Saturday, March 31, 2018

From the Yarns of Black Vulmea

Five Entries for the Robert E. Howard Lexicon

Before lending out Black Vulmea’s Vengeance last year I did note which words needed to be addressed but failed to lift quotes for them, Crom forgive me.

Note from Lynn:  Internet to the rescue!  Robert E. Howard's work is available at Gutenberg Australia (link gets you to 'H' authors, scroll down a bit and you'll find Howard).

Winsome

"Truth, there are few women who could endure such exertions, sleep all night on the bare sand of a cavern floor and still look elegant and winsome." 

Attractive or appealing in appearance or manner, in an innocent or childlike way. From the old English wynn, circa 900.

Plaint

"All was silent save for the occasional raucous plaint of some jungle bird."
The Isle of Pirate's Doom.

In British law a charge or wrongdoing. In literature the act of mourning or lament, possibly even in song.

From the Middle English: from Old French plainte, feminine past participle of plaindre ‘complain’, or from Old French plaint, from Latin planctus ‘beating of the breast’.


Certes
"But, certes, any man could look on that accursed shrine and instinctively feel that doom overshadowed the place."
The Isle of Pirate's Doom.

Certainly or assuredly, to be sure

From the Middle English: from Old French, based on Latin certus ‘settled, sure’.


Gorge

"My gorge rose against running and hiding from them, but I saw naught else to do."
The Isle of Pirate's Doom.

Gullet or throat, related to gulch, gizzard and guzzle and the root for the knightly neck guard or gorget worn into modern times.

From the Middle English (as a verb): from Old French gorger, from gorge ‘throat’, based on Latin gurges ‘whirlpool’. The noun originally meant ‘throat’ and is from Old French gorge; gorge (sense 1 of the noun) dates from the mid-18th century.

Alarums

"At the first alarum, she had attacked Gower and he had met her with his blade held in a posture for defense rather than attack."
The Isle of Pirate's Doom.

Shouts of alarm or an archaic term for alarm of an unknown origin.

(c) 2018 James LaFond

Sunday, March 25, 2018

Lockhart's Top LaFonds Volume 17

James appeared on the Fatherland Podcast, discussing child-rearing, boxing and other arts for self-defense, urban blight and gentrification and much more.

Conan of the suburbs is performing nighttime reconnaissance.

The Checkered Demon liked at least one Yankee.

Divorce and video games, two ways to harm boys.

What's so bad about the Culinary Institute of America, James?  Do you have something against fine dining?

It's a good idea to learn about pre-Columbian people, because we are now the pre-Columbians.

Proof that the Drunken Agon is more than a legend, it really happened!

Interesting discussion on Ancient Greece between James and Teutonic Fist.

Global warming and wild dogs.

Not surprising, James admires a man nicknamed "White Devil."

Jeremy Bentham bids farewell to Professor Speak&Spell.

Advice on canine opponents, with a follow up from LaMano, and another from Carbon Mike.

Boxing analysis:  Holmes vs Butterbean

Advice in light of muggings and sexual assaults in a small town.

Instructions on the proper handling of an innocent and inquisitive youth who enters your home uninvited.

Surfing the wave of suburban colonization, cane in hand.

Learn about James' dark vision of the demasculinized future through his fiction.

Buy James' books through Amazonpdf books through his main website, become a Patron, or donate straight to the man through Paypal, because you love James and his work.

Friday, March 23, 2018

Education or Assimilation

The topic of home schooling has been coming up a lot around here.  James covered it in a short interview with a traveling YouTube journalist and on the Fatherland Podcast.  My kids are just under school age and we have done some pre-schooling work and will begin a formal home schooling program this autumn.

Home schooling seems like the domain of women, yet here are all these masculine men in the LaFondiverse showing interest in it, as well as some hesitation.  James mentioned that he was prohibited by the State of Maryland from home schooling, and that his wife preferred to send their boys to public school.  Most everyone has heard about the importance of a school setting for socialization.  Many of us have been out of school for decades and wouldn't know where to begin to educate a small child.

The following are my thoughts on some of the challenges you will face, and things to think about for patriarchs who wish to home school their children.

State Law


Here at the LaFond Media Empire, we always advise you to remain within the boundary of the law and avoid drawing the Eye of Sauron upon yourself and your loved ones.  Home schooling requirements include the competency of the educator, notification to the school district, course requirements and more.  The HSLDA (Home Schooling Legal Defense Association) maintains a 50 state (plus territories) database of requirements for home schooling.  My family will be joining the HSLDA for the duration of our children's education.


