WOLVERINES!!!!!!!!
I got a new AlterNet piece up that I think you might find amusing. It’s about what Red Dawn can teach us about Bush-era foreign policy. Excerpt:
What a Cheesy 1980s Teen-Flick Can Teach Us About the Bush Doctrine
By Brad Reed, AlterNet.
[…]
Just what is it about Red Dawn that sends a thrill up conservatives’ legs? Well the plot of the film, such as it is, revolves around the Soviet and Cuban armies invading and occupying the Colorado town of Calumet (Population: fewer than 8,000) and senselessly slaughtering patriotic Yankees who prove unwilling to part with their private property.
(Why the Soviets would need to use several tanks and helicopters to occupy such a small town in the middle of nowhere is never really explained. Presumably, the godless city-dwellers on the coasts failed to pose any resistance as they were too busy throwing surrender parades to honor their new overlords, thus leaving the burden of starting an anti-Commie resistance movement to the red-blooded Amur’kins living in the Heartland.)
The film’s first scene, appropriately enough, revolves a black history teacher who foolishly tries to negotiate with the Commie troopers as they parachute into the high school parking lot at the start of the invasion. Indeed, the silly diplomatic teacher is barely able to speak a complete sentence to the communist invaders before they viciously open fire on him and blow him away. This opening sequence nicely illustrates one of the chief principles of Bush-era conservatism: That America is being made weak by effete intellectuals who put too much emphasis on their talkin’ and their learnin’ when they should be doin’ more a-killin’.
As you can imagine, this recession is not being all too kind to the freelance writing market. So while your clicks over at my AlterNet stuff are always gratefully welcome and appreciated, they will be even more gratefully welcome and appreciated this time around. Thanks.
Also:
******
UPDATE: As if on cue:
Movie Blegging [John J. Miller]
What are the best conservative movies of the last 25 years?
This cinema epoch begins roughly with the release of Red Dawn in 1984. I’d like the opinions of Cornerites. Email your suggestions to me at nrorocks — at — yahoo.com. Send as many as you like, but please make sure to include at least a line or two of explanation.
The fruits of your labors will become apparent within the next few weeks.
Memo to Jonah: No need to email me about Groundhog Day.
Even if the economy were in tip-top shape, my mini-career as a freelance parodist of wingnuttery would be in danger because they do an amazing job of parodying themselves.
Thank you, on behalf of fake Garys everywhere!
Yes, that was great. Someone rush a copy of that film to Obama so he can bone up on real history and foreign policy before the start of his term.
Apparently, Brad wants to run a prostitution ring from a woman’s shelter, and therefore he needs to be edited out.
Box turtle ben’s quote about, “they actually show the jackbooted communist thugs ” reminded me that I need new footwear for after the inauguration. Yeah, I suppose my Docs would do in a pinch, but I’d like to put on an authentic show for my neighbors that fly the christian flag.
What that flick teaches me is that in 20 years we’ve gone from a “godless” enemy to one who is “too goddy”, or “wrong-godded”.
Apparently all this week the BBC World Service is playing clips of Americans reflecting on the end of the Bush Jr. Presidency.
Today’s fun reflection excerpt was some woman talking about how we all have to be thankful to Bush forever that he returned Christian values and morality to the White House, which had become a ‘den of iniquity’.
God, it’s something to walk around and know that at least 1 out of every 4 of our fellow Americans (in general, it’s probably a lot higher in the South and lower elsewhere) agree with this nice lady and would have sent Bush Jr. back into office if they could have.
Great article, Brad. Especially:
If you’re an Iraqi insurgent, anyway.
Nothing new here. Remember, the Sci-fi movies of the fifties often featured the wimpy scientist who tries the understand the alien before getting blown away. The Thing is a good example. BTW, anyone else notice the resemblance between the Thing and Joe the Plumber?
By the way, I don’t think it was an accident that the conservatives take such joy in watching the liberal intellectual surrendercrat Negroe teacher get shot by the Commies.
El Cid says:
It’s like that movie where you had to have special glasses to see the alien monsters, but in this case, they just have to speak.
I declare wrong-godded to be the neologism of the day! That’s amazing!
Groundhog Day is a conservative movie? Since when?
dissentients
That’s what Blade Runner was about, right?
OT (0r is it?): From Balloon Juice comes word of the Red State Trike Force’s first mission: Operation Silly Putty!
