You Can Only Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps If You Have No Boots.

ABOVE: John F. DiLeo


Although I was quite prepared to give the best headline ever award for “Santorum Surges” to the numerous headline writers that crafted this classic with, obviously, a knowing wink to what Santorum really means, that was before I stumbled across John F. Di Leo’s “The Democratic Party’s War on the Poor” over at The American Genius.

This is sometimes why I think our job here at Sadly, No! is too easy. (It’s a good thing we don’t get paid for it.) Where really is the challenge to ridiculing wingnuts when they whip up headlines that have no basis in reality at all? And again where’s the fun when the ridiculous headline is illustrated by a preposterous non sequitur? Di Leo’s proof of the Democratic Party’s war on the poor is an escalator in Medellin. As in Colombia. As in a tiny third world country about a zillion miles from the United States and partly in another fucking hemisphere and where the only Democrats there are a few tourists getting drunk in hotel bars in Bogota. Yes, that escalator in Medellin is, somehow or other, proof of a war of the Democratic party against the poor.

The escalator that precipitated Di Leo’s hissy fit was built so that poor residents of a ghetto in Medellin could go from downtown to their homes in 5 minutes, replacing a 35 minute walk up 530 steps on the side of a mountain. How could anyone object to that, you must be wondering, but, if so, you’ve clearly forgotten that these are the kind of people who get upset when they hear that an orphanage is lavishing its residents with macaroni and cheese rather than the traditional and biblically mandated fare of stale bread and thin gruel. (If you give ’em mac and cheese, they’ll never want to leave the orphanage and will become permanent parasites stealing my tax dollars, etc., etc. You may be laughing now at the preposterous notion that anyone would actually make an argument like that, but, if so, just be patient for a few minutes and let Di Leo get there all on his own.)

Now, why do we turn to a foreign country for an example of the critical failing of the American Democratic Party?

Gee, John, you beat me to it because I was asking myself that very same question.

Because the way American conservatives and liberals react to this story of misguided social programs is the American economic debate in a microcosm.

If you’re thinking that John is going to totally make up the liberal reaction to this story, then our work is done here and you can skip to the next paragraph. According to John, silly liberals like the escalators because they help poor people while keeping them poor, particularly because the stupid beaners didn’t know to cover the escalators so that they will now be destroyed by the first rainfall and the liberals won’t really care that this happens because the rain is not their fault.

Of course, the conservatives, who are truly wise, take the real lesson from the Medellin escalator:

[W]e see that the mayor and his friendly press down there in Colombia have exactly the wrong attitude: they are spending $6.7 million to help return people to a shantytown every day. What they should be doing is trying to free these poor people from Comuna 13 — to help them earn better salaries so they can, one day, come down from that mountaintop and never, ever be compelled to return!

But wait, you ask, couldn’t this argument be made against any form of public transportation? Certainly, he’s not going to condemn public transportation as well, is he? Sadly, Yes!

We subsidize the public transportation of our cities so that the poor can ride in an air-conditioned bus or train for free or nearly free.

All this does not make it a joy to be poor, of course. It’s still a miserable life. But all these freebies, all these misguided little benefits, have warped the ability of individuals to rationally judge the delta between their current lifestyle and their potential future lifestyle in a job, their potential future lives in the middle class.

Whoomp, there it is: the mac and cheese argument. Air-conditioned public buses will make the poor want to stay poor forever because they can get on an air-conditioned bus anytime they want and luxuriate their lives away rather than working hard to buy their own air-conditioned car. If you made all poor people walk to work, every single fucking one of them would be richer than the Koch Brothers in just a few months.

Sadly, no.

 

Comments: 465

 
 
 

Yeah all those poor people living the cushy life the Demoncraps give them. Everybody knows having air-conditioning when you are poor gives you an incentive to be lazy.

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

In fairness, gentlemen like Mr. DiLeo /do/ certainly know what it’s like to have such a warped perspective that they can no longer rationally judge the delta between the current lifestyle of the horribly impoverished and their potential future lifestyle.

But it’s not because the poor have a fucking escalator.

 
 

I’ve been reading Sadly, No! for a bit, now. This is the first time I’ve clicked over to the linked article and *really* delved deeply into it and the comments that follow. Holy fucking shit. I didn’t have a whole ton of optimism for humanity before, but that didn’t increase it.

 
Judas Peckerwood
 

Mr. DiLeo is completely right.

Didn’t you libtards learn ANYTHING from Blade Runner or whatever movie it was that made that point I’m trying to recall?

 
 

Yeah snoeman, in all seriousness, stay in the goddamn boat. I know some of our fellow Sadlies enjoy reading wingnut santorum, but I firmly believe it’s bad for you on a number of levels.

We all know these evil, deluded assholes are out there, right? Ain’t that enough?
Hence, the shorter. Trust it. When there IS one, I mean.

 
 

Golly, this is probably the most pure distillation of the Nirvana Fallacy I have ever seen. And I’ve read Milton Friedman on economic deregulation, so it’s not like this is my first time at the NF Rodeo.

 
 

everybody knows that ONLY POOR PEOPLE ever take buses or trains. having spent time in new york and san francisco i can attest that this is the truth.

 
 

Bare feet have no bootstraps.

 
 

And everyone knows that the best way to ensure people leave the slums is to make sure they have no easy means to work anywhere else but in the slums, thus making it impossible for them to be able to take those “middle class jobs”.

Why if I didn’t know better I might even assume that that’s the point and all this blather is just a thinly veiled attempt to keep the “undesirables” out of competition for the “real jobs” and stuck in their cages where they “belong”.

 
 

Those things aren’t human. They just aren’t.

 
 

Governments also subsidize the expensive public roads the above-lower-classes drive their plump smug cars and SUVs over. When I see these little Galtlets with machetes in hand cutting a trail to the office or grocery store for themselves, rather than luxuriating on the subsidized public roads the nanny-state provides them, then I will respect Mr. DiLeo’s argument better.

 
 

Wow. Simply…wow. Mangoes, boats…there isn’t enough beer on this planet to erase the stupid, not only of the article but also the oh-so-supportive comments, that this idiot has brought forth into my skull.

I may need to find a power drill and go after it myself and release those demons from my brain…

 
 

John Rev nails it. I haven’t left the boat in nine months. I sit on the deck in my white linen suit, sipping mint juleps and waiting for Intrepid Explorers to brave the swamps infested with mutant alligators that have lasers on their head.

I firmly believe it’s bad for you on a number of levels.

We all know these evil, deluded assholes are out there, right? Ain’t that enough?

Always. Trust. The. Shorter. If there IS* is a Shorter.

Cerb: wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Can we haz accompanying Shorters, pleez? 🙂

 
 

Very nifty: Already I’ve read comments from seven people I’ve not yet encountered at S,N (and I’ve been a fairly regular lurker/commenter here for three years).

It’s always nice to have new voices and perspectives in Sadlyville.

 
 

@fenwick: Tintin here. I wrote this post, not Cerberus. Apparently the rumors of my death among the mango groves have gotten out of hand. Actially the title was going to be an embedded shorter, but I couldn’t think of a good title so it became the title instead. But your request is duly noted for future reference when I’m not being too lazy to comply.

 
 

yo check it, a sensible centrist solution: drone bomb the fuck outta the chumps. the o-dogg flexes his muscles again, our friends in the repub party are happy and everybody wins. drop a dime to our buddies at gizzold to the sizz-ach so they can sell short or buy long or flow the zetas and hedge vs gammas or whatever the fuck they do to make money.

yo, ac360, how come you aint return eazy e’s calls? i got my tightest polo shirt and my blingiest watch all laid out to come on your show and get some face time. hit me up.

 
 

oh my homeboy yglesias would cry like a little baby if i forgot to drop this on y’all–dude got a shout-out from the national review http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda for a column he wrote recently. i knew it was only a matter of time before they recognize his motherfuckin perspicacity.

hey, nro, how come no love for E$? every time meggers (that’s ms mccardle to all you working class chizz-umps) hook up and start beasting off the riesling i remind her that ezra needs some shout-outs.

 
 

I used to ride the bus to and from work. And after numerous times waiting forever for it I decided to work harder so I could buy a car. DiLeo, you dumbass…

 
 

I’m the first to admit that I don’t know much about the design of outdoor escalators. But I would assume that, much like a funicular railway, a chairlift, or a roller coaster, it’s powered by a single motor at the bottom in a RAIN-PROOF enclosure. And much like a funicular or a chairlift or a roller coaster you don’t have to keep the whole thing out of the rain. So when I read an article saying that the Colombians have built a set of uncovered outdoor escalators my first reaction is NOT “Oh what a stupid bunch of beaners, I guess they’ll be ordering submarines with fly screens next”. That’s just me of course.

 
 

Thanks to the excesses of Democratic liberalism, I take an escalator three miles to my office across a half mile wide tidal straight.

It’s a big fucking escalator.

 
 

You guys have it all wrong.

I’m just tickled that he was able to talk about brown people without wanting to bomb them.

 
 

You guys have it all wrong.

But I’m using the approved two-handed grip!

 
 

Not only do they have escalators, but they have cable cars in Medellin! Oh the enslavement suffered by the people of Medellin!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrocable_%28Medell%C3%ADn%29

 
 

Governments also subsidize the expensive public roads

This.

Anyone who thinks public transportation is socialism but national highways are a duty and an obligation needs to shut the fuck up.

 
 

It’s a good thing this dim bulb hasn’t heard of the funicular in Quebec City, left out in the frequently freezing rain and snow for more than 100 years and installed in Marx’s time because of socialixm. Perhaps because it is mostly used by tourists it’s OK and not evidence of my war on the poor.

 
 

ooh, he used ‘delta’ as a synonym for numerical difference. He must be one of those financial whizzes.

 
 

Is it my imagination or do I come to S,N day after day to read some screed by a wingnut that says the lives of the poor just aren’t shitty enough?

OK, so public transportation helps the poor, middle-class and people who are pollution-conscious get to work. You know, the work that he’d be complaining about the poor not doing if they couldn’t get to it.

This is so breathtakingly stupid and mean-spirited, it kinda leaves me at a loss for words.

 
 

socialixm

Sounds hawt.

 
 

socialixm
Sounds hawt.

Does it involve a Socialatrix?

 
Helmut Monotreme
 

This is so breathtakingly stupid and mean-spirited, it kinda leaves me at a loss for words.

Well if it wasn’t stupid and mean spirited, it wouldn’t be modern wingnut. Seriously, when is the last time you can think of a wingnut column that included a sensible response to anything? Three quarters of the time they are tilting at windmills inventing imaginary problems just to say how holy they are or how nasty liberals are, and the remaining quarter of the time that they identify a real problem, their solution is to make things worse.

I would love to hear of an example within the last 20 years of wingnuts 1.identifying an actual, universally acknowledged problem, and 2. proposing a solution that actually addresses and/or resolves the problem, instead of being used as an opportunity for partisan grandstanding or enriching campaign donors at the expense of the victims.

 
 

Does it involve a Socialatrix?

She dominates your means of production.

 
 

I would love to hear of an example within the last 20 years of wingnuts 1.identifying an actual, universally acknowledged problem, and 2. proposing a solution that actually addresses and/or resolves the problem, instead of being used as an opportunity for partisan grandstanding or enriching campaign donors at the expense of the victims.

I’d expand it over a bit more than 20 years.

If by “wingnuts” we mean “Republicans,” recall that even in their better days, back in the 1950s/1960s Eisenhower/Rockefeller years, they weren’t actually coming up with ideas and solutions, just following the trail Democrats had blazed twenty years earlier.

If we mean “conservatives,” I think the answer’s pretty much never.

 
 

If we mean “conservatives,” I think the answer’s pretty much never.

Well there was that one time, I mean……um…….you know…….shit, I got nothin’

 
 

Yeah, I never see anybody in a suit riding the bus or Metro; it’s all homeless dudes draped in dog fur and scarves made out of abandoned house cats.

And you know what else? Places that deliver are just contributing to this country’s laziness!!! Wake up, sheeple!

 
 

Oh, and did anyone else catch Chris Matthews’ comments about the state of the GOP last night? He said that they are now a collections of the “droppings” of the Democratic Party: The Dixiecrats, the Evangelicals, the neo-liberals-turned-neo-conservatives. I know what he was trying to say, but it really came out as, “The GOP has survived off of shit for the past two generations.”

