Nicholas > Recent Status Updates

Hilarious how I found out about this book while reading an old 1993 Entertainment Weekly. Either way, I’m very excited, I feel this will help in the dilution process with all the mythology I’ve ingested over the years. At the very least, a fresh perspective! First chapter really emphasized Zeus’ betrayal.

Not bad, actually pretty awesome if you consider it was written in the 1950s. The movie is all I know, and so far it seems like a good adaptation.

They’ve found the undulating green cave and the creepy copies of ole Ricky. And poor Rosie, getting dragged like that, like ants carrying a kill into the colony. 🤢

I really hope they exterminate these things, although I’m not too hopeful. Something still doesn’t feel right.

It’s eerie, something is very “off” at this facility.

And Ricky is super weird, the wife is hurt from the car accident but still going to come out to the desert? The kids were scared to go visit their mom, but they were forced to.

Have these things taken over the world and Jack is talking about the outbreak in the past tense? Yikes? Big if true. 😬

There’s something very strange happening beyond the obvious. The way Jack talks in the past tense at points, describing is underestimation of the swarm.

The wife, Julia, element. Raising the swarms like pets. Teaching them.

So far I’m suspecting that his baby Amanda is definitely compromised, maybe all three kids, and MRI magnets definitely affect the swarm. We shall see if my predictions are close.

“That was how little I understood my adversary.”

Well, we’ve just been introduced to the swarm. Interesting to finally understand his concept of this tech. It’s a genetic manufacturing as much as it’s a micro mechanical. A mix between cellular and silicon. And the apparatus Crichton imagines is spectacular. The gleaming glass octopus assembly line.

So far so fun!

So far so good. I love the idea of utility fog. One of my favorite science fiction concepts.

Jack just accepted the offer from his old boss. Ricky is acting weird, and everyone who is suspicious looks hot. 😆 Apparently changing your features is one of the first things these things do when assimilating.

I’m guessing MRI machine magnets are what can destroy these things.

I’m just gonna say it, Anatoli was just a typical stubborn Russian who would never dare back down after feeling slighted. It sucks how things turned out between the author and Toli, but that’s pretty much par for the course if you try telling an Eastern European that they made a mistake. Either way, Anatoli was a badass mountaineer, shit happens. He, quite obviously, was only “guiding” as a means to an end.

Well, that escalated quickly. It’s wild how there’s zero margin for error when you’re in the “death zone.” Storm, miscommunication, mistaken identities and timelines due to hypoxia. Like David Robert’s quote from pg 152 says, “much of the appeal of mountaineering lies in its simplification of interpersonal relationships… adolescent refusal to take seriously aging, frailty of others…”

Vicious.

My reading “climb” continues for Into Thin Air. The author has just made it to camp 3 for his “acclimatization” and returns to base camp. Concerns are expressed about having an author along on the expedition, regarding unnecessary pressures from being written about. Pretty fascinating when you consider what Rob Hall was risking, business wise, if the climb was a failure. Makes ya think! 😬

Author is at Camp 2. He encountered his first two dead bodies, well, one and a half. His recollection of the IMAX Expedition and Sandy Hill Pittman was a fascinating anecdote. The fate of the Sherpa HAPE was also wild, after all that work to help him rapidly descend, he ends up dead anyway. Brutal.

So far so good. Krakauer knows how to make you feel like you’re there. The cast of characters up on the mountain that spring of 96 was wild. You had the Schoener guy, known as “The Belay” from the notorious K2 incident in the 50s. The scammy dude leading the South African expedition. The competing enterprises of Mountain Madness and Adventure Consultants. What a wild series of events. Time to keep reading!

Wow, his battle with the spiritual fraudsters was big. He straight up puts them as lunatics and criminals whose sole intention is to defraud unsuspecting innocent people. The punch(es) wasn’t how I imagined, so it’s nice to know how that actually transpired. Damn Whitehead.

What a phenomenal showman! While he may have been “difficult” he probably deserved to be. There were A LOT of weirdos around. RIP HH

Houdini’s relationship with Sir Authur Conan Doyle is hilarious to me. Doyle was clearly disturbed by the death of his son and others in WWI, but the way he fell into Mysticism, Psychics and “Mediums” was just weird and sad. He tried so hard to convert Harry and even went so far as to claim he DID convert him. Harry got pissed and publicly denied Doyle and dissolved their friendship. Houdini was based af.

Houdin’s flirtation with flight. His foray into movie making. Particularly The Grim Game and his stunt jumping from the wing of one airplane to another. Considering MI: The Final Reckoning, which just released last month, features Tom Cruise doing a bi-plane wing-walking stunt in the final climax. It would seem what’s old is new again! Houdini inspiring artists long after his passing. Legends truly never die.

This is goooood. Extremely prescient. Much of what he alludes to has actually already taken place today in 2025.

Amazing how one is still dismissed as a “Right Wing Radical” when criticizing the depraved content that has taken over the world. The “loony left” still clutches its pearls when exposed for speaking out of the side of their mouths. ‘Support this, not that. And if you do, you’re a fascist.’

Erik Weisz. Eric Weiss. “Erri” “Harry” I thought that was fascinating how he came to be called Harry.

His quick affair with aviation. His record for having been the first person to fly in Australia. An American, no less.

His journal entries are also fun to read.

“The Night Watch.” As a fellow night owl, I really appreciated this proclivity of Dean’s. Barney’s Beanery was also a favorite spot. Googie’s sounded like a real gas, that would have been cool to see. But at least we had The Den! Jimmy just linked up with Dennis Stock, a young photographer who decided to propose the idea of a photo essay on Dean to Life Magazine. The rest is history.

Things only get crazier when Elia Kazan takes him out to LA for “…Eden”

“Oh God, my ass hurts.” Hahaha. The shit the guy put himself through, it’s no wonder he was so troubled. Sometimes I think these ‘tortured souls’ do it to themselves. They blame the tragedies of their upbringing, like James losing his mother — but, in actuality, I believe they just enjoy the chaos and use the pain as an excuse for their deviant behavior.

Fascinating. You often think you know about a public figure but then you pick up a book like this and getting transported to another time. As if you’re sitting with Martin Landau and Jimmy Dean at Cromwell’s. Smoking cigarettes and drawing crude sketches of one another.

Fisher makes contact with Chin-Hwa Pak after infiltrating Pyongyang. I’ve been waiting a while for this moment, let’s see how it all pans out.

I’m beyond thrilled with this book. I didn’t know what to expect, but this just keeps getting better and better. I bought this and Marcus Aurelius’ ‘Meditations’ at the same time and I find that to be quite coincidental. Ellis has some extremely wise observations on today’s social and political landscape. I think Marcus would have appreciated these meditations as well.

Glad I picked this back up. I’ve been enjoying Sam’s globetrotting adventures.

I flew through the first hundred pages in mere moments. It was as if Ellis was this author that provided me such entertainment and remained out of reach, like a secret hideaway I could retreat to and be, as he put it, “ wiped out by the cruelty of someone’s vision of the world…” but then it was as if he turned on the stage lights and said ‘stop the show.’ As if compelled to address the audience directly.

Xenophon’s recollection of Socrates’ dialogue with Critobulus is always entertaining. He appears to enjoy busting Critobulus’ balls, which I interpret as a sign they are good/old friends.

Here he mentions the “speech of the dog” again, which he has used several times thus far.

Socrates dialogue with Aristippus feels oddly familiar. Perhaps I possess some of the foolish qualities of Aristippus. 😬

The Steve Wynn and Barron Hilton story about what would ultimately become Trump’s Castle is wild. Funny and informative chapter.