Sunday, March 31, 2019

Lockhart's Top LaFonds Volume 67

Hello everyone!

Here are the two big hitters for the week: James channels the Ancients, as he does so well, to bring you the Phalanx vs the Legion, with some additional weapons notes.  I have to put this video here:



How to build a world for your children to play in.

If you always wanted to read Gene Wolfe, follow along with James.

Are nightmares the price of creativity?

Here is everything we know and hate about surburbia, modernity and worshiping the God of Things.

The Khan assesses the regional offerings of the good old USA.  Banjo makes a tentative itinerary.

Click here for the mailbag, especially the incredibly severe and effective social control being exercised in the antipodes.

James is getting intersectional here, learning about African-Americans who fought for the Confederacy.

Don't miss James and Dennis in the diner, a couple hours of relaxing chit chat.

(c) 2019 Lynn Lockhart

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Lockhart's Top LaFonds Volume 66

Sorry for the late links, I was checking in with Uncle Sam yesterday.



James's thoughts on Christchurch, part 1, part 2.

Attention Londoners -- The book you need is linked in the image below.  If the Crackpot comes into his deserving millions of sales, maybe we will head to the UK to do some journalism on knife violence.





How does North America turn people into Indians?

Very kind words about a pre-publication fiction work from Nathaniel Lucas, lately of Social Matter.

Learn more about climate change, if you are brave enough.

Reading about reading about the horror might be worse than reading the horror itself.

This piece has everything, but my favorite is how the Irish keep Boston safe for white people.

A boxing piece, both coaching and commentary here.

I enjoy unearthing sources for James but it creates more work for me in the end.  Learn about Sluyter and Dankaerts journals of their travels to the New World.

(c) 2019 Lynn Lockhart

Friday, March 22, 2019

Sneer at the Blizzard

A Masculine Correspondence


On the Poz

Riley:  Disgusting images from modern parenting...

James:  Let me get this straight, that gay white man made his gay mulatto boyfriend have sex with a quadroon woman so that he could have an octaroon son?

That kid doesn't have a chance. This is what comes of driving the African man out of the house and the European man out of the bedroom.

That poor child.

On Keeping Warm

Riley:  Cowboy’s replacement Jet. 7 month old shepherd/Heeler mix. Female. Pointy ears to keep errant boxers in line. One wide awake canine here. Carries her tail in a tight curl.



James:  Yeah, she'll have me ditching from dawn till dusk!

On the Dread Grace

Riley:  There’s a dearth of males active in this presidential run up. Few dangly bits, even among the tokens. I feel confident the kids will work it out. I will spit at them across the respirator in the ol’ foke’s home.

I am enslaving my female dog, house breaking and such. Female canids are relation-ship-wise far more amicable than their human counterparts. They listen, and learn.


No country for old Men or Women.




James:  I would like to form a harem of frustrated female presidential candidates, seriously.

***



(c) 2019 James LaFond

Sunday, March 17, 2019

Cracker-Boy IN PRINT! - Crackpot Podcast 53

Hello friends, I am so happy to be podcasting more regularly again.  I am even happier to tell you that Cracker-Boy is in print!!!

You can buy this rogue history book, packed with original sources, served in small portions, right here:


I think I talk more than I ever have in an episode here, so consider yourselves warned.

The Crackpot Podcast features unsanctioned historian James LaFond and his enabler Lynn Lockhart.

Audio:



YouTube:



0:00:28  Podcasting technology update
0:01:45  Apologies!  CRACKER-BOY!!!
0:04:16  John Hu and distinguishing slaves from citizens
0:10:56  Amelie Wen Zhao, African-American slavery supremacy
0:22:21  Freedom on the Move
0:28:20  Fugitive slave catching, petroleum, foreign labor
0:33:20  James makes a prediction
0:34:55  Carcel clothing, Lynn gets emotional
0:40:54  WIPs, see also, the Letter to the Shareholder
0:57:52  Wrath of Gnon, nightmares
1:03:30  In the mind of a writer, On Silence
1:10:04  Panhandler murder, Baltimore


(c) 2019 Lynn Lockhart

Saturday, March 16, 2019

Lockhart's Top LaFonds Volume 65

This is a big set of weekend links, so much good stuff!!