 
 

Helmut— word. So totally pithy and neat.

snoeman, welcome. If in case you aren’t familiar, and I am not totally wrong, I think “the boat” and “the mangoes” and such is a reference to the film called “Apocalypse Now,” which is loosely based on the novella “Heart of Darkness” (which can, btw, be read in its entirety at the Gutenberg digital library).

In that movie, while on the boat, one of the soldiers left the boat and went into the jungle to gather some mangoes to make a nice snack for everyone. What he found, was

a tiger!

The intrepid tintin and cerberus and someone else whose name I do not recall right now get off the boat and gather mangoes on which for us to feast, without getting eaten by the tiger themselves. They use the “mangoes” to make a shorter

They venture into “The Heart of Darkness,” so to speak.

I may have made this all up. Sometimes I’m not sure because I used to study Art History’ and once, along with a host of other things, I saw an Athena Nike and a frog with a bowtie in a Rorschach blot.

For a short time, I used a nim about intrepid wiley go and get some mangoes, or something like that, but then I got too wonderfully busy and suddenly had no time for unfiltered right-wing horseshit.

Anyway, people around here say, “Always trust the shorter,” because these post-writing people at Sadlyno! always nail it. Always. You might have to test it until you believe it, but you really can always trust the shorter. I’m a person who embraces preciously few absolutes, but “Always trust the shorter.” is one of them.

For real.

 
 

Well, I’m embarrassed to say I did not know the “boat,mango” stuff was a literary reference. I thought it was just random S,N cleverness. Huh.

 
 

So this guy’s argument is, “I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes until I met the man who had penny loafers”?

 
 

Well, I’m embarrassed to say I did not know the “boat,mango” stuff was a literary reference.

You need to undergo Ludovico treatment, but with Apocalypse Now rather than random violence.

 
 

We subsidize the public transportation of our cities so that the poor can ride in an air-conditioned bus or train for free or nearly free.

Free? Where I’m from a month of getting to work by bus = a month of car insurance. I don’t recall encountering “nearly free” transit anywhere in North America. Oh, except that the Staten Island ferry was supposed to be a nickel “in perpetuity” wasn’t it? Perpetuity is over.

 
 

Oh, except that the Staten Island ferry was supposed to be a nickel “in perpetuity” wasn’t it?

It’s now free because SIers are whiney children who expect the other 95% of the city’s population to subsidize them.

 
 

My brother, in whatever depraved party house he was living in back during his unapologetic bachelorhood, always put on the same movie every night at midnight and for a long time it was Apocalypse Now. It held up a lot better than Scarface and I balked completely at Sound of Music.

 
 

It’s now free

All right! Next trip to NYC is ALL STATEN ISLAND!

 
 

“You need to undergo Ludovico treatment, but with Apocalypse Now rather than random violence.”

Thanks. I love you, too

 
 

Next trip to NYC is ALL STATEN ISLAND!

After you get done with mandolin bros, if you have any money left, there’s a good pizza place. Some trip to NY. I don’t think they encourage visits to Freshkills.

 
 

“and I balked completely at Sound of Music.”

Aw. What’s not to love? You got singing, dancing, Nazis. Yeah, OK. Woulda been better if it was the Nazis singing and dancing.

 
 

What they should be doing is trying to free these poor people from Comuna 13 — to help them earn better salaries so they can, one day, come down from that mountaintop and never, ever be compelled to return!

That’s like weapons-grade stoopid.

Of course we should help them get richer so they can move down off the mountain! In the meantime, while they’ll still DIRT POOR, perhaps helping them not exahust their vast stores of energy and entrepreneurial spirit by, I don’t know, making it so they don’t have to climb the Empire State Building to go home from work makes a bit of sense.

What doesn’t make sense is this is coming from a guy who probably drives his Hummer down to the corner store to buy cigarettes just outside his gated community.

 
 

It’s now free because SIers are whiney children who expect the other 95% of the city’s population to subsidize them.

Plus, tourists. Also.

 
 

Next trip to NYC is ALL STATEN ISLAND!

*whew*

For a moment there, I thought he’d actually come to NYC….

 
 

She dominates your means of production.

Unless she’s a Marxist, in which case, she bottoms.

 
 

. Woulda been better if it was the Nazis singing and dancing.

AGREED

 
 

“They’re not REALLY poor – why, many of them have cell-phones, plasma-screen TeeVees & even refrigerators! No wonder so many of them remain jobless – they’re living the life of Riley in the slums! Only by the purifying flames of suffering can the poors be uplifted from their indolence! What? Making them suffer just makes them more apathetic? The solution is obvious: KILL MOAR CATS!”

Meet the new Calvinism, same as the old Calvinism.

PS: Someone’s fetish for States’ Rights appears to be coming back to bite them in the arse.

 
 

What they should be doing is trying to free these poor people from Comuna 13 — to help them earn better salaries so they can, one day, come down from that mountaintop and never, ever be compelled to return!

Too bad the Quick Escalator to Better Jobs You Might Lose if Your 35 Minute Walk Made You Late Or Sweaty won’t do that, eh? So what would Di Leo have advised, tax cuts for the wealthy?

 
 

So what would Di Leo have advised, tax cuts for the wealthy?

I don’t think the Colombian cartels pay taxes anyway.

 
 

So … this guy’s entire argument is: A poor person who is too poor to own a car and, thus, must ride a bus 30+ miles across town to one of his/her three minimum wage jobs, will continue to want to be poor simply because the bus has air conditioning.

**blink**

**blink blink**

Ya know, I’m starting to hope that the Mayans were correct … rather than, ya know, just killed off by the Spanish before they could finish their calendar.*

(* Stolen from a funny image someone emailed me.)

 
 

Ah the American Stinker . . . where the author directory is alphabetical . . . by first name . . . fucking maroons.

 
The Tragically Flip
 

W. Kiernan said,

[…] Galtlets […]

Awesome.

 
 

What they should be doing is trying to free these poor people from Comuna 13 — to help them earn better salaries so they can, one day, come down from that mountaintop and never, ever be compelled to return!

If they were doing that, he’d be crying that the libtards are making the poor stay poor by giving them checks to buy Cadillacs and have lots of not-white babies.

To reverse his half-ass defense of using an example of an escalator being built in South America as some sort of indictment of American Democrats (in a microcosm), Di Leo outlines American conservatism in his own Santorum. Don’t solve anything, don’t fix anything, but sit on your fat ass and bitch about everything. Oh, and don’t make me and any other conservatives pay taxes, but demand increased spending for weapons and our beloved troops.

War on the Poor. Brilliant. It rhymes and everything.

 
 

What they should be doing is trying to free these poor people from Comuna 13

He probably means they should bulldoze folks’ houses. Be free, poor people!

 
 

He probably means they should bulldoze folks’ houses.

It worked so well in Chavez Ravine.

 
 

He probably means they should bulldoze folks’ houses. Be free, poor people!

Property is theft, according to capitalism.

Wait…what?

 
 

It worked so well in Chavez Ravine.

Let them sleep in the bleachers.

 
 

Awfuck I was commenting in the last thread. I’m not used to such frequency of new posts!

The streetcar and MAX (light rail) are free in the downtown area. Used to be busses were too but too many homeless were spending all day on the bus. Portland is usually ranked as the best in the country for public transportation. Outside of the downtown area, the fare is, I think, $1.75 for most everything except the farthest stops (basically the airport).

 
 

Where really is the challenge to ridiculing wingnuts when they whip up headlines that have no basis in reality at all?

But that’s the whole point. This “story” was written from the headline down – Di Leo came up with the “I know you are but what am I?” headline and spent – I dunno, weeks? Months? Looking for any kind of news item to attach it to.

W]e see that the mayor and his friendly press down there in Colombia have exactly the wrong attitude …

Yeah, what do the mayor and the fulltime professional media of Medellin know about their town and how best to run it? I mean, really – they aren’t even white, most of them!

 
The Tragically Flip
 

That was also the Mugabe’s approach to the slums of Zimbabwe, no? I eagerly await the conservative (no pun intended) whitewashing of Mugabe as the new black Pinochet.

 
The Tragically Flip
 

Di Leo came up with the “I know you are but what am I?” headline and spent – I dunno, weeks? Months? Looking for any kind of news item to attach it to.

S,N! has taught me why conservatives regard Jonah Goldberg as an intellectual. Compared to their B-leagues, he really does craft arguments with care and precision. “Central to my point” and “meh” would be a real improvement over the stuff we’ve been seeing at American Thinker.

 
 

That was also the Mugabe’s approach to the slums of Zimbabwe, no?

He blames Cecil Rhodes, tho.

 
 

They have these escalators in Hong Kong too, where pretty much everyone is not-poor, so that makes it ok.

 
 

Compared to their B-leagues, he really does craft arguments with care and precision. “Central to my point” and “meh” would be a real improvement over the stuff we’ve been seeing at American Thinker.

And all this time I’ve been wasting my time with book-learnin’ and math trying to get one of those “formal” educations. Shoulda just joined a think tank.

 
 

Doesn’t look much like a lion to me. More like a cunt.

 
 

Anyone who thinks public transportation is socialism but national highways are a duty and an obligation needs to shut the fuck up.

But you see, they use the highways, ergo, it is free-market capitalism Jesus 9/11 Double-Plus Good, whereas “those types” use public transportation. You know, “inner city” types with the “gang violence” and all that. So it’s double-plus bad commie socialism. I mean, one of the more famous instances of the civil rights battle took place on a bus marking it forever as “theirs” (hence why buses will always be the most underfunded and looked down upon form of public transportation despite being the most car-like for these fuckers).

Of course, I’m willing to bet that these same fuckers also think it is high treason that the highways are so crowded and congested with traffic without being so expanded that they never ever have to wait in traffic while they bitch about how “public transportation” is “draining the treasury” and doesn’t “pay for itself”.

It is always amazing how much a certain type of white person is willing to inconvenience themselves and their selfish habits entirely because they think they are inconveniencing brown people somewhere more.

 
 

Obama’s going appoint Richard Cordray in during the recess. Cue GOP calls for impeachment…

 
 

It is always amazing how much a certain type of white person is willing to inconvenience themselves and their selfish habits entirely because they think they are inconveniencing brown people somewhere more.

I think it was called “Manifest Destiny” at one time.

 
 

PS: Someone’s fetish for States’ Rights appears to be coming back to bite them in the arse.

Expect to see a US Supreme Court decision soon that is essentially “buh-buh-but that’s not what we meant”.

 
 

He probably means they should bulldoze folks’ houses. Be free, poor people!

I’m reminded of the Transmetropolitan scene where The Smiler “fulfills his promise” to handle the slums problem that Spider gives public exposure by sending in bulldozers to take them down without warning.

Hey, as long as “respectable people” have nothing to engage their consciences over, then problem solved, right?

 
 

But you see, they use the highways, ergo, it is free-market capitalism Jesus 9/11 Double-Plus Good, whereas “those types” use public transportation.

I guess they forgot about Greyhound buses, then, which are highway-going and accessible to anyone with the cash to pay the fare, but not “public,” since they’re a privately-owned corporation and not paid for by the evil nasty sockulist gummint.

Whoopsie…

Who’d’a thunk, wingnuts overlooking something!

 
 

If you have to work to pay the rent for a hovel, you’ll work a little harder to get a better place. If you have to work to pay for rotten food, you’ll work a little harder to afford better food. If you have to work to buy poor clothing, to send your children to substandard tutors, to bicycle to work, then you’ll appreciate the immense advantage of working a little harder for the promotion that allows you to buy a little better clothing, to send your children to more accomplished teachers, and to drive an air-conditioned compact car instead of riding a bicycle in the rain and heat.
Holy crap. Solving poverty by simply insisting that those in it try harder and voila. Improvement in one’s station, things, etc. Also.

Nope, can’t leave it without comment. …working a little harder for the promotion…, because as we all know, the Great Invisible Hand of the Free Market doles out promotions all the time, to everyone, with the simple requirement that they work harder for their current pay.
Maintain same pay. But work mucho mucho harder and poof. Promotion. Eventually. Conservative math at work.

 
 

I don’t recall encountering “nearly free” transit anywhere in North America.

Here in Corvallis buses used to be free for Oregon State students and faculty, but the city just expanded that recently to be free for everybody. Obviously that means we are sliding down the slippery slope and will become dirt poor islamocomusociofascists any minute now…

It would be damn near perfect if the buses ran later than 7:00pm so I could drink downtown and not deal with drunken bicycling in the rain.

