Category: Ghost Ship

What I Learned from Cookie, The Rodeo Clown: Liberals don’t have a chance

I have to thank Cookie, the rodeo clown, for a great night at the rodeo in Cody, Wyoming.  One of my sons-in-law suggested we go to the rodeo as a family while doing some extensive travel out west.  On our way to where we were staying for the night, he pointed out the big arena dedicated to nightly rodeos during the summer months, complete with mountains and vast desert in the background. I’ve been to rodeos in the past, the kind that comes to towns like Butler County, Ohio in a fairground setting, or some of the big ones that come to the arena in downtown Cincinnati. Still, I can say that I had never had the opportunity to see one in the west, where they usually do them in town.  There, they are the centerpieces of social activity, and this open-air arena in Cody was meant to hold thousands of people, of which it was filled when we arrived.  The sun was setting, the air was chilling, and it was just about a perfect day.  The crowd was filled with real Americans, and we were about as far away from Washington D.C. politics as we could get, and it was refreshing.  Many F-Biden flags were blowing from the tailgates in the parking lot, which was an otherwise reminder of what was happening in the world outside of Cody.  Nowhere did we see a corrosive liberal, which made the hotdogs and concession Cokes taste so much better. 

The Rodeo in Cody, Wyoming

When you hear stories like the one from this week of New York prosecutors harassing Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg over accusations of tax dealings, we all know it’s purely political; how the political left weaponizes law enforcement to impose social will on all participants in society.  That was one reason I was on a trip out west with my family, which consisted of over 5000 miles by the time we were back home.  I wanted to see lots of open places where there were few people so that I could get right in my mind the fight that we had before us.  I don’t live in a big city like New York.  Cincinnati has all the good things of a big city and all the good things of a rural community, so I’m pleased with it as a place to be.  But it is on the front line of the greater global battle that is going on between global progressives and traditional conservatives.  And when I need a vacation, I more need to be away from the people causing all the trouble than really embarking on a regional endeavor.  I knew where we were going, but I was a little surprised by the height of the mountains crossing Wyoming going to Cody, next to Yellowstone, followed by a vast desert between the mountains and our destination for the night. 

Arriving in Cody, Wyoming, founded by Buffalo Bill, a person who has had a significant impact on my life over the years, it was like a mirage that just arose out of the harsh countryside.  I know of Buffalo Bill because of my exposure to the western arts over the years, specifically the Annie Oakley Festival in Darke County, Ohio, every year.  Annie Oakley worked in Buffalo Bill’s show, and that was what that celebration honored, was a tribute which I often participated in those Buffalo Bill Wild West Shows.  So, for me going to a town founded based on Buffalo Bill was quite a pleasant pilgrimage.  Just visiting a place like that was enough for me.  When we decided actually to participate in the culture of that town and go to a rodeo at the capital of rodeos in the world, well, that made a special night spectacular for me.  While driving through the desert to get there, I was thinking about the problems back home, in the political world.  I was wondering how anybody ever thought they were going to get away with election fraud, and how they were going to try to divert everyone’s attention from the crimes of the century with Covid, and mass voter fraud, the phony prosecution of the Trump Organization, Rudy Giuliani himself, Sydney Powell and many others.  Justice had to be enacted toward the vile despots who had to take over our government, and I was thinking about how to do that as we arrived.  For me, Cody, Wyoming, was like a nice drink of cold water when I needed it most. 