A Classical Education


I have taken the liberty to reprint an essay describing a classical education by Susan Wise Bauer, a proponent of home schooling and a scholar of the Classics and Western Canon.  Public educators seem to always be seeking some novel teaching method, whether whole word reading, common core math or learning through videos or electronic devices.  Modern technology offers us a great deal, including access to materials and tools, but I believe a focus on ancient methods and subjects is necessary for the development of an autonomous intellect.

I am no Good at Math (or some other subject)


There are tremendous resources out there to help you cover all the subjects your children will need to know.  There are also home schooling co-ops in your area, and hybrid academies, where children meet in class a couple times per week and complete their studies at home with parents (this will also help get "socialization" objectors off your back).  A parent's lack of mastery in any particular subject should not be considered an impediment to home schooling.  Anyone interested in specific recommendations should leave a comment below.

Mom


Let's face it, home schooling is not going to happen unless Mom is on board.  Home schooling will likely mean she won't be able to work outside the home and will have virtually no time to herself.  Ideally you would find a mate who agrees with you on this from the outset.  I don't really have any advice here, maybe some of the Dads will chime in in the comments.

Good luck to all on raising the next generation of dissidents!

(c) 2018 Lynn Lockhart

What is a Classical Education? by Susan Wise Bauer

This is a reprint of an essay by Susan Wise Bauer, describing the course and value of a classical education.  I believe it encapsulates what James was describing in this video.
Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium.

The first years of schooling are called the “grammar stage” — not because you spend four years doing English, but because these are the years in which the building blocks for all other learning are laid, just as grammar is the foundation for language. In the elementary school years — what we commonly think of as grades one through four — the mind is ready to absorb information. Children at this age actually find memorization fun. So during this period, education involves not self-expression and self-discovery, but rather the learning of facts. Rules of phonics and spelling, rules of grammar, poems, the vocabulary of foreign languages, the stories of history and literature, descriptions of plants and animals and the human body, the facts of mathematics — the list goes on. This information makes up the “grammar,” or the basic building blocks, for the second stage of education.

By fifth grade, a child’s mind begins to think more analytically. Middle-school students are less interested in finding out facts than in asking “Why?” The second phase of the classical education, the “Logic Stage,” is a time when the child begins to pay attention to cause and effect, to the relationships between how different fields of knowledge relate, to the way facts fit together into a logical framework.

A student is ready for the Logic Stage when the capacity for abstract thought begins to mature. During these years, the student begins algebra and the study of logic, and begins to apply logic to all academic subjects. The logic of writing, for example, includes paragraph construction and learning to support a thesis; the logic of reading involves the criticism and analysis of texts, not simple absorption of information; the logic of history demands that the student find out why the War of 1812 was fought, rather than simply reading its story; the logic of science requires that the child learn the scientific method.

The final phase of a classical education, the “Rhetoric Stage,” builds on the first two. At this point, the high school student learns to write and speak with force and originality. The student of rhetoric applies the rules of logic learned in middle school to the foundational information learned in the early grades and expresses his conclusions in clear, forceful, elegant language. Students also begin to specialize in whatever branch of knowledge attracts them; these are the years for art camps, college courses, foreign travel, apprenticeships, and other forms of specialized training.

A classical education is more than simply a pattern of learning, though. Classical education is language-focused; learning is accomplished through words, written and spoken, rather than through images (pictures, videos, and television).

Why is this important? Language-learning and image-learning require very different habits of thought. Language requires the mind to work harder; in reading, the brain is forced to translate a symbol (words on the page) into a concept. Images, such as those on videos and television, allow the mind to be passive. In front of a video screen, the brain can “sit back” and relax; faced with the written page, the mind is required to roll its sleeves up and get back to work.

A classical education, then, has two important aspects. It is language-focused. And it follows a specific three-part pattern: the mind must be first supplied with facts and images, then given the logical tools for organization of facts, and finally equipped to express conclusions.

But that isn’t all. To the classical mind, all knowledge is interrelated. Astronomy (for example) isn’t studied in isolation; it’s learned along with the history of scientific discovery, which leads into the church’s relationship to science and from there to the intricacies of medieval church history. The reading of the Odyssey leads the student into the consideration of Greek history, the nature of heroism, the development of the epic, and man’s understanding of the divine.

This is easier said than done. The world is full of knowledge, and finding the links between fields of study can be a mind-twisting task. A classical education meets this challenge by taking history as its organizing outline — beginning with the ancients and progressing forward to the moderns in history, science, literature, art and music.

We suggest that the twelve years of education consist of three repetitions of the same four-year pattern: Ancients, Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, and Modern Times. The child studies these four time periods at varying levels — simple for grades 1-4, more difficult in grades 5-8 (when the student begins to read original sources), and taking an even more complex approach in grades 9-12, when the student works through these time periods using original sources (from Homer to Hitler) and also has the opportunity to pursue a particular interest (music, dance, technology, medicine, biology, creative writing) in depth.