And a belated happy new year to all the sadlies. I took a much needed break from all things intertron over the holidays. It was great, but I did miss the banter here.

 
 

Not to mention that “working harder” has, you know, real, measurable physical consequenses for people who are doing manual labour, which would be, like, most poor people everywhere. Wingnut punditoids, who have never actually been physically tired from manual labour in their lives (never mind from climbing up and down the sides of mountains), kinda don’t get that a person’s physical capacity for work is finite. Doubly so when they’re living in a hovel in a slum with crappy food and no creature comforts.

I mean, shit, here I am sitting at my comfy desk in my well-provisioned, climate-controlled office, doing office work (well, sort of), having just finished an excellent and abundant meal, and apparently somehow I have the capacity to imagine that there are lots of people in this world much worse off than I am, no matter how badly off I might be. But then, I’m not a wingnut.

 
 

Well, I’m embarrassed to say I did not know the “boat,mango” stuff was a literary reference. I thought it was just random S,N cleverness. Huh.

I was pretty sure it all came from Tropic Thunder.
.

 
 

Interrobang-

They don’t, because words like “free-market” don’t actually apply to concepts like “run by a corporation” but rather to things like “good” and “white”.

So, you’ll notice when a wingnut starts ranting about buses and public transportation, they occasionally slip and include Greyhound in the list of “evil wastes of government money”, while always always including the free government utility of highways for private vehicles in the list of “good free-market” things (because you privately own the car, right?).

 
 

Wingnuts. 1984 and Hunger Games
ARE
NOT
MANUALS!!!!111!eleventy!!!!1!!one!!!11!

So laborers, wait-persons etc need to work harder by doing the work of OTHER workers, wiping them out, so they can get promotions, freeing up the lesser tier jobs….for….no, wait a minute. I’m trying to parse the logic here. Buncha poor mainly not-whites in jobs. Get some portion of them to work harder (neglecting the fact the admonition is for every one of *them* to work harder), to get noticed, for the promotion, when for much of the poor the ‘work’ is finite meaning do the work for morethanone-but-forthepayofone (insidious, that), so, um, some poor will get promoted and be notpoor, leaving all those openings for the jobs for…
dang it. I think I almost had it.
1. You’re poor.
2. You live in a hovel.
3. You work, but what you make is only enough for the hovel. Sort of. So rather than make the hovel less hovelly with things like transportation, refrigerators, A/C, and so on, the poor simply need to ‘work harder’ which in most cases would mean doing the work of someone else, pushing them out of a job so that you can be noticed and get promoted out of your job level (by my math, that’s 2 people now out of the menial job market with 1 new promoted worker)…
4. ???
5. Profit!
Am I even getting closer?

 
 

OT, as a palate cleanser, I see Bosom Buddies had been remade as Work It.

Huh.

 
 

So what would Di Leo have advised, tax cuts for the wealthy?

Duh. That’s the solution for everything

——–
TinTin: My bad for missing your authorship on this one! I really like your Shorters. They are perfect distillations.

——
Thank Wiley: I had no idea the Boat and Mangoes came from Apocalyse Now. Thanx, I sure hope I don’t have to trade my white linen suit and mint juleps for gatigues and swivel-mount 50-cal….

 
 

I blame Hiltre for the mistakes. Plus, fuck you WordPress.

 
The Tragically Flip
 

Apocalypse Now really was the best metaphor for S,N. Travelling up the river of insanity, with every stop worse than the last. No, the days of Playmates and colonial French dinners are behind us. We’re past the fucked up bridge they rebuild every day and well into Kurtz country.

Yet we never seem to find Kurtz.

 
 

Actually finding Kurtz was not so fun.

 
 

I wonder how many wingnuts sit in endless traffic jams and smile at the wonders of privatized transportation…thanking the Great Galt that there isn’t enough public transportation to alleviate the traffic hell that is a place like Seattle. I’m guessing they’re happy to not have paid the taxes to improve the roads to help traffic flow as well.

No?

 
 

free-market capitalism Jesus 9/11 Double-Plus Good,

This is the sort of phrase that make Cerb such fun to read. II mean,’m just boppin’ along reading reasoned, regular-type sentences, and the–KA-POW–I break up in laughter when I hit a phrase like this.

 
 

I mean, shit, here I am sitting at my comfy desk in my well-provisioned, climate-controlled office, doing office work (well, sort of), having just finished an excellent and abundant meal, and apparently somehow I have the capacity to imagine that there are lots of people in this world much worse off than I am, no matter how badly off I might be.

The difference between you and a wingnut: You give a fuck.

 
 

We were watching Apocalypse Now a while back because Mrs. Kong had never seen it.

She couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t stop laughing during the mangoes/tiger/never-get-out-of-the-boat scene.

 
 

we never seem to find Kurtz.

Eventually, Kurtz will find us.

 
 

I also blame Hiltre for those mistakes, too.

 
 

Actually finding Kurtz was not so fun.

You must not be a Montagnard

 
 

He dead.

 
 

I wonder how many wingnuts sit in endless traffic jams and smile at the wonders of privatized transportation…thanking the Great Galt that there isn’t enough public transportation to alleviate the traffic hell that is a place like Seattle.

I see you’ve not been introduced to Kemper Freeman.

 
 

Actually, “Exterminate the brutes” has some viability as an S,N! motto.*

*Now you see the violence, inherent in the liberals!

 
 

Um, finishing the thought…Freeman is a guy who can’t think of anything better than roads covering every square inch from Puget Sound to the Cascades, all leading to Bellevue Square.

 
 

She couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t stop laughing during the mangoes/tiger/never-get-out-of-the-boat scene.

Frederic Forrest seems to really want those mangoes.

 
 

Eventually, Kurtz will find us.

In Russia, Kurtz finds you.

 
 

Actually, “Exterminate the brutes” has some viability as an S,N! motto.

I prefer “‘Elp, ‘elp, I’m being oppressed!”

 
 

“[sniff] I already miss oneLtwoNs.”

Well, at least she knows shes done. On the other hand, Perry vows to march on to the next three states: New Hampshire, South Carolina and, uh………………..oops.

 
 

Freeman is a guy who can’t think of anything better than roads covering every square inch from Puget Sound to the Cascades, all leading to Bellevue Square.

I see Robert Moses was paroled from hell…

 
 

I prefer “‘Elp, ‘elp, I’m being oppressed!”

Because there’s nothing more important in the world than getting Monty Python quotes right, I think you mean “repressed”.

 
 

New Hampshire, South Carolina and, uh………………..oops.

Well played, well played indeed.

 
 

“Because there’s nothing more important in the world than getting Monty Python quotes right, I think you mean “repressed”.”

I don’t think he expected the Spanish Inquisition………..

 
 

I don’t think he expected the Spanish Inquisition………..

Does anyone?

 
 

Don’t make me bring out the comfy chair!

 
Marion in Savannah
 

I see Robert Moses was paroled from hell…

You mean he did his “neighborhood destruction” thing in hell too? No wonder Satan kicked his ass out…

 
 

re: Transit

Here in LEAFS SUCK, there has been vigorous defense against teh War on teh Car. Jackwads are complaining about taxpayer $$$ going to subsidize transit – as if folks riding teh trains, subways, buses and streetcars wasn’t good for society. Usually they add in a gripe about traffic in teh same rant.

Both teh commuter train system (GO Transit) and teh local system (TTC) have fare capture rates around 70%. This is about double what most large transit systems operate under and explains why we have some of teh highest fare prices in North America.

And yet. Even in teh last provinical election, teh Conservatives rallied behind a call to end teh War on Cars, supported by our awesome mayor, Rob Ford who single handedly killed a twenty billion dollar decade long plan to install seven light rail routes. Because it would apparently have been bad for cars.

 
 

Teh fuck of teh thing is that Rob Ford was elected with a comfortable margin and teh Tories gained a boatload of seats with their War on Car rhetoric.

 
 

Rob Ford was elected with a comfortable margin and teh Tories gained a boatload of seats with their War on Car rhetoric.

O, Canada, I hardly know ye anymore.

 
 

You mean he did his “neighborhood destruction” thing in hell too?

Put in a bypass between levels 6 and 3. The people on level 4, Greed, got really pissed they couldn’t get a cut of the tolls.

 
 

Um, finishing the thought…Freeman is a guy who can’t think of anything better than roads covering every square inch from Puget Sound to the Cascades, all leading to Bellevue Square.

That’s almost what you have already. It’s an adventure to drive over there for us small town rubes, but I would HATE to have to commute every day over there. Hell, I hate it here and our traffic doesn’t even register on the Seattle clusterfuck scale.

 
Marion in Savannah
 

Transit… Here in Slowvannah we actually have buses and some of them are even [gasp] hybrid buses. Howsomever… If you want to actually USE the buses you’re constrained to living along the route of the bus that will take you to work, almost all of which run exclusively north-south. There are virtually no transfer points unless you go all the way down to the Historic District, so if you live on the east side of town and your job is on the west side of town you’d better start thinking about moving.

 
 

I’m sure he’d see it differently if he only knew how much more quickly the maids and cleaning ladies can be summoned to their tasks.

 
 

Does it involve a Socialatrix?
Silly Kong, Socialatrix are for socialakids.

 
 

I didn’t realize the boat/mangoes connection, although I just read “Heart of Darkness” last spring….the intellectual sophistication of you Sadlys astound me anew! Bring on the p00p jokes!

 
 

Bring on the p00p jokes!

How do you bury a 300-pound Texan?

Give him an enema, put him in a shoebox.

 
 

How do you bury a 300-pound Texan?

Run him in the Iowa caucuses?

 
 

I was pretty sure it all came from Tropic Thunder.

sadly, if it had been a TT reference I would have been all over it.

 
The Tragically Flip
 

DKW, I take a more optimistic view. Miller and the sanitation union combined to really fuck up the 2010 mayoral race. Miller for provoking a strike and the sanitation guys for really fucking up the politics with things like trying to block citizens from taking their own garbage to the temporary collection sites. On top of that the big issue they were fighting over (accrued paid sick days) really played into classic right wing anti-union tropes. It was a really bad hill to die on and as a direct result, half their union has been trashed already in the phase 1 garbage collection outsourcing, with the other half likely to follow shortly. Suicide of the liberal class.

As for provincially, McGuinty has really worn out his welcome. The shock is not that the tories gained seats in a weak economy after 2 majority terms of McGuinty, but that the Liberals hung on to a minority and missed a majority by only 1 seat. The provincial Conservatives have really mastered the art of missing opportunities. 0 for 2 on gimme elections.

Toronto’s transit situation is all fucked up though, and it’s going to get much worse before it gets better. Best we can hope for is that Ford’s schemes are so bad that we rebound into sane transit policies under our next Mayor. The loss of transit city was apocalyptically stupid though.

 
 

JUST STEP BACK AND FUCK YOUR OWN FACE!

 
 

TT was the first glimmer of credible acting I’ve seen from Tom Cruise.

 
 

TT was the first glimmer of credible acting I’ve seen from Tom Cruise.

Nonsense. He was married to Katie Holmes first.

 
 

I have nothing against Tom…but, yeah, he was really funny in TT.

 
 

I have nothing against Tom

Not even his ridiculously over the top crazy religion cult?

 
 

TT was the first glimmer of credible acting I’ve seen from Tom Cruise.

Go rent “Born on the Fourth of July.”

 
 

I’d say a lot of Tom Cruise roles are pretty much interchangeable.

Tom Cruise plays a cocky young (pick one- fighter pilot, race car driver, bartender, spy) trying to prove himself.

 
 

I’d say a lot of Tom Cruise roles are pretty much interchangeable. Tom Cruise plays a cocky young (pick one- fighter pilot, race car driver, bartender, spy) trying to prove himself.

Yeah, but he had his moments. “Risky Business,” which put him on the map, was a perfect performance where he was anything but cocky.

 
 

Tom Cruise plays a cocky young (pick one- fighter pilot, race car driver, bartender, spy) trying to prove himself.

With the notable exceptions of “Interview With a Vampire” and “Collateral,” yeah.*

*[ The only movies (besides Minority Report) that I like him in, BTW. I find him completely unbelievable in these “Mission Impossible” flicks. ]

 
 

Tom Cruise plays a cocky young (pick one- fighter pilot, race car driver, bartender, spy) trying to prove himself.

Which is why BotFoJ was such a surprise. It’s a pity he hasn’t found it in himself to try harder to be a good actor.