Lowry? Didn’t someone write about him?
@Johnny Pez: Actually, they had their first mission already. They were supposed to vote RedState in the Weblog awards. And we all know how well that turned out!
Second mission, then.
WOLVERINES! indeed.
They Live! John Carpenter is the greatest. But I’m surprised that the stupids haven’t embraced Assault on Precinct 13, in which a few police officers and prisoners are pinned down by a bunch of multi-ethnic gang members and nearly wiped out. Maybe they were turned off by the bonding between the black police lieutenant, brave woman cop and live-by-a-code-of-honor white prisoner.
“Memo to Jonah: No need to email me about Groundhog Day”
Anybody got the DL on what he’s talking about here? Groundhog Day is a conservative movie because?
Quite ironic that movement conservatives are embracing Groundhog Day as reflective of their values. I always viewed it as saying that being a self-centered dick is bad.
Nutso: click on the “Movie Blegging” link and you will find a link to Pantload’s ham-headed ode to Groundhog Day.
Because unlike the Emm Ess Emm, local news is A-OK with wingnuts, what with its constant barrage of crime stories, weather updates, and z-grade sports bloopers.
And yeah, weather updates. I don’t really know the reason why wingnuts are so damn interested in the weather- a gateway drug for global warming denial, perhaps?- but turn on any local AM shouting head in the morning and they spend about 30 minutes out of every hour talking about the weather and how totes awesome their particular weatherman is.
I’m sure their little list will be about as conservative as John Miller’s list of “50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs.”
The main character in Groundhog Day could live forever, do anything he pleased and never had to carry any responsibility. Isn’t that paradise? And then he had to blow it by turning from wholesome selfish prick to dirty liberal. That’s the moral of the story.
When Stanley Spidalski found his mop in the conservative classic “UHF”, he bahaved in the fashion of a typical conservative placed in any good vs. evil situation.
If I remember correctly (and I might not), the teacher doesn’t go out to negotiate, but simply to find out what the hell is going on.
But then again I saw it 20 years ago and never since.
Mongo think Pirates of Penzance expresses his world view most accurately.
This cinema epoch begins roughly with the release of Red Dawn in 1984…
…and concluded with the first volume in the series of novelty porn, ‘watch him fuck.’
Uncle Mike,
“finding out what’s going on” is obviously central to negotiation.
Except when it’s useful for delaying the inevitable (to our benefit), anything like this (AKA “further studies”, “more research”, etc, etc) is clearly a bad idea.
In Prager’s calculus, being “right” means that one “loves John Bolton”
That explains so much.
Naw, they got it all wrong. This movie genre has been around for a LONG time. Please go watch Duck Soup. It obviously makes the point that being insulted by a foreign leader is a just cause for launching a war against a neighboring country. It also receives high praise in neo-conservative circles for its accurate depiction of war as a grand and glorious undertaking, that getting a local peanut vendor off the street and giving him the position of Secretary of War is a reasonable thing to do, and that the good guys will ultimately win when you capture the bad guy and throw a bunch of fruit at him.
Is Red Dawn the one where Patrick Swayze sings “He’s Like the Wind” to the Cuban colonel that’s played by Ron “Superfly” O’Neal?
If I remember correctly (and I might not), the teacher doesn’t go out to negotiate, but simply to find out what the hell is going on.
you are correct…
I’m guessing that the list with have the inevitable, non-ironic inclusion of Starship Troopers, or at least Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation. Do I hear Starship Troopers 3? I believe I do!
During my 15 minutes as a movie critic, I gave a zero-stars review to Red Dawn. That drew the only objections to a review I ever received.
To be fair, I did throw in a gratuitous crack about how it was irresponsible to make such a movie when he had a president (Reagan) who thought it was funny to make jokes about bombing Russia.
Groundhog Day is a conservative movie because?
Because, dude, you can, like, punch this dude, like right in the face, and he won’t remember you’ve done it, and the next day you can just go and punch the dude right in the face all over again. That would be fuckin’ awesome.
I knew the kindly black teacher being shot was just for wanting to find out what was going on. This had the salutary effect of a) giving the kids a (paper-thin) reason to fight, and b) getting rid of the inconvenient black guy who’s on our side. This had been quite a cliche in films and TV for years and was so moth-eaten that this one scene alone was enough to tell me how bad the movie was going to be.
