Monthly Archives: April 2014

COLLEGE HOCKEY: THE CHAMPIONS FOR 2014

Here’s one last round of congratulations to the college hockey champions in the five divisions covered here at Balladeer’s Blog.

st-norbert-green-knightsNCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) DIVISION THREE

National Champions: SAINT NORBERT COLLEGE GREEN KNIGHTS (3rd title in last 4 years)

Runners-up: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN- STEVENS POINT POINTERS

2013 Champions: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN- EAU CLAIRE BLUGOLDS

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Arizona State Sun DevilsACHA (American Collegiate Hockey Association) DIVISION ONE

National Champions: ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY SUN DEVILS

Runners-up: ROBERT MORRIS (IL) UNIVERSITY EAGLES

2013 Champions: MINOT STATE UNIVERSITY BEAVERS Continue reading

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PULP HEROES: THE FINAL TWO MOON MAN STORIES

Moon Man 5I’m concluding my look at Frederick C Davis’ 1930s pulp hero the Moon Man. In reality police detective Stephen Thatcher, the Moon Man stalked the night-darkened streets of fictional Great City clad in his black costume and his helmet made of one-way Argus glass.

Armed with two automatic pistols plus limitless courage and ingenuity the Moon Man captured or killed Great City’s most dangerous criminals –  both white collar and blue collar – and robbed them of their ill-gotten booty. He would then distribute that money to the city’s Great Depression-ravaged poor. All this made him hunted by both the crooks AND the cops. For more on the Moon Man and other neglected pulp heroes click here: https://glitternight.com/pulp-heroes/     

37. MURDER AS A PASTIME – This story opens up with the Moon Man raiding the headquarters of a stolen car ring in order to capture the gang and make off with their criminal loot. “Yelloweye” Ruane, a man with odd yellow irises, is the brains of the car ring and in a lead-heavy gunfight he succeeds in driving the Moon Man off, but not before our hero nabs the crooked money.

Following MM from a distance Ruane learns the location of his latest hideout and after the Moon Man leaves Ruane enters the house and kidnaps Sue McEwen, our hero’s lady love who has been an accomplice to his double-life ever since she learned his true identity. Ruane is convinced that our globe- helmeted protagonist doesn’t really give his stolen loot to charity but keeps it for himself. Yelloweye anonymously informs the newspapers that unless the Moon Man comes up with $100,000 ransom his female accomplice (name unknown to Ruane) will be turned over to the cops. Continue reading

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FREE SPEECH NOW: BECAUSE PEOPLE WHO NEVER OFFEND ANYONE NEVER SAY OR WRITE ANYTHING WORTH PAYING ATTENTION TO ANYHOW

RELIGION KILLS

RELIGION KILLS

Free Speech has been under assault by both Liberals and Conservatives in recent decades. There was a time when Liberals actively supported freedom of expression because they understood it was THE primary freedom from which all other freedoms flowed. The early figures from my own country’s history protected speech with the FIRST Amendment to the Constitution because they knew all too well that ideas that are considered taboo and offensive today might be considered essential truths by future generations.

The repulsive 1960s generation of American Liberals were all about Free Speech when THEIR ideas were the ones offending people. Once they considered themselves to be comfortably in the cultural, educational and political driver’s seat by the early 1990s they decided they wanted their own already outdated worldview enshrined in stone and presented as THE one true set of values.

They became the Political Correctness Police and anyone who offended their 1960s attitudes had to be silenced because – as they knew so well from their own experience – when controversial ideas are given the room to breathe they can often thrive. The totalitarian asses of the 1960s can’t bear the fact that younger people might have opinions that offend THEM as much as their opinions offended their parents’ generation.

SPIKED-Online.com is launching a FREE SPEECH NOW campaign in recognition of the fact that, all around the world similar assaults on Freedom of Expression are being made. If Muslims are offended they want the offensive material banned, if authoritarian regimes like the one in China are offended they want the offensive material banned, and on and on it goes. Considering that the more easily offended someone is the less intelligent they tend to be I find it amazing that Politically Correct censorship has thrived the way it has.