He’s not gotten better, sadly. Many actors do, like say Woody Harrelson, or even Bruce Willis, shedding their stereotypes for deeper, more complex roles (altho in Willis’ case, I think he has to work with Tarantino to get that depth).

But you’re mostly right: he’s the same cardboard cutout in every film.

 
Xecklothayyquou Gilchrist
 

Free? Where I’m from a month of getting to work by bus = a month of car insurance.

It’s like that here in Salt Lake City, too (though similar to what Pupienus pointed out there is a free zone downtown, likely for the benefit of tourists but which is used by a lot of homeless folks between the shelter and the library.) I’m amazed at how good the public transport is here in the heart of Red-stateland, though SLC itself is much less conservatroggy than the rest of the state.

But wingnut boy has never ridden public transport, nor have any of his readers who matter, so he’s able to think it’s free or nearly free easily enough.

 
 

With the notable exceptions of “Interview With a Vampire” and “Collateral,” yeah.*

I’d argue that both those films fit the criteria of “cocky ____,” particularly Lestat.

Collateral was more subtle, and showed a different facet of a cocky guy, the facet where he’s daring the hero to knock the block off his shoulder, so to speak, but it’s the same damned role again.

 
 

Yeah, but he had his moments. “Risky Business,” which put him on the map, was a perfect performance where he was anything but cocky.

It shows him as a cocky punk who gets taken down a notch, but he’s ultimately still cocky. Just with a Thalberg ending.

 
 

I’d argue that both those films fit the criteria of “cocky ____,”

Yeah, but without the “having to prove yourself” piece, it’s a different dynamic. In “Interview,” there was also this sense or world-weariness and loneliness about him that you didn’t get in previous films. With “Collateral” it wasn’t about having fun or enjoying life; he was a hitman who was just fucking good at his job (“I’m a professional…”). So yes, cocky, but justifiably so.

Many actors do, like say Woody Harrelson, or even Bruce Willis, shedding their stereotypes for deeper, more complex roles (altho in Willis’ case, I think he has to work with Tarantino to get that depth).

Willis did start out doing a romantic comedy before leaping into the action-hero genre. And it’s hard to say Willis didn’t sell his character in “Sixth Sense” or in “12 Monkeys.” Then again, I did see “Surrogates” (on cable!) and…well, yikes.

 
 

Not even his ridiculously over the top crazy religion cult?

They’re all pretty culty to me…but, yeah, it creeps me out A LOT. Acting-wise I don’t have any major beefs with him.

 
 

Tom Cruise, a little birdie says, is an absurdly knowledgeable film buff. Which in a way makes his choices worse. It’s like Spielberg continuing to do what he does: why do people who know better and don’t need the money keep foisting this shit on the world?

 
 

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if mass transit riders staged their own strike, where all of them drive to work (if they can) for just one or two days. If they did that, maybe the resulting traffic jams would make regular car commuters STFU about transit “subsidies.”

 
 

And it’s hard to say Willis didn’t sell his character in “Sixth Sense” or in “12 Monkeys.”

Sixth Sense to me was just a complete waste of time. Even Toni Collette mailed it in, and that rarely happens. From Willis, I never got the sense that he was frustrated with what was happening to him (of course, the direction was horrendous, so I might be mislaying the blame on that) or angry or even puzzled that no one seemed to respond to him, except of course Haley Joel Osment. I don’t know any therapist who is that oblivious to interactions around him.

Now, Twelve Monkeys was a pretty intriguing film. Pitt as a raving loon was unnerving. The thing about Willis’ performance, like the one in Pulp Fiction, is he wasn’t a superhero. His character is out of his element and Willis played this note beautifully, never quite settling in, very alert to events around him.

There’s something engaging about Willis, to be sure. But when he

 
 

I can’t figure out what happened to Nick Cage who actually used to do fun, funky stuff (Vampire’s Kiss, Raising Arizona, Moonstruck) that actually had some merit. Now he’s like parodying himself in every film.

 
 

Let me finish that thought:

There’s something engaging about Willis, to be sure. But when he isn’t reined in, it’s a disaster. That’s fine for scenes where he’s driving a Mack truck being chased by a Harrier fighter, sure, but he has the same volume nearly every scene in nearly every other movie, too.

 
 

Now he’s like parodying himself in every film.

His uncle is Francis Ford Coppola. Nuff said.

 
 

My son keeps crawling around and playing with doorstops, so sometimes it sounds like neverending cartoon boner sounds around here. *SPROING!!*

 
 

Tom Cruise, a little birdie says, is an absurdly knowledgeable film buff. Which in a way makes his choices worse. It’s like Spielberg continuing to do what he does: why do people who know better and don’t need the money keep foisting this shit on the world?

They honestly believe they’re making art and they have no non-sycophants available to tell them otherwise.

 
 

They honestly believe they’re making art make gobs of money and they have no non-sycophants available to tell them otherwise to stop hogging screen time

FTFY

 
 

“My son keeps crawling around and playing with doorstops, so sometimes it sounds like neverending cartoon boner sounds around here. *SPROING!!*”

You’ll know its not just cartoon boner when soon after *SPROING!!* you hear “SPLAT.”

 
 

Gah! Lemme enjoy babyhood first!

 
 

When M. Night admitted that he got the idea from and R.L. Stine-like story, it pretty much destroyed any glamor Sixth Sense had for me, and I started to notice the holes right away. Of course back then, no one wanted to hear it. It’s like trying to be critical of Nolan’s Batman films (“But….no! His work is flawless!”).

But it is rare to find an actor who is completely different in every movie they play in, especially after they play a very memorable character.

 
Marion in Savannah
 

VS, just wait until he’s walking… The “SPROING” made me chortle, though.

 
 

Oh yeah, I like Nolan’s Batman films, too, but hardly found them flawless.

For instance, I really disliked Heath Ledger’s performance in Dark Knight.

 
 

Ha. I just saw “Rise” the other night.

 
 

I see Robert Moses was paroled from hell…

Robert Moses? That guy never even had a driver’s license, and at least his parkways were pretty. More like Judge Doom:

[Infinitely many] lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past. … Soon, where [Puget Sound and the Cascades] once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it’ll be beautiful.

I am actually starting to believe that the campaigns against public/mass transit actually are run by deranged toons. (And yeah, Cerb, I know they like to forget or elide Greyhound and other private bus companies; it wouldn’t be Wingnuttia without its being perpetual cherry-harvest time, after all.)

 
 

Ha. I just saw “Rise” the other night.

That was weird. I liked it so much I was wondering why they bothered to make it good.

 
 

For instance, I really disliked Heath Ledger’s performance in Dark Knight.

For your own safety, make sure you never say that to any guy who’s been a Batman fan since the 1990’s.

 
 

But it is rare to find an actor who is completely different in every movie they play in, especially after they play a very memorable character.

True, which is why people like Daniel Day-Lewis and Laurence Olivier are remembered long after they’ve hung them up.

It’s not even that they have to be different in every movie. To me, the mark of a really good actor is that I forget there’s an actor beneath the make-up and start to believe that’s the actual character I’m seeing.

Johnny Depp does it really well (altho I’m starting to see his performances petrify into “Captain Jack Sparrow Meets…”). There are movies that he’s performed in that I forget that he’s even in them until the credits roll. “Dead Man” springs to mind, but it was a Jarmusch film so it was pretty surreal from the get-go.

 
 

Robert Moses? That guy never even had a driver’s license, and at least his parkways were pretty.

The ones that catered to well-to-do white folk, yes, like the Northern and Southern States, and the Wantagh to Jones Beach.

Not so much the roadways that destroyed inner city neighborhoods, like the Cross Bronx Expressway.

 
 

Is it true that Robert Moses deliberately built the bridges on the Parkways to be too low for a city bus to fit under?

 
 

(altho I’m starting to see his performances petrify into “Captain Jack Sparrow Meets…”).

Might have been one of the reasons he seemed to stay away from the summer blockbuster…it’s how most actors get typecast.

 
 

Hello friends? My desert bugbear just died. She got run over by a bus. I’m sure you know a desert bugbear requires honesty but I had no honesty left.

 
 

Is it true that Robert Moses deliberately built the bridges on the Parkways to be too low for a city bus to fit under?

The parkways are designed with cars in mind, not commercial vehicles. I don’t know that the bridges are deliberately low with that in mind, however.

See, they have some pretty tight curves that make a high center of gravity a liability, and some pretty steep hills (where there are hills) which makes excess weight troublesome.

Naturally, SUVs and pickups drive these things all the time and have all sorts of problems, but I digress…

The curvy design was to enhance the “scenic route” aspect of the roadway, which did negate vehicles like buses and trucks from bespoiling things. The “autobahns” like the Long Island Expressway, are the roads that commercial vehicles take: straight, fast, and about as crowded as any roadway in the world.

 
 

Might have been one of the reasons he seemed to stay away from the summer blockbuster…it’s how most actors get typecast.

Well, “On Stranger Tides” released May 20, so it was awful close to a summer blockbuster.

Two of his next films are Dark Shadows and The Lone Ranger (he plays Tonto…ought to be interesting)

And his other soon-to-release is the film version of 21 Jump Street, which gave him his commercial break on TV

 
 

sadly, if it had been a TT reference I would have been all over it.

Of course, I keed, I keed! As an old guy, I’ve seen Apocalypse Now more times than I can count.
.

 
 

Ha. I just saw “Rise” the other night.

Worth burning January’s Redbox freebie on?
.

 
 

That was weird. I liked it so much I was wondering why they bothered to make it good.

It got 2 stars in the PPV rating. I thought elements of it were silly, but I enjoyed it.

 
 

Of course, I keed, I keed! As an old guy, I’ve seen Apocalypse Now more times than I can count.

You’re not old.

Apocalypse Now is one of those films I know I’m “supposed” to see…I just haven’t for whatever reason. Possibly because it’s a war picture.

 
 

Worth burning January’s Redbox freebie on?

I found it pretty entertaining, so I’d say yes.

 
 

A bunch of scenes from Apocalypse New come from the book Dispatches. Superb journalism.

 
 

I found it pretty entertaining, so I’d say yes.

Before you say that… keep in mind I have not seen Scott Pilgram…

And I dunno if Redbox is planning to keep giving freebies. No code yet (and usually that’s in the first few days of the month), and they jacked up prices to $1.20/night.

In Nashville, the auto-vend DVDs are the only game in town.
.

 
 

Worth burning January’s Redbox freebie on?

It depends; if you liked any aspect of the Planet of the Apes, absolutely. After that it’s a much better-than-average science-fiction film. You got yer animal rights and yer slaves getting back at The Man too.

 
 

And his other soon-to-release is the film version of 21 Jump Street, which gave him his commercial break on TV

That’s a joke, right? Depp has been quoted as saying how much “21 Jump Street” repulsed him even while he was making it.

 
 

Vaccumslayer–

First, Off T: Checked out your blog for the first time in a while (sorry!) and your kid is so absurdly adorable. Almost so much it should be illegal. And the new blog name rulez.

On T: When it comes to Apocalypse Now, I suggest you read two books:

Dispatches: As noted by Looch above, which is a disturbing but fantastic look at the Vietnam War. As someone with a close family member who went through versions of hell I could never imagine in that jungle, it got me as close to that experience as I’d ever want to come. Ever.

Heart of Darkness: ‘Tis by Joseph Conrad and is … well, his writing can be what I call “thick” and not what most would consider an easy read.* It can be done, however, by smart folks like yourself, so no worries.

Then see the movie, as more of it might make more sense.

Of course, you could just ignore all of that and rent it some night and wonder to yourself, perhaps even aloud, “What the holy fucking hell … ?”

Your call.

(* Prospero should be banned for flagrant use of quotation marks. I mean, really. It’s fucking abhorrent in its flashbacks of flashbacks, all quoted by someone quoting someone else who was quoting someone else two people back. Just … fuckityfuckshitfuck that book was hard to follow.)

 
 

Di Leo is right. We need to make it damn near impossible for poor people to earn a salary, because only then will they be incentivized to earn a salary.

You leftoons just don’t understand basic human behavior.

 
 

Speaking of movie greatness, here is the Animaniacs parody of Apocalypse Now. Link is to some random foreign site because WB killed the ute oob copies.

 
 

Btw, this post title is brilliant.

 
 

First, Off T: Checked out your blog for the first time in a while (sorry!) and your kid is so absurdly adorable. Almost so much it should be illegal. And the new blog name rulez.

