The Victims' Game - Season 2 - Netflix Series

The Victims' Game (Season 2 Teaser subtitled) | Trailer in English | Netflix
Trailers in English

We watched the first two episodes tonight. So far our hero has managed to be in the vicinity of the murders of two people who were vaguely connected to another pair of murders that happened fifteen years ago when our hero was the forensic examiner. The first victim had traces of his skin under her fingernails. You know our guy didn't do it, I mean he's the hero, and this a murder mystery made for TV. Of course he's not the villain, but somebody is sure going to a lot of trouble to make him look guilty. And how do you even steal enough skin from someone (without them noticing, mind you) to make a decent sample that they could then stuff under the murder victim's fingernails?

This guy is autistic, but he has two good looking women who are after him. One is Lois Lane, the investigative reporter from season one, and the other is the new forensic examiner. There's another hot chick, I think she's from the prosecutor's office, but she's been pretty neutral so far.

The police are a bunch of Keystone Kops. There's a pack of them that follow the prosecutor around and whenever they see our hero they all take off running after him, but they never manage to catch him. Huh. Imagine that. Almost like they are taking a smoke break as soon as they get around the corner and out of sight of the camera.

We watched season 1 exactly 2 years ago. Note: It is Victims' Game, not Victim's Game. That is, it is a game belonging to a group of victims, not just one. I'm telling you this because Blogger's search function could not find this old post using either Victim, Victims or Victim's. Stupid apostrophes.

Cathy Smith

The Infamous Rock Muse and the Comedy Icon
The Cody Tucker Show

Man, that chick is bad news. Belushi died in 1982! Geez I remember that like it was yesterday. Here's the two songs:

The Band - The Weight
GreatOldiesDJ

Gordon Lightfoot - Sundown (1974)
Katy Jones

Wikipedia page about Cathy.

Random Thoughts

White Privilege

I was talking to some people and it occurred to me that I had some serious advantages in my life. My parents were both college graduates, I also got a degree and I got a job at a big, important company. So now I'm wondering if I compare myself to an indigent immigrant, or shoot, anyone who didn't have my advantages, how much money would it take to put us on an equal footing? I'm thinking that today it would be about $500 thousand dollars. So maybe White Privilege just means having money in the bank.

Women Drivers

These days driving takes a lot out of me. A drive to the airport and back takes about two hours which is okay, but then I need a day to recover. If you just follow the rules, stay in your lane, and don't drive aggressively, you are pretty safe, you are unlikely to have an accident. From watching YouTube videos I'm learning that weird stuff can happen at any time and at any place. Being aware of your surroundings helps, but sometimes stuff just comes out of left field. When that happens, there is often nothing you can do, but sometimes if you are quick enough and can grok the situation, you might be able to avoid disaster. So now I am wondering if men are perhaps, statistically speaking, slightly better at these reactions. This is not where I intended to go with this, but I think I kind of lost whatever idea I originally had.

Genetics Part A - Women, babies and war

Birthrates are down worldwide. I'm wondering if maybe the lack of wars that kill zillions of people has someone affected people's brains so their urge to make more babies just isn't as strong.

Genetics Part B - Fat, weight, famine, ornery

Likewise, I wonder if famines in the past tended to select for people who had built up enough fat that they could weather the storm. Not so many famines, especially in the West, and maybe that's why we have so many fat people. Likewise, Americans are known as brash, maybe that's because emigrating from Europe to the USA selected for people who "aren't going to take it anymore".

Fever

Does the body temperature go up because the higher temperature helps kill invading microbes, or does the temperature go up because the body is burning more energy because fighting infections takes more energy?

Gaza

Hamas is a a terrorist organization funded by Iran. Terrorists deserve nothing less than death. A strong society can withstand small scale terrorist attacks, but the October 7, 2023 massacre was horrific and deserves a horrific response.

Some people seem to think that only a fraction of the people in Gaza belong to Hamas, that is, most of the people in Gaza are not terrorists. Numerous idiots have been calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. What Israel needs to do is mount a full scale war on Hamas (if they haven't already), but call it a war of liberation for the Palestinians. In other words, they need better PR (Public Relations). Wipe out Hamas, annex Gaza and make it part of Israel. To the victor go the spoils. Just hope that the spoils are not rotten.