(To put it more academically, I imagine the ethos of ‘do what thou wilt’ with no consequences that pervades the humour of the film appeals to their so-called ‘mind’ set.)
…That bastard! How much worse would this country had been if we’d merely killed the man responsible for 9/11, instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives invading a country that posed no threat to our national security, while at the same time allowing the man responsible for 9/11 to get away clean?!
(ftfy)
Wow, no update and then 3! The Sadlygnomes must have snuck in overnight.
Obviously you’re not as sharp-eyed a critic as I thought you were, since you have failed to accurately digest the conservative agit-prop that is “Red Dawn.”
Had you been paying closer attention, you’d know that the reason the Godless Socialistical Communistical Heathenic Red Thugs attack Palookaville, Nowhere, is that they’ve already nuked those deserving bastions of Liberal Scumerality on the two coasts (as explained by Powers Boothe in the riveting stick-in-the-dirt scene).
Taking advantage of the confusion, they therefore proceed to attack the Heartland of the Homeland of Real America, which is vulnerable because, at the time of the Redski attack, Sarah Palin is still working on becoming Miss Wasilla after dropping out of community college in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
By conquering Homelandia and enlisting the CommSymps from the local “free” paper, Khrushtalin knows he will defeat The Forces of Holiness and make the world safe for the second coming of the Mao Suit.
ITTDGY–
You have struck gold. “I rest assured.” “dissentients,” which is a great neologism meaning “intelligent people who disagree with something.” And that final, delightfully surprising question mark.
Yes, we all miss Swank. But pls. stay “on top of” these two bondservants of Christ Jesus. Because, I mean, Louise Jeeze…
My model for a population fighting back against their oppressors is Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here.” These numbnuts should take a swing at that one. If any of them could actually make all the way through a novel, you know, ’cause that takes patience and reading skills and stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can't_Happen_Here
“dissentients,” which is a great neologism meaning “intelligent people who disagree with something.”
I thought it was a condition in which it hurts to think.
Eagle Pass, in Maverick County!
I hope Dwight and Sheryl Baker have better luck with their “Bondservants of Christ Jesus Ministries” than Rev. Gary Aldridge had with his “Bondage servants of Christ Jesus Ministries”.
I don’t understand the conservative wank-fest over this movie. I’ve seen it several times on the teevee and, honestly, I dig it as an action flick. But to look at it as a political statement? That’s absurd! The movie is about a bunch of immature kids who “come of age” during an occupation of their home land by a foreign government stripping them of their rights. Wow, that sounds awfully familiar.
Looking to the torture/execution scene, I don’t see how it helps the pro-torture side at all. The point of the scene, to me, was to show how some of these kids have completely lost their humanity. I didn’t see it as a scene about how they grew their beards.
Finally, the Wolverines didn’t win! They got pwned when the Cuban commander finally got sick of their
terrorist attacksfreedom fighting. And to add insult to injury, the Cuban commander didn’t even kill the kids when he had the chance (what? morals?). He felt bad for them because they were just dumb little kids playing war! Plus, if I remember correctly, negotiations actually were mentioned in the epilogue when the USA and Soviet Union finally made peace.So… Seriously. How does this help the conservative cause? If anything, what the kids were going through in this movie parallels young insurgents in Iraq who “LIVE… HERE!!!!” more than it parallels Red-Bludded Amur’kuns Fightin’ Fer Freedum. And I’m pretty sure that’s not the angle they are going for.
I’ve never seen from Red Dawn, but based on what I have read (both from wingnuts and other places), how different is it, really, from the type of stuff that Kim Jong Il has churned out on a daily basis in North Korea? You know, the movies where brave North Korean farmers organize an uprising to toss out the evil, pigfaced Japanese (and American) soldiers? And then the brave farmers return to work ensuring North Korea remains as the envy of the world?
Because it sounds exactly the same to me.
Eagle Pass is where Lone Star was filmed. I wonder if Dwight and Sheryl Baker have any opinion on that one.
Maybe that’s because of his Lincoln-like greatness.
Isn’t that what Palestinians shout as they throw chunks of rubble at the Israelis?
Hey, wanna hear about my Florida vacation?
