Logos Rising Review

Posted on August 31, 2025 by JC

Logos Rising: A History of Ultimate Reality by E. Michael Jones, Fidelity Press
April 2nd, 2020

E. Michael Jones is a contemporary writer I’ve mentioned a couple of times on this blog including one post dedicated to an article he wrote on J.R.R. Tolkien. I mentioned in that post that I had been reading (but still not finished), the subject of this post. I bought it soon after it was published in 2020 and did read three or four chapters in before stopping for what I assumed would be a short time and which ended up being over five years. So long in fact, that I promised myself I would start the whole book again and work through it this year and finished reading it around a month ago. 

I should hasten to add, that this was not because I found the book wanting but that I simply wasn’t in the mood for such a lengthy work partially given the strange reality of the world in 2020. Like many, I was seeking to escape this reality somewhat which I did by retreating into Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age and as a spectator in the Medieval Japanese Heian Court.  On checking my reading list from that year, a lot of the non-fiction I did read were shorter works and usually with a Catholic focus. I will note that I did at least tackle Plato’s Republic that year too though one can see where my mind was in this post from late in the year.

Nonetheless, I finally got to Logos Rising this year and what follows is a short and largely positive review.

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Does the Poodle Mince His Words?

Posted on August 20, 2025 by JC

The Insider by Christopher Pyne, Hachette Australia, March 31st, 2021

I have previously reviewed two other works by Australian politicians with one by Cory Bernardi and the other by Tony Abbott. It is not a coincidence that these two as well as the subject of this review, are from the Liberal Party of Australia; which is more or/and increasingly less the conservative party in Australia. If you’re among the midwitted chattering classes of Australia, Cory Bernardi and Tony Abbott are as right-wing as you can get before having to resurrect Adolf Hitler. Though as my reviews of those two works demonstrate: they aren’t really all that “right-wing” at all. Christopher Pyne in contrast, is considered by most (and his own words), to be a moderate. As the more genuinely earnest politicians learn by experience, moderates are the ones most likely to leave a metaphorical knife in your back while crossing over to the enemy when you most need them by your side. 

Unlike the other two works, I didn’t intend to read this book or even know it existed until it came up in a library search when I was looking for the Michael Mann film of the same name. This might sound like a joke but I am quite serious and though I may now have to search elsewhere for the Mann film, this chance discovery has at least provided ample material for the post that follows.

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The Decline of South Park

Posted on August 7, 2025 by JC

Almost nine years ago in the early days of this blog, I wrote about the decline of The Simpsons which was my favourite television show growing up. I pointed out then that the show had declined in quality significantly around Season 10 and despite this, had continued for another fifteen. At the time I wrote it, I had assumed it would be cancelled within the next few years but I was very wrong and just this year it has been renewed for another four seasons which will take it to forty years on broadcast television. 

As I also state in the same post, it has carried on well beyond its cultural relevance as I still have never failed to “get” a reference to the show because they are always from seasons through the 1990s which most people of my generation are familiar with. I don’t know anybody who watches it today and I am only reminded that it exists when it comes into the news from time to time.

In the late 1990s, South Park became a hit and could be seen as the successor to The Simpsons. People might prefer to point to King of the Hill, The Family Guy or Matt Groening’s own Futurama but it was South Park that had the more comparable success; especially as it reached beyond the United States. Similarly to The Simpsons, it had a run of about a decade where I regularly watched it. As a young and morally uncertain teenager, it’s deliberately offensive social iconoclasm certainly appealed to me. And it is South Park that I’ve very lately noticed, has also lasted much beyond it’s cultural relevance. 

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Happy Gilmore 2: Another Pointless Sequel

Posted on July 27, 2025 by JC

As I’ve briefly written previously, Adam Sandler came to prominence in the early 1990s mostly through his success as part of the cast of Saturday Night Live. Like many, he was able to leverage this to transition to film which began with a few supporting roles in films like Coneheads and Airheads before starring in Billy Madison in 1995. The following year he starred in Happy Gilmore which was even more successful and which has led to mostly continued success up to the present.  Happy Gilmore was the first film I remember seeing him in on VHS as a teenager and I’m sure this is true for many.

Both Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore had a very similar formula and Sandler would continue to repeat this in most of his films going forward. Generally speaking, Sandler plays a sympathetic loser (often with some special gift or advantage), that he uses to succeed invariably with a supportive female love-interest. While many of these films were even more successful than his first two major successes, I would say none have ever bettered these two films. 

