The Natalie Harp Loyalty Test

It really is as simple as that.  Being instructed to not talk about Natalie Harp is just another item in a long grocery list of things that require unyielding devotion to a personality cult instead of exercising some remaining brain cells.  It’s a test that superficially can easily be passed, just wait a few days until nobody else is talking about Natalie Harp and you will blend in along with everyone else.  Cults do love themselves some blending in.

This particular coordinated counterattack was kind of rushed.  And whether by accident or design that makes it stand out as being odd and unnatural.  Which is paradoxically not unnatural as the Trump loyalty test is a signature move.  Follow a simple directive today, when I ask you to do something insane later I know I can rely on you.  Loyalty testing is normalized as a distraction technique.

One of the top comments on a Bluesky Natalie Harp search is this:

And I’m feeling in a generous mood since this was my technique in my previous post.  (Which was made before that Bluesky comment.)  Finding an excuse to post the name as many times as possible, awfully immature and childish.  Nobody, even someone as hungry for attention as Natalie’s deserves that.  I’ve thought of a lot of good reasons to let it go, move on, and repent from the error of my ways and remove myself from the eternal doom loop of polarized criticism and snark.

It would be a shame if the Streisand Effect got renamed the Harp Effect.  Barbara sort of brought that infamy on herself.  Natalie’s case is by association from someone else instructing us to not pay attention.  Two totally different things.

It would be a shame if enshittification got renamed ennattification.  Just because someone else likes money above quality of product and services surrounding them.

Those annoying co-workers who ride the coattails of the most obvious office politicking/sabotaging low life?  It would be a shame if “riding the coattails” got replaced by “plucking the Harp strings”.

Having to insist that you also like the same type of women that Trump likes?  It would be a shame if that gets referred to as “getting Natalie wood”.

——————————————————————-

Passing the loyalty test is much less intellectually taxing than spending the effort in researching what the fuss is all about.  Getting eyes on the post (and following it up by a donation request) is far more effective than the order of magnitude of increased effort to understand the real issues behind the hubbub.  Underneath the pettiness are some important topics.  Topics such as genuine concern if there’s a national security intelligence risk at play here.  The loyalty test is a cheap short circuit.  Those that pass the loyalty test actually fail the loyalty test.  The failure is understanding the why you're supposed to talk or not to talk about something.  The failure to comprehend why you’re

Harping on

the same topic over and over again.

This Is Definitely Not About Natalie Harp

It’s never too late to learn something.  And I just found out 

DON’T TALK ABOUT NATALIE HARP.

You may want to talk about Natalie Harp.  You may want to type the name of Natalie Harp into searches or social media messages.  But don’t, because the topic of Natalie Harp is off limits and all mentions of the name Natalie Harp and research on Natalie Harp and any focus on Natalie Harp is taboo.  The less times the name of Natalie Harp is mentioned, the better for everyone.  You’ve got about zero chance of seeing that name here, this is a fully accredited not about Natalie Harp blog post.  That’s easily verified by seeing the enormous effort taken to avoid Natalie Harp’s name of Natalie Harp.

We have Jon Ossoff to blame for not being allowed to mention Natalie Harp.  John mentioned Natalie Harp’s name in full-NATALIE.  Not a pronoun like she, her and not a reference to her position, but a full blown Natalie escaped his lips.  And from context you knew he meant “Natalie Harp.”  Maybe he thought he could get away with saying the forbidden name of Natalie with some plausible deniability that it was another Natalie other then the not to be mentioned Natalie Harp.  It’s almost like he found a giant Don’t Press This Button Which Talks About Natalie Harp and like a wet paint sign gave it a test.  Let’s see what happens when you mention the unmentionable name of Natalie Harp.  It’s no wonder that the don’t talk about Natalie Harp crowd reacted instantly and viciously.  They take their not talking about Natalie Harp seriously in the Don’t Talk About Natalie Harp circles.

Ossoff should have taken a cue from the gematria grifters who are definitely not talking about Natalie Harp.  They’re still busy with Hayden Panettiere instead of Natalie Harp.  Natalie Harp would have been a perfect name to mention.  Even if told not to mention Natalie Harp, why would something sensitive stop them now?  They’re still busy have a perfectly Natalie Harp tie in with the years of bullshit HAARP (definitely not Natalie) weather warfare attack on science stories.  You have to stretch to turn Hayden’s passing into an eclipse ritual.  But HARP vs. HAARP?  How can that not be a clue?

