Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Race, Religion and Nation

Adam wrote an excellent piece on this here, and I urge you all to read it.

Adam is a proper Catholic (Sedevacantist) and has got this point about race and religion right.

Nevertheless, I, as a Venetian, have some more nuanced view (or extremist, take your pick).

My country, my nation, has been usurped and annexed first by the French under that megalomaniac Napoleon, and essentially dissolved by the French on 12 May 1797,

He then gave it to the Austrians, who then gave it to the Italians in 1805 (under Napoleon still) but then took it back by force in 1814 with help of the English. Between then and 1866 it went back to independence, then back to Austria, then back to France, then finally to the Italian Kingdom in 1866. Despite this, there has been an undercurrent of Venetian wish for return to independence that has never ended, and that will never end.

On April 25th 2016 I was in St. Mark’s Square during the traditional feast for the patron Saint of Venice. The mayor started out strong claiming Venetian nationality but then went full diversity and the crowd pretty much turned their backs on him with not a few shouts of “bastard” and “traitor”.

It was more than the Catholic religion that held those people together and that calls to me too. Despite my having never felt any loyalty to Italy as a country in general, I feel one towards Venice.

I grew up all over the world and when I lived in Cape Town for over a decade, I loved that city, and the sea, and when I would come back to it after a trip, driving in, seeing the Ocean below I always wondered “Is this my place?“ I liked it and I had chosen it, but it never felt truly mine, even though I liked it more than any place I had been before. It was much later, in 2004 or so when I worked in Aviano’s US base that on one of my forthrightly trips to London, when the plane took a turn over it and I saw the waterways and laguna not close to the city really, that instinctively, powerfully, seeing that desolate and water-logged land from the porthole-like window of the plane, I felt a pull in my chest and the words came into my mind unbidden:

That is my land.

I was shocked by it. I had been a nomad all my life and spent more time in various countries in Africa than I ever had in Europe. I had refused and avoided military service in Italy thanks to having lived overseas since a young age, but on principle I hated the idea of being enrolled in a military if not by my own choice.

I knew my grandfather was Venetian and I went there on holiday with him and my grandmother as a little boy of 2 and 3 years old, where they (both champion swimmers) taught me to swim.

I loved the sea, unlike my brother who was scared of it as a little boy.

But I barely had ever taught of Venice or being Venetian. But from that day, that visceral, instinctive pull made me aware of it.

Then in 2016 I lived in Venice for a year and there it become clear. This was, my city. And the Venetians, ornery critters that they are, are recognisably my people, both in the things I detest about them as well as those I like.

There is more to it than mere religion, though I agree it is the main glue that binds a people.

And there is more to it than race, for it has never prevented me from loving a person I cared about, although differences are undeniable, even if we happen to share a religion.

But there is a deeper sense yet, and it might be in the blood, genetics, or maybe there is even a link to the soil, because I can no more explain why a place I was not born or lived in for my entire life other than one year in 2016 should have ever had such a pull on me, in 2004, and when seen from the air that. And not the city or the glory of it, but the swamps and waterways unpopulated by anyone other than birds and fish.

So, yes, while religion binds us above all, so does race and even nation.

Venetians have always been a mixed breed of bastards, because we travelled and explored and traded with the whole world, and we partook of pretty women wherever we went and the Venetian girls were known throughout Europe for being if not easy to keep, certainly adventurous.

We are not phased by difference from us. I certainly have never been. But that is not to say we don’t recognise it.

We are a nation of explorers, and explorers try and do and see. And they learn to appreciate it all; even as we remain ourselves.

My children have a Venetian father and an English mother, and already, I can see, like me, (and their mother too) they are curious and explorers at heart, and like us, they too, are people of the sea.

And I will teach them their ancient history. And see they ignore the lies of the demons trying to conquer us all and make us all the same.

If you want a laugh…

It helps if you were part of the Sad Puppies or even better, Rabid Puppies event of several years ago, which basically thanks to Larry Correia, exposed the Hugos (writer’s award thing) for the giant inbred cesspool of pedophiles, incels and general human flotsam it is, and the actual awards being less prestigious than a squashed bottle-cap you might find in a gutter by the side of a highway.

Well, if you wondered how that is all going, you may want to head off to Larry’s site and read this long and schadenfreude filled post.

I like Larry and before I got banned so hard from twitter that I STILL can’t get on it,* we used to interact a little on it. And when the whole Portuguese are not white thing came around I sent him a helpful Dulux colour chart. he was always a good guy to interact with and his fisking posts are glorious to read.