There are films that vary this formula a little, such as the romantic comedies 50 First Dates and Just Go With It but the essentials remain the same. As he got older and got married, he started portraying a family man instead but this was more a product of his age. He has occasionally also demonstrated more dramatic talents in films like Punch-Drunk Love and more sentimental films like Reign Over Me but his most successful films are his comedies.

What is strange is that despite how formulaic these films are, there have been no sequels except for the ensemble comedy Grown Ups and more recently a sequel to the Netflix exclusive Murder Mystery alongside Jennifer Aniston.  So it was something of a surprise to see him go back to make a sequel to what most would consider his best comedy film: Happy Gilmore.

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The Galactic Plot Thickens

Posted on July 10, 2025 by JC

Starquest: Catburglar of the Constellations by John C. Wright, Tuscany Bay Books, May 13th, 2025

In my last review, I mentioned that this book was then upcoming but though I bought it soon after release, I didn’t finish it until the other day. As I write, I have the fourth book sitting on my shelf and waiting to be read which I will get to in a month or so. John C. Wright has also recently revealed the cover for the fifth book along with a second Kickstarter though there is no release date as of writing.

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Thoughts on the Nintendo Switch 2

Posted on July 4, 2025 by JC

As I write, it has been almost a month since the Nintendo Switch 2 released worldwide. This was long expected and rumoured but not officially announced until early this year which was likely prompted by increasing media leaks online. Though the announcement was initially well-received, the Nintendo Direct presentation dedicated to it was received less positively for a number of reasons.

These reasons included a title Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour being a paid digital release when the title’s premise is based entirely around promoting the new hardware and features. The introduction of ‘Game-Key Cards’ which are physical cards that allow you to download and play the purchased game though containing no game data. The paid ‘Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Upgrade’ packs for Switch titles most notably for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its direct sequel. The most controversial though was the pricing and most notoriously the $80US cost of the marquee launch game Mario Kart World. These controversies had many on various websites, within comment sections and social media platforms declaring they weren’t going to buy it. 

Though I was certainly bothered by a couple of things, I did purchase it on launch; mainly because the positives outweighed the negatives and given the long support life for the original Switch (that I purchased in the second half of 2017), which is still going strong. Some initial impressions and my response to some of the controversy follow.

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From Thriving to Dying

Posted on June 25, 2025 by JC

In keeping with the tradition of this blog, I am commenting on something quite some time after it was current news. The article that follows was published on the Guardian website on January 11th, almost six months ago. It gives an update on Fr. Peter Kennedy, a heretical Catholic priest and the short-lived cult he formed at St. Mary’s Parish in South Brisbane. His actions were so egregious that Rome was forced to act on it which is an achievement given the abuses tolerated within the church over the last fifty years especially. A linked article headlined ‘Our beloved heretic’: Rebel priest going strong‘ from the same year he was dismissed in 2009 summarises the problem quite openly:

Fr Kennedy initially defied his sacking and continued to conduct weekly masses in which he would contradict core tenets of the faith – he allowed women to preach, blessed gay couples, performed illegitimate baptisms and questioned the divinity of Jesus.

This is not even the full extent of his departures with the faith and morals of the Catholic Church. He is in every sense (and by his own words), an apostate. However this open apostate still believed he should have been able to remain within the Church though rejecting the core tenets. To try to explain how irrational and unreasonable this expectation is to him or his supporters is a waste of time — they think it should be so and so it should be so. 

Happily, the most recent update on the parish some fifteen years later shows that his heretical cult has dwindled to almost nothing and will likely die with him.

The article which I will be drawing from is titled, ‘Ageing in exile: the greatest threat facing Brisbane’s rebel Catholic parish‘ and I will be responding to most of what is written. The article is interesting in that it is very positive but can’t help but reveal what a failure his “parish” has become and how pathetic his remaining adherents look.

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Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope Season Pass Review

Posted on June 15, 2025 by JC

In November 2022 I posted my review of Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope the sequel to Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, one of the best early releases on the Nintendo Switch in 2017. In my review I was quite critical and considered a let down compared to the original but still a fun game and one I might one day come back to; when the then unreleased Season Pass content was inevitably discounted. A significant enough discount came in April so I grabbed it.