Awww, thanks.

Ya know, I know every parent thinks her kid is cute…but honestly I don’t see how anyone could look at my son not find him CARTOONISHLY adorable. I mean, he takes my breath away every day.

Heart of Darkness: ‘Tis by Joseph Conrad and is … well, his writing can be what I call “thick” and not what most would consider an easy read.* It can be done, however, by smart folks like yourself, so no worries.

Again, thanks, but I think you overestimate my patience. I did not read “Heart of Darkness” in my AP high school English class because I thought it was “a waste of my time.” Did I mention i was an arrogant asshole when I was a teenager? I’m still one. I just try to be a little more smart and discreet about it.

 
 

Again, thanks, but I think you overestimate my patience. I did not read “Heart of Darkness” in my AP high school English class because I thought it was “a waste of my time.”

Well, unless you’re reading it as to make more sense of AN, it pretty much is.

Did I mention i was an arrogant asshole when I was a teenager?

The Department of Redundancy Department would like to have a few words with you.

I’m still one. I just try to be a little more smart and discreet about it.

EPIC. FAIL.

😉

Oh, and yes — all of us parents think our kids are cute. But yours truly is.

Mine wasn’t so bad, either. I blame his HAWT MOMMY. Who is, ya know, hawt.

 
 

Oh good grief. He’s adorable.

My son is cute despite his uggo of a mom. We got lucky!

 
 

I just try to be a little more smart and discreet about it.

Fail.

 
 

Or looked at another way, the poor coddle the rich by lavishing an absurd percentage of the economic surplus on them without even cutting their throats. If rich people understood the work that actually goes into eating, and sleeping under a roof, and owning a car, they might be more aware of the gulf between their lives and those of everyone else and behave more responsibly.

 
 

Well, unless you’re reading it as to make more sense of AN, it pretty much is.

Well, or if you’re interested in the Belgian Congo, or like Joseph Conrad, or find fascinating tales of the depths to which humans can sink.

 
 

Aside on Bruce Willis: I don’t think enough people give him credit for Death Becomes Her.

 
 

That movie never got its due IMO. I liked it. Sue me.

 
 

Substance McGravitas said,
January 5, 2012 at 1:04

Sleeping to a sweet lullaby.

Well, frick, that is cute.

 
 

Well, or if you’re interested in the Belgian Congo, or like Joseph Conrad, or find fascinating tales of the depths to which humans can sink.

Or stories within stories. It’s narrated by a guy who was on a boat who tells the tale of what he heard from another guy on the boat, who tells the main tale and also what he’s heard from others…there’s a point where some further nesting occurs and it’s getting loopy and then someone on the boat lights a match.

 
 

I think I swallowed a bug.

I don’t have anything else to say.

 
 

Speaking of Cruise and Tarantino, relevant.

 
 

Is it true that Robert Moses deliberately built the bridges on the Parkways to be too low for a city bus to fit under?

If you believe Robert Caro – who is only capable of writing bios of people he hates with a white-hot flame, but who also does meticulous research – yes.

 
 

Marlon Brando said,

January 5, 2012 at 1:41 (kill)

I think I swallowed a bug.

Marlon, your performance as “Summer Glau” is incredible.

 
 

incredible.

“Incredible” as in: nobody would mistake Marlon Brando for Summer Glau?

Even if he was alive?

 
 

AFAIK, “I think I swallowed a bug.” appears in Serenity. Marlon was carefully disguised.

 
 

r find fascinating tales of the depths to which humans can sink.

I come here for that.

 
 

S,N! is more the large intestine of darkness than the heart of darkness.

 
 

Marlon was carefully disguised.

Boy I’ll say.

 
 

Not the cloaca of darkness? Or is that redundant?

 
 

Sproinging the doorstop.

 
 

I think in AN he said “I swallowed a bug.” I just watched much of Serenity t’udder day – can’t recall hearing the line but I wasn’t really paying attention.

Completely OT, The Ho brought home the new season of Downton Abbey and we’re about 2/3 of the way through. No, you peons have to wait for it to air.

Frothy Mix 2012!

 
 

can’t recall hearing the line

After the return to the ship following the chase scene at the robbery.

 
 

Coalescing the Santorum

 
 

Coalescing the Santorum

Coalescing of the willing?

 
 

Anyone else excited about the new season of Todd Margaret?

 
 

Headline writer having fun:

Santorum surge sparks ethics questions

 
 

Kg, just started watching the first season on Netflix…and yes.

 
The Tragically Flip
 

After New Hampshire, will we be treated to headlines like “Morning After New Hampshire, Santorum left behind”

 
 

Santorum Frozen Out In Snowy New Hampshire

 
The Tragically Flip
 

Romney comes first, leaves Santorum trailing

 
 

Santorum Trailing Behind Romney

 
 

Romney Cleans Up

Santorum: It’s All Over

 
 

Iowa headlines:

“Santorum’s up, Perry’s Behind”

“Santorum Surges from Behind in Messy Late Night Three-Way.”

“Santorum Forces Perry to Withdraw”

“Santorum Beneath Romney now, and Paul’s Behind”

Too fun; too easy

 
 

John DiLeo:

What they should be doing is trying to free these poor people from Comuna 13 — to help them earn better salaries so they can, one day, come down from that mountaintop and never, ever be compelled to return!

Humph! When I was young, we were too poor to afford neighborhoods! These people got nothing to complain about.

 
 

“Santorum comes up short after a long, hard, sloppy slog.”

“Santorum’s weak thrust leaves messy aftermath.”

“A’ Bachmann cries “stop, no more!” Romney sucks up to Santorum’s hardcore followers.’

 
 

“As” not “A'”

FYWP and Android keyboard also too.

 
 

Fine, you slackers:

A frothy mix of hope, doubt, and uncertainty greet Romney after tight end of Iowa scrum”

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

I can’t figure out what happened to Nick Cage who actually used to do fun, funky stuff (Vampire’s Kiss, Raising Arizona, Moonstruck) that actually had some merit. Now he’s like parodying himself in every film.

Fun, funky stuff doesn’t pay Nick Coppola’s bills. And he got a whole lot of bills to pay. So if they’ll pay him for Drive Angry in 3D? He’ll do it.

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

I liked “A” Bachmann better. It leaves room for interpretation.

 
 

Santorum’s Sudden Surge Leaves a Bad Taste in Romney’s Mouth

 
 

Tight squeeze results in close, messy finish for Iowa hopefuls.

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

Also:

Santorum flung into faces of GOP hopeful in Iowa.

 
 

YOU PEOPLE…

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

And let’s not forget the puff-pieces!

An in-depth, hands-on experience with Santorum.

 
 

“It’s like trying to be critical of Nolan’s Batman films (“But….no! His work is flawless!”).”

Make that “…trying to be critical of any Nolan movie after his Batman films.” That guy is in serious danger of losing sight of storytelling basics and seeing movies as one long tedious game of narrative oneupmanship.

 
 

S,N! has taught me why conservatives regard Jonah Goldberg as an intellectual. Compared to their B-leagues, he really does craft arguments with care and precision.

From the most recent Load o’berg:

… consider the Occupy Wall Street movement. Not since the Hebrews killed themselves at Masada has there been a group that more obviously won by losing.

Never before has such a nicely proportionate comparison been made with such care. (Though, to be fair, that’s about as subtle as any wingnut gets at fantasizing in public about the violent deaths of his poltical opponents.)

I’m sure [Kemper Freeman]’d see it differently if he only knew how much more quickly the maids and cleaning ladies can be summoned to their tasks.

Actually, he himself does not commute via automobile to work, although in his case, it’s more akin to P.J. O’Roarke’s observation that very rich Americans are often the only ones in our country who are as thin as poor persons in the Third World.

I wrote this post, not Cerberus.

You had me going, too. I read it from my iPhone whilst commuting on mass transit being coddled into not working hard enough (arrived at 7:45 am, left at 7:55 pm today), and so I didn’t bother to squint for the author’s name. And I’m not (just) snarking on the length of your post; your style seems similar to hers, and I mean that as a compliment.

It’s a good thing this dim bulb hasn’t heard of the funicular in Quebec City, left out in the frequently freezing rain and snow for more than 100 years and installed in Marx’s time because of socialixm. Perhaps because it is mostly used by tourists acceptably pale and acceptably well-off persons it’s OK and not evidence of my war on the poor.

F’zd, to match DeLoser’s lazy thoughtless racism and classism.

(Hmmmm… lengthening his post … hmmmm …)

 
 

Angels Flight..cooler than an escalator..at least in it’s first incarnation..however the city of LA built the thing to get wealthy Angelenos from nasty Olive St up to the mansions on Bunker Hill..socialism is always cool for rich folk

 
 

AFAIK, “I think I swallowed a bug.” appears in Serenity.

Tito, on the other hand, couldn’t help but chew the scenery

 
 

Depp has been quoted as saying how much “21 Jump Street” repulsed him even while he was making it.

He’s in it, according to his IMDB page.

He may have hated it, but it gave him his career.

 
 

I thought “Inception” was really silly and, frankly, boring.

 
 

vacuumslayer said,
January 5, 2012 at 14:18

I thought “Inception” was really silly and, frankly, boring.

But without that, no Dudeskull!

 
 

HA!

That joke works in several levels. Omg, incepjoke!

 
 

It’s a joke hidden within a joke wrapped in an enigma and covered with cheese sauce.

 
 

It better be real cheese. Hubby eats that “cheese” dip that I’m pretty sure is made of melted plastic and it grosses me out.

 
 

Hubby eats that “cheese” dip that I’m pretty sure is made of melted plastic and it grosses me out.

Velveeta: The Cheese That Never Dies

 
 

I thought “Inception” was really silly and, frankly, boring.

Interesting concept, particularly with DiCaprio’s wife living way down the circles of hell, and visually pretty stunning, but you’re right, it got boring by the end.

 
 

Interesting concept, particularly with DiCaprio’s wife living way down the circles of hell, and visually pretty stunning, but you’re right, it got boring by the end.

Considering that (by some claims) it’s a rip-off of an old Ducktales comic story, you’re pretty much right. The part I never got was how he could screw up [Spoilers!] the woman he supposedly loved by [Spoilers!] her into a [Spoilers!].

But in a way, it’s another analogy of what the posters do here: go into a dreamworld where your mind (or at least your sanity) could be lost. Watch out for those folding streets.

 
 

I thought the last dream looked a low-budget Bond film. It was actually cheesy

 
 

Real cheese?

 
 

It was real cheesy all right.

 
 

You know what work of his I love? Prolly one of his lesser-known: Insomnia.

 
 

weird…i’m reading heart of darkness right now!

 
 

Real cheese?

i thought real cheese was always spelled with a ‘z’?

 
 

Sadlies, we scooped the world! All those many snarky comments that wingnuts accuse Obama of doing things he would have had to Time Travel to do?

Turns out it’s TRUE!

The sinister, shocking truth about Barack Obama’s past lies not in east Africa, but in outer space. As a young man in the early 1980s, Obama was part of a secret CIA project to explore Mars. The future president teleported there, along with the future head of Darpa.

That’s the assertion, at least, of a pair of self-proclaimed time-traveling, universe-exploring government agents. Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings insist that they once served as “chrononauts” at Darpa’s behest, traversing the boundaries of time and space. They swear: A youthful Barack Obama was one of them.

This explains everything!

 
 

I thought “Inception” was really silly and, frankly, boring.

Plot holes one could sail a supertanker through, too. I’m all for willing suspension, but Jeez Louise.
.

 
The Dark Avenger
 

Yes, you’re such a qualified judge on the subject of maturity, Dennnis.

 
 

Sure, I had my youthful days of time travel but mostly I think of “chrononauts”, people who wander randomly through time, as another label for drummers and percussionists.

 
 

They swear: A youthful Barack Obama was one of them.

This Barry Soetero fellow must have stoled his identity.

 
 

i thought real cheese was always spelled with a ‘z’?

That’s the pretentious British spelling.

 
 

My name is Obama, from the galaxy
I came to meet you, to make you free
Deliver to you socialist healthcare from
A distant planet from where I come

 
 

So Obama’s a Time Lord?

 
Helmut Monotreme
 

So is Obama going to do the Time Warp again?

 
 

I thought “Inception” was really silly and, frankly, boring.

You left out “pretentious”.

 
 

So Obama’s a Time Lord?

