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Friday, January 29, 2021

‘Like All His Race’

A Ghost Out Of The Past: Chapter 13 of Robert E. Howard’s Hour of the Dragon
Reading from pages 181-190 of the DelRey edition
Impressions by James LaFond


“Argo was at peace; laden ox-wains rumbled along the road, and men with bare, brown, brawny arms toiled in orchards and fields that smiled away under the branches of the roadside trees. Old men on settles before inns under spreading oak branches called greetings to the wayfarer.”

Howard has taken his hero back down the road of his own storied past, to the place where he fled once from false judicial justice as a young mercenary to begin the life of a bloodthirsty pirate with his own pirate queen. From here on out the author walks Conan beneath the horizon of his former exploits that earned him fame and infamy in equal measure by illuminating characters which were once but shadows merely inferred. For instance, the fat fence Publio is now rich off of the trade he did with Conan, who strides out of is shadowy past with blackmail on his lips and menace in his grin.

And, as Conan guzzles, feasts, schemes, chafes and threatens his former partner in crime, four sinister shadows ride along his path, like psychic bloodhounds with the scent of his savage ambition in their nose, which the artist symbolically presents as a relentless footnote of four shadows under a sun setting on the ruins of a lion gate—Conan’ totemic symbol.

Diction of Note
Dromunds, a type of boat

Monday, January 25, 2021

Flood No. 13: The Mark

 Eldorado Lounge, Baltimore Street, 1994

 

H

e was getting somewhat long in the tooth, but still liked to impress the young ladies, and more than that liked their tender company.  The girls at the Old Eldorado Lounge on Baltimore Streetn, before it moved out to Lombard Street in Highlandtown, had the finest little dancers in town, all of them part black, part Asian and part something special—like they was built in a factory that had his particular taste in mind.  They were pale like white women, but round like black women and had those soft features halfway between the two.  He just always thought a white woman looked like a wicked witch in the face.  So this Asian-Negro mixing seemed to be the one case were miscegenation made some kind of sense, in breeding strippers.  He supposed it was some hard-working GIs that had done it overseas…

As he walked past Tito, the heavyweight boxer who did not frisk him—he now being an elder statesman of sorts—he looked over the seated thugs in their athletic wear and gold chains, past Jeremy the barkeep in his tuxedo and into the mirror and saw… well it could have been worse: Rosie Greer dressed up like Richard Roundtree for a TV movie about Shaft trying to lose weight while he solves crimes…

While he didn’t look like a creature any of these fine girls would want as a boyfriend—and he didn’t pay for no pussy, no-siree—he did at least look like a dude that chumps would not trifle with.  He was feeling his age at 51, just maintaining his properties and working on the night crew for that smart old Hebrew, having left Mister Baines about a decade ago on good terms in need of some union insurance benefits.

He sure hoped that all the violent challenges of the past were behind him.  He just wanted some work, some money, some loving and a warm home… and he had all of it—just wanted to keep what he had earned.  But he knew in his heart, that that’s when The Rotten Snooping World could smell you, when its hunger to bring a man down started gurgling in the belly of misfortune…

The night was grand, the girls crowding each other out for a spot on his lap on this Thursday night.  But the night had to end and it came time for him to leave, having drunk a little too much.  Tito helped him get his long leather coat back on and fixed on his head that lucky leather slick hat won in battle some three decades gone, set it on his old head just right.  As he did so, the lightest skinned girl, with the biggest ass—how could you go wrong there—pranced up to him and placed a napkin with her phone number and an impression of her lips in purple lipstick, folded neatly in the chest pocket of his silk button shirt.

Tito grinned, “Big Izz hasn’t lost it.  You be careful out there, big brother.  There’s been some bad shit goin’ down.”

“You got it, Tank,” he said to the impressive heavyweight boxer, and headed on out the door with a wave to Jeremy.

He made a left down the sidewalk past the various knots of young hoppers, everyone there seemingly half his age or less.

He just had to make the left, turn up the way and, there they were, two tall strong bucks of about thirty years, both his height and no doubt quicker by a lighting strike.  The lighter-skinned one stepped out towards the curb as the darker one stayed center and said, “Oh, its’ Mista knot roll a cash.”

He stopped, realizing that these guys were completely sober and put up his hands and said, “Look, fellas, I don’t want no trouble.”

The dark-skinned one sneered, “A course yo ole ass don’ wan no—”

People were disappearing and Tito was—oh thank God!

“Kooorack!” sounded the fist of the bouncer, whose head slid up behind and past him—and the big eyes of the dark-skinned bruiser rolled back in their coconut husk head and then that head bounced off of the concrete and split all open into a red mess in the cold February night.