Then the gematria crowd and other conspiracy crowd could help us with the other many questions.  What about other Natalie Harp’s other than the current don’t talk about Natalie Harp, Natalie Harp?  Whether you talk about Natalie Harp (which I won’t) or not, the gematria of NATALIE HARP is still the gematria of NATALIE HARP.  Mostly some two and three digit numbers which could mean other things than the Natalie Harp you aren’t allowed to mention.  Some of them wildly far away from anything concrete about the Natalie Harp I’m not mentioning.  Normally they love the repetition and any reference to the Natalie Harp we aren’t allowed to mention anymore is a good thing.  Talking about Natalie Harp instead of gas prices of talking about Natalie Harp instead of the Epstein files or talking about Natalie Harp instead of tariffs, that’s a good thing, right?  Shouldn’t we be talking about the Natalie Harp we aren’t allowed to talk about instead of housing prices?

 Gematria would be perfect for this.  If I was allowed to decode Natalie Harp instead of being censored for mentioning Natalie Harp I would find out something like NATALIE HARP = 66 (reverse reduction) and FISH = 66 (reverse ordinal).  Does that mean I can’t talk about fish because it might be considered talking about Natalie Harp which I’m still not mentioning.

And there’s side gigs to the main show about not talking about Natalie Harp.  Like we mentioned before, there are likely other Natalie Harps other than the main don’t talk about that Natalie Harp.  What if there was a Natalie Harp that got married and became known as Natalie Smith?  Is that really still a Natalie Harp that we probably shouldn’t mention?  Or is that Natalie Smith who is definitely not the Natalie Harp we can’t mention but is “ close enough” to the Natalie Harp we aren’t supposed to mention?  What about just harp or a harpsichord?  Is that close enough that it’s best not to mention it, just in case it’s hitting too close to the Natalie Harp we aren’t supposed to mention?  Errrggggghhhh.  It’s so terribly confusing, if only Natalie Harp wasn’t allowed to be mentioned much earlier, decades ago.  We wouldn’t have the current don’t talk about Natalie Harp mess now.

And that’s not even discussing the substantive parts about what it is about Natalie Harp that makes the Natalie Harp that we aren’t allowed to mention.  I suppose that the part of being an unrelenting sycophant with questionable access to positions of power is part of mentioning the Natalie Harp that can’t be mentioned.  Some might even be tempted to say that the Natalie Harp we can’t mention now is some version of Rasputin.  Can we still talk about Rasputin?  With or without gematria?  Or is that by extension part of the fiber of the Natalie Harp we can’t talk about that defines why we shouldn’t talk about Natalie Harp.  At least not THE Natalie Harp that we aren’t allowed to talk about.

Some people may say that the unmentionable Natalie Harp we can’t talk about is the primary narcisstic supply to a malignant narcissist.  So can I still talk about malignant narcissism, or is that now under the Natalie Harp we can’t talk about.

Another thing I personally would never do during my free periods of not talking about the Natalie Harp I’m not allowed to talk about is being sarcastic.  Even if I said something favorable about the Natalie Harp I’m not ever talking about, some will miss the joke and make a big deal of my mentioning the Natalie Harp I’m not allowed to talk about.  If I only had the cachet of The Onion I’d be a little clearer on my boundaries of what, where and when I can talk about the Natalie Harp I may never, ever get to mention.  And unfortunately, not being a dedicated enough cult member I might miss any memo on when it’s safe to talk about the Natalie Harp I’m not talking about now.

Updating Civilization 2

 A long time ago, before enshittification worked its claws into every fiber of society, there was a sort of golden age of computer games.  A period of time when you could purchase a stand alone game that wasn’t just existing to funnel you into an endless cycle of upgrades and newer versions.  Upgrades that increasingly had a form of intellectual property shrinkflation.  Dubious benefits versus additional costs.  In that time, Civilization 2 became my favorite. 

 A balance of playability and realism was achieved.  Some stuff from the beginning was just wrong.  For example, a battleship crewed by veterans could be destroyed by a fortified troop of musketeers in a walled city.  Playability-wise that makes sense.  Too easy = boredom and there should be a risk or the reward is hollow.  I suppose the thought process in that example is much like the actual straight of Hormuz situation now.  Just shelling from long range isn’t enough to capture a city.  In the absence of a coordinated force of battleship delivered shells and marines landing and doing the boots on the ground work, they had to do something with just battleship versus just musketeer combat.