As it was well over two years since I played through the game, I had forgotten generally how it played and so opted to go back to the main game first to mop-up the extra content and collectables I hadn’t completed. One of the biggest criticisms I had in the review was how easy it was even with all the optional difficulty sliders turned to max. This lack of difficulty meant that any further levelling up or collecting better items would only make the game even easier and so there wasn’t much incentive to do so. Going through the missed content proved this to be the case and only a couple of the special battles against supersized enemies provided any challenge. The extra collectables (and especially the weapon skins), added little and by the time all were collected, there was nothing left to do. There was no multiplayer or co-op modes or anything else to extend it. I will say that re-visiting the game was mostly fun and I certainly wouldn’t have bothered had it not been but the average player would still get the best experience from the main story content. 

Having re-familiarised myself with gameplay and the various worlds, I was ready to jump into the DLC packs which are neatly integrated into the main menu. The three packs are The Tower of Doooom, The Last Spark Hunter and Rayman in the Phantom Show which will be covered in order.

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The King of Kong Review

Posted on June 8, 2025 by JC

 

In April I wrote a post on the outcome of a lawsuit brought by Billy Mitchell against Karl Jobst, a resident of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. In this I gave some background to Billy Mitchell including the 2007 documentary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters which brought him wider public attention. As stated in the post, he is undoubtedly a pioneer of competitive gaming and was particularly skilled at the arcade classics Donkey Kong and Pac-Man. This captured my interest for a number of reasons, not least because the case took place in the city where I reside and I was familiar with both personalities involved before it began. 

This led me (and I’m sure many), to re-watching the documentary which is the third time I believe I’ve sat down to watch it. This is relatively rare as far as documentaries go as it is not generally a genre that invites repeat viewings. On this re-watching, I found myself focusing more on the methods used to position Billy Mitchell as the antagonist. As mentioned in the previous video, I believe he consciously played up to this to some extent but the film also clearly positions him as such. If like most people, you were watching this as an entertaining window into the little world of competitive arcade gaming than you will more or less forget the details of afterwards, it would be fine but Mitchell being positioned as an antagonist had far reaching effects as the defamation lawsuit against Jobst certainly shows.

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The Chronicles of Riddick Review

Posted on May 31, 2025 by JC

The Chronicles of Riddick was released in 2004 and was a sequel of sorts to the 2000 film Pitch Black. I say “of sorts” because while both shared the same director David Twohy and lead character played by Vin Diesel, the original was a slasher film with a science-fiction premise and the sequel was far more ambitious science-fiction epic. Indeed, a related video game prequel, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and a related animated short released alongside it with Diesel providing his voice and likeness in both. Unfortunately, the film did not see the success that was hoped and didn’t even make back it’s budget when released in theatres; it wasn’t treated much better by critics either.

Though it wasn’t ultimately successful, it wasn’t considered the disaster that films like Waterworld were; which incidentally, Twohy also co-wrote the script for. My general impression is that it was largely ignored and then forgotten except by few enthusiasts. Vin Diesel himself is no doubt among these enthusiasts as he had turned down appearing in sequels to his far more successful The Fast and the Furious and xXx films to work on this. Today his main claim to fame is still the former series and it is easy to forget that he didn’t appear in the immediate sequel and made only a cameo at the end of the third film. It wasn’t really until the fourth and fifth films that the series became a box office juggernaut. The immediate sequel to xXx starred Ice Cube and Diesel didn’t return to that role until 2017; some fifteen years later.

Though not performing well in theatres, the film presumably did well-enough with its home release on the then still popular DVD format to become profitable. It also developed a dedicated enough following that Twohy and Diesel were able to do another film which released in 2013 and was titled simply Riddick. Though continuing immediately after The Chronicles of Riddick, it is more a sequel to Pitch Black. It had a much smaller budget (which it seems to have made back), and the plot is in many ways a re-tread of the original film with grotesque monsters now brought out by rain instead of darkness.

The horror genre has never much appealed to me and it is only the science-fiction setting of films like Alien and Pitch Black that grabbed my attention. While it is understandable that they went for a cheaper and more bankable film, it was the attempt at a science-fiction epic that really appealed to me. There are relatively few science-fiction films and fewer still I would consider very good. Though The Chronicles of Riddick certainly has its issues, I consider it a great film and I hope here to expand on why.

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