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Goredho

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Goredho

  1. Yeah, it seems sort of like a big rural/urban divide, but affluent resort areas with their relatively higher levels of wealth and education seem pretty normal (light blue). If it’s rural and doesn’t have anything attractive to outsiders who bring a cosmopolitan mindset, it’s likely a libertarian hellscape full of people who are convinced liberty’s end is nigh. Summit County vs Park County is that way, too.
  2. No, we’re pretty much at the border of Chaffee, Fremont and Custer counties. Each is within a 15 min drive of the house. Chaffee is sane, but has its share of zealots. The other two are a deep, angry shade of red.
  3. I think they want to eliminate the federal government outside of the military branches. At least that’s what they want here in red-assed MAGA monkey country. They are self-described libertarians who view the federal government as disconnectedly oppressive as the English monarchy was in 1776. They identify with Randy Weaver and Cliven Bundy at a primordial level. I can understand them feeling they don’t get a return on their tax dollars. But the hardship these rural farmers and ranchers experience is 95% because time marches on, the world changes, and the only thing they produce or own that anyone cares about anymore is their land. Yet they feel entitled to a life and livelihood that their grandpa had. If they ever got what they are fighting for, they’d be without disaster relief when wildfires burned through. The farmers and ranchers would lose their subsidies and most would fold. They’d survive, but not as farmers or ranchers. They would have to sell their farm or ranch and do something else. The schools their kids go to would further decay, and their kids would get dumber and even less competitive in a world that passed their parents by. And all of these people would be like:
  4. Whites against Trump: Uh... its 2023, shouldn't we be referring to any US citizen of African heritage as African Americans? Blacks against Trump fist bumping whites against trump: That's my n*****. Blacks for Trump: Fuck that. We're the African Americans, those blacks against Trump are n*****s. Whites for Trump: Goddamn it! I'd get cancelled for calling a n***** a n*****, but a n***** calling a n***** a n***** is just fine!! Furthermore, white's can't be n*****s, even if they're goddamned liberal communists. Only n*****s can be n*****s! What the hell is this country coming to?! Black's against Trump: What the fuck did you just say? Oh, hell nah, stay right here, Ima get my gat. Whites against Trump to Whites for Trump: You people are so repugnant. Black's for Trump to White's against Trump: What do you mean, "You People?!" White's for Trump to Black's for Trump: Ewe people! They mean Ewe People. Furries! They are all goddamn furries. Not n*****s, furries. They want to teach your unborn children to fuck goats. Goats:
  5. No, but we’ve apparently run out of guitar picks.
  6. Yeah, Blood Meridian has stylings and phrasing from the period it came from. It’s McCarthy’s prose, but he’s intentionally using such outdated phrases to help establish a setting and bring the reader into the period where it takes place. Compare some of McCarthy’s passages posted here from Blood Meridian to this description of the historical Judge Holden from Samuel Chamberlain’s autobiography that was penned sometime immediately prior to the civil war: The second in command, now left in charge of the camp, was a man of gigantic size called "Judge" Holden of Texas. Who or what he was no one knew but a cooler blooded villain never went unhung; he stood six feet six in his moccasins, had a large fleshy frame, a dull tallow colored face destitute of hair and all expression. His desires was blood and women, and terrible stories were circulated in camp of horrid crimes committed by him when bearing another name, in the Cherokee nation and Texas; and before we left Fronteras a little girl of ten years was found in the chapperal, foully violated and murdered. The mark of a huge hand on her little throat pointed him out as the ravisher as no other man had such a hand, but though all suspected, no one charged him with the crime. Holden was by far the best educated man in northern Mexico; he conversed with all in their own language, spoke in several Indian lingos, at a fandango would take the Harp or the Guitar from the hands of the musicians and charm all with his wonderful performance and out-waltz any poblana of the ball. He was “plum center” with a rifle or revolver, a daring horseman, acquainted with the nature of all the strange plants and their botanical names, great in geology and mineralogy, in short another Admirable Crichton, and with all an arrant coward. Not but that he possessed enough courage to fight Indians and Mexicans or anyone else where he had the advantage in strength, skill, and weapons. But where the combat would be equal, he would avoid it if possible. I hated him at first sight and he knew it, yet nothing could be more gentle and kind than his deportment towards me: He would often seek conversation with me and speak of Massachusetts and to my astonishment I found he knew more about Boston than I did. McCarthy really took the time to immerse himself into and understand what he was writing about. I grew up on the border in a town present in both No Country for Old Men and the Border Trilogy, and… he fucking nailed it. From the descriptions of the land and geography to the way locals not only talk but THINK. I couldn’t believe someone, even a generational talent of a writer like CM, could have captured the places those stories took place in and the people that inhabit them without living there their entire life.
  7. Yeah, too many periods in that paragraph
  8. Yep. I’ve read NCFOM, the Road, border trilogy/ATPH and Blood Meridian and would probably rank them in that order in terms of accessibility to new readers. You might do fine with Blood Meridian, but I’ve recommended it to people who didn’t finish it because it’s was too big a leap from the casual reading they were accustomed to.
  9. I will advise, you need to be prepared when reading Blood Meridian. It’s a challenge, and if you aren’t focused, you might give up before finishing. It’s not something to read at night before bed to relax. It requires active reading and consideration while you read. I would recommend No Country For Old Men or The Road first. They are more approachable, easier reads and will likely make it to where you can absorb CM’s prose in Blood Meridian with less effort.
  10. I have had this conversation with a conservative friend recently. He called and was lamenting the politicization of the justice department with the most recent Trump indictments. I just reminded him who started “Lock <my opponent’s pronoun> Up!”, told him to read the indictment and then call me back so we could continue the discussion about the indictment. Narrator: The conservative friend never did call back.
  11. I’d rather not have to choose between Mussolini or Methuselah. If presented with a choice of Mussolini vs Methuselah, I’ll choose Methuselah. Most of what Biden is being blamed for would have happened regardless of who was in office.
  12. No, you're safe. Your wife, on the other hand, is getting anal probed as we speak.
  13. Let’s send him to see the Judge in the outhouse.
  14. And this age of hyper-connectivity virtually ensures someone like Elon has a skewed perception of the world and their place in it. Just because there are a bunch of assholes that give your borderline fascist/racist/homophobic/transphobic tweets a heart doesn't mean you are brilliant and leading a societal reformation for the better. It just means you're connected to a lot of other assholes. Likewise, businesses rejecting your reimagined social media platform isn't evidence of a woke mob cancelling your great ideas. It's evidence that you are an asshole with shitty ideas that drive people away. You aren't Jesus. You are Fucktard Jesus. There's a big difference between those, and I hope their obliviousness to it proves to be a fatal flaw for people like Elon who are trying to roll back the human, civil and gender rights gains made over the last 75 years.
  15. Whenever I think of Blood Meridian, I always remember the following passage sentence. A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
  16. You know its bad when even the hamburglar thinks you are a crook.
  17. I saw a dad-populated classic rock cover band in Utah maybe 10 years ago that did a pretty damn good Led Zeppelin impersonation. The thing that killed it for me, though, was the lead singer. He sang great, but he wanted to be Robert Plant so bad that he insisted on dressing and gyrating like an in-his-youthful-prime Robert Plant, and I'm sorry, dad bod's don't work in this:
  18. Certainly one of mine, probably my favorite (until now) living author. I loved No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses, The Road & Blood Meridian most of all. I read The Road in the year after my father died, and the ending hit me fucking hard. I wept like a baby.
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