HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JAMES JOYCE! His works got me hooked in my teens when I really related to his character Stephen Dedalus as he rejected his religion and indulged what I call his “young and pretentious side” in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I wore out my copy of Joyce’s novel Ulysses and continue to mark Bloom’s Day to this very day.
Over the years Finnegans Wake replaced Ulysses as my favorite Joyce novel and I’m fonder than many people are of his play Exiles. Continue reading
Filed under Neglected History
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the stories of pulp heroine Jirel of Joiry, the Medieval French woman-warrior created by female author C.L. Moore in 1934. For the first story click HERE.
JIREL MEETS MAGIC (1935) – First off, let me say that is a bizarrely bland and unfitting title for this wildly imaginative tale. It also ignores the supernatural elements of Jirel’s first two adventures by implying this is the first time she “meets” magic.
The story opens up with Jirel on horseback leading her army in a bloody assault on Castle Guischard, the stronghold of the sorcerer Giraud. When our heroine leads the way into the castle itself, even her bravest men are a bit intimidated by the dark history of the place, but charge in along with her.
When the last of Giraud’s men are slain and all secret passageways from Castle Guischard are covered, Jirel and her men scour the entire castle for any sign of the sorcerer, whom she has sworn to kill over his double-dealing with her.
At last, in a high tower of the castle, Jirel finds what must have been Giraud’s hiding place and sees how he apparently fled.
Behind plush curtains is a window with impossibly large ivory shutters. Once opened, those shutters reveal that the window leads not to the outside, but to another dimension in which Giraud has sought shelter.
Continue reading
Filed under Pulp Heroes
“I didn’t really win mine, either.”
Add Pennsylvania to the states where courts have ruled unconstitutional the mail-in (“cheat by mail”) vote procedures unilaterally forced through by Democrat office-holders before the 2020 election. It’s no secret at this point that the long, drawn-out court procedures necessary to wade through were counted on by the Democrats, knowing that proper challenges and appeals could not be finalized before November 3rd, 2020.
With this latest court decision (link below) we have even further support regarding the way that the 2020 presidential election was at least as corrupt and tainted as the 1876 and year 2000 presidential results. Naturally at this point we cannot go back and discard the ballots which came in improperly, or without postmark dates or which otherwise failed to meet legal standards, but Joe Biden has joined George W Bush in 2000 and Rutherford B Hayes in 1876 with an eternal asterisk by his name. Continue reading
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
It’s been awhile since Balladeer’s Blog has posted a shoutout to a neglected college sports team with a cool name. Here’s the first in a long time.
College: SOUTH CAROLINA FAITH A&M
Team Name: RAGIN’ BULLS
Location: Summerville, SC Continue reading
Filed under Cool names and cool logos
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