The light-skinned mugger was now darting across the street, beating feet, with fearful looks over his shoulder at Tito, who lumbered after him in a fashion that authoritatively assured the onlookers that Tito never had an athletic option other than boxing.

And, as Israel stood in just-been-saved amazement at Tito lumbering after the fleet-footed fiend, he saw a plan in action, saw that the bouncers on the street were working together as the skeevy white doorman from the Club Pussy Cat—who wore light slacks and Hawaiian shirts even in winter time and the wicked little Porto Rican from the Titty bar where the skinny white bitches with plastic tits danced, converged on his would-be mugger.

“Oooo!” screamed a bitch-made man next to him.

“Awe, fuck!” shouted the more masculine fellow to his left, “this is like a martial arts movie where only the bad guys know kung fu and the director decided to make it into a zombie flick!”

“Oh, Yo is fucked!” exclaimed another one of the upstanding onlookers.

Israel was a little drunk and did not understand half the shit that the two evil little bouncers did to the light-skinned criminal in the black leather jacket before Tito got to him—but that shit he understood—Koooo-rack!  And another body decorated Baltimore Street for the cops to come clean up.

Israel looked down at a soft hand that had appeared on his shoulder and saw it was the girl who had put her number in his pocket.  Somehow she had gotten a hold of his keys—“Oh, whatever ole fool gave you da keys to ma conversion van, Baby?”  he heard an old man drawl as she pulled him by the hand around the corner, past the stretched out mugger with blood pooling around his head, as two slicksters in bright athletic attire and gold chains around their neck stood over him and the smart one wondered, “Is dis nigga dead?” and the genius of the two answered, “Oh, he jus’ knocked da fuck out!”  

And her little hands were as soft as all get out. 

Thursday, January 21, 2021

‘The Box of Zarothus’

The Fang of the Dragon: Chapter 12 of Robert E. Howard’s Hour of the Dragon
Reading from pages 171-181 of the DelRey edition
Impressions by James LaFond

Howard, the author, finds himself in a strange place at this point of the only Conan novel. The standout tales of adventure he had built the character on were generally the immediate result of ill-chance, blunder and desperation. Not only is Conan generally broke or on the run or both, but his entire situation is a surprise, which brings out the best in his barbaric personality. However, with King Conan releasing himself from a hopeless civil war he starts out on a quest that is nearly Tolkienesque, except of course that Howard’s Conan pre-dates Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Howard is now in the position of taking the character which is the creation of the realistic 3-to-5 chapter pulp yarn and having to draft him into a novel, the novel being the most inauthentic, forced, unnatural, unrealistic and affected for of literature, possibly rivaling hip hop and gangster rap is the lower form of human language art. 

The end results of this misuse of the heroic pulp character as a sentimental vehicle unfold across the final chapters of the book and are threefold:

-1. The overuse of serendipity, something which most novels and their video spawn suffer from.

-2. The introduction of gross sympathy into the hitherto hard-boiled world of Conan.

-3. The development of more interesting and intense characters than most novelists use in an entire long form book. 

The remainder of this reader’s impressions will avoid spoiling the plot by focusing on the incredible array of rogues and monsters cast into the fantastical winds of Howard’s imagination one chapter at a time, creating and discarding the characters necessary for a novella in what must have been a single evening of writing.

But first Howard retrogresses his protagonist back down the Road of Kings:
“He looked the part of the hired fighting-man, who had known the vicissitudes of fortune, plunder and wealth one day, an empty purse and close-drawn belt the next.

“…more than looking the part, he felt the part; the awakening of old memories…with no thought for the morrow, and no desire save sparkling ale, red lips, and  a keen sword to swing on all the battlefields of the war.”

The passage above smacks as sentiment to the sissy who has not known real apex fighting men, but to someone who has known many, it strikes an authentic chord.

Three fascinating characters, the brutal Valbroso, his cunning henchman Belosa and their captive fence of filched goods, Zorathus whose un-openable iron chest leaves Conan as part of a meat-headed trio of thugs seeking the secret of their desperate Gordian Knot.

This story also features ghouls, a mainstay monster of the Dungeons & Dragons game that drew heavily on the works of Howard, with their focus on the undead and subterranean stages of adventure.

To close the chapter a working sketch of Conan battling ghouls afoot faces a full panel scene of the horsed barbarian cleaving the fiends from the back of his rearing steed.