How to be a psycho in seven easy steps.

What's the truth about heroes?

I don't know much about Molyneux or Peterson, but yes, their voices annoys me.

The Levantine Question is going to be the next big one, Taleb, Hayek, etc.

The video for this punchy post seems to have gotten lost, but I have to counter with this guy who literally catches a punch out of the corner of his eye:


Here is a relevant training video on stepping off and around when a guy looks like he's going to punch you:


This is your chance to jump into my favorite ongoing fiction project as a character!!!

Massachusetts  is a nice version of the social contract you never signed.

Boxing:  More anachronistic Ali matchups, with banter!

James has unearthed a third party account of early American servitude, Peter Kalm.

FAQ -- how to start reading the world's most prolific author?  (In the works - a James LaFond starter pack section in the BOOKSTORE.)

Here's another FAQ -- how to explain the seeming lack of proofreading in much of James's massive catalog?

Portland vs. Baltimore, this is what you wanted to know!  Check the comments for knucklehead math.  James in Portland sounds like the premise of a 90s sitcom to me.

Here is a grab-bag of current events insanity.

How distances is interposed between the hero and his purpose, while keeping enough ass-kicking to entertain couch-bound viewers.

The stories of Home Children are heartbreaking and I have to add that I don't believe the foster system currently in place in the US is any better.

Read along with Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 of Shadow & Claw.

(c) 2019 Lynn Lockhart

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Letter to Shareholder

To: James LaFond
Re: Crackpot Industries Letter to Shareholders 2018

Dear Mr. LaFond,

2018 was a banner year for Crackpot Industries. I want to highlight our successes and our trajectory for 2019, but first, I will give you a quick recap of 2017 to show how far we have come in such a short time. When I joined in late 2016, you were struggling to keep track of the number of books you had in print. I spent the first half of 2017 cataloging your works in a massive spreadsheet, using Amazon searches and your own website as sources.  The Crackpot Podcast was born in June of 2017 and we published 20 episodes that year, as well as some other videos.  Before the year was over, I had edited and published Masculine Axis and Autumn in a Dying City, the latter of which was banned by Amazon, the opening salvo in a war on your writing that would continue into 2018.

Let's look at the numbers for 2018:

Books published: 7 titles, 331,000 words
Books banned: 3 titles
Crackpot Podcast: 27 episodes
YouTube: 11,000 views, 185,000 minutes watched
MP3 downloads: over 10,000
Blogposts: 159 articles
Total titles in print: 149

In social media, the Crackpot Podcast YouTube channel has over 190 subscribers, with another 140 RSS subscribers, and 230 followers on my Lynn Lockhart twitter account.

At the bottom of this post you will find images of each book I have edited, including our first title of 2019, Cracker-Boy; clicking each image will take you to the Amazon link for each book.

Looking ahead, this year, we hope to publish another 7 titles, beating our total for last year, as well as continue podcasting approximately every other week after a slow start.  A special project is in the works to release banned titles in limited edition, autographed hard covers.

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to Crackpot Industries.  If I wasn't doing this, I would be crocheting potholders (I can only do squares or rectangles), or trying to sell Avon to my non-existent female friends or some other stay-at-home mom hustle so I hope you decide to keep me on.

Sincerely,
Lynn Lockhart
COO, Crackpot Industries





















(c) 2019 Lynn Lockhart

Saturday, March 9, 2019

Lockhart's Top LaFonds Volume 64

It was a light posting week as James recovers from a fever and focuses on writing fiction (my favorite!).


This article reminds me that John Random asked about a connection between Catholicism and boxing, for a future podcast...

If you are into linguistics, please chime in here.

Anachronistic boxing match-ups, Ali vs. today's giants.

Are you following along with Gene Wolfe?

Finding a coach, this belongs in an FAQ. 

(c) 2019 Lynn Lockhart

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

‘Dog-Brothers’

James LaFond's impressions of The Cliffs Reel, Chapter 3, Robert E. Howard’s Hour of the Dragon, reading from pages 98-105 of the Del Rey edition


The lead illustration by Mister Gianni depicts the royal pavilion guarded by ten hard-bitten “veterans,” left to defend the prostrate king and a squire attending a saddled and barded horse, lion banner blowing to the right.

