarking with them? No creative urges beyond blogs and articles? ...and.. no children?
You're a fairly impressive specimen, both good looking and intelligent, and I can't understand why you choose to dump the genes that helped make you what you are down the toilet.
Too much Rand taint?

No offence meant, I'm just frankly puzzled by it.

Lanius said...


If climbing on the credential merry-go-round is your ticket to happiness, then go for it.


I think my ticket to happiness is doing creative things, such as programming or engineering.

Also, sorry about the comments in the above posted. Insensitive, they are. Feel free to delete it.