Monday, January 18, 2021

Flood No. 12

1980, Lombard Street Store

Israel had gotten to know Mister Santoni from delivering and picking up drop shipments in the company truck, a panel truck, not the old van from back in the day.  This was the flagship store down in Highlandtown.  He got along well enough with the receiver, Ed, as well.  The closer, Stump, who was an assistant store manager and the produce manager, resented the drop shipments, because they were ordered directly by Mister Santoni himself, meaning that Stump did not get any kickbacks or tickets to the ballgame from the deliveries and Stump’s grifting ass did not like that…

And there was another thing, something not suitable for polite conversation, that he had on Stump quite by accident.  So, one Friday afternoon, when Israel made that delivery while Mister Santoni was at another store overseeing the set-up, Stump shouldered Ed aside on the dock and the following conversation ensued:

Stump:  I didn’t order this shit.

Israel:  Your boss did.

Stump:  I’m not signing for this.

Israel:  I think ya are.

Stump:  How ’bout I beat the black off you?

Israel:  How ’bout you try?

Stump:  You know I had four fights back in the day, as a pro.

Israel:  Is dat so, Slick?  Well, one: dat were back in the day, and two, dey gots somethin’ in boxin’ called weight classes, and they gots rules—so let’s have at it.  Ed, you da ref!

Stump:  How ‘bout I call the police?

Israel:  Bet you would if you was white—but you Eye-talian!

Stump:  Look, I’m jus’ not signing for it.

Israel:  Okay, Ed, you know what I seen one day when I was puttin’ da lemon juice order away, in the produce box?

Stump:  What?—no…

Israel:  Well, I didn’t see much, ‘cause dat produce girl had a big fat ass en Stump, so it turns out is not named Stump for his five foot of height!

Stump:  Really, Flood, I was just joking with you.  I was goin’ ta sign you in!

Israel:  Oh, in dat case, I apologize fo noticin’.  You didn’ hear nothing Ed.

Stump:  Fuck you and get the fuck back to the jungle that spat you out!

They all three laughed and went on their respective ways. 

Saturday, January 16, 2021

‘In A Black Boat’

Swords of the South: Chapter 11 of Robert E. Howard’s The Hour of the Dragon
Reading from pages 164-170 of the DelRey edition

Impressions by James LaFond


Inspired by Osirian mythology, the illustrator has chosen to depict the great dark slave steering the boat of the Asuran dead down the river to the far blue sea, as a jackal-headed Anubis.

Conan is depicted as insatiable for defining action, a rampaging egotist barely able to enforce his own warrior discipline as he steers impatiently downstream to his destiny. Howard describes this as, “The fire of his grinding desire…”

The above passage brings to mind the only historical characters that seems to have been equal to Howard’s fictional barbarian, Harald Hardrada, who died at Stamford Bridge in 1066 and Nathan Bedford Forrest with more horses killed under him than even the fantasy hero.

Howard writes the knights of Poitain, who behave like a cross between Spanish conquistadors and Comanche warriors, as a distinctive breed of fighting man, as he had already depicted the Gundermen, Bossonians and Nemedian adventurers as unique types of fighting men, fighting with crafty ferocity under their leopard banner. 

Conan’s conversation with the Count of Poitain is revealing as Howard imbues the barbarian usurper of a civilized kingdom as having very European American sentiments:

“I have no desire to rule an empire welded together by blood and fire. It is one thing to seize a throne with the aid of its subjects and rule them with their consent. It’s another to subjugate a foreign realm and rule it through fear.”

In this passage, written exactly halfway through America’s bid for world empire, which would result in over 900 military bases on foreign soil and also in it losing its sovereignty to globalist concerns, Howard voiced the standard American belief in isolationist foreign policy of the 1930s, in the wake of their tens of thousands of dead and maimed, that had been and would repeatedly be overcome by fictions so improbably mean that Howard’s fantastical tales stand like pillars of truth by comparison to the contemporary American propaganda, which is even now, 80 years later used in barely rewritten form to mesmerize the ever less intelligent American slave mind into supporting a cause more evil than Xaltotun’s ancient ambitions.  

The character of Conan is authentically meat-headed enough to endear him to some more cerebral readers. 

The closing illustration depicts a raging lion emerging from a crown and holding a battle axe between its paws.

Monday, January 11, 2021

Alarmingly Plausible

King of Dogs, by Andrew Edwards, book review by Lynn Lockhart


Fate has been much on my mind lately, as the schemes of our ruling class are carried through with cruel ineptness.  I feel instinctually, as I felt in 2016, that the prognosis of the American empire is not good and that we are all playing our roles, wittingly or not, and no one who states their intentions, for good or ill, has much chance of meeting their purpose.