A cute touch is that towards the end climate change and pollution is a real issue to be dealt with.  Unchecked, too much pollution would end your dreams of being master of the planet.  But without explanation, dedicating some capital from your global economy made that a nuisance more than an actual threat.  So I would argue that without magical knowledge of what things look like today an upgraded version could theoretically be made.  One that addresses the diplomatic and truly global effort necessary.  Because as is, at the endgame where climate change is being a pest it’s just one human player and any AI positions left are sort of a joke in comparison.  Now let’s look at some other problems with Civ 2 and how they could be updated these many years later.

The King Richard’s Crusade wonder

https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_wonders_in_Civ2

The game is effect an increase in production for engaging in a holy war.  That sounds an awful lot like slavery over a notoriously unstable region of the real world.  Perhaps s a different theme could be chosen, or how about this.  The cost to receive the increased production in that single city is an extra garrison to keep the slaves in line.  One extra military unit of the era’s main type must be in the city or it revolts.

Sun Tzu's War Academy

Veteran troops are better than green newbies.  Got it.  But that means a social cost that should be addressed.  Low morale, PTSD for the society’s forgotten Rambos, stiffing vets out of health care and pensions as is the tradition.  I’m not going to throw a number out for my solution since I can’t play test it.  Troops start as veterans, then after a period of some time reduce to non veteran status unless a monetary upkeep is put in to the system.

Adam Smith's Trading Company

 The game is a product of the era of capitalism is the only way to allocate resources, and it shows.  The “never becomes obsolete” aspect is complete and utter nonsense.  My solution -a timer.  A set number of turns after building the wonder and costs to eliminate pollution increase dramatically.  It takes more time, more of your Cub’s treasury to clean up.  As with real world capitalism clean up in game is more or less magic.  My fix has you pay for the inevitable creation of oligarchs hoarding resources in our bastardized version of Adam Smith’s ideas.

Statue of Liberty and Women's Suffrage

 Ouch.  The U.S. doesn’t take the concepts behind them seriously enough.  Best to just get rid of them until people start treating marginalized groups with more respect.

And let’s leave the rest of the wonders alone, but add Artificial Intelligence.  And adding AI gives a reasonable tech increase but has so many expensive problems that it’s to be avoided instead of built.  That approach takes the stance that the solution to the Fermi paradox is that advanced civilizations give up on wasteful spending on pipe dreams.

Fundamentalism and Extremism

 https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Fundamentalism_(government)_(Civ2)

Double Ouch

That does seem a bit racist and judgmental to instantly dive to the Middle Eastern vibe.  The fix is easy.  A graphic of an overweight AR toting slob with a red MAGA hat….as an option, not a forced choice.

Leaders

 I’m not against the idea of Stalin being the choice for a Russian Civilization leader like in the first game.  Civ 2 lets you pick from a wider set of options.  However, when put side by side with the absence of Hitler as a choice for a German.  The computer opponents per manuals and the internet are based on some set tendencies.  Well I’m calling bullshit on the whole leader concept.  You should be able to adapt and change as new information and eras arrive.  The idea that Abraham Lincoln took you from the Bronze Age to launching a fusion powered craft is fine for playability.  But I want the chance for Shaka to see the era of his ways and accept my regime change ideas after I threaten to nuke him.  AND see that maybe backfire when he immediately forges an alliance with the Celt’s who also have nukes.  Actually , at high enough levels the AI leaders seem to be all pretty much assholes.

Railroads

Sorry railroad fans, in Civ 2 railroads are way overpowered and the one thing for the mechanics of the game I’d change first.  You can literally build railroads in every land terrain square and move across an entire continent sized piece of territory instantly.  There’s no such thing as policing borders being an issue, and with no downside it’s beneficial to max out railroads.  There’s an economic boost to doing it.  The fix - instead of being free forever after construction you must pay for ongoing maintenance.

I could add some more.  The temptation to offer a snarky gematria based conspiracy wonder is high.  But we’ve all suffered enough with that.

The Frozen Eggs Debate

I hate being a conservative these days.  It’s so hard for me to understand sarcasm and satire.  Maybe I shouldn’t talk about this until I get a better grasp of that.

I just watched clips on Fox News of the Eggs Jubilee debate.  A nonexistent but very real sounding parody of the Jubilee debate format where a claimant makes a proposal and then is surrounded by a group of opposing view holders.  The clip was totally not cherry picked and edited to make it as embarrassing for the lefties as possible.

The Claim:  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a poopyhead.

First Debater:  You care to present a single specific point about what makes AOC that?