Enjoying the atmosphere

A rodeo is often made or broken based on the rodeo clowns who work the night entertaining the audience while corralling the animals after the sets are completed safely behind the scenes.  They have rodeos like this every night all over the west; I saw advertisements for them in Deadwood, Cheyenne, even down in Vernal, Utah.  Conservatives were entirely in their element; there was likely no Democrat who voted for Joe Biden anywhere close.  Probably the government workers at the National Parks and down in Jackson, Wyoming, but all other places were strong Republicans who were still very supportive of President Trump.  Cookie, the rodeo clown, knew that as he told jokes during the show.  I have included an example here for review.  Most of the audience members were not from back east; this was an everyday ritual for them.  But for me, it was much needed after a rough year of politics.  Where I live, the Biden presidency is like a cloud over everything in life, primarily because I am politically active.  Not everyone pays as close attention to these kinds of things as I do.  But for the people of Cody, Wyoming, all they knew of Joe Biden was indicated on those flags flying from those truck beds.  They had no tolerance for liberals, and I had an answer to a question I never really thought of asking until I went to that rodeo.  There would never be a political insurgency in America.  There was no threat of these coastal liberals taking over the country.  I had at that point seen enough of the country to know that these were not a conquered people.  The only reason there wasn’t an all-out war between conservatives and liberals was that the distances of land kept them far enough apart to prevent the conflict.  But there was no risk of liberals taking away nights at the rodeo like I was watching.  Most of what we saw of that fight was just a Truman Show-like setting that existed entirely in media.  It had no grip on reality.

Cookie, the Rodeo Clown, wasn’t trying to change the world; he and his partners were doing their good and honest thing.  They were undoubtedly Christian soldiers who were deeply committed to a conservative lifestyle reflected in their jokes of the evening.  After the show, I talked to the rodeo clowns. I noticed that they had crosses on their facepaint indicating a religious foundation for the performance of each of them, including Cookie.  I appreciated that because it let me know that these were not people who would be pushed around, the way progressives on both coasts thought they could get away with doing.  Where the rubber hit the road out in places like Cody, Wyoming, there was no yielding to evil.  They were more than ready to go to war with it, and on that night, I saw just how hard of a line of defense we had in America.  America was far from broken.  Liberals had no idea what kind of fight they had picked and how far toward a loss completely they were already on.

Rich Hoffman

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The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Looters of the Lost Art: Hollywood has forgotten how to make an Indiana Jones film

The movie Raider’s of the Lost Ark turned 40 as of June 12th, 2021, and I have to say, it has been one of the most impactful films ever produced.  Not just for me, but science in general.  More happened well in science as a result of that movie than anything ever has done for any field of endeavor.  But it’s a shame; even this movie has come under criticism from wokeness, as I talk about in the video above.  Back in the 80s, they made three Indiana Jones films in 10 years.  Then it took over 20 years to make another one.  Then since Disney bought the franchise under the roof of Lucasfilm, even with all the money and talent in the world, they can’t get a script that everyone likes that is woke enough for modern Hollywood.  We went from a culture that made great movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark then to not to do anything close with no prospects on the horizon in such a short period.  And that is because of wokeness.  I will have to say that Indiana Jones 5 did start shooting this week in London.  It took a long time to get there, and I don’t have high hopes for it.  But you never know. 

Cliffhanger the Overmanwarrior


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Biden Will Always Be Known as an Illegitimate President: Evidence of massive voter fraud isn’t going away

It is pretty smoky out there; it’s a war between ideologies and, you know, the rule.  In wars or fights of any kind, the winner is determined by capitulation.  And right now, it’s impossible to tell who is thinking of capitulating, but remember.  We are not in a peaceful transition of power, and President Trump is not gripping power for power’s sake.  We are in a full-out war for the influence of American ideas in the world.  I think all this is healthy.  Because of Trump, the world has its ideas challenged. That challenge is forcing honesty where it has otherwise been hidden.  All that is good, as I said in the video above.  The cracks are showing through the many methods of election fraud that were performed for Democrats to get the power they have gained in 2021.  And no matter what happens as a result of this war, Joe Biden will never be considered the official president.  Only five months into 2021, just over 50% of all Republicans do not believe Joe Biden is the legitimate president.  And that number is growing as election audits are showing a lot of irregularities that factually did occur.  There will come a time very soon where all those in the media who said that there was no election fraud will have to retract their statements and admit there was, just as they have been doing with Covid coming out of the Wuhan lab in China.  And despite the smoke we see now, this is as good as it will ever get for Joe Biden and his Democrat insurgents.  And that’s not very good.  The best punishment is to force them all to live with what they have done.  Every day, they look in that mirror, knowing that they have been caught and will go down in history as losers of the highest degree and criminal scum who used government offices to hide their many crimes for which reflection will never forget.