Just as in a Greek tragedy, the hardships and inhuman punishment faced by the novel's hero Grayson lead inexorably to more hardships and punishments, adding to his glory but showing that any one man, even a most capable and extraordinary man, can only do so much against the eternal evil.  The author cruelly leads Grayson on a circuitous quest, introducing fell enemies as well as wormlike cowards, and sprinkles in a few normal folks who navigate this alarmingly plausible near-future dystopian doomsday novel much as I would likely do, forming neighborhood associations, sharing sandwiches, sitting tight and hoping it all blows over.  

Mister Edwards' loving descriptions of the Moab, Utah setting have planted in me the seeds of a road trip or maybe a train trip in some far off future.  

Underlying everything is the author's appreciation for the privilege of life itself, including all of the injuries we suffer from fate, the mistakes we make and the marks we leave on the world in the short time we have.

King of Dogs is a highly relevant book to these unprecedented times but there is much more to it, it is written with great care to reveal eternal truths as only great fiction can.





Saturday, January 9, 2021

Berry to syrup

Foraging and Canning with the Last Pale Americans, August 23, 2020 by James LaFond





In four hours over two days I picked four shopping bags of berries from the sides of roads in Kamas Valley, Utah, listed in the order of proportions:

-Choke cherries 87%

-Elderberries 5%

-Oregon grape 2%

-June berries 3%

-Black currants 3%

This filled a bushel and four of us spent 2 hours sorting and cleaning the berries.

Then three of us spend two hours cooking and rendering the berries.

Then the next day three of us spent two hours canning the berries into syrup.

I can’t eat the sugar without returning to the sloth diet. However, I ate the mash, a pint of it, and it was great. The sugar is being used as a preservative and as a means to get slaves of the American factor diet to eat it. I would just can the juice, which I am told is possible

Deb supervised.

I washed jars and lids and dishes.

Bob stirred the berry juice, lemon juice, pectin and sugar on the stove.

Bob and I then poured the syrup into a pitcher and I poured it into jars, which Deb wiped off. I then put the lids on the jars and screwed on the bands and turned the jars upside down to that the hot liquid within would help seal the jar.

We then cleaned up, labelled and dated and boxed the jars, having made 30 pints, 4 half pints and one ¼ pint jar of syrup.

I am the picker and helper. Since then we have canned green beans we picked from the garden and pickles and pickled vegetables from produce got at the grocery store. We will be canning more recipes and making apple cider instead of apple pie filling this year with the wealth of apples from the tree in the yard. Elderberry and Oregon grape will be the next batch of syrup. Rose hips are two weeks out and my scouting tells me I should get a dry bushel this year hiking mountain trails and logging roads.

Bob and Deb’s children and grandchildren have done well and refuse to eat home canned foods. Still, the old folks think that if times get bad enough that the home survival arts of their parents will once again have a place.

Canning supplies are increasingly hard to get and prices rising. The unthinkable is coming into being, that the Collective God of American Humanity might one day have to worry about feeding, might need to step down out of retard Olympus to engage in the despised act of survival.

Monday, January 4, 2021

2020 Crackpot Industries Editrix Statement

 How much Crackpottery?

I didn't get as much done as the boss, but it wasn't too shabby:

9 books published (only 7 in 2019 but one was the beast Cracker-Boy)
308k total words (compared to 326k in 2019, I feel pretty good about this)
15 Crackpot Podcast episodes 
22 Blogspot posts (that is really low, gonna fix that in 2021)

Thank you, James, readers and listeners, for bearing with me as I tried to gain my footing in the perma-kwar regime, with work-from-home, the sad end of our in-person homeschool c0-0p, the happy introduction of weekly beach trips, a new family to homeschool pod with, and more time with cousins than we ever had before.  

Podcasting these last 3+ years has been a great experience, I learned the rudiments of sound editing and video editing, got to practice interviewing skills, did a little writing and really enjoyed talking on the phone with my friends and sharing that with you.  The door isn't closed on podcasting, but scheduling and connectivity are issues for James and myself during these unprecedented times and combined with the strange social and political climate we are in, it's a good time to take a break and focus on publishing books.

I had help from a number of proofreaders this year, including Charles S., Rusty, Colin, Greg and Chris, and perhaps others (hope those names are sufficiently anonymous).  Your work will be very valuable to me in our 2021 publishing plan!