Vlad the Impaler

There has also been some whining about how captured terrorists are treated. What Israel should do with captured terrorists is impale them on ten foot tall spikes. All these mideast Jihadists are uncivilized savages. They are behaving like they are living in the 15th century, so we should be treating them as we would have in the 15th century.

Ukraine

I don't understand the war in Ukraine. I've been trying to figure it out, but I'm not having much luck. But this week I came up with a couple of new ideas.

My favorite is that somebody with serious clout, he might even be running the country, though with all the infighting going on I don't think anyone is really in charge, and certainly not effing Joe Brandon. Anyway, this mythical big shot has got a personal hard on for Ukraine and he just wants to destroy the country. Somebody pissed him off so bad, made him so angry that he is going to lay waste to the entire country. So far he's doing a pretty good job.

This might even be why he decided to start poking the bear back in 2014. Irritate the Russians enough and they are likely to retaliate, and that would suit Mr. Big just fine. Also, don't allow Ukraine to actually retaliate against Russia because that would mean war and we don't really want to hurt Russia, we want to confine all the death and destruction to Ukraine.

Ukrainian Oil and Gas Reserves and War Zones

The other idea is that the war is being fought over the Ukraine's natural gas and oil fields. This would normally be my favorite, oil being money and all, but the occupied areas do not seem to coincide with the oil fields. But maybe Russia just hasn't gotten around to them yet.

Djibouti Notes

Djibouti

I finally finished reading Djibouti by Elmore Leonard and now I'm finishing up my notes. 

The story is about Dara, a middle aged woman, who is in Djibouti with her assistant Xavier to film a documentary about the pirates operating out of Somalia. They meet Idris, a pirate leader, Billy, an American zillionaire, and his girlfriend Helen. Billy has a big sailboat that he sails himself. There is also Harry who is some kind of loose cannon with connections to the CIA or the military, it's never really clear. Jama is a full-blooded American terrorist. He got locked up in prison in the USA and converted to Islam and kept going.

The first 2/3 of the book are a bit of a slog. Eventually it occurred to me that Elmore may have been writing the way people talk which doesn't always translate into smooth reading. Also, in many of the scenes we have Xavier and Dara reviewing the films they have recorded that day and talking about whether what they have is good enough to be in their film.

Around about the 2/3's of the way though the book, things get lively, or rather deadly, with bodies falling left right and center. It's kind of a shock because up till then it's all cocktails, dancing and bravado.

Billy has 600 nitro express rifle. He loves to talk about it and mentions it every chance he gets. He also loves to show it off.

Cameron Mitchell shooting the .600 Nitro Express
Cam's Wild Life

LNG Tanker

While this story is meandering along, there is also a very ominous ship lurking in the background. It's a LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) tanker. Some Al-Qaeda thugs have managed to get on board and place some explosive charges that can be detonated with a call from a cell phone, all you need is the number. (And the ship has to be in range of a cell phone tower, along with a subscription that allows it to receive calls in that region of the world. Never mind this, the story never gets that far, I'm just picking nits.)

Jama has the number and is trying to decide on the best time to blow it up. His Al-Qaeda bosses have canceled this operation. This might have something to do with the gas coming from Qatar and the elite Qatarians support for terrorists. You know, if Al-Qaeda bites the hand that feeds them, they might not be getting any more doggy treats. None of that is in the story, it's just seems obvious to me. But Jama doesn't care. He likes being a terrorist and killing people.

The best place to blow up the tanker would be at an east coast port in the USA, if the gas gets delivered there. Everyone is aware of the situation, but the terrorists are no longer on the ship and no explosives have been found, so maybe there's nothing to worry about. But not finding any explosives does not mean there aren't any there, so maybe we should be worried. Billy's solution is to shoot it with his Nitro Express rifle and blow it up where it is, in the middle of the Red Sea. Multi-million dollar loss for the gas company, but not a disaster for people living around the delivery port.