Cliffhanger the Overmanwarrior


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Cliffhanger’s Exopolitical Theater: Giants, a galactic alliance, and human immortality coming to ‘The Curse of Fort Seven Mile’

While I was on the air with Matt Clark during his WAAM radio broadcast recently he wanted me to talk a bit about my latest Curse of Fort Seven Mile series.  However, time ran out and we couldn’t get into the details.  Actually, I don’t think I could cover all the details in an hour show, or a 10 hour show.  For me, what started as a simple pulp fiction series has evolved into something I would term as a philosophy for the 22nd century.  The below videos will help with the context but essentially what I’m doing is this: over the next one hundred years we are going to discover that we are not alone in the solar system, let alone the galaxy.  We will learn to defy death.  We will unlock all the potentials of a Type 1 civilization and that will require us to completely revisit our current political and religious philosophies—because the present ones just won’t be sufficient.  That’s not a knock on anybody, but the discoveries of the next century will just unlock a massive amount of potential that isn’t even forecasted on the horizon as of yet—and people will need some means of thinking about those things if they want to survive.

I have been pretty adamant about my hobbies and positions.  I essentially grew up studying mythologies and religious cultures, but I like to make money, so I chose professional endeavors that I could raise a family on—but there is a lot about me that is very sympathetic to the Nathan Drake video game character.  The people I most admire these days are people like Josh Gates and his friend Erin Ryder.  If I did not love family as much as I do, I would have loved to live the life that they have—and believe me I have no regrets.  But I do read and watch a lot of what those fantastic people have put out as far as discovery over the years.  When they tackle some crypto mystery much of it comes out to nothing, but it’s the asking of the questions that I find absolutely amazing.  There are a lot of people, many whom are featured in these videos who have committed enormous amounts of time and resources to asking hard questions about mankind’s origins—and I’ll be honest—I love each and every one of them.  When I listen to their lectures and read their books I think in the best case scenarios, they may be getting 50% of any given idea correct.  But even 1% of what these people are saying they are major game changers for the entire human race and the world at large.

In spite of my love of guns, capitalism, business entrepreneurial activity, innovation and pop culture, I am most at home with books, museums, and very smart people.  One of my best friends growing up had an IQ of around 170 so I know those types of people excessively well, and I love being around them.  Some of the people in these videos like Steve Quayle remind me of that friend.  They are too smart for mainstream society, and they are usually defined as lunatics by a society which embraces too openly—sheer stupidity.  As long as I’ve been on earth, I have asked similar hard questions and sought the answers and I have a general theory about the reason that ancient cultures collapse—actually all cultures including recent ones.  I published my thesis in a screenplay, which won a few awards along the way called The Lost Cannibals of Cahokia.  While most archaeologists and anthropologists will point to environmental conditions and say that the reason that a culture fails is related to a loss of water, or of food supply—usually those opinions are corrupted by their left leaning educations.  My theory is that cultures fail because of the human inclination to the Vico cycle—where they just can’t seem to get off the treadmill—and they have been like that for their entire existence.  That screenplay would probably make a good movie and I should probably push it more toward production—and maybe I will.  My goal in writing it was to get the thesis down in an entertaining way that people could enjoy—but come away from the story asking hard questions like—what is the primary driver of a successful culture—then offering the answer as the climax amid the usual expectations of exciting storytelling.  After I shopped that script around it became obvious that I’d have to produce the picture myself to do it right, and honestly, I didn’t have the time or patience to “collaborate” the way it takes to make a movie.  So I shelved it and offered it as a legitimate thesis about the rise and fall of civilizations.  On the surface, it was an action adventure horror story, underneath was something that meant a lot to me which was based on many thousands of hours of reading and personal discovery—traveling all over the world checking things out for myself—a little the way Josh Gates has—only with fewer frequent flyer miles.