Anyway, I had wandered off to his blog because I have a new book out tomorrow that is a pure indulgence.

I have had this idea for a little while and I punched this one out in a ridiculously short time, since it was really fun to write. I have not ever read a monsterhunter book, not because I don’t like Larry, but because the snippets I did read are not really to my taste, which is to take nothing away from Larry. A LOT of people like his books, so it’s clear it’s my tastes that are defective and certainly not his writing. But I was curious about the difference in style, since this latest book, which should be out tomorrow on the E-Store and by middle of next week on Amazon, is indeed a horror.

Kind of. One of the beta readers rightfully stated that this is not a Lovecraftian style horror, and he is quite correct. This is more of a “We have it all figured out and isn’t science grand and there is no such thing as monsters, all stuff of legends…” and then…

I mean it is a horror genere, but I also wrote it as realistically as possible if that situation actually happened to me (yes, the characters are Mary Sues of the worst order, as, I am told is Larry’s character in his monster hunter books). There are the usual Easter eggs for those in the know, but one aspect of my character is that in really serious situations, I invariably see a darkly humorous side.

You know that scene in the film 300 when the Spartans are hiding under their shields from all the arrows raining down on them and they start to laugh at the whole situation? I kind of get like that a little. So I wrote it like that and to me it’s also funny. To the beta readers too because I got a lot of positive feedback about both the realism and the humour. Oh… and the guns. They are described so that anyone who knows guns knows pretty much exactly what is being talked about in the book.

Anyway, the thinking about horror-style books, and Larry’s books and the parallels, though I am sure our styles are quite different, I wandered back over to his blog to have a read and I was not disappointed.

Now here’s hoping this kind of book does half as well as Larry’s do, because writing these types of books is actually not even work. It’s just raw fun to do for me too.

Subscribe or visit tomorrow and the next few days, as I will announce when it will be out. And if I manage I will even update the “books I wrote section”.

*As I still have the same device, I think they banned me at the IP level, or device address, or maybe hint of my magnetic aura, who knows, but that account is as unrecoverable as it’s possible to make it. If Elon knows about it he’s probably got it buried in a vault underground surrounded by caging spells.

The Flatulent Warnings of Macaroon

Mommy’s boy “president” Macron, has been doing what mommy’s boys in playgrounds where their mommy is also their teacher, have been doing forever: He’s been shooting his mouth of as if he was some big, tough, schoolyard manly, man.

The reality, of course is that the only reason no one has bitchslapped him and then flushed his head into the nearest urinal/toilet while giving him an atomic wedgie, is purely because Mommy (the USA) is looking over the playground. But the fact is that Mommy is tired, and has the principal looking over her shoulder (Israel) who has had quite enough of Emannule, or Emmy, as he is known to everyone in the playground, because mommy’s boy is a blusterful, emotional, effemminate little runt, that has only ever been seen kissing mommy, and holding hands with some of the immigrant boys that live near the school, but never an actual girl.

And at least one of the other teachers is not best pleased with Emmy. And hasn’t been for a long time, at least since 2018 when she complained about Emmy’s behaviour and choice of friends from outside the school grounds that he brought into the cafeteria that one time.

The problem is that there is this new exchange student in the school. From Moscow. He’s a patient kid. Took the bullying egged on by the principal of all people, in stride. Got pushed around a bit by a Ukrainian kid who just kept harassing the Russian boy for a long while. And always egged on by the principal of all people. Turns out the Principal hates Russians. A long story about some Russians holding their ground back in his grandfather’s day or something. Anyway, eventually the Russian kid had enough and kicked the shit out of the Ukrainian kid.

The Principal made it known he would do nothing if any of the kids in school were to teach that Russian kid a lesson, but the problem is that the Russian kid was picked up by his dad that day and his dad had bright blue eyes that looked very intense, like he’d been in wars, and he had. And he had a weird tattoo on one forearm that said Hypersonic and on the other that said NukeSubs in your Port. It’s odd tats to have, to be sure, but the thing is he glanced at the Principal of the school when he picked his kid up, and since then the principal has been very quiet about pretty much everything.

And now Emmy is shooting his mouth off, saying he can beat that Russian up, and he isn’t afraid of no Ivans, and blah, blah, blah.