Could be he’s Doctor Who

 
 

That’s the assertion, at least, of a pair of self-proclaimed time-traveling, universe-exploring government agents. Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings insist that they once served as “chrononauts” at Darpa’s behest, traversing the boundaries of time and space. They swear: A youthful Barack Obama was one of them.

Peak Wingnut will be achieved next February, 2013. Oily Taint will be speaking to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday on this very topic, and Wallace won’t roll his eyes or crack a smirk.
.

 
 

Inception was terribly disappointing. They really couldn’t think of anything to put in the dream world besides bog-standard action-thriller guns-n-splosions? If I had such derivative and cliched dreams I’d shoot myself.

 
Meanie-meanie, tickle a person
 

I was quite prepared to give the best headline ever award for “Santorum Surges”

I would have given it to TPM for “Santorum Flashback”, except they misspelled “Splashback”…

 
St. Trotsky, Pope-in-Avignon
 

Well, that’s just it, innit?

If Inception followed the course of most people’s dreams, it’d be a bunch of staging from our old schools and places of work, we’d spend half the time flying around aimlessly, and every time you felt like you were about to get someplace, you’d get bogged down, drift off or wake up to morning radio and roll over because fuck if you’re going back to work.

If I had dreams with a standard narrative like an action-thriller, I’d be overjoyed that I was at least heading in some direction.

 
 

If I had dreams with a standard narrative like an action-thriller, I’d be overjoyed that I was at least heading in some direction.

Well, it’s easy to have those when someone else scripts and architects them.

 
 

Dream sequences are notoriously difficult to film convincingly, partly because they are so subjective and personal, and also because they never really make narrative sense. A “realistic” dream would be something like, I don’t know, you’re driving a car, and it’s the first car your parents had when you were a kid, but it’s really big, like with rooms and tunnels, and you keep getting lost trying to find the car keys, and you’re going to be late for the final exam in a class you forgot to go to for the whole year, except you’re not wearing any pants, and then your old algebra teacher shows up riding a camel, and starts to laugh at you, except the camel is actually a fish, and your mom is there talking about Fred Flintstone, who is also there, and now you’re back in the car again, but it won’t start, and they’re having a wedding in the back seat, and the bride is waiting for you to put your pants on so you can get married, and suddenly you’re at the beach, and it’s raining…

 
 

Inception was terribly disappointing. They really couldn’t think of anything to put in the dream world besides bog-standard action-thriller guns-n-splosions? If I had such derivative and cliched dreams I’d shoot myself.

Well, then this will really get you: the movie, some say, can be interpreted as an analogy of making a movie, where the the dreamworld is the set, Cobb is the director, and so on.

 
 

Dream sequences are notoriously difficult to film convincingly, partly because they are so subjective and personal, and also because they never really make narrative sense.

That’s why my favorite movie dream sequences usually came from Nightmare on Elm Street. It didn’t matter whether it was supposed to be believable or not, because Freddy was manipulating them pretty much from the get-go.

In real life? I dream about places I’ve never been to, but for some reason they feel familiar. Go figure.

 
 

Dream sequences are notoriously difficult to film convincingly, partly because they are so subjective and personal, and also because they never really make narrative sense.

Exactly.

One I keep having is that I’ve ridden my scooter somewhere, and me (and sometimes others) end up driving a car, and I’m concerned about how the scooter’s going to get back home, now that I’m driving a car.

Also, vehicles sometimes just melt away, and I’m traveling down the road like a snake on its belly, only faster.

I think it’s almost universal that we’ll have a room or rooms from familiar places inside dream buildings that have nothing to do with the original settings. Everything’s so fluid, and things morph from one thing to the next, randomly.
.

 
 

Dream sequences are notoriously difficult to film convincingly, partly because they are so subjective and personal, and also because they never really make narrative sense.

Mine seem to, except that they usually take place in some surrealist landscape (to be precise, something Terry Gilliam might dream up, no pun intended).

That is, I can get from point A to point B in a narrative and can follow the plot of how I got from one situation to another. Too, I can usually recall the story the next morning, and put it in the context of what my subconscious is tryign to tell me.

Perhaps I just need to find better drugs.

 
 

They could have, at least, arrived at some happy medium between “half-remembered quotidian pointlessness just like a real dream” and “same as every other action flick, just IN DREEM LAND!!!”

It’s not that they tried, and failed, to capture a dreamlike yet still narratively interesting dream world. They simply didn’t try in the first place. This is a creative gap.

 
 

They could have, at least, arrived at some happy medium between “half-remembered quotidian pointlessness just like a real dream” and “same as every other action flick, just IN DREEM LAND!!!”

Considering how many dreams in real life are pointless and arbitrary, and how in the film they had to achieve an objective, what middle ground could they possibly have come to? Especially given the presence of sentinels designed to thwart their efforts?

 
 

Also, have you ever tried to trell someone about a dream you had? It’s all, “OK, first I was…then i saw…then suddenly…” You absolutely can’t convey the experience of a dream without “editing” it to make it sound more logical than it was. Plus, even if you are unusually good about remembering your dreams, most of the detail fzzes out within a few moments of awakening.

As usual, xkcd has an app…

 
 

I’ve had some pretty weird dreams but I do remember once very vividly having the “I’m falling!” dream

at which point I executed the B-52 ejection sequence:

Arming Levers – Rotate
Triggers – Squeeze

and I felt the kick of the ejection seat just before waking up.

 
 

what’s my locker combination?!?!? what’s my next class?!?! WHERE the hell’s my next class?!?! we had a HOMEWORK assignment?!?! GAAAAAH!!!!

those are pretty much my dreams…except if u count teh sexytime ones featuring old frank sinatra in a swimming pool…

 
 

As usual, xkcd has an app…

This is completely fuckin’ awesome.
.

 
 

I’ve had some pretty weird dreams but I do remember once very vividly having the “I’m falling!” dream

at which point I executed the B-52 ejection sequence:

Heh. When I have the falling dream, it’s never about when I really fell (blog whore). It’s always much neater and cleaner and the safety harness and rope grabber and rope gleam in the sunlight and fail miserably and I free-fall and street-pizza myself.

 
Helmut Monotreme
 

and I felt the kick of the ejection seat just before waking up.

I can only hope, as you woke up, the next thing you felt was not the rush of cold air on your face and the sight below you of a fully operational, though quite a bit draftier B-52 flying serenely on it’s way without you.

 
 

I can only hope, as you woke up, the next thing you felt was not the rush of cold air on your face and the sight below you of a fully operational, though quite a bit draftier B-52 flying serenely on it’s way without you.

That would really ruin your day.
.

 
 

That actually happened once. A B-52 gunner fell asleep (they slept most of the time anyway) and woke up disoriented, thought something was wrong with the plane and punched out.

 
Helmut Monotreme
 

That actually happened once. A B-52 gunner fell asleep (they slept most of the time anyway) and woke up disoriented, thought something was wrong with the plane and punched out.

Here’s hoping it wasn’t over the north sea or some other location that would have made it hard to get home. Also, I would imagine the debriefing after that maneuver would be …memorable.

 
 

That actually happened once. A B-52 gunner fell asleep (they slept most of the time anyway) and woke up disoriented, thought something was wrong with the plane and punched out.

Do they dock your pay for that?

“Son, I’m sorry to say your enlistment won’t be up for another 403 years.”
.

 
 

I would imagine the debriefing after that maneuver would be …memorable.

Debriefing? He must have filled them entirely.

 
 

I’ve had several falling dreams where I fall and get up and walk away into the next part of the dream. I had one where I crash-landed a plane into the tops of some trees and the big challenge was figuring out how to climb down from there.

But I’ve had a couple of absolutely bizarre dreams that I can remember in great detail, and in both of them, German breeds of dogs were prominent features. And not in any Santorum sort of way.

 
 

Thread Bear said,
January 5, 2012 at 19:43

heh…exactly…lately i’ve been treated to the added bonus of fraking the fuck out because graduation is imminent and there i have skipped a needed math and/or science class the entire semester…then after awhile I realize I’m th same age I m in real life and that I fucking graduated in 1984…so suck it teachers!!!!

 
 

I fucking graduated in 1984…so suck it teachers!!!!

It doesn’t matter. That shit goes on your PERMANENT RECORD.

 
 

It doesn’t matter. That shit goes on your PERMANENT RECORD.

I bet my permanent record is so thick, one could fall off it much like one would fall off a skyscraper…

 
 

Dream sequences are notoriously difficult to film convincingly,

Not true! Bob Newhart made like 150 episodes of them!

 
Helmut Monotreme
 

Dream sequences are notoriously difficult to film convincingly,

Not true! Bob Newhart made like 150 episodes of them!

Also wasn’t an entire season of “Dallas” a dream, including the episode where teh Pope shot JR?

 
 

Also wasn’t an entire season of “Dallas” a dream, including the episode where teh Pope shot JR?

I thought Maggie Simpson shot J.R.
.

 
 

I thought Maggie Simpson shot J.R.
.

Ii thought jr was mr burns?!?!

 
 

Yeah, that’s why the Newhart finale was so funny. Thinking about the scene where he wakes up in bed with Susanne Pleshette still makes me laugh.

 
 

Do they dock your pay for that?

“Son, I’m sorry to say your enlistment won’t be up for another 403 years.”

“One hundred years before the mast!”

 
 

I bet my permanent record is so thick, one could fall off it much like one would fall off a skyscraper…

Oddly, that was my dream last night: falling off your permanent record.

 
 

Also wasn’t an entire season of “Dallas” a dream, including the episode where teh Pope shot JR?

And Bobby gay married Benson the butler!

 
 

I thought Jeannie shot JR and then eloped with Major Healey.

 
 

Jeannie shot the sheriff. But not the deputy.

 
 

The drunken dream scene in Dumbo was awfully familiar.

 
 

Jeannie shot the sheriff. But not the deputy.

Who shot Barney Fife?

 
 

Who shot Barney Fife?

Kevin Drum?

 
Lurking Canadian
 

I actually had a dream the other day that I got to act in Henry V. I was Henry and the Chorus, because dream-me is Just That Good, apparently.

So, yeah, that dream had a narrative structure, but I totally ripped it off from Shakespeare, so that doesn’t count.

 
 

Seen on teh interducts: “Michele is out. Marcus is not.”

 
 

“Who shot Barney Fife?”

Gomer Pyle had the means; don’t know about incentive.

 
 

I actually had a dream the other day that I got to act in Henry V. I was Henry and the Chorus, because dream-me is Just That Good, apparently.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh, but were you in a Maidenform bra?

 
 

Gomer Pyle had the means; don’t know about incentive.

*whips off sunglasses to the strain of a Who song*

Ask brother Goober. He’s the brains of the outfit.

 
 

“Ask brother Goober”

Gotta be more specific; there’s lotsa Goobers down South.

 
 

VOTE EARLY AND OFTEN!

I like how you can vote as many times as you want. It was difficult to not vote up my own entry, but I managed.

Voting up the entry.

 
 

OBS is a cheater in this TERRIBLY IMPORTANT POLL!

 
 

Gotta be more specific; there’s lotsa Goobers down South.

Ah, but the Andy Griffith show is post “Highgooberer: The Quickening”.

That’s right: there can be only one.

 
address my envelope, lips!
 

Ah, but the finale of St. Elsewhere? Sucked major Balls.

I’ve been dreaming lately that I forget to check out of a hotel, go home, and a month later remember, when I get the credit card statement. Except last night, where I was hiding from flower-bedecked aliens with gas-mask faces that wanted to make me one of them.

 
 

I have had dreams about a couple of the guys here. Never set peepers on them, yet I knew it was them.

 
 

Major, I work with many test pilots — professionals who are totally dedicated to safety and excellence in your art. However, not a one of them has ever claimed to be such a conscientious pilot that he or she correctly executed a checklist procedure WHILE ASLEEP. Bravo, sir, bravo! 😉

 
 

I wouldn’t have dared screw it up.

They used to say “To err is human. To forgive is not SAC policy.”

 
 

Me, too. I knew one was Smut because he had a bird on his head. This morning I dreamed I could send people free gifts like in a live-action facebook game(the gifts were all on a menu board behind a soda fountain-like counter in a country store/old timey barber shop), and I sent my husband a new toe to replace one with a blister but it wouldn’t let me send the green foot he also wanted.

 
 

That was to vs, obviously. I haven’t worked with test pilots that I know of.

 
 

“Arming Levers – Rotate
Triggers – Squeeze”

Sadly, I haven’t had that kind of dream since I was about sixteen………

 
 

Tigris, your dreams are superior to mine.