Claimant:  Because she is.  Checkmate!

And the debate ended.

So I have an ex-friend, let’s call him Leon to secure his true identity.  I’m sure he’d appreciate that since he used to be one of the guys, and now he’s having some naughty thoughts about doing actual research.  And asking to discuss meaningful DEI bullshit topics like bodily autonomy and stuff.  And since his wife is named Noel and that’s Leon spelled backwards nobody will know I’m talking about him.  Noel is the problem.  She has been giving him bad ideas.  So he asked me what I thought of the debate and asked me, “So what would you pick as a single specific point?”

Dammit, Leon you chucklehead.  The softball of all softball of all questions to ask.  The right wing media ecosystem just told me what to say about this.  It’s the big thing to talk about, until the next big thing I’m told what to whine about comes in.  AOC wants to freeze her eggs.  Some lame bullshit about bodily autonomy blah, blah, blah, uncovered by insurance, blah, blah blah, and missing out on the child bearing years and regrets and blah, blah, blah, equality between sexes and blah, blah, blah.  Totally missing that the Eggs Jubilee content has already proven she’s a poopyhead.

Then Leon told me I was being close minded and a MAGA cultist who couldn’t think for himself.  I. Have. Never. Been. So. Angry.

So I laid into Leon armed with all the confidence that one only finds in what Noel calls the multibillion dollar online grift economy.  Like, what the fuck does that even mean?  So here’s what I told him.

It’s the economy stupid.  What’s the most important part of the economy?  Stocks.  Like chicken stock.  That you make soup with.  And what’s the best part of a good chicken noodle soup?  It’s when you cut up pieces of hard boiled egg for the soup.  And what’s the best measure of inflation?  THE PRICE OF EGGS.  Sure the price of oil is part of that, as oil prices rise egg prices rise.  Duh!

Buy low, sell high.  I’ve been trading in cryptoeggs for the past couple of years.  Nothing too big.  Don’t want to lose the house the next time some lefty president comes in with their dumb ideas.  That got me thinking.  Why not invest in egg eggs.  Like the actual thing you could eat.  And I did something nobody I know did.  I bought them when the price was high.  A symbolic purchase in honor of the greatest world leader ever, DJT.  Those aren’t dumb ideas that are bad ideas, they are never before seen displays of genius.  And when the egg tariffs work their way through the system (SOON!!) I’ll be sitting on a goldmine.

Because, I’m freezing my eggs.  The generator to provide electricity for the egg freezer was bought from INFOWARS (back when it was good).  You can tell it’s high quality since it was $59,999.  No cheap ass commie  generator for me!  I’ve made arrangements for purchasing liquid nitrogen as a backup during times when the genny might go down.  Way more inexpensive and practical than you think.  And the nitrogen was made in Texas.

In about 20 years, when prices finally calm down, I’ll have something that retains value better than a house, better than gold, better than cryptoeggs.  I’ll have a fucking ton of genuine ex-frozen eggs that can be exchanged for real goods and services.  More valuable now than ever as 20 years from now when people are just figuring out how ironic it is that AOC freezing her eggs is exactly what poopyhead would do.

The security issue was a tough nut for a while, but finally solvable by finding someone who is willing to guard them for the promise of a couple really valuable eggs a year starting twenty years from now.

And get this.  Leon said,

“Are you sure you aren’t just triggered because she’s a bright young woman who shows signs actually fighting for a future worth living in?”

Leon, I don’t even know you anymore.  Lucky for you things seem to be going great with Noel.  Have some fun now, because she’s a poopyhead, too.  She will turn on you one day.  Her and her bad ideas about the cost of raising a family.  The cost that won’t be subsidized by stockpile of frozen eggs.

Know Your Grifter Tactics -The Unreliable Narrator, Part 2

Dr. John Gartner in YouTube

I remember the first time I saw The Sixth Sense, famous for its twist ending.  Perhaps I could have slowed down and figured it out before the reveal, but I was pleasantly surprised.  I was fully armed with advance knowledge there was I major twist, but I didn’t see it coming.  A good movie lets you escape and get lost in the story unfolding in front of you.  I had forgotten to even try to figure out what the surprise would be.

Bruce Willis’s character is a classic fictional unreliable narrator.  If he knew he was a ghost at the start his interactions with other ghosts and a tiny human that can see those ghosts would be different.  But there is a sort of bias wall between reality and his perceptions, his framing is skewed by that bias.