Lately, there has been an explosion, likely because of the Internet, of conspiracy theories and examinations into a hidden past that does not agree with the Leaky evolutionary theories.  The latest revisions are probably driven more by Jurassic Park’s DNA examples and the popular Lord of the Rings movies about Middle Earth—art has helped our society ask new questions from a fresh perspective—and the answers to those questions might just be explosive.  If only 1% is true, mankind is in for some startling revelations.  The best movies and books are the ones that make you ask, “what if,” and as the videos included here surmise, there are some very smart people who are asking lots of questions tainted by their personal backgrounds.  But it is what they agree on that has stimulated my thinking and focused my mind on the hard evidence that is rapidly pouring in.

I wanted to write another Cliffhanger novel but I wanted it to be relevant to the world 100 years from now the way I read Jules Verne, Ayn Rand, H.P. Lovecraft or even Shakespeare.  My favorite play of his is Titus Andronicus.   His use of extreme violence to tell the moral story of love and loss—as well as dedication are the kinds of things I find infinitely fascinating and it doesn’t matter when in history we read such a story—they still communicate a truth which is valuable.  Having these kinds of interests I couldn’t just write some average piece of fiction reviewers of today would like—I wanted to write something that people a century from now would marvel at and would still draw inspiration from.  Yet I also wanted to make the argument that the values America had from around 1870 to about 1900 were the best the world had ever seen, and that those values should be captured in a bottle and examined in actually a scientific way—as having merit on culture building itself.  The economic means of the country was explosive during that period, morality was respectable, and collectivism was being defeated wherever it was encountered—namely during westward expansion.

For about forty years I have had in my mind a really terrible antagonist and a concept for painting it into a story against the ultimate protagonist—but I needed to collect a lot of information to tell that story.  Finally, I feel like I’m there.  Once I had all the details worked out, I went to work writing it—and as I thought, it has turned out to be the byproduct of a hyperactive imagination, a technical background, legitimate scientific investigation and all the life experience learned in every hard way imaginable.

Knowing that over the next couple decades history will have to reflect what we are learning now—and that we will learn that not only are we not alone, but that we are currently in a relationship with thinking beings not from earth’s origin story and that the essential ingredient to a successful society resides within individual behavior as opposed to collective salvation—and that once that process begins—where democracies run by a mob take over the individual input of actual leaders—that all civilizations stop functioning and regress back to their beginnings.

Even as my protagonist, Cliffhanger fights bad guys with flaming bullwhips all in the name of justice—it is important these days to define the merits of that justice.  It is not enough to simply show bad and good—it has to be defined by actual universal rules of engagement as defined by the observable conditions of our cosmos.  To do that we have to step beyond our veil of politics and modern philosophy and take the next step.  Taking that step is what and why I’m committing so much time to this new Cliffhanger story.  Similarly to that Cannibals of Cahokia story—this Curse of Fort Seven Mile has the benefit of an additional twenty years of hard living and earned observation.  Like H.P. Lovecraft I have a love for pulp fiction written in a romantic fashion—and on the surface that is what these new Cliffhanger stories are.  But, my protagonist, Fletcher Finnegan in The Curse of Fort Seven Mile is actually named after one of my favorite literary figures of all time, the giant in Finnegan’s Wake from the James Joyce classic.  My goals with the work are not to reach the New York Best Seller’s list, or even to get reviews from Publisher’s Weekly.  It is to offer a useful philosophy for people grappling with real significant challenges to everything they believed was true for over 10,000 years and to provide them a softer landing philosophically—so to maybe for the first time in human history to provoke a change in mankind’s propensity to always revert back to the Vico cycle.  Thus Spoke Cliffhanger.