 
 

However, not a one of them has ever claimed to be such a conscientious pilot that he or she correctly executed a checklist procedure WHILE ASLEEP. Bravo, sir, bravo! 😉

Stone drunk, however….

 
 

Further OT: Antonio Perez is one of those brilliant 1% job creators we hear so much about. He’s so brilliant I imagine his next job will be running for preznit on the GOP ticket.

 
 

Shorter George Will

When rape inevitable, lie back and enjoy.

 
 

Just now I briefly glimpsed the cover of Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” graphic novel.

I spend too much time on the internet — I thought the title read “Santorum”.

Although the subtitle of “Preludes & Nocturnes” would work for that also too.

 
 

We subsidize the public transportation of our cities so that the poor can ride in an air-conditioned bus or train for free or nearly free.

Pass that joint my way. He’s gotta be smokin’ because that’s the only way you can believe such shit.

In totally socialist Chicago the poor gotta pay to ride the bus/train/el. Nothing like paying close to 1% of your monthly wages PER DAY to ride in air-conditioned (or for Chicago, heated) comfort.

 
 

Yeah, the MBTA is talking about raising fares AND cutting service.

 
 

Rule of Law != respecting copyrights, it would seem.
.

 
 

I live in Denver, and we have an excellent bus and light-rail system, that is used by everyone from students to suit-and-tie execs. I ride for free because my company generously provides its employees with the “Eco-Pass” as a fringe benefit, and it is quite valuable and coveted. This is not cheap for the copmany, and you’d better believe employees at Wal-Mart and McDonalds sure don’t get one. So much for subsidizing those darned poor folks!

 
 

Whoever copy-pasta is, he left out the “Effing” between “George” and “Will.”

 
 

Nothing like paying close to 1% of your monthly wages PER DAY to ride in air-conditioned (or for Chicago, heated) comfort.

In most cases, this is true. Someplaces, like Miami, Detroit, and curiously, Staten Island, have pretty generous subsidies to rely on:

Farebox Recovery Ratios is how much of the cost to provide your mass transit ride you pay in fares.

Atlanta (MARTA) 31.8% 2007[10]
Austin (CMTA) 9% 2007[11]
Boston (MBTA) 43.7% 2002[12]
Chicago (CTA) 55.2% 2010[13]
Cleveland (GCRTA) 21.5% 2002[12]
Dallas (DART) 28.4% 2008[14]
Detroit (DDOT) 13.9% 2002[15]
Edmonton (ETS) 39.4% 2007 [16]
Harrisburg, PA (CAT) 35.0% 2005
Las Vegas Monorail 56.0% 2006[17]
Long Island (MTA) 26.6% 2009 Q1[18]
Los Angeles (LACMTA) 30.6% 2004[19]
Maryland 26.3% 2002[12]
Miami 16.1% 2002[12]
Montreal (STM) 57.1% 2006 [20]
New York City (MTA) 55.5% 2009 Q1[21]
New York/Connecticut (MTA) 36.2% 2009 Q1[22]
New York/New Jersey (PATH) 41.0% 2002[12]
New Jersey (NJT) 56% 2001[23]
Orlando (Lynx) 26% 2006[24]
Ottawa (OC Transpo) 43.2% 2007 [25]
Philadelphia (SEPTA) 58.6% 2002[12]
Pierce County, WA 13.0% 2009[26]
Philadelphia/New Jersey (PATCO) 61.4% 2002[12]
Portland Metro Area (TriMet) 22% 2010[27]
Puget Sound Region (King County Metro) 19.1% 2006[28]
Puget Sound Region (Sound Transit) 22.2% 2007[29]
San Francisco Bay Area (BART) 64.5% 2008[30]
San Francisco Bay Area (Caltrain) 41% 2006[31]
Staten Island (MTA) 15.2% 2002[12]
Toronto (TTC) 66.7% 2009 [32]
Toronto, Hamilton and area (GO Transit) 88.4% 2008 [33]
Vancouver (TransLink) 51.9% 2010 [34]
Washington, DC (WMATA) 62.1% 2010 [35]

 
 

I live in a teeny, tiny town…you either have to drive yourself, hitch a ride with a buddy/sucker you can talk into it or ride the golden retriever…for which you pay .40/mile for one way out of town jaunts or 1.25 a trip. since most of our towns are miles apart and not one has all the necessities needed, this leaves quite a few people in the lurch…we have all learned to plan ahead and that patience is a virtue, cuz whether you are the driver or the hitcher, somebody is going to be waiting on somebody else to get all their appointments/errands/shopping done…

 
 

I’m in West LA, and I’m just counting the days until we have a Westside extention of light rail. You cannot drive from the beach in Santa Monica to UCLA – a mere 10 miles at most – in under 1.5 hours at rush hour.

I work at the beach, get off at 6:00 pm and sometimes try to make an 8:00 pm curtain at Royce Hall, with, hopefully a half hour to grab a bite. Usually I barely make it there before the bell, with an empty stomach.

This is why no one on the westside goes downtown to the opera or the Ahmanson.

Please – give us light rail!

 
 

bbkf — Too bad you live where snow/ice are so common, or I’d recommend a scooter!
.

 
 

I have had dreams about a couple of the guys here. Never set peepers on them, yet I knew it was them.

me too…it was u, actually…I got to babbysit little dudeskull. And then when you came home, u showed hubbkf and I all the amazing things your magic apartment could do. Then my mom came over and she brought you a really tacky nativity scene as a gift and u told her u didn’t believe in the babby Jesus and she freaked out and made us leave in a giant bus…for good measure, you sent a couple of zombies after her to make sure she didn’t come back….

also, to…are sadly not guys hawt?

 
 

bbkf — Too bad you live where snow/ice are so common, or I’d recommend a scooter!

also too my lack of balance, clumsiness and regrettable reaction rates…

 
 

I believe here in Columbus Ohio we have the dubious distinction of being the largest city in the country without any form of light rail.

 
 

Riding the retriever

 
 

also, to…are sadly not guys hawt?

I would participate, but I’d ruin the grading curve.

 
 

also, to…are sadly not guys hawt?

I certainly am! heh
.

 
 

Re George Will, is it really likely the only thing that folks will remember about Obama is a mania for high-speed rail? I’m not even aware of any such mania now.

Also, has anyone linked this yet?

also, to…are sadly not guys hawt?

You know, any time someone I only know online appears in a dream I can’t see their faces, I can only look at them up to their neck or at the top of their head, but not at the face.

 
 

I certainly am! heh

well, I know who i’ll be dreaming about tonight…how do feel about swimming pools?

 
 

also, to…are sadly not guys hawt?

I can’t believe you dreamt about me. I’m kinda touched!

Sadly guys are totally hot, just ask N_B…but I’m afraid I never got to experience their hotness cuz all my dreams have been about stuff like receiving e-messages, legal (sort of) documents and drives to the…airport??? Hardly erotic stuff unless the subtext is the most subbest EVAR in dream history.

 
 

also, to…are sadly not guys hawt?

Ahem!
~

 
 

Sorry, I’m only into right-footed guys.

 
 

also, to…are sadly not guys hawt?

I’ve been called many things, but never “hawt”.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1676402799164&set=a.1251837825305.2031395.1510303919&type=3&theater

 
 

Ahem!
~

my, my…such a well-turned and shapely ankle could only belong to a totally hawt d00d…

 
 

I’ve been called many things, but never “hawt”.

hmmm…I never pictured u wearing a dress…but yes, you are quite attractive…

 
 

I can’t believe you dreamt about me. I’m kinda touched!

u won’t be when u find out I accidentally dropped babby e…

 
 

Major, is that you and the bride? You’re both quite nice-looking!

 
 

Yes, that’s me and Mrs. Kong. That was taken last summer on vacation in Savannah.

 
 

also, to…are sadly not guys hawt?

Ahem!
~

C’mon Thundra, it’s THE SCRAPES WITH DEATH that are sexy. Ask Jesus.

 
 

I got a great big bruise on my right thigh that I just noticed.
~

 
 

Twelve Monkeys was a pretty intriguing film. Pitt as a raving loon was unnerving. The thing about Willis’ performance, like the one in Pulp Fiction, is he wasn’t a superhero. His character is out of his element and Willis played this note beautifully, never quite settling in, very alert to events around him.

Super film! Williis’ best evah, imo. Pitt was superb as a hospitalized bipolar patient in a full-blown manic-manipulative cycle. Before this role, I thought of Brad Pitt as a pretty-face heartthrob. In Twelve Monkeys, Pitt shows some real acting chops.

The great Terry Gilliam directed Twelve Moneys. The film has a subtle presentation of the ‘time-travel paradox’. I highly recommend this movie to any Sadly who hasn’t yet seen it!

((Also, too, the movie was set and filmed in Baltimore (+ some Philly scenes). The gritty prisone pens and ‘time-travel’ machine were filmed in a former printing plant of the Baltimore Sun. So screw NYC and LA. And Arkansas, too…))

 
 

So screw NYC

I’m working on it. I’m up to the “Ns”.

 
 

So screw NYC and LA.

I thought they filmed everything in Vancouver and Toronto these days.

 
 

You know, once upon a time I was hot. These days, not so much. I just decided when I was in my early 40s that I had my time and now it was for the youngsters to enjoy theirs. Not only is it not worth never ever ever again eating most of the things I like just to lose and keep off 10 pounds (when more like 40 or 50 would be needed to restore my early 20s hotness) but it’s actually kind of a relief to be invisible. Hotness complicates your life; being almost 50 simplifies things a great deal.

 
 

C’mon Thundra, it’s THE SCRAPES WITH DEATH that are sexy. Ask Jesus.

wait…is thudner the wee little man by the vehicle or the hairy pecker by the tree?

 
 

Back by the State Trooper’s car, behind the shutter, A.K.

When life deals you lemons, take pictures for your blog, says I.
~

 
 

No, not A.K. I meant bbkf.

I blame the confusion on the contusion.
~

 
 

shut up…i’m the one on the left…

 
 

shut up…i’m the one on the left…

 
 

and i m not anonymous…

 
 

You remind me of a young Kate Capshaw.

 
 

I have already shown SO MUCH of my body. What, you want the pr0n?

 
 

I thought I made that clear.

 
 

shut up…i’m the one on the left…

If you bought that house when you say you did, either that photo is 30 years old, or that’s your daughter!
.

 
 

The streetcar and MAX (light rail) are free in the downtown area. Used to be busses were too but too many homeless were spending all day on the bus.

Naw, it’s because the new businesses and condos in the Pearl district – the gentrified industrial area downtown – refused to pay like the other businesses downtown do. So they took it away because otherwise you could ride the bus from the Pearl and back without paying.

Basically, stupid rich jerks refused to pay the same as everyone else because they knew people would walk or pay to come to their ritzy new shops that displaced the industrial jobs and poor and LGBT community that used to reside there.

 
 

One of the very best threads.

Sadlyville’s residents are handsome and hawt. I wish I could figure out how to put up a photo. I don’t have many. (Don’t have a camera and I’m reclusive.) The most recent photo was from the Rally to Keep Fear Alive.

The entire Dream conversation is very, very nifty. (Tonight, I may try to write a more-extended comment about Dreams.)

Worth sayin’ again: One of the very best threads!

 
 

Or stories within stories. It’s narrated by a guy who was on a boat who tells the tale of what he heard from another guy on the boat, who tells the main tale and also what he’s heard from others…there’s a point where some further nesting occurs and it’s getting loopy and then someone on the boat lights a match.

No kidding, and here’s another level, he was writing in his third language( Polish/French/English). The only other great 20th century author that achieved relevance in his 2nd language would be B. Traven. I think, go ahead, name me another.

 
 

Well done.

 
 

JM Coetzee (Afrikaans)

 
 

Borges.

 
 

Nabokov. HA.
JM Coetzee (Afrikaans)

Nabokov, absolutely, Coetzee, meh, might be forgotten by history. I know there’s another one out there I’m forgetting.

 
 

Goldberg.

Liberal Fascism certainly wasn’t written in any variant of English I’ve ever read.

 
 

Well, Wole Soyinka got himself a Nobel…

 
 

You know, I might be wrong about Borges having written in English, I can’t seem to find anything now.

 
 

Wasn’t English Nabokov’s third language too? All those high class Russos had to learn French, plus all that Latin for his entomology.