The other subject areas of the curriculum are linked to history studies. The student who is working on ancient history will read Greek and Roman mythology, the tales of the Iliad and Odyssey, early medieval writings, Chinese and Japanese fairy tales, and (for the older student) the classical texts of Plato, Herodutus, Virgil, Aristotle. She’ll read Beowulf, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare the following year, when she’s studying medieval and early Renaissance history. When the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are studied, she starts with Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) and ends with Dickens; finally, she reads modern literature as she is studying modern history.

The sciences are studied in a four-year pattern that roughly corresponds to the periods of scientific discovery: biology, classification and the human body (subjects known to the ancients); earth science and basic astronomy (which flowered during the early Renaissance); chemistry (which came into its own during the early modern period); and then basic physics and computer science (very modern subjects).

This pattern lends coherence to the study of history, science, and literature — subjects that are too often fragmented and confusing. The pattern widens and deepens as the student progresses in maturity and learning. For example, a first grader listens to you read the story of the Iliad from one of the picture book versions available at any public library. Four years later, the fifth grader reads one of the popular middle-grade adaptations — Olivia Coolidge’s The Trojan War, or Roger Lancelyn Greene’s Tales of Troy. Four more years go by, and the ninth grader — faced with the Iliad itself — plunges right in, undaunted.

The classical education is, above all, systematic — in direct contrast to the scattered, unorganized nature of so much secondary education. This systematic, rigorous study has two purposes.

Rigorous study develops virtue in the student. Aristotle defined virtue as the ability to act in accordance to what one knows to be right. The virtuous man (or woman) can force himself to do what he knows to be right, even when it runs against his inclinations. The classical education continually asks a student to work against his baser inclinations (laziness, or the desire to watch another half hour of TV) in order to reach a goal — mastery of a subject.

Systematic study also allows the student to join what Mortimer Adler calls the “Great Conversation” — the ongoing conversation of great minds down through the ages. Much modern education is so eclectic that the student has little opportunity to make connections between past events and the flood of current information. “The beauty of the classical curriculum,” writes classical schoolmaster David Hicks, “is that it dwells on one problem, one author, or one epoch long enough to allow even the youngest student a chance to exercise his mind in a scholarly way: to make connections and to trace developments, lines of reasoning, patterns of action, recurring symbolisms, plots, and motifs.”

‘The White Stranger’

Robert E. Howard - Conan - The Vale Of Lost Women

Review by James LaFond


Conan & Livia by Mark Schultz


I have read no other story more often than The Vale of Lost Women. Something about its grim progress outward into insanity presses inward upon me. When reviewing this in 2013 with feminist novelist V. J. Waks [imagine doing such a thing today] she was of the opinion that this unsold story was essentially the outline of a novel. Looking at the story with the woman’s yearning for a long, involved relationship with the untamable masculine force of the Conan protagonist [and no character ever deserved to be referred to as a protagonist more than Conan] as the heroine made her way slowly, romantically, adventurously—but unerringly—home from her horrible ordeal, Ms. Waks saw more promise in the Vale of Lost Women as a prologue to Livia’s Great Adventure, than the story had on its own merits. The sheer horror of the tale from the modern feminist perspective begs for it to be eclipsed by Livia earning Conan’s respect, enslaving him with her soft body, leading him with the superior compassion, learning how to ride and fight like a man, choosing a fling with Conan over a life as a queen and then choosing quiet retirement in her home town over a life with Conan.

However, in the masculine universe, in an age before women’s rights, enforced by million-man militaries, when men lived and died by the sword, Livia—or any fair, dainty morsel of maidenhood abducted by a tribe of negro savages—is most likely just a piece of ass. If she’s lucky she might become the sexual property of some man who is both powerful and stricken with an uncharacteristic kindness at the sight of her. If she’s unlucky, she’s dinner. In the hands of Robert E. Howard, the heroine of The Vale of Lost Women, Livia, naïve white girl from the city, abducted by brown bandits, who are slain by black savages, who castrate and kill her young brother before her eyes, the best chance Livia has is for a barbaric white devil, such as Conan, to decide that sheathing his penis in her is worth the trouble of sheathing his sword in some fat black cur.

Throughout the story, spanning only three chapters, Livia is at first realistically helpless in a horrible situation, as she is prepared to be wed to an abominable groom—to share the bed of the grotesque man who ordered her brother’s execution.