” Feces-throwing monkey on the loose in Tampa Bay”
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D95N55DG0&show_article=1
If I remember correctly, It Can’t Happen Here features a brutal American fascist government that invades Mexico as a way of distracting the masses.
Wingnuts would have a hard time grasping why the book’s bad guys aren’t the book’s good guys.
Parrotlover – so what you’re saying is that they appear to be idolizing a movie that they don’t even understand, and that in fact says the opposite to what they think it says?
Occam’s Wingnut Razor: Yes, they really are just that damn stupid.
Always applies. Always.
I’ve been trying to decipher the code regarding the current Russio-Israeli relations that can be foubnd in the classic 80’s teen flick, ‘Short Circuit’. So far, all I can come up with is ‘reassemble Johnny 5’. I think this means the Soviet Union is going to return to power and conquer five continents.
“Just what is it about Red Dawn that sends a thrill up conservatives’ legs?”
Cause it’s a glorious violent circle jerk tribute to conservatives desperate need to feel oppressed/victimized, set in a completely ridiculous scenario in a boyish-fantasy death struggle with the Evil Other?
See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCMfjKLZIXE
Moral of the story? This democracy thing was a cute little experiment, but if we don’t become a militaristic police state NOW, we’ll be invaded and turned into a militaristic police state!
One does have to wonder about a movement whose formative political experience was watching the rise of Hitler and desperately wondering how, if it Happened Here, they could get on the Fuhrer’s good side.
So no one got the reason why Groundhog Day is a conservative picture? Simplicity itself: our soldiers are reportedly crazy about it, since the endless day in and day out Bill Murray endures reflects the US Army’s never-to-be-finished mission to teach the Iraqis to sing the “Star Spangled Banner,” eat hot dogs and watch baseball.
I really thought Andie Macdowell stank up that movie, me.
I assume “Canadian Bacon” is also high on their greatest movie list. It might even be the blueprint to explain the present administration’s foreign policy.
Groundhog Day is a film intimately about religious and personal growth. Because the right has degenerated to the point that the smartest people in the room (a) includes Pantload the Doughier (oppose pseudolib-hawk Unleavened Pantload, who has the taste to avoid the room most of the time) and (b) think ‘conservative’ and ‘good’ are synonyms.
It’s why ‘liberal fascism’ ever passed the drawing-board phase. An entire political party is now being run by people who treat politics the way marks do pro-wrestling. I’m really hoping the big realignment (the Republicans quietly assimilated into the Democratic fold, leaving a center-right majority party with a regional bugfuck wingnut party opposing it where the primaries aren’t being actively and violently contested, CT-style) happens, and happens soon; listening to these people on TV is heart-breaking.
It’s been a while since the election, so I’d just like to reiterate: Mitt Romney, a bog-standard New England Republican (sadly, not out of place among modern Dems, on the balance) managed to get the redstaters and Acey to cry bitter, bitter tears over his loss by raiding the Reagan speechbook and showing a little crotch.
Michael Moore could win one out of three Republican primaries if he wanted to.
Groundhog Day as a conservative movie is so easy to justify, that I am astounded no one here has picked up on it.
Compare the average wingnut to Ned Ryerson. I dare you to find a difference between the two.
I was taken to see Red Dawn on a date. As we exited the theater walking towards the car, my date said “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry”. I’ve had worse dates, but that one sticks in my mind, especially the scene where you realize one of the Wolverines is a Baddie because he doesn’t like drinking fresh, still warm deer blood. Yep, later on he did something treacherous or cowardly, I cant recall.
They Live!
That was, by far, Rowdy Ronni Piper’s finest work.
The bad guys also put all the black people in concentration camps, which would only add to the wingnuts’ confusion.
I loved that book. Real dark satire. The ’36 Democratic convention is deadlocked (the book was written in ’35) and a dark horse, a dimwit named Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip propped up by an evil advisor, one Lee Sarason, takes the Democratic nomination with a bit of razzle-dazzle, and goes on to win the election in 1936. Then he goes about applying certain “modern” ideas about government that Sarason had picked up while hanging around in Europe earlier in the decade.
Buzz and Buzz and Kep It Up!
Even more amazing about their, er, seminal interest in this movie is what actually does happen to the elite coasts.
As Col. Nathan Tanner USAF Eagle Driver himself says, “We stopped ’em at the Rockies, and at the Mississippi.”