SPIKED-Online.com’s opening post in this campaign even quotes Spinoza’s wonderful line “Every man should think what he likes and say what he thinks.” That still rings true because no matter what the hypersensitive fools who want to censor the rest of us find offensive NONE of them has the right to try to extinguish one single product of the human mind.

Here at Balladeer’s Blog I deal with these issues on a daily basis. Just about everything I write offends either left-wing fanatics or right-wing fanatics or religious fanatics. So, in the spirit of freedom of expression no matter whose delicate little sensibilities are offended (including – GASP – African- Americans) I will link to Spiked-Online.com’s post and would certainly encourage anyone else who creates in any way to join me in doing so. Tell the powers that be – no matter what their skin color or their blood-soaked religion – that you will NOT let them dictate to you what ideas and opinions you are free to express. CLICK HERE FOR THE ARTICLE AT SPIKED – http://www.spiked-online.com/freespeechnow/fsn_article/let-everyone-think-what-he-likes-and-say-what-he-thinks#.Uz8mu4JghtT

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Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, opinion

SEX SYMBOL CASEY JAMES PRESENTS MAIL TIME WITH BALLADEER’S BLOG

Casey mail woman 1Renaissance woman and supermodel Casey James once again demonstrates her versatility! Not only is she Balladeer’s Blog’s Official Movie Hostess, but she’s also my Official Gothic Horror Presenter and now is trying on the role of Mail Woman for Balladeer’s Blog.

The tough and seductive Casey will be generously presiding over my periodic posts like this where I will answer frequently-asked questions – including very hostile ones – from the emails that are sent to me.

EMAIL:  What r u – some kind of Satanist or something?     Continue reading

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COLLEGE BASKETBALL CHAMPIONS FOR 2014

Here’s one final round of congratulations for the champions of each of the fourteen divisions of college basketball covered here at Balladeer’s Blog.

Vanguard U LionsNAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) DIVISION ONE

National Champions: VANGUARD UNIVERSITY LIONS

Runners-up: EMMANUEL COLLEGE LIONS

2013 National Champions: GEORGETOWN (KY) COLLEGE TIGERS

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Indiana Wesleyan WildcatsNAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) DIVISION TWO
National Champions: INDIANA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY WILDCATS 
Runners-up: MIDLAND UNIVERSITY WARRIORS
2013 National Champions: CARDINAL STRITCH UNIVERSITY WOLVES

Continue reading

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CLOUDS WITHOUT WATER (1909): ALEISTER CROWLEY’S LITERARY PRACTICAL JOKE

Clouds Without WaterWhat better way to mark April Fool’s Day than by commemorating one of the wittiest and most daring of practical jokes, one perpetrated by Aleister Crowley in those brilliant years before drugs and/or self-delusion fogged his mind. Decades before the pathetic “Peekaboo Crowley” of much renown Aleister was still churning out some very enjoyable poetry – some of it brilliant. The Sword of Song and Konx Om Pax are my favorite volumes of verse by “the Laird of Boleskine” … AFTER Clouds Without Water, that is.  

Clouds Without Water was not Crowley’s only literary practical joke, of course, but the humor of it resonates to this very day, thanks mainly to the never-changing air of pious self-righteousness that afflicts most of the world’s clergy-members. And not just pious self-righteousness but a habit of condemning in the strongest language works of art which their self-limited minds clearly don’t understand.

THE JOKE: Clouds Without Water was published under one of Crowley’s pseudonyms – Reverend Charles Verey. It was circulated to various ministries and teaching colleges allegedly as a condemnation of “the type of atheism and socialism” that the young and the bohemian were embracing. Crowley – writing as Reverend Verey – wrote a foreward and a closing prayer for the volume of poetry as well as (when you know the full story) HILARIOUS footnotes expressing the kind of simplistic moral outrage that only the most narrow-minded of holy-rollers can spout. 

Under another assumed identity Crowley ALSO wrote the sonnets being condemned by his Reverend Verey alter ego. On the surface the poems were written by a college professor scandalously celebrating an extramarital affair with one of his female students, a young woman named Lola. The sonnets reflect the supposed couple’s flouting of social and sexual conventions until the affair ends in tragedy for all concerned. Crowley’s fictional persona Reverend Verey was denouncing the poems and the lifestyle reflected in those poems in the strongest possible terms. Continue reading

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Filed under Mythology