In the meantime, the Russian kid is now going up to each of the bullies that stole his lunch money from him and some of the other smaller kids too and having a bit of a look. He goes up to them with the Ukrainian kid in tow, who just keeps his eyes down now and does whatever the Russia kid tells him. And now he’s looking at this big stupid girl called Moldova, who has been harassing the crap out of this little girl calle Trini Sinistra, and the Russian kid looks at Moldova, then he slaps the Ukrainian boy right in the mouth and says “Odessa. Move it”. And the Ukrainian kid you can see really doesn’t want to but is going to take off his watch, that is an Odessa brand apparently. And the Russian kid keeps looking at Moldova, daring her to do or say anything. And there are a few other kids now following the Russian kid, hoping that the Russian kid and this other big, quiet Chinese guy who seems to be his friend, might help them get their shit back from the Principal’s office, which got confiscated over the years.

And there is Emmy, shooting his mouth off, thinking his aging Mommy will protect him while she breast-feeds him like she does every night, even though he is 13.

Well, it’s not really going to work out so good for Emmy. Everyone can see it but him. Even Mommy can, most likely. But she’s getting on a bit and is tired, and she doesn’t have it in her anymore to fight all his battles. it’s all she can do to keep breastfeeding him and telling him he’s her special boy. And she falls asleep every night she starts to think maybe it will be fine, maybe she won’t wake up anymore. Problem is, at the rate he’s going, Emmy might get a bloody nose. Well, she’d think maybe it would even do him some good, but who’s she kidding, she knows, it won’t. She knows Emmy is gay, always has been. Born that way. He can’t help it, and he’ll never be one of the big boys he so desperately wants to belong to. Well maybe he’ll get lucky. Maybe one of the immigrant bigger kids will take him on and marry him after she goes for the long sleep. That’s her hope anyway.

Her only hope.

Short stories…

Posting the recent short story, Red Space, reminded me that I have fragments of stories and half-finished books all over the scattered contents of some 30-plus years of writing, I wonder if it might be worthwhile to place these in a collection, or to develop them into full-blown novellas… especially when contrasted against the non-fiction books I also would like to write.

If you have a preference let me know.

My short stories remain mostly unpublished and have a considerably wider range of concepts, styles and approach than what regular readers might be used to.

If I had to guess which writer I probably remind one most of, in the short stories, I would not know, although I am aware that there is a generic sense of either the numinous or the metaphysical or a slight… reverberation of things beyond the merely physical, that I am most aware was present in the writings of Philip K. Dick. Although our styles are quite different, I think, at heart, our underlying premises concerning the more rarefied aspects of our fiction writing, are probably closer than most would guess.

And from beyond the veil, I think Philip agrees with me.

On the reviews…

So the overwhelming majority of my readers would like me to review books more than anything else, which is fair enough, since I have read a lot of books. So in order to refine that I will add a further poll here below, but I will also begin to cover a concept of “guns review” even though it is not a popular request, because the people that do want that I think have a fairly specific requirement that interests me and I think I have decent answers for.

So… poll first:

Regarding book reviews, do you prefer I review fiction or non-fiction books?

View Results

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On the Gun “Reviews”

It was this comment that got me interested, as it clarified my own intent in asking too, and articulated it better than I had done (not hard to do since I had not articulated my intent at all), Tarcisius asked:

My first instinct was to choose any of the (3) entertainment mediums mentiond (Books, TV, Movies.)

But I gave it a moment’s thought and decided that the gun reviews and knowledge contained therein would be the most applicable to life once TSHTF. I have enough good Catholic sense to weed out the demonic garbage when it comes to entertainment. I do not, however, have any significant knowledge or experience to draw from when it comes to firearms; and it is that knowledge that I will need to protect my family and myself and my community in the days that are coming.

Strictly speaking then the question relates in a wider sense to guns in general and type and purpose of them, and only after can we get into specifics.

This is going to sound silly to some of you, but honestly, if you want to get a generic take on the overview of things, buy and read my pen and paper RPG called Surviving the Current Zombie Apocalypse. Yes it’s a game, yes you can use it to have fun, and yes it’s written in a humorous and somewhat over-the-top way, but there is a reason why militaries around the world actually game-out various real life scenarios. Bad role-players get it wrong and have spectacular losses (America), good role-players plan properly and kick the entire ass of the combined enemy forces (Russia).