The brave patriots of Calumet High were fighting for a bunch of dirty fucking hippies and faggots who probably wanted the damn commies to take over anyway!!11!1!
Irony…sweet, sweet irony.
Just thought I’d throw this out there:
– Joseph Goebbels
“Wildlife officials said a rhesus monkey known to throw feces when mad is on the loose in Tampa Bay.”
Who let Amy Alkon out? And how did she get to Tampa Bay?
Perhaps Groundhog Day is popular due to the unlimited number of “do overs” the, uh, protagonist gets? No matter what he does, stupid, dangerous and illegal, he always gets another chance! Till that liberal Andie McDowell comes along and seduces him.
“By conquering Homelandia and enlisting the CommSymps from the local “free” paper, Khrushtalin knows he will defeat The Forces of Holiness and make the world safe for the second coming of the Mao Suit.”
Hey, now, I won’t work for just any Khrushtalin or Mao Suit that comes on down the pike. Second Coming? Bullshit. This ComSymp wants in on the ground floor.
However, the idea of fighting The Forces Of Holiness IS intriguing…
Just a point of information, Brad:
Powers Boothe explained briefly why the Red Commies invaded Calumet, when he was describing the situation across America in Red Dawn. Apparently, Calumet is near enough to a pass over the Rockies that the paratroopers and air-dropped tanks were there to capture and hold that pass to prevent/enable troop movements.
“I don’t really know the reason why wingnuts are so damn interested in the weather- a gateway drug for global warming denial, perhaps?- but turn on any local AM shouting head in the morning and they spend about 30 minutes out of every hour talking about the weather and how totes awesome their particular weatherman is.”
I don’t think it’s got anything to do with wingnuts. When news outlets do surveys of what their audience wants them to cover, weather almost always comes first or second.
“Intellectual activity is a danger to the building of character.”
He should know. After all, everyone knows that Heidelberg is a party 18th-century romantic-drama novelist college.
Bingo. Wingnuts seem to exercise some pretty total antipathy towards the very idea of meteorology – it’s why the insane belief that abolishing the NOAA would do any good thrives among glibbies – but, the masturbatory fantasies of Clear Channel aside, most people stuck in traffic or bumming around the news have extremely little interest in what some third-rate Ziegler knockoff thinks about the latest thing blacks are up to.
Oh, he’s being much too modest – & he’s off by a good 70 or so years, to boot.
Man needs to watch The Birth Of A Nation – there’s little doubt that those patriotic Knights of The Ku Klux Klan were the first real neocons, after all.
Fair enough.
I do hate going off topic, I really do, but this…this is beyond…beyond any and all…just read:
“Subject: More “mistakes”?
Hello Mr. Doyle and Mr. Dougherty!
Please, say it aint so: did you really allow a story to run in your paper today claiming Levi Johnston is a high school drop out? Did I read that right?
And did you really print a story last week suggesting I had any connection with Sherry Johnston’s activities in the past six months or so and you won’t correct the story? Did I read that right?
And is your paper really still pursuing the sensational lie that I am not Trig’s mother? Is it true you have a reporter still bothering my state office, my very busy doctor (who’s already set the record straight for you), and the school district, in pursuit of your ridiculous conspiracy?
And, oh, I could go on…”
Why it’s good ole’ gal pal and comedy legend Sarah Palin again, warming up the crowd with an email missive that will leave you gasping with laughter! And fear! Fear of her utter lack of perspicacity! And intelligence!
The rest here: http://community.adn.com/adn/node/136523
The editor’s response is a calm and thorough dissection of the hysteria on a shriek-by-shriek basis. Art.
Bunnies are cute.
csp: As I understand it, this is pretty much par for the course pre-election. Palin and her staff have personally harassed editors, librarians, even freaking bloggers. This is what happens when you elect someone who thinks they’re running a prom court.
Bunnies are Satan’s minions.
Of course, not that running America’s largest state as if it is a prom court is anything particuarly novel. (As the good subjects of the Cowboy Queen will tell you, Alaska is mostly ice anyway.)
Bunnies aren’t just cute like everybody supposes,
They’ve got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses.
And what’s with all the carrots-?
What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
Bunnies, bunnies it must be bunnies!
I never go off topic. In fact, I espouse going off topic.
the White House… had become a ‘den of iniquity’.