While this topic is under discussion Xavier mentions the 1937 gas explosion disaster at the New London School in east Texas:

The New London School Explosion | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
Fascinating Horror

While I was reading I took sporadic notes. Here are some things that get mentioned:

Page 45

USS Vella Gulf

Page 77

USS Bainbridge

Maersk Alabama Hijacking

Page 80 Aphrodite thousand foot long LNG tanker owned by bin Laden

Page 110 Remember we're talking about a federal system of people with semi-one track minds. You make a mistake you spend the rest of your career in a third world country so they sit on this till the twins go away.

Page 199 'the Song telling us "The sweet things in life to you were just loaned. So how can you lose what you never owned?"' - Rudy Vallee

Statue de Foch
Place du Trocadero, 75016 Paris France

Page 202 We have this passage:

Cars came around to take different streets off the Place Verdun, circling past the statue of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, 1851-1929, on a pedestal in the center of the plaza, the single word J'Attaque below his name.

Xavier said, "Ferdinand was asked what he'd do if surrounded by Germans and he said he'd attack. I believe it was at Verdun he lost somethin like eighty thousand men j'attackin." He said, "There's your man there."

So I go looking for Place Verdun and a statue of Marshal Foch in Djibouti but all I find it this poster:

Commandant Marchand - Across Africa Book Cover

Musee de L'Armee Invalides Page 34 

"In 1896, Captain Marchand was appointed to lead the Congo-Nile mission to the White Nile River, with the aim of establishing a French protectorate in southern Egypt. Marchand led a team of eight French officers and 150 Senegalese skirmishers up the Congo, Ubangi and Bahr el-Ghazal rivers, arriving in Fashoda on 10 July 1898. They built a fort and raised the French tricolour flag. In September, the Anglo-Egyptian army under General Kitchener arrived at Fashoda. French and British colonialist ambitions came face to face at Fashoda, a standoff that ended in December 1898 when the French government ordered its troops to retreat to Djibouti."

Eventually I realized Xavier was just giving an example of a particularly bull-headed soldier to describe Buck, the soldier they were meeting. Although the French were in Africa, Marshal Foch was not.

Page 203 plant Epimedium otherwise known as horny goat weed

Page 215 Billy is talking about Medal-of-Honor winners:

• Joe Foss shot down 26 Zeke's over the Solomons in his Grumman Wildcat and later became governor of South Dakota.
• Major Bing Bang Bong flying a P-38 shot down 40 doing it during his tour and gave his life testing a jet. 
• Another Ace, Pappy Boyington, a Sioux Indian, shot down his 26th over Rabul. Later that same day some nip sent Pappy down in flames. 
• I forgot the name of the Navy pilot in a Dauntless crashing into a cruiser after he'd been hit. Another hero giving his life for his country, all Medal of Honor winners. He's probably referring to Colin Kelly who was flying a Vindicator, which is very similar to the Dauntless.

Page 216 Sterling Hayden doing Jack D Ripper in the movie Dr. Strangelove

Page 217 1 cubic foot of liquefied natural gas will make 12,400 cubic feet of flammable gas air mix

Chapter 31 

Page 230 Golfo de Tadjoura
Page 243 Big Mucha Island

Previous posts: 

• Djibouti
• Chartres House

Vikings: Valhalla Season 3 Netflix

Vikings: Valhalla | Season 3 Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Great stuff. Season 2 saw Leif and Harald going south across the Rus to Constantinople. Now they have been in the employ of the Emperor for seven years.

Season 3 starts off with the siege of Syracuse by the Byzantine Emperor:

Maniakes was a Greek general of the Byzantine Empire . . . . His greatest achievement was the partial reconquest of Sicily from the Arabs beginning in 1038. He was aided by the Varangian Guard, then led by Harald Hardrada, who later became King of Norway.

The Byzantines prevail thanks to the explosives concocted from Sulfur by Leif Ericson. They dig tunnels deep beneath the walls and in a scheme that would make Rube Goldberg proud, use the explosives to bring down a section of the wall. This allows the Emperor's soldiers to storm the city. The central castle holds out, but the Emir in charge calls for single combat to decide his fate. Leif's fellow Viking, Harald Haraldson has become one of the Byzantine generals and gets picked to fight the Emir.

So we have numerous historical characters, plenty of action, intrigue and people murdering their fellow man in all kinds of horrific ways. Much of the plot involves people scheming to get themselves or their children on the throne of one country or another.

Vikings: Valhalla

Wikipedia season 3 episode summaries.