Then, on seeing Conan, a white chief among black savages [quite a normal situation in the late 19th and early 20th century, being the era in which Howard’s popular reading was done from boyhood to manhood], Livia—like a modern woman given the vote—sees a lever of man-killing power which she aims to seduce into winning her freedom, bluntly offering her body in return for the Black King’s head.

Finally, in the third chapter, Livia pushes her agency beyond reason and finds herself in deep peril, a supernatural menace which Conan selflessly fights on her behalf, having come to the realization that he had behaved like a dog, callously bargaining for this woman’s freedom when he should have freed her as an expression of racial solidarity.

By asserting the falsehood of feminism in a time when it was barely forming in the collective imagination, and extolling heroics as an expression of racial solidarity, Howard wrote the most taboo story of his career. The initial lack of chivalry on the barbarian hero’s part doomed the story to editorial rejection in his own day, while the sexist and racist elements doom it in our own time.

However, Howard’s sketch of Livia, as a woman ordinary in all ways other than her beauty and determination, places her in the very real dilemma that woman have found themselves in since the beginning of time. By telling this Conan story as the tale Livia’s abduction and escape, Howard did more to document the true, ageless plight of young women as it was before our delicate time and as it will be again when the earth once again turns on its squabbling children. Even today, in 2018, an estimated 2 million women, most of them of white races, are sold into the global sex trade every year, the majority destined for savage societies where women have the rights of a dog. Livia’s outrage, indignity, sorrow and emotional dislocation are evocatively drawn with a compassion rarely matched in literature.

Below are some select quotes from this exceedingly well wrought tale of realistic brevity.

“She accepted the miracle without thanksgiving…”

“…the vividness of her mental pictures made the visible world seem like an unreal panorama of ghosts and shadows.

“…sat a fat squat shape, abysmal, repulsive, a toad like chunk of blackness, reeking of the dank rotting jungle and the nighted swamps. The creature’s pudgy hands rested on the sleek arch of his belly. His nape was a roll of sooty fat that seemed to thrust his bullet head forward. His eyes gleamed in the firelight like live coals in a dead black stump. Their appalling vitality belied the inner suggestion of the gross body.”

Such was Livia’s vision of chief Bajuju, who she stared at so balefully that she thought he should fall dead. From this vision of her husband-to-be, Livia glimpses a brutal hope and it is this encounter, consisting of the second half of the first chapter and the most of second that is at the heart of the story, betraying Howard as a genius of the emotive aspects of the timeless female condition.

Whoever you are or wherever you live on this planet, at some point in the life of your bloodline, a woman who is your ancestor, whose failure to survive would have erased your family from the history of mankind, cringed like Livia in the dark, wondering at the fate that dawn and the “rude hands” of man would bring. Whoever you are in this cruel world, in Livia, Howard has sketched an unflinching portrait of your ancestral mother.


Audio Recording Notes


The savagery of Conan’s diction is superb. The only thing that could have made this recording better would be to have a female reader do Livia’s voice.

Finally, I cannot, with a clear conscience omit quoting the most masculine speech delivered to a demanding woman in fiction:

“You said I was a barbarian, and that is true, Crom be thanked. If you had had men of the outlands guarding you instead of soft-gutted civilized weaklings, you would not be the slave of a black pig this night.”

This is followed by the most savage statement of companionable desire ever uttered by a hero to a damsel in distress and a lecture in realpolitik that ought to be memorized by every urban police cadet in the U.S.






Vale of Lost Women - wikipedia page

Monday, March 19, 2018

Sick Sick SICK Stickfighting Stories - Crackpot Podcast 29

Listening to these stories made me queasy in my tummy.  This episode was a special request in response to James' appearance on Myth of the 20th Century, discussing Rodney King's baton beating and the subsequent LA Riots.  The YouTube video is a slideshow of injuries inflicted by and upon James LaFond.  We talk wall to wall carnage here, so I am sure you psychos will love it.

The Crackpot Podcast features lunatic James LaFond and podcasting motherslave Lynn Lockhart.



Audio:










0:00:50  Myth20 on LA Riots, subduing with a stick
0:04:00  Charles and James hitting the bag, inside stroke to the side of the head
0:06:15  Video of European police with batons
0:07:02  Choking with the stick, other targets
0:11:05  The skull is the can
0:12:50  Pool cues, batons, sticks, clubs
0:14:15  A better way to take out a big guy
0:15:40  Pics, Modern Agonistics, Winter of a Fighting Life
0:15:58  The thigh, Drunken Agon
0:24:50  Pictures of James' bruised and battered torso
0:29:10  Huge elbow bruise
0:32:30  Biceps bruise by Chuck with wakasashi & shoulder bruise (with hoodrat bandana)
0:34:30  Aryas
0:39:55  Thumb and ankle pics
0:41:10  Chesapeake, VA
0:47:40  Weapons craft
0:53:15  James' favorite weapon