I am not a trained psychologist or psychiatrist.  Not that formal education or training would do me any good career wise.  There’s still a lot of anti-science and anti-intellectual sentiment floating around.  You gotta give the dwindling number of cult members something to do.  Not all of them get to deport decent people who just happen to have the (allegedly) wrong skin color.  So hey, Fauci is in the news again.  Let’s reinstate the bullshit false accusations that came about when he was scapegoated the first time around.

For myself, real life unreliable narrators are easy to spot.  Even without formal training it just comes naturally.  This is because there’s nothing wrong with my pattern recognition skills, and a science degree.  I also figured out the science degree wasn’t going to work out for employment.  Going into massive debt to get a masters degree - that wasn’t a grave I wanted to dig into.  But it did help a lot structuring my thoughts and solidifying the critical thinking abilities learned in high school.  Ah yes, those glorious days of high school where I first discovered that people have patterns, too.  I didn’t hang out with the cliques that would be most likely to be found at the type of rally Charlie Kirk would be hosting.  I learned to avoid them.  Which being in a fairly large school meant spending a lot of time by myself.  A classic Generation Jones nerd world of books and movies that I could absorb at my own pace without being assaulted by people in various stages of narcissism.

Yes, it’s another one of those posts.  Because at this point the actual objective facts are undeniable.  Not only is Trump objectively an unreliable narrator due to his lifelong narcissistic personality disorder, his dementia addled brain is mush.  “The Donald Trump you see today is the best you’ll see because it only just gets worse.”

I would gladly trade some peace and stability to replace the flex of seeing something of the kind of world that exists today.  The NPD affected brain by definition is heavily biased.  The NPD affected brain is an unreliable narrator to the body it operates.  The dementia affected brain by definition is a supercharged unreliable narrator.  Nothing is more important than the self.  Every narration is skewed.  Unreliably skewed.  Every story is now purposefully guided towards the skewed alternate reality or a jumbled mess as the various parts of the brain that govern impulse control and memory fade into pudding.  As Gartner and others mention on the various news shows and social media postings, it’s not cool to diagnose without interviewing by a trained professional.  But we’ve seen the trajectory over a decade.  The constant need for attention and providing material for the loyal subjects to get a short term attention boost is a great form of relevant and damning material.

Over not just the decade of active Trumpism and but decades leading up to that, narcissists without NPD have been “trained” to ignore the personality cult leader’s worst displays.  Like Fauci being unfairly scapegoated, Biden, Obama, Comey, Jack Smith, oh….its much shorter to say anyone that ever has disagreed with you is bad.  The multi billion dollar online grifting community latched on, amplified and the lingering seeds of doubt, although wilting now, the plants grew and the rot spread long enough to influence elections over millions of impressionable minds.  It’s absolutely no big surprise that Congressional ability to check and balance, to stop the madness, wasn’t going to happen.  The narcissists in control of those wheels in the machine didn’t do much about the 2008 financial crisis or January 6th.  Or a concerned response to climate change issues.Why should we expect different now.

Gartner has explained across his presentations that Trump is a good candidate to throw a hissy fit and launch some nukes.  I’m a bit more hopeful than that, but it is something to think about.  Yet, this is because my favorite scenario is more like some other nut job responds to his outrageous demands and pulls a big FU in retaliation.  And at least we’d never know who was wrong because everyone at that point is an unreliable narrator.  Some form of monetary reward is part of the online grifter’s speech, and even they aren’t dumb enough to think hustling you for Patreon subscriptions is going to help, right?

Know Your Grifter Tactics - The Unreliable Narrator, Part 1

 *Spoiler alert for The Odyssey and Project Hail Mary*

Back in the old days there was a quaint little practice known as reading.  This archaic mode of information sharing required a reader with enough resources to acquire printed material as well as a fundamental knowledge of how to translate the mysterious scrawling into something that wasn’t complete and incomprehensible gibberish.  For example, you may use this so called reading skill to read a restaurant menu and order the fish that you like instead of a spinach omelette you do not like.  Or you read the instruction manual instead of just trying to assemble your kid’s Christmas bicycle unaided.  Because you’ve got your pride.  You don’t need no damn instructions.  And if you really want to show off your reading skill, you can read gematria decodes because you can tell these are reliable.  The narrators tell you so.  Quite frequently.  Annoyingly and insanely frequently.  Almost like they need to say it instead of just being an actual reliable source needs to be, projected, instead of relying on actually being reliable.