You can get it in paper format off Amazon here, or you can buy the full colour PDF from me direct, and print it for cheaper, here. And yes there is also a starter module you can get that helps anyone new to pen and paper RPGs get the ball rolling by presenting you a ready made scenario with pre-created characters.

The point of the game is that it will get you thinking about your specific situation, which is ultimately what you need to identify before ANY gun review is even relevant to you other than by random chance.

In order of specifics, for me to provide a decent review of either:

1) A gun I own or owned or am familiar with through decent amount of use or testing, or,

2) My opinion on a particular calibre, weapon platform, etc based on my own life experiences (and not anything else)

I will need at a minimum for you to identify:

1. The legal restrictions/requirements of where you are and/or your specific circumstances. You don’t need to give me any self-identifying details, if you don’t want to, I don’t care, but if you live in say the UK, handguns are simply outlawed other than for very specific government mandated purposes and people, and shotguns or rifles are very difficult to come buy, very highly regulated and so on. The geography of pretty much the entire UK is also not exactly conducive to anyone being able to go Rambo-style and survive as some kind of desperado fugitive from the law (not that anyone is advocating anyone does this, by the way). In short, if you live in the UK and the SHTF really badly, you had best hope you are in a rural area, surrounded by like-minded people, who maybe also have the odd shotgun or two and who are willing to band together against say hordes of marauding bandits that might decide to attack a farmhouse or so.

The alternate reality, that the government armed forces decide to requisition your property/wife/life, is pretty grim, and there is not likely going to be any viable resistance to such an event, regardless of how legal/illegal/just/unjust it might be. The amount of deadly force the UK government can bring against its own citizens and the geography and digitisation of that nation are such that, as the Borg would put it, “resistance is futile”. Your best bet in such an environment is to stick to permitted weaponry like pellet guns or maybe crossbows if you are in an area that would permit you to use them for hunting purposes in order to supplement your diet in an emergency. So you see that a gun review about the merits of the colt 1911 for self-defence purposes would have zero value for a person in such a position.

If on the other hand, you’re Hillbilly Joe and your cousin Billy-Bob-Jean the third is actually the redneck that took out that F35 the US air-force “lost” with a shoulder fired .50 calibre Barrett, well… your situation in a SHTF situation would be completely different, but the review of the Colt 1911 might be just as meaningless to you, as you might be dealing with raiders that come at you from over a click away with heir own .50 cals.

So that explains the why I would need the legal constraints.

2. Geographical constraints. If you life in flatland desert where you can see someone approaching from 10km away, it makes a difference when compared to a guy living in the Amazonian underbrush with visibility limited to a few metres. So your current or at least intended geographical situation needs to be understood. Again, I don’t care to know your position on Earth, but a simple descriptor of the situation is helpful. Is it mostly flat-land with low-rolling hills, like most of the UK, mountain terrain with deep snow-drifts and inaccessible areas, mediterranean forest, sparse beach on the ocean-front on a smallish island nation, or what?

At a minimum then those two things need to be provided for me to give a bespoke reply to anyone interested in it.

If you also have a specific weapon you are either thinking of or want my take on in general, then that alone can suffice. In this case my assumption will be that you already have identified the other two aspects and just want my opinion on the specific weapon you are interested in.

All that said, keep in mind the old adage that opinions are like assholes: Everyone has one, and most times they are full of shit.

My opinions are valid and valuable in general terms and I am not prone to exaggerating or hyping my “theoretical” knowledge above my actual practical knowledge, but most of all my opinions re valuable to me first and foremost because of my personal experience in life with various weapons and concepts. My history with guns is fairly well-known and I did work for a number of years in armed close protection, and grew up in a very experienced family of hunters and have hunted since I was a child. I worked various undercover jobs, alongside police, military and private people, and have trained both armed and unarmed police in close quarter combat as well as private clients. I have worked for people that are known world-wide in this respect and have no need to breach my NDAs and so on to “prove” how cool or tough or clever I am. I’m just saying that my opinions are based on a lot of experience that most normal people do not have and as such are probably worthwhile. But if you’re some special ops guy with a bunch of kills to your name and you think my preferred weapons etc suck, then by all means ignore my advice and follow your own. People are different and have different skills, different mentalities and different body sizes. What works for me might be awful for a guy that is 5’6″ and 140lbs.

Now that I got all those corollaries out of the way, feel free to post a comment or ping me an email on any guns you want a review on. I will basically only do gun reviews on specific guns or concepts related to them when asked, so you can make it as personal to you as you want.

That’s all for now.

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