If you want a preview of this work they are available on the sidebar.  But the real meat is yet to come and why I am dedicating some specific time and resources to completing it.  To get a sense of it, just watch all these videos and you’ll get your mind ready to read what I’m putting into a story intended for readers of the next century.  I’m not giving up on politics.  But rather it is too small of a shoe for me now.  The next obvious evolution is exopolitical theater and the vast changes it will bring.  Currently it is a bit on the fringe side, but that will change rapidly—and when it does–well, people will want a point of reference and fiction is a good place to begin—by bridging what we know with what we will come to understand.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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A Temple of Hope: The Ghost Ship photographic journey

My family had a good laugh when the lunatic feminists in my home school district addicted to tax money accused me of being sexist.  The terminology clearly didn’t fit.   I raised two daughters and never gave them the indication of submission to anybody for any reason under any circumstances.  They are more technically liberated women than even the most rabid progressive feminist and it is quite a joy to watch them grow up and flower into everything that they feel inclined to develop about themselves.   However, it was very rewarding to see how one of them who is a professional photographer viewed a day we recently spent together.  She is pictured below on the bow of the Cincinnati Ghost Ship and can read her point of view at the following link.

http://adventuringphotographer.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/the-cincinnati-ghost-ship/img_7006

She has been an adult for long enough now to display her skills many times over and I haven’t been disappointed.  She is first and foremost an artist that wishes to embody all the elements I introduced to her as a child and it is wonderful to see all those elements come together into the person she is.  As I was raising her I never directly tried to shape her personality into something I would approve of, but simply removed the social shackles that often prevent the development of a mind properly.  My interest has never been social roles as society defined them, but as an individual does—so my parenting style was always focused on allowing my children to be exactly who they uniquely are—even in spite of my wishes—which I always made sure to contain.  When someone decides to become an artist of some type they leave themselves vulnerable to interpretation as their efforts are impossible to disguise.  What an artist produces becomes the culmination of their internal philosophy, which in my daughter’s case can be seen in the video below.

 

 

The day was not intended to be so monumental.  She and I have done that kind of thing many times.  As a little girl she trudged through many denser places, caves, trees, lakes and even confronted sometimes hostile inhabitants.  The standard equipment has always been a part of our life, satchels, loose clothing for easy climbing, hats to keep spiders and small rodents out of our hair, and my whips for climbing and diverting away hostile encounters.  Oddly enough on this trip to the Cincinnati Ghost Ship as an artist her natural focus was on most of those things which I take for granted as just part of everyday life.  As a photographer she brought them to the surface in a way that told me much of how she sees me—which is more beneficial to me than her.

Videography is a new skill she is adding to her arsenal.  She has been to film festivals with me several times and has met professionals who make movies—and has seen many artistic efforts from behind a lens.  So she has seen all the tricks and knows that there isn’t any way to hide her soul.  The way a camera operator and video director lights their subject, the focal point, the movement of the camera, and the way a piece is edited together ultimately reveals everything that there is to know about the artist behind the effort.  So her shot selection and ability to tell a story with moving pictures was very revealing regarding the kind of young woman she has become, and was a real treasure.  I didn’t know that at the beginning of our little adventure that I would come away with more than she did.img_6972

As the video was shot, we typically did not stop and pose for pictures.  We just did our thing and turned on the camera to capture footage as we were doing it.  The adventure always comes first; the attempt to document it is second which makes the job of a filmmaker more difficult.  Some things that show up in the video that were actually not filmed was the nice lunch she and I had at McDonald’s just prior to visiting the Ghost Ship.  Usually when she and I get together the rest of the family is with us, so she has been deprived of craved personal time with me.  Upon hitting the exit that would take us to the Ghost Ship off the highway the fuel light came on indicating that we were about to run out of gas.  So I turned around and got some gas down in Lawrenceburg before getting back into the hills of Northern Kentucky on an empty tank.   We were in the right area so I felt confident that time was on our side.  Getting gas was a little bit of an adventure so we decided to go ahead and grab a bite to eat before getting back into the woods.  The two of us had a Sausage McMuffin with Egg each—which the last time she had breakfast at McDonald’s with me was during a trip back from Florida the previous year so that breakfast tasted much better on the cusp of such an adventure.