As Conan lays suffering from lack of action moreso than any pain, the squire peeks through the curtain and relates the unfolding battle to Conan who sees it clearly in his mind’s eye, predicts folly and calamity and has his worst fears magnified and related to him, for, as his heroic body double falls for a wizardly ruse his strike force is not ambushed in the mountain pass viewed from across the contested riverbed, but the mountain itself reels and comes crashing down, crushing the flower of Conan’s army, 5,000 armored knights, the same number of knights Conan lost to another treachery years before when allied armies turned on his force.

Howard masterfully relates the battle through the eyes of a supporting character, just as Conan’s exploits are often depicted from the eyes of a feminine or less masculine observer, putting Conan, his apex literary creation, in the deepest hell imaginable for the character, that is placing him in the position of the reader rendered as listener, a passive fate that torments his savage soul.

At length the army is broken and routed, his veteran guards selling their lives harshly and his loyal squire implores him to surrender, to which Conan “ground” “I have no royal blood, I am a barbarian and the son of a blacksmith.”

Then, to those seeking him Conan roars, “Here I am, you jackals. I am the king! Death to you dog-brothers!” [1]

Gianni’s second illustration is a full page panel which accurately illustrates the well-worded mechanics of Conan’s brief heroic fight with the two armored men.

Howard is at his best using totemic metaphors to describe the antagonists, with the “maned” Conan, whose totem is the lion, sneering at his inferiors as canines.

His squire brained offhand by one of the armored men who enter his tent to take him captive, Conan, unarmored, cuts a figure not unlike Pizarro, when his assassins came for him in his old age. Roused in his wrath to a drunken parody of himself, Conan is yet able to butcher his attackers and King Tarascas of Nemedia, balks and his squire grabs his arm, again providing a powerful totemic image of the beleaguered barbarian, “Nay, Your Majesty, do not throw away your life. I will summon the archers to shoot this barbarian, as we shoot lions.”

Xaltotun then enters, Conan immediately sensing the ancient evil the man embodied and falls to his sorcery, a deep abominable power which then engulfs his vassals in its mind-crushing coils as well, and Conan is borne off in a chariot behind unnatural horses as “the setting sun rimmed the cliffs with scarlet flame…”

The third illustration follows, a portrait of Xaltotun appearing as an ancient Chaldean with powerful physiognomy, broad shoulders, a raised hand of power and an awesome curled beard.

(c) 2019 James LaFond

Saturday, March 2, 2019

System Become God-Crackpot Podcast 52

My friends, please forgive me for holding this episode for so long.  I became obsessed with publishing Cracker-Boy and my attention was entirely absorbed by that.  I will set up a new item in the bookstore and create a special post for my new baby, weighing in at 676 pages, 107 thousand words!!!  And James writes these things three times faster than I can edit them!

For Episode 52, James and I chatted about quite a few topics, but the major item was a question from Vlad Tepid on mortality.  James also wrote this piece covering the topic.

The Crackpot Podcast features the Great Nomadic Writer James LaFond, and his little sister Lynn Lockhart.


Audio:



YouTube:




0:01:15  Grocery questions
0:09:07  Subway stick fight
0:16:14  Baltimore
0:18:00  Det Suiter
0:22:20  What is the level of policing in Baltimore?  Mr. Mohammed, Murderbowl
0:31:44  Twitter update, Winter of a Fighting Life
0:36:15  Mortality
0:39:35  Animism  & Pastoralism
0:41:40  Farming
0:44:00  Philosophy and the mystery religions
0:47:00  Government support, the heroic element
0:50:50  Technological life extension vs heroic immortality
0:56:26  Bolsonaro & Trump, politics

(c) 2019 Lynn Lockhart

Lockhart's Top LaFonds Volume 63

It's the weekend, time for you to catch up!


Here is how an author stays current with political violations.

Wolfe's story is set in South America and the vocabulary noted in this installment make me wonder if he was familiar with the local language.  Are you following along?

Back when childhoods were wholesome.

This entry may help you understand your marriage.

He would be deadlier with a sword, but in the meantime...

Even if you don't know anything about RPGs, this will show you why James is a great babysitter.

A list of heroes of the ring, sword and pen.

(c) 2019 Lynn Lockhart