Thankfully, it is now a den of iquity.
you had to have special glasses to see the alien monsters
Prolonged insomnia works just as well.
I said it on BJ too, and I’ll say it here: We are going to need Adam West back in the Bat-Suit to combat these nefarious people. Only he can respond with the appropriate level of satire and seriousness to stop these kooky kollaborators.
It’s also a funny mind exercise to determine who the corresponding costumed criminal is. EE is the Joker?
Ha ha! J— marries going off topic!
Satire only works on people with a modicum of self awareness. Otherwise, they tend to take everything at face value.
Sadly,No! endears going off-topic.
Better fix this if you want more free-lancing money.
They pay at Alternet?
Bunnies, bunnies it must be bunnies!
Or maybe midgets.
Sadly,No! endears going off-topic
Sez you, Bambi.
I saw this flick when it came out, when I was about 18, and I knew a turd when I saw one. Like many young people, I consumed movies pretty much indiscriminately back then, and wasn’t particularly picky about what was put in front of me. But that film was a hysterical mess, and I don’t recall ever having any doubts about that.
When Stanley Spidalski found his mop in the conservative classic “UHF”, he bahaved in the fashion of a typical conservative placed in any good vs. evil situation.
I always thought UHF was a conservative classic because it introduced the world to Jonah’s favorite dish, the Twinkie Weiner Sandwich…
The guy’s email address is “nrorocks”? I’ll bet “Be Cool” makes it to the top ten. It has a very positive portrayal of inner-city youth, all dancin’ and singin’ and wearin’ their baseball caps at jaunty angles
Box turtle ben’s quote about, “they actually show the jackbooted communist thugs ” reminded me that I need new footwear for after the inauguration. Yeah, I suppose my Docs would do in a pinch, but I’d like to put on an authentic show for my neighbors that fly the christian flag.
Hobnails are a bitch on linoleum floors.
If you disagree with my claim that Obama makes up for his lack of wit by shouting like a Vogon, then read no further. Whenever he tries to fortify our feeble spirits with a few rehearsed words of bravado, I can’t help but think that he claims to have read somewhere that you and I are inferior to what I call sanctimonious lotharios. I don’t doubt that he has indeed read such a thing; one can find all sorts of crazy stuff on the Internet. More reliable sources, however, tend to agree that before Obama once again claims that skin color means more than skill and gender is more impressive than genius, he should do some real research rather than simply play a game of bias reinforcement with his underlings.
Common sense and scientific evidence agree: When a mistake is made, the smart thing to do is to admit it and reverse course. That takes real courage. The way that Obama stubbornly refuses to own up to his mistakes serves only to convince me that the absenteeism “debate” is not a debate. It is a harangue, a politically motivated, brilliantly publicized, witless attack on progressive ideas. I’ve heard of gin-swilling things like egotism and vandalism. But I’ve also heard of things like nonviolence, higher moralities, and treating all beings as ends in and of themselves—ideas which his ignorant, unthinking, muddleheaded brain is too small to understand. On a television program last night, I heard one of this country’s top scientists conclude that, “Many recent controversies have been fueled by a whole-hearted embracing of inaniloquent personal attacks.” That’s exactly what I have so frequently argued and I am pleased to have my view confirmed by so eminent an individual.
A sure-fire way to elicit derisive sneers, leers, and jeers from Obama is to open minds instead of closing them. No wonder that I take seriously the view that he cottons to alcoholism. Whatever weight we accord to that fact, we may be confident that if this letter did nothing else but serve as a beacon of truth, it would be worthy of reading by all right-thinking people. However, this letter’s role is much greater than just to suggest the kind of politics and policies that are needed to restore good sense to this important debate. He wants us to think of him as a do-gooder. Keep in mind, though, that Obama wants to “do good” with other people’s money and often with other people’s lives. If he really wanted to be a do-gooder, he could start by admitting that those of us who are still sane, those of us who still have a firm grip on reality, those of us who still insist that his tactics include personally attacking various individuals for whom I have a great deal of respect, have an obligation to do more than just observe what he is doing from a safe distance. We have an obligation to solve the problems that are important to most people. We have an obligation to shield people from his malicious and snivelling deceptions. And we have an obligation to encourage opportunity, responsibility, and community. In closing, although this letter has been lengthy there are still a large number of comments about Barack Obama that I have had to leave aside. I didn’t even begin to mention, for instance, that he spews out so many falsehoods, distortions, and half-truths, that rebuttal requires some lengthy documentation. Anyway, the important point is that Obama’s hortatory exclamation that it would be beneficial for him to inculcate the hermeneutics of suspicion in otherwise open-minded people makes me think that Obama’s few positive contributions will continue to be overshadowed by his broader message of hate.