To wrap up the year, I will be adding recently published titles to the bookstores, so please remember to check those out.  If you want to keep up with me, follow me on twitter and remind me to add you.

xoxo,
Lynn


Sunday, January 3, 2021

Lockhart's Top LaFonds Volume 127

 Happy New Year, LaFondians!  Crackpot Industries had a banner year!  Well, the Crackpot got a lot of work done, completing 37 books, but the Editrix slipped to a 25% work rate, publishing only 9 books for the year.  We set aside regular podcasting to focus on Plantation America for Patreon and publishing hardcover books.  The virus disrupted life for both of us, but we have adapted and will continue to do so and hope the same for you.  Posting on the main site, jameslafond.com, is changing going forward, so instead of summary posts like this one, look for new posts here, including Robert E. Howard reviews, fiction, and more.  

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and good luck and health to all readers of good will!


The anecdote about me is true and so are the horrors described that continue to this day.

Do you have a personal brand?

Play word games!

Stop reading or watching movies about WWII.  Lots of other big brain stuff there too.  Can't get away from WWII!

More bootleg LaFonds are available. How God Saved MarsAfterdarkRandy Bracken Goes to HelSoliloquyWytchfinder.  The South American River finds new ways to be odious.  Trouble with poorly paid and trained censors.

I can't easily judge the happiness of others and never assume that the average suburban dad is living a hollow life. But Lynn T. isn't an average suburban man. If he felt good about the big sale, I suppose it would show in the vid, and it doesn't.

Everyone over the age of 10 or so should always carry a knife.  Among my social group, very few do, and they are wonderfully impressed when I produce it at a time of need.  Some more ideas to prepare.

Ranking pugilists.

Grizzly bears and pigs are both omnivores.

People watching in the Denver train station.

Slavers have been kidnapping English children for centuries and working and abusing them to death.  

Writing biographies is one of LaFond's special talents.  "Flood" is shaping up to be one of the best.  Part 10 and Part 11 takes a turn!

The message the RWBB community does not want to hear.

Don't miss the comments on this Taboo piece.

I think everyone underestimates how much American Christianity is based on the social primacy of commerce and wealth accumulation, so much so that the theology is reversed engineered to fit.

The King James Version has had the most impact on the language and culture of the West.

James, just so you know, this is basically a boutique twitter experience.

Troubling signs to look out for.

Oh no, what are we getting into...?

James, you are just trying to shirk responsibility for your ne*gro*es.

If you can view someone's beliefs or practices as abhorrent, but contend that it is good to engage in commerce with them, you might be an American.

So much of medicine is butchery, even when it saves your life, but a serious portion is quite malicious and it turns my stomach.

Exceptions that prove the rule in Japan.

Dialogues with Anglospherians.

We're all running out the clock on this tumultuous year.

The bug future that approaches inexorably.

Just remember to carry a ball and mitt, too.  This is not advice at all, just hypothesizing for entertainment purposes.

The Ghetto Grocer and his razors.

The governmental-religious regime we live under is quite tyrannical, self contradictory, ahistorical and unpleasant.

At my old job everyone who quit got a huge party.  It was universally agreed that leaving that job would be one of the best days of your life.

I love when people tell me the CIA is not allowed to conduct domestic operations, then I get to show them the wiki page on domestic CIA operations.

A very kind review of Stupid-Time, available now!

In 2021 we are bringing back pulp, try some Edgar Rice Burroughs.

This is very kind of you, James, thank you.  I only ever wanted to make it easier for you to write, given the constraints.  I never expected a payoff when I began insinuating myself into your writing career but maybe we'll both get the bag!

If we ever do another pod with just me and James we really need to talk about Samson.

Some fun videos.

Don't miss the comments here.  One thing about social media is that some facts on the ground do leak out in real time.  Watching the subsequent historification of events by the official media really brings home the possibility that most everything we are taught in history is a motivated narrative.

Stephen King is a disgusting person and I've never read a single book of his.

Friendships are rare for all of us.  I feel this very intensely at times.

The hard right is divided on the virus.  Many of us raised the alarm very early, watched what was happening in Wuhan and Italy and predicted what would happen here.  As more information became available, we adjusted our views.  This is hard for some people to accept.  LaFond's work in reading and interpreting that which is unreadable to mere mortals is truly heroic and thankless labor.  

Things to look out for, ugh!

I think "feds" are everywhere, some of them on govt payroll, some unwitting idiots enforcing social norms, some who will sell you out the moment there is pressure or profit available.  We all need to be careful, maybe even paranoid, and find ways to enjoy life and activities anyways.

LaFond once read Reason Magazine????!!!!  James, in failing to conform to social expectations, despite the proven ability to do so, you have inspired and blessed people around the world.