(c) 2018 Lynn Lockhart

Sunday, March 18, 2018

‘He Gave Me Water’

Ben-Hur: A Story of the Christ, 1959, Review by James LaFond


Ben Hur was one of my favorite movies in childhood and it was time to view it again. I was surprised at how the rather cartoonish depiction of The Nativity plucked sentimental strings in my mind even as the spotlight effect of the star above shone like God’s own spotlight on the stable where the god of my parents took human form. Despite the warm feelings the Holy Night prologue brought to me, welling up out of my childhood induction, the presentation did seem contrived for the benefit of the believer, certainly not for the non-Christian.

The style of the story, placing the fictional Judah Ben-Hur literally in the shadows of both Roman administration in Judea and the life of Christ, was very smartly done with the usual overreliance on serendipity. 

The most striking aspect of the film was its accurate portrayal of Caucasian slavery and its discussion as a blessed and brotherly institution of love, with Ben-Hur’s Hebrew slaves literally basking in the glorious light of his benevolent ownership. Certainly the best and most authentic aspect of the film was the hellish life of the galley slave. Unlike the classical Hellenes, the Romans used slaves to row their oared ships, as did European and Islamic navies up until the 1600s and 1700s respectively. The worst job in military history is richly depicted and starkly deprived by a Roman Consul, a brutally rational yet honorable and loving military man. 

The depiction of Jesus’s ministry, unlike the Nativity, was done in a more appealing fashion, particularly the early Hollywood custom of not showing the face of Christ, but presenting him in outline. 

As far as the presentation of masculine values, the Roman characters shine in their various shades: from red hot, to sterling to wilted gold. None are depicted as evil, but seem to be used to portray human behavior across its normal scale, where the Hebrew cast are one and all saints or martyrs. Almost all of the best lines are reserved for Roman characters, who are very well acted, with balance going to Ben-Hur, and Balthazar the wise man and the flamboyant Arab who provides Ben-Hur with a prize team of white horses for the iconic chariot race:

“…Until all men are like him [Jesus] we must keep out sword bright.”

The chariot races in the Circus were very well done and give the viewer a great appreciation as to why that was the longest lived sport in the ancient world, from at least 800 B.C. [probably centuries earlier] and continuing for centuries after the fall of Rome in the west under its continuation in Constantinople.



(c) 2018 James LaFond

Lockhart's Top LaFonds Volume 16

Weekend links, it's still the weekend!

Ex-cop finds a meaningful line of work.

A blustery day is a good day for a walk.

The Butthole Surfer gives his thoughts on the assassination of Osama Bin Laden and domestic unrest.  For an alternative view on the OBL op, I suggest reading Seymour Hersh's piece as well.

After concluding a decades-long civil war between Indian Tamils and native Sinhalese, Sri Lanka is now feeling the effect of the Religion of Peace, update from Fred Beare.

James gives a lesson on how to manage panhandlers, with an assist from Nero.

Flint is begging for a merry warband to seize it.

Hipster chick is begging for Mescaline to seize her.

The Checkered Demon offers many gems in this piece, like "trusting enough to cause a life."

Documentary evidence of the ancient practice of rioting in Baltimore.  (Forget about the comments, already scrubbed).

The absolute state of English policing, videos and commentary from Shep.

I am not particularly worried about the crackdown.  We are already on a lot of platforms and are adding more as fast as I can, and I back up offline frequently.

Well Read Ed is contributing to the science of anthropology with a new entry, coined the "Afro bugman" by Mescaline in the comments.

James takes a dip into the brainwashing matrix.

Tony Cox tells the fate of the late-in-life tweaker.

Advice on canine care from Big Ron.  For James' thoughts, see here.

James looks at the wars of pre-Revolutionary America.  Support this work through Patreon.

"Eventually, Bobby’s method will converge with resurrected techniques to form an art superior to either of its ancestral parts," bare knuckle fighting from Bobby Gunn.

Christianity & Pedophilia.  James makes the most important point, which is that sexual abuse in the Catholic church is about the same as any other large organization.  My comment is that the Catholic church has not so much a child abuse problem as a gay problem, which includes sexual abuse of children wherever it is found.  John Saxon may or may not be interested in the exploits of Mohammedans in this crime, but I understand it is rampant in shitholes like Afghanistan and the UK.

Interesting to think that the nations we think of as homogeneous are no such thing, and the implications for America.

A bonus link from John Paul Barber, boxing and writing have a good history together.