Because this tedious reading thing doesn’t just require an education to read and some form of payment in a late stage capitalist nightmare.  There needs to be a writer.  And that’s a mixed bag.  Some writers are better than others, whether it be for entertainment to distract others from how they are struggling to pay the rent bill, or they’re targeting people who wouldn’t recognize propaganda if it bit them on the ass.  The marketing for sports/conspiracy gematria has always played to it being a somewhat fun method of acquiring secret and forbidden knowledge that just happens to coincide with bigotry and undreamt of wealth.  Every single one of these narrators is unreliable.  The profit motive is there.  The willingness to contradict just for the spur of the moment influencer economy points is there.  The sociopathic lack of giving a shit about others is there.  The doubling down on the craziness is there.  The constant drive and search for new cult members, braggadocio, confluence with other bad ideas, etc….  It just never ended.

Sometimes effective entertainment writing will deliberately use an unreliable narrator as a driving plot point.  And sometimes this can become an effective method of injecting societal concerns into the entertainment.  And as these get adapted into films the burden of slogging your way through hundreds of pages is removed.  You just might be forced to put up with an angle you don’t agree with when 100% objectivity is virtually impossible.  

The narrators of Fight Club, American Psycho, and Shutter Island are unreliable since they’re crazy.  Golden Caufirld in Catcher in the Rye is heavily biased.  Children are naive and innocent.  The unreliable narrator is officially a trope, a trope that exists because in real life the unreliable narrator exists in its many different forms.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator

(Throwing that in because a red flag for spotting an unreliable narrator is insistence that they are the ultimate source of all knowledge without providing references.)

My two favorite movies this year are Project Hail Mary and The Odyssey.  And both have unreliable narrators.  In PHM the protagonist suffers from a (deliberate) drug induced amnesia who slowly requires his lost memories over the course of the story.  The part about man made climate change is more clear in the book.  The clock is ticking to save the Earth.  And fortunately man made climate change bought us some extra time.  The alien microbe is absorbing the Sun’s energy and a super long trip to another star system holds the cure.  The creative choice allows our hero to work hard as tension builds instead of not having much of a movie and magically knowing the answer within 10 minutes of film time.  Throw in an alien that sociopaths and xenophobes can’t appreciate that makes grown adults with real feelings cry.

But I find even more interesting is The Odyssey.  Not more entertaining, but thought provoking.  The mere fact that this is the topic Nolan chose, I find fascinating.  The same way the Vietnam War sparked movies of war veterans trying to re-assimilate back into society (Rambo).  The source material has been part of philosophical discussion for THOUSANDS of years.  And not only is Odysseus an unreliable narrator, the question of his reliability is part of that philosophical discussion.  Translation and interpretation are an integral  part of the lore.  Not just the plot but the subsequent arguments.  Here’s some other content I’ve absorbed from YouTube:

https://youtu.be/u0Y8tFcpWnI?is=9jerJZiBRU2IfjQZ

(Phil0bot philosophy channel)

https://youtu.be/u0Y8tFcpWnI?is=9jerJZiBRU2IfjQZ

(MadMorph Movie Club channel)

These are smart people with worthy opinions.  Reliable narrators.

Previously, my experience with The Odyssey was 

1). High school English - the finale with Odysseus returning home and killing Penelope’s suitors.

2)  Bits and pieces of chapters stolen and thrown into other works.  Usually the Sirens.

3.  Xena Warrior Princess did the whirlpool story and devoted an entire separate episode in the second season titled, Ulysses.  And now we know Homer was full of shit and Ulysses fell in love with Xena.

These things, while fun like PHM and didn’t prepare me for the unreliable narrator.  So wrapping up Part 1 of the blogging.  My three takeaways in my highly personalized and opinionated recap of the Odyssey.

1)  The in movie referencing to the Sea Peoples was frequent.  I can’t help but relate that to current day big issues like the war with Iran and resource depletion.

2)  It’s complicated.  Odysseus is a complicated man.  It’s not black and white.  It does appear that like a conspiracy theorist all the good and cool stuff he accomplished because he’s study and cool.  All the bad stuff, the Gods are out to get him.  The convenient scapegoat.  

3)  With intent I do not waste my time on Twixter anymore.  But I have heard that there’s pointless argument about culture war topics instead of substantial issues.  Like the casting of Page and a black woman for Helen of Troy.  These are the talking points of the grifter.  The talking points of someone unwilling to focus on meaningful content.  The talking points of an unreliable narrator that will not talk about unreliable narrators because it hits too close to home and can’t express a complicated issue without resorting to a two or three digit number in a gematria decode.