If I had the energy I’d spend a few days recommending shit movie after shit movie with made up reasons why the thing’s conservative.
Oh hey hey hey: Waterboarding is torture, says US attorney general nominee
Obama’s “broader message of hate”??
Is that you, Gary?
Somebody cut-n-paste a long, truthful screed just now about the drunk who has been sleeping in the White House for the last eight years, but changed the name “El Chimpo” to “Obama”.
Fixed, at least metaphorically.
It’s a condemnation generator. Breaks the ice at parties.
Lipstick: I agree. Seems much more like Bush than B. O.
Ah. I see…
I think.
I hope, anyway.
Red Dawn is a great camp movie. The ‘prying a gun from cold, dead hands’ part is comedy gold. A real moment of truly unintentional hilarity.
It’s the ceremonial Airing of Grievances.
Anyway, the important point is that Obama’s hortatory exclamation that it would be beneficial for him to inculcate the hermeneutics of suspicion in otherwise open-minded people makes me think that Obama’s few positive contributions will continue to be overshadowed by his broader message of hate.
Heheheh. It said hermenutics.
I do have a whole life, I really do have other things to say. But for now, check out these wolverines. They’re fighting for YOU, dammit.
Almost forgot! Tonight is Bush’s “Farewell Address,” as George (G. W. also) Washington does several thousand RPMs in his grave.
Anyone want to take some action that he’ll announce that a bombing or other assault on another sovereign nation is “already underway?”
> I do have a whole life, I really do have other things to say. But for now, check out these wolverines. They’re fighting for YOU, dammit.
Somebody with a video editor ought to have fun with Juggs and her statement that she “has no clue” near the beginning of the video of these has-been’s log-rolling session.
No you don’t. But you don’t have to pretend here.
“Real life” & “other things to do” is bullshit to keep you working for The Man, Woman, or alien robot overlord who’s already running your life. Don’t buy it for a second.
I thought it was a euphemism for “looking for porn on the internet”.
Bunnies are tasty. Yumm. But, beware the ones with long pointy fangs.
> I thought it was a euphemism for “looking for porn on the internet”.
Wait a minute! Shouldn’t that be “looking for pron on the Internet”?
I am so unaware of all Internet traditions (after Kibo, anyways)
I think “Night of the Lepus” is a GREAT conservative movie.
Forget Red Dawn it does not standup like Roadhouse.
Obama’s hortatory exclamation
You can lead a hortatory but…
No. This isn’t going to work.
Looking for smut?
On intertoobze, smut looks for you!!
(May or may not apply to Herr Doktor Smut-C.)
I know that this is about a month too late, but whenever I think of Patrick Swayze, I can’t help but think of this.
http://www.themadmusicarchive.com/song_details.aspx?SongID=6149
“dissentient” is one of the most wonderful neologisms I have ever met. I take it to mean “intentional incorrect mentation.” It’s a Platonic self-contradiction. An oxymoron qua itself. Semantically recursive self negation. Brilliant!
It would be ever so much attractive (in an Aristotelian sense) if the coiner could understand why I find it so wondrous. But then, it wouldn’t be perfect anymore.
This could well be the final word on Yakov Smirnoff rip-offs.
On intertoobze, smut looks for you!!
That was my previous job.
What is the milieu in which disingenuous polluters inculcate the hermeneutics of suspicion in otherwise open-minded people? It is the underworld of conspiracy theory, a subculture in which uncouth, satanic sybarites share fantasies of fighting heroically against a huge conspiracy that will depressurize the frail vessel of human hopes faster than you can say “histomorphologically”.
-Posted on a thread about Apple’s MultiTouch.
But Rev. Dawkins is surrounded by bleeding-heart ignoramuses who parrot the same nonsense, which is why he is trying to inculcate the hermeneutics of suspicion in otherwise open-minded people just to prove he can.
-Posted on a Pharyngula thead about Dawkins
Milwaukee Rock Posters Blog’s machinations have created