Well done Sean, Dennis, and corner man James!  Have a look behind the scenes of a sanctioned boxing match.

Evergreen urban combat advice.

James' strange lack of racial hatred has puzzled many.

James has a new roommate.

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

‘The Violence of Men’

James LaFond's review of Gunman’s Debt by Robert E. Howard




Pages 139-162 of The Last Ride, 1978, Berkley Medallion Books

John Kirby, a cowboy and gunslinger, on the lookout for men feuding with his kin down in Texas, rides into a fledgling Kansas town and politely gives over his gun belt to the sheriff. The nagging realization that one is at the mercy of corrupt society and the criminals allied with politicians—even when society only consists of a hopeful main street—nags Kirby as he enters a saloon where a man is beating a woman, a man wearing a gun belt.

Gunman’s Debt is too simple a story to give away any more of the plot. As in most western yarns—short or long—there is an unrealistic proliferation of serendipity. Howard's characters rescue the story from its own crude plotting by acting according to their various unharmonious natures.

Gunman’s Debt does not end as predictably as it begins, spends no time on sentimentality and roisters along, chaos building on every page until the surviving characters literally burn the curtain before it can come down. This would have been a great Spaghetti Western.

Over the course of the story, Howard ladles out bloody themes conveyed in blood:

-Women cannot be trusted in clutch situations.

-Hard men, especially loners, must make and maintain alliances with others of their kind, and that this may only be accomplished by adhering to a code of honor.

-That settled societies all become corrupt and the only way they can be cleansed is through reversion to barbarity.

-And, most importantly, that a society that bans men from arming themselves, never disarms all men, only those targeted for death and diminishment.

(c) 2018 James LaFond

Monday, March 12, 2018

Patreon Bonus Ep - Crackpot Podcast Ep 28

A special bonus episode, just for you!  Twenty minutes of Patreon updates and Trump love.

Please note, since we taped this podcast, James has figured out how to post written content on Patreon, so Patrons will continue to receive exclusive content.

If you wish to support James' important work revealing the truth about slavery in pre-Revolution America, please consider becoming a patron.

The Crackpot Podcast features Crackpot James LaFond and Podcaster Lynn Lockhart.

If you enjoy the podcast, please buy James' books through Amazon, pdf books through his main website, become a Patron, or donate straight to the man through Paypal.

Audio:









(c) 2018 Lynn Lockhart

Saturday, March 10, 2018

Everything but the Shooting - Crackpot Podcast Ep 27

In Ep 27, James and Lynn discuss contributing factors to the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

The Crackpot Podcast features aggression and violence expert James LaFond, and homeschooling mom Lynn Lockhart.



Audio:







0:02:05  Advice for students from James in case of a school attack
0:06:00  Why aren't school shootings more common?  Drugs, illicit and prescription
0:08:35  An example of Feds setting up vulnerable people to commit crimes:  schizophrenic Oklahoma man duped by Feds
0:10:00  Kreepy Kid Krew for gun control
0:14:00  Abolish the schools
0:19:50  Do schools teach teamwork?  Mentorship, Big Ron, Malcom X
0:24:05  Intergenerational friendships
0:25:40  Courting in the Nation of Islam
0:27:15  Gender differences in treatment of servants in colonial America
0:30:40  The malleability of the youth vote
0:34:58  Dropping out as a safety valve
0:36:10  The joys of dodgeball and hazing
0:42:30  Dante & Vance
0:58:09  Megan
0:59:57  Disparate impact of school offenses
1:01:05  Externalization vs internalization of aggression
1:02:36  A punching bag or a gun safe
1:06:22  Coeducation as a risk
1:09:50  The right way to protest injustice
1:11:45  Atomization in the family
1:14:40  Pathological public schools

(c) 2018 Lynn Lockhart & James LaFond

Lockhart's Top LaFonds Volume 15

Links on a Saturday???!!!  Next post will be Crackpot 27, coming up in a few minutes.


Don't miss James' latest appearance on Myth of the 20th, covering Malcolm X.

Another snapshot of crime trends in Harm City and Harm County.  School shootings are decidedly a first world problem.

The candidate pool for the Baltimore Police Department is the population of Baltimore; no amount of testing, procedural reform, juries, will change that.

A Ghetto Grocer's initiation.

The Urban Anthropologist surfs a wave 20 years into the future.

Ghetto grocer and Harm City stories from Megan.

Shep speaks on feminized police departments on the Left Coast; I hope he speaks again soon.

I bet you always wanted to be some punk's daddy.

Some coaching and video and book links for stickfighters.

Tony Cox keeps tabs on the PNW version of the future, including homelessness in mild weather, mountain bikes, and of course, mushrooms.