 
 

I know Soyinka and he’s a total phony. NOT PERMITTED. The colonial language you’re taught in your khaki shorts doesn’t really count as your second or third tongue. Conrad and Nabokov (and Traven) learned their third languages as adults and made great art from it. Borges, sorry, but his English was rudimentary and he paid (or his publishers paid) for translations. I know there’s one out there I’m forgetting though.

 
 

tsam is decidedly NOT hawt, what with all the death threats and such.

 
 

OMG, people, how could we forget Ayn Rand?!!!

 
 

Liberal Fascism certainly wasn’t written in any variant of English I’ve ever read.

That’s cuz it was written in American!

 
 

I guess I was thinking of WG Sebald, too recently dead to have secured his place in the pantheon, but a brilliant writer in his second language.

 
 

listy poo for the interested.

 
 

Hawt? Or nawt?

 
 

This is awesome:

What English-language authors learned English as a second language?

AUTHOR | FIRST LANGUAGE
Smirnov, Yakov Russian

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

Although I was quite prepared to give the best headline ever award for “Santorum Surges”

I dunno… I think “Santorum Trailing Romney” would be even funnier.

 
 

Hot, of course. Everyone who comments here is so cute buttons look bad in comparison. Put a commenter next to the cutest kitten ever and the commenter is the one getting chin scritches.

 
 

YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE.

 
Big Bad Bald Bastard
 

The only other great 20th century author that achieved relevance in his 2nd language would be B. Traven. I think, go ahead, name me another.

Jerzy Kozinski

 
Privatize the Profits! Socialize the Costs!
 

But all these freebies, all these misguided little benefits, have warped the ability of individuals to rationally judge the delta between their current lifestyle and their potential future lifestyle in a job, their potential future lives in the middle class.

…and wouldn’t it be cool if the cops could just go ahead beat the shit out of poor people every now and then, just on general principles?

Perhaps THAT might inspire the lazy bastards to work a LITTLE harder to join the middle class!

But you damn bleeding heart liberals just wouldn’t allow such a simple solution, would you?

 
 

This picture shows off all my best attributes.

 
 

12 Monkeys is awesome. Apparently the first thing Gilliam did was hand Bruce Willis a list of Bruce Willis Acting Cliches and ask him not to do any of them.

But Pitt is a far more convincing nutcase in Kalifornia, a film that’s good enough not to be completely ruined by the presence of David Duchovny in the co-starring role.

 
 

This picture shows off all my best attributes.

OMG I think I’ve met you and DRIED FRUIT IS NOT CANDY.

 
 

Jerzy Kozinski

Hard to think of a bigger phony than Soyinka but you reminded me: Kosinsky!

 
 

YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE.

True dat.

 
 

YOU KNOW IT’S TRUE.

Ooooh, ooooh, ooooh, I love you?.

 
 

That lab coat is suspiciously clean, WC

 
 

Sadly guys are totally hot, just ask N_B

Four duds DUDES in their natural habitat. The good-looking one is Mini__B.

 
 

OMG I think I’ve met you and DRIED FRUIT IS NOT CANDY.

Sometimes I hate you for being so funny.

 
Whale Chowder from his phone
 

That lab coat is suspiciously clean, WC

The night was still young.

 
 

Four duds DUDES in their natural habitat. The good-looking one is Mini__B.

You’re all lady-killers. But nobody ladykills like my little guy…the FUSS people make over him.

 
 

Four duds DUDES in their natural habitat.

I remain astonished at the close resemblance between Substance McGravitas and that Righteous Bubba guy who we never hear from anymore.

 
 

I remain astonished at the close resemblance between Substance McGravitas and that Righteous Bubba guy

It’s the subtle smile.

 
 

The jaundiced complexion.

 
 

No, that’s the cheese sauce.

 
 

It had better be real cheese!

 
 

They may use plastic cheese at McDonald’s, but not at McGravitas’s.

 
 

Three more minutes and I’ve killed it for an hour! Worship me!

 
 

There are tumbleweeds blowing through the dusty, dirt main streets of every town I visit on the intertronz, tonight.
.

 
 

No kidding, and here’s another level, he was writing in his third language( Polish/French/English). The only other great 20th century author that achieved relevance in his 2nd language would be B. Traven. I think, go ahead, name me another

Tom Stoppard, born Tomáš Straüssler.

 
 

It had better be real cheese!

I prefer imaginary cheese

 
 

The only other great 20th century author that achieved relevance in his 2nd language would be B. Traven. I think, go ahead, name me another

Tom Stoppard, born Tomáš Straüssler.

Also, Nabokov.

 
 

RESPECT TEH HAWTNESS. (hopefully this doesn’t require a sign-in; I got it to open in another window, sooooooo …)

Also, U RAGE, U LOSE.

 
 

I have already shown SO MUCH of my body. What, you want the pr0n?

omg…almost peed myself on that one…

If you bought that house when you say you did, either that photo is 30 years old, or that’s your daughter!

also, alcohol is a wonderful perservative…i might be the heftiest one in my family, but i’m aging pretty well…

You’re all lady-killers. But nobody ladykills like my little guy…the FUSS people make over him.

oh, he is so totallly fussable…i m sorry i dropped him in my dream..

 
 

okay…this might be the alcohol talking…and what was i doing drinking so much scotch w/out supper tonight? but y’all are a lovely, lovely group of commenters to gaze upon…

 
 

y’all are a lovely, lovely group of commenters to gaze upon…

Yep, that’s the alcohol.

 
 

I thought they filmed everything in Vancouver and Toronto these days.

As an actor, Sadly, yes.

As a New Yorker, sadly, no. I don’t think a week goes by that somewhere in my travels I come across a catering truck and mobile dressing rooms.

 
 

Excellent! I like being shown to be wrong. So, Conrad, Traven, Blixen, Nabokov, Stoppard with some less greats like Soyinka and Kosinsky and Bellow. I stand corrected.

 
 

The only other great 20th century author that achieved relevance in his 2nd language would be B. Traven. I think, go ahead, name me another

Flann O’Brien.

 
 

When his baby Gabriel died at childbirth, he and his wife, a neonatal nurse, spent the night in a hospital bed with the body and then took it home — praying over it and welcoming it, with their other kids, into the family. This story tends to be deeply creepy to many secular people but inspiring to many of the more devout.

it tends to be deeply creepy because it IS deeply creepy…

 
Helmut Monotreme
 

The only other great 20th century author that achieved relevance in his 2nd language would be B. Traven. I think, go ahead, name me another

Orly Taitz

 
 

Flann O’Brien.

You know, I thought of him, and Synge and Beckett too, also. While O’Nolan was the only one of the three fluent in Irish I think he grew up speaking Sassenach. Not sure though.

 
Helmut Monotreme
 

Although I suppose she ‘achieved relevance’, if that is what you want to call it, in the 21st century.

 
 

the news media sends out messages that make it harder to raise decent kids.

this is where bobo gives me a big confuzed…now, i have not watched the nightly news regularly on either local or network channels for a long time…i catch a news cast now and news updates on the weather channel in the morning (hubbkf and i are enamored of ‘abrahms and bettes’ in the morning) so maybe i have no clue what imma talking here, but how does the news media send out messages about raising kids? and since when?

one could argue, i suppose that the ‘feminization’ of the news would support bobo’s claim, since raising kids is the woman’s job, so if they ARE in fact offering un-wise child rearing advice, then there’s that…but doesn’t the blame really lie with advertisers and television programs? what with all the boobies and teh sex and teh gheys and teh ghey sex and teh ghey sex before marriage and the precocious kids and the dumb dads and did i mention teh ghey sex? before marriage?

at least that’s what i keep hearing about in the ‘news media’…

of course, another topic the ‘news media’ regularly covers is politics…and politicians and their actions…so, i guess he may be right after all (?!?!?) in that they are sending out the message that these are the people who are leading us and making decisions for us…and i think we can agree on this, who are becoming increasingly power hungry, media hungry and just plain partisanly ineffective and harmful…

so yeah, i guess that’s a message that would make it harder to raise decent kids…

 
 

When his baby Gabriel died at childbirth

Baby Gabriel was aborted.

 
 

As an actor, Sadly, yes. As a New Yorker, sadly, no.

You couldn’t get a gig as the dead body in the opening scene of Law and Order?

 
 

Wrong kind of stiff.

 
 

So, Conrad, Traven, Blixen, Nabokov, Stoppard with some less greats like Soyinka and Kosinsky and Bellow.

And STILL you give the cold shoulder to the greatest and relevantest, SOOPER GENYUS AYN RAND.

 
 

You couldn’t get a gig as the dead body in the opening scene of Law and Order?

Actually, I turned that down. Twice. A casting director owed me a favor and figured she could weasle out with an extras role.

I did audition for one of the leads on SVU, tho.

 
 

Wrong kind of stiff.

I worked really hard to get those films taken off the shelves…

 
 

SOOPER GENYUS AYN RAND.

Chronologically speaking:

First language: Gibberish

Second language: Yiddish

Third language: Russian

Fourth language: English

Fifth language: Gibberish

 
 

Fifth language: Gibberish

It’s like a linguistic riddle of the Sphinx.

 
 

What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs when it’s very, very horny?

 
 

What has two thumbs and loves oral sex?

 
 

Are the thumbs opposable?

 
 

No, they’re in favor

 
 

Siskel & Ebert!

 
 

Siskel & Ebert!

Ebert still has both thumbs?

 
 

Siskel’s thumbs are decomposable

 
 

Ebert still has both thumbs?

Yes, and Siskel’s were frozen like Ted William’s head.

 
 

Yes, and Siskel’s were frozen like Ted William’sWalt Disney’s head.

 
 

Ebert still has both thumbs?

yes, his thumbs are fine, he’s just eyes without a face…

 
 

and ZOMG! i am wearing leggings and flats w/OUT sox…in MINNESOTA…in JANUARY…what the hell is going on? it’s 40 frickin’ degrees in the a.m. and will be in the 50s today…

 
 

yes, his thumbs are fine, he’s just eyes without a face…

you’re the last person that I expected that kind of joke from. kudos.

 
 

I have wracked my brain but I am unable to come up with a writer who speaks with a thick Scottish brogue. I so wanted to make that joke.

 
 

you’re the last person that I expected that kind of joke from. kudos.

hmmmm…i’m both pleased and appalled…

 
 

and ZOMG! i am wearing leggings and flats w/OUT sox…in MINNESOTA…in JANUARY…what the hell is going on? it’s 40 frickin’ degrees in the a.m. and will be in the 50s today…

Nothing to see here citizen. Move along now. Be sure to keep using lots of fossil fuels.

 
 

Rabbie Burns?

 
 

and ZOMG! i am wearing leggings and flats w/OUT sox…in MINNESOTA…in JANUARY…what the hell is going on? it’s 40 frickin’ degrees in the a.m. and will be in the 50s today…

Nothing to see here citizen. Move along now. Be sure to keep using lots of fossil fuels

I’m intrigued by the lack of a shirt.

 
 

I’m intrigued by the lack of a shirt.

i am a bit chilled by it…

also? um…moderation at your blog? really? is this payback?

 
 

I have wracked my brain but I am unable to come up with a writer who speaks with a thick Scottish brogue. I so wanted to make that joke.

Ewan McTeagle

 
 

Every new address is auto-moderated. You’re in now.

 
 

Every new address is auto-moderated. You’re in now.

i knew that…just had to give you crap…

 
 

SOOPER GENYUS AYN RAND.

If nobody’s translated Atlas Shrugged into Klingon yet, it NEEDS to happen.

Attention Trekkies! Humanity is counting on you to do this.
MAKE IT SO.

 
 

I’d work on that translation but I am too busy integrating Siri with Grindr.

 
 

sheets

er, I mean… new posting, above.
.

 
 

Look at the time! it’s already Newthread-thirty!

 
 

You know, I thought of him, and Synge and Beckett too, also. While O’Nolan was the only one of the three fluent in Irish I think he grew up speaking Sassenach. Not sure though.

He grew up in an Irish speaking household and was home-schooled because his father didn’t want him being educated in English. He probably did speak English at an early age despite that but I don’t know about The Brother. And his first novel was written in Irish.

Also, no efforts should be wasted on a Rand to Klingon translation until we have a lolcats Fountainhead courtroom scene to watch on Xtranormal

 
 

OMG lolcat Fountainhead would be a holy offering pleasing unto Ceiling Cat.

 
 

I am too busy integrating Siri with Grindr

I thought you were gay?

 
 

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