Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

The Noble Red Man: Mark Twain on the Indians.

Have you noticed that the vast majority of so-called love songs are really nothing of the kind but are, in fact, sex songs? The funniest example is probably Sinatra’s “When I Was Seventeen.” I mean, here’s a guy who is at the end of his life bragging to everybody how much sex he’d has during [...]

In the days of Bill Clinton, when the freerepublic.com people were still sane, somebody mentioned the “shadow government.” This brought about a contest of hilarious pictures depicting whatever the shadow government seemed to mean. Here are some of them.

Consider the following rhymes, off the top of my head:
try and hide – cyanide
religion – pigeon
mind – try and
water – slaughter
along – strong – song
queen – seventeen
funeral – sooner-or-l… ater
society – impiety – propriety – variety
abdo’men – roman
church – perch
hears – grenadiers
Don’t you think these are, well, interesting? Have I been in the ivory tower [...]

Guys, I’m becoming a Rastafarian. Christianity is a great religion, but, having conducted the Outsider Test, I am now convinced that Rastafari is the one true faith. I’m eager to discuss the merits of our religions in the future.

I don’t understand why I have to leaf through The Oxford Book of American Poetry in search of poems that actually rhyme. But here are a couple of delightful ones:
Dawn
An angel, robed in spotless white,
Bent down and kissed the sleeping Night.
Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone.
Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.
Fire [...]

Call people you dislike (or affectionately, it’s up to you) anything you want: kikes, papists (check both), niggers, wops, gooks, frogs, etc., etc., as long as you don’t drop a fucking bomb on them. Sticks and stones, you know? Or, and freedom of speech and association. Got it?

From the point of view of a crocodile a human being is a moderately quickly moving piece of meat.

Is that why we embody evil on Halloween? Because normally we can only defend ourselves from demonic attacks; we cannot attack the evil spirits. But if these spirits were to assume flesh and blood, we could end their baneful influence by killing them physically.

I don’t bestow the title “work of art” lightly. But here are some of the titles which I found beautiful:
Computer Games:
Grim Fandango
Star Control II
Warcraft II
Fiction:
James Clavell’s Shogun
Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment
Edmond Hamilton’s Star Kings
TV:
The X-Files
Seinfeld
Aeon Flux
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Movies:
Casablanca
Notorious
The Rock
L.A. Confidential
The Matrix
Gladiator
What did I miss?

This is the one. Let’s sing something in celebration:
I promised her rings for her fingers,
Sparkling flowers for her flaxen hair;
I swore that I’d never set sail in foul weather,
But stay by her side at the shore.
Fare thee well, oh ye Barbary merchants,
Fare thee well to the Spanish blockade,
Fare thee well to the siege of Gibraltar,
And [...]

That’s exactly what that blog is. It’s not scholarship, it’s not apologetics, it’s not even debate; it consists of outrageous rants, often in response to other rants no less outrageous.

I was robbed of my childhood by being almost completely deprived of cartoons in the rotten old Soviet Union. When I moved to the US in 1993, I’d never miss what was called “Disney Afternoon” on TV. Some of the more recent cartoons I’ve found to my liking, alphabetically (I’m omitting the adult cartoons, such [...]

Happy independence/secession day to you and yours. Please comment “aye” if you would like the state you live in to secede from the United States.

In one episode Peter is filming a plastic bag being moved to and fro by the wind and saying that there’s so much beauty in the world, obviously in a reference to the movie American Beauty. Then there is a shot of God on a cloud yelling at him: “It’s just a piece of trash [...]

Lew Rockwell asks, “why are the frightening calls for energy autarky — that is, destruction of part of the division of labor — by McCain and the other neocons — never even controversial?” I think it’s because the government can do anything to us. The only thing that limits the state these days is public [...]

Here is the master himself:

Consequently, when man knows an effect, and knows that it has a cause, there naturally remains in the man the desire to know about the cause, “what it is.” And this desire is one of wonder, and causes inquiry… For instance, if a man, knowing the eclipse of the sun, consider [...]

Am I guilty of expatiating on the Absolute as if it were my pocket watch? Do I also fail to shrink from announcing eternal absolute values and from establishing moral codes unconditionally binding on all men?

Aeon has heard about Trevor’s new method for creating exact human duplicates…

Scafandra is being tied to a chair. Aeon is watching above.

Trevor:

Alright, I think we are ready to start.

Twikka:
You cost way too much, buddy.

Henchman 1:
You’re one tough little cookie… let’s see how crusty, what’d you say?

Scafandra:
(struggling) Eat it!

Henchman 2:
Now, take it easy!

Trevor:
Scafandra, you are overdoing [...]

I used to like imaginative retellings of the story of creation and fall, and I think I still do. Here is one such, from Aeon Flux’s “Chronophasia”:

Trevor is holding Aeon captive in his tent and is feeding her.

Trevor:

You’ve been exposed, Aeon. When will you learn to take precautions? What did you do with the vial?

Aeon:
What?

Trevor:
The [...]