(c) 2018 Lynn Lockhart


Monday, March 5, 2018

‘The Devil’s Children’

James LaFond reviews Normandy: A Graphic History of D-Day by Wayne Vansant

2012, Zenith Press, NY, 103 pages

Normandy is a 6 by 9 inch comic with three to five cleanly depicted scenes on each page. The lettering is something I can actually read, unlike most comics. Each pages has at least one panoramic image from margin to margin. The soldiers and officers have individualized faces presenting a wide scope of personality types and emotions.

The action is covered in fifteen chapters, from D-Day, June 6, in Second Front Now! to “Aux Barricades!” which covers the liberation of Paris. The text was well-researched, the equipment authentic and the action so realistic it was not possible to follow a set of heroes through the many engagements. Every unit of Allies or Germans are depicted in a balanced and humane fashion, from slaughtered fools, to lucky heroes and diabolical meat-makers.

Wayne Vansant demonstrates a keen appreciation of the campaign to take and breakout from Normandy, from Omaha Beach, to the Bocage, the hedgerows, Cherbourg and on toward Paris. Unit types include GIs, Canadians, Scots, Brits and even Hitler Youth among the Germans. The author manages to show war as a brutal ugly business without demeaning the combatants.

Thanks to Mescaline Franklin for the loan of this book.

(c) 2018 James LaFond

Children's Books Recommendations from Ishmael

Ishmael is a lifelong and avid reader, and during our interview I asked him to name his favorite books from his childhood and youth.  It wasn't very nice of me to ask him that without any warning, but he was kind enough to send me a list by email:

The Once and Future King, by T.H. White
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
Twenty Years After, by Alexandre Dumas
Ten Years Later, by Alexandre Dumas
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, a children's edition
Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire, by Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury
Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway,
Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown
Give Your Heart to the Hawks, by Winfred Blevins
The Indian in the Cupboard, by Lynne Reid Banks
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis

Thank you so much for these titles, Ishmael.  Readers, please leave your suggestions in the comments.

(c) Lynn Lockhart

Lockhart's Top LaFonds Volume 14

Weekend links!

I am sure plenty of recovering soy boys complained about Black Panther, but most the reactions I saw were richly deserved ridicule.

Jeremy Bentham gives a brief history of the break up of Yugoslavia and draws lessons for us.

Long live the Checkered Demon, I have a good feeling about the next few years.

The truth about Nigerian diversity from Eirik Bloodaxe.

James channels Hume in the Baltimore Ghetto.

James has moved and is getting the kinks worked out of his tech situation.

James wonders about the school shooting situation, and the Checkered Demon chimes in with his usual wisdom.

Shell casings from a .45???  I thought you moved to the 'burbs, James!  I think it was LaMano that commented, you are riding the crime wave, bringing readers the Harm County happenings.

There are some very good links and reader contributions here.  The LaFondiverse is high quality people.

I love it when an unspoken plan comes together.

James discusses the logos and the end of history.

Learn about Bacon's Rebellion and support James on Patreon.

Just say no to drugging your children.

I bet you never knew there was a whole book in the Bible of steamy love poems.

Evola recognized permanent revolution as a degenerate state or slavery.

(c) 2018 Lynn Lockhart

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Son of a Lesser God by James LaFond - Crackpot Podcast Ep 26

James and Lynn speak with Bob, otherwise known as Ishmael, about living in the West, his father and more.

The Crackpot Podcast features the masculinist James LaFond and motherslave Lynn Lockhart.

Audio:




YouTube:





0:00:50  Introducing Ishmael, Son of a Lesser God (Kindle, paperback)
0:01:55  The buffalo hunt
0:08:50  What makes an animal tastier
0:13:30  Shooting vs. fishing
0:15:00  The importance of proximity
0:16:35  Beartooth Loop
0:21:07  How is the winter so far?
0:23:30  Hayden Fork
0:24:45  Forest fires
0:27:00  Kokanee salmon & other fish
0:30:35  Ishmael was a late in life child
0:35:05  The skills needed for life in the mountains, starting early
0:36:55  Grandchildren
0:37:40  Mushrooms
0:39:00  How did Ishmael find James' website?
0:47:20  Raccoons and other wildlife
0:51:30  Books for young readers
0:54:23  Imagining Head Smashed In
1:00:03  Thrill killing by wild predators
1:03:15  Fowl
1:05:03  Bear
1:06:20  Alcohol
1:11:05  Vegetarianism
1:16:08  Aging the catch
1:18:20  Generation gaps
1:20:34  Travel plans
1:23:00  Mushrooms again and other foraging

(c) 2018 Lynn Lockhart & James LaFond

Thursday, March 1, 2018

‘What You Got, Whitey’

Muhammad Ali gets knocked down by Chuck Wepner


Lynn, I was looking for Chuck [Chuck Wepner biopic] as per Mister Barber’s recommendation and found this.