As we sat and ate, and caught up on all the things we typically talk about, we looked over topographical maps of the area and contemplated strategies for getting there.  It turned out to be much easier than I anticipated which was nice considering that we had some really expensive camera equipment.  We were dressed to wade into the water and board the vessel if need be.  I typically carry with me a 12’ bull whip for those types of occasions.  I also typically have my rope bag that has 150’ of rope along with climbing gear, but that wouldn’t be needed for this.  The whip will get a person up small climbs most effectively.  I always have on my hip a whip holster that my friend Gery Deer designed especially for me.  I use it each year in the bull whip fast draw competition and when I walk around the house practicing.  It is designed for smaller whips but the 12’ whip can fit in it.  So that is what appeared in the video.  I didn’t know my daughter focused some of her shots on things like my whip and satchel, but they were nice bits of context from the adventure that surprised me.

When she was old enough to sit still I raised her on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and each night when she went to sleep, she played the Raiders of the Lost Ark soundtrack and let it go on repeat throughout the night.  She had a healthy childhood filled with the yearning for adventure, likely due to the kind of material she had from her first conscious moments.  Our interest didn’t stop there; we actually expected to live that life to a certain degree and she has so far her entire life.  So our outing to the Ghost Ship was simply a reflection of who we were.  But watching her video of it, it was clear that there was some Indiana Jones in there—which makes sense.  Indiana Jones to me is one of the most wonderful characters ever created for film.  He can get dirty with the best of them then turn around and be among the most scholarly.  He reads, he’s smart, and he’s fearless—but better yet, he’s tenacious.  I knew what I wanted to be as a man when I saw Indiana Jones swing into the Temple of Doom and steal the Shankara Stones from the skull on the sacrificial altar.  To a large degree I do live that life as a man.  The film was a fun movie filled with comic book antics, but the substance of the story is something that both my daughter and I have carried with us every day of my life and hers.img_6977

After we explored the vessel, dripping with sweet, I was pulling bugs off my hat and we decided to go back to McDonald’s for lunch to cool off.  We looked at our footage and talked about what we saw and as we were sitting there I thought about the many times that I had shown her the Temple of Doom movie and realized that we were living that life.  One moment we were knee-deep in adventure, the next integrating the boon of our discoveries with the civilized world—sitting in the corner with my cut up cloths and sweat soaked shirt, with cobwebs still hanging from my hat.  More than a few people looked my way wondering what we had been doing.  Most of them had no idea that just across the river was a treasure that had been there for many years right under their noses yet they were blissfully ignorant.  The only trace of anything out of the ordinary was my daughter and I who had just stepped out of some story book adventure sitting in the corner eating ice cream.  But that was part of the fun for us.

It was those little moments from the adventure that filled her mind which ended up in her cut of the video and framed the way she photographed the day’s events.  It made me very happy and confirmed why I raised her the way I did—it was to nurture that spark of hopeful optimism that can always be present—even when the circumstances are quite scary.  There is a hope in the way my daughter photographs that is a liberating pleasure unmatched by anything else for me.  As an artist, the mind of the creator cannot hide so cynicism shows behind every attempt if it is present.  Adventure isn’t always about things “out there” but what’s really inside–the adventure of a Ghost Ship in our back yard, or a simple trip to McDonald’s, or running out of gas at a highway interchange with no stations in sight.  Adventure starts in the heart, not in the extraordinary and the best of those events happen  when a parent and their child get together for the fun of it—and joy, and lack of pretense just to live life and capture what comes as future memories.   A temple is a place of worship and our lives come together driven by mutual interest.  It is not the Temple of Doom that we share as a lifelong focus–but a Temple of Hope captured by photos for time to benefit.img_7024

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com