Chuck Wepner did something great for boxing when he pissed off Ali by actually hurting and embarrassing him and touched that nerve or pride in the arrogant champion which caused him to fight like he could, but rarely would. Ali made his money clowning for sissy white people and bitter black folks.

We are looking here at and extremely tough and athletically above average man fighting a physical genus. Ali probably had the best body ever designed for boxing by God and he spent many of his fights acting the fool instead because he was that much better.

One way of noting the difference is the abandonment of the hand span guard by Chuck. If chuck extends his lead hand off his shoulder and uses it as a stopping check and a gun sight he will be twice fast. The problem is, Ali is still faster, which leads him to abandon the hand span guard and protect his face because he knows that if Ali wants him gone he could be eating five punch combos that he will only be able to answer with two strokes.

Wepner’s body work was good and demonstrates an immense reserve of core body strength and deep well of relaxation in Ali. The heart punch was a sweet shot for a big man. Now, to give you an idea of why Ray Robinson was the best of all time, he had Ali's balance and hand speed but had Wepner’s work ethic and went on the hunt to the body, sending rights to the heart. Ali could have KO’d most of his opponents that matched his stature with heart punches, but that’s hard work.

Chuck did us a hell of a favor by bringing out the beast in Ali. Note how Ali is landing combos while on the balls of both of his feet, doing micro-pivots. This guy was essentially untrained and could not even explain what he did. Imagine if Ali had had the humility to let Archie Moore train him?

One thing to say for Ali is that he fought everybody and fought on heroically to put his family out of economic insecurity even after is brain was known to be separating after a CT-scan in Bermuda.



For a bonus here is Wepner on the show card against Andre the Giant.

God that ring is small—give me a knife!


(c) 2018 James LaFond

Cestus

Roman boxing gloves unearthed by Vindolanda dig

Photo from Vindolanda Trust, refer to link above.


The image from the link, and reproduced above, is a double photo. In the background is an image of the statue of Kleitomachos [Eternally-glorious-fighter] who fought just over a hundred years before the statue was made at Rhegium, in Magna Grecia Italy. The statue shows competition gloves without metal inserts. Only some Roman spectacles included studded or spiked hand gear, and these were manifestly not used in sacred agons.

The two gloves in the foreground are fitted to manikin hands. The article erroneously states that these were both sparring gloves; they were not. These are not gloves but composite leather knuckle dusters, traditionally wound in seven layers of bulls hide. They were described as sharp because they bit like “ants” and were sometimes thus named. These became sharp from sweat salt and dried blood accumulation.

The underparts, clearly evidenced on the statue, are missing, as are the uppers, which were made of soft leather straps and wool, for blocking. Fighters were described as wetting their lips with the sweat accumulated by the woolen band halfway down the forearm. These composite fighting gauntlets required third parties to strap them on. The seven layers of bull’s hide stretched over the boxer’s knuckles—the same number of layers used in archaic shield construction—had both traditional and mythic significance and were known to cause fearsome wounds as described in Virgil’s Aenid, in which one boxer smashed in the skull of a prize bull with his leather-sheathed hand.

The idea of spiked gauntlets comes from late Roman frescoes depicting a type of pugilistic gladiator.

I have found some evidence of padded sparring gloves from the Hellenistic [literature] and Roman [reliefs of boxing-gloved Cherubs] Eras. They surely existed and were in wide use, based on the high skill level of the fighters as depicted in art and the defensive skill required by their competition gear.

The padded knuckle guard on the left would be for sparring and that in the right, with twisted leather inside, for competition, probably not in sacred agons in Roman Britain, but for training and competition among Hellenized Romans or soldiers stationed in Britain.

The sharp hand-straps or cesti, as depicted on the statue of Kleitomachos and described by Virgil [from which Roman boxing took its inspiration] would be reserved for sacred occasions, with expert handlers to affix these complex arrangements to the hand and forearm.

The following is supposition: The twisted leather within the smaller glove is an obvious crude attempt to inflect the same level of damage without the need for a lengthy gearing session, suggesting use in team competitions, or being kept on hand by a unit for member soldiers to quickly don for masculine occasions, alternately suggesting use by slaves for entertaining their masters or by Roman soldiers who might wish to imitate the heroes of legend in a type of competition from which the sacred art of boxing seems to have emerged in earlier antiquity, as a form of dueling likely to draw blood and unlikely to cause death.

(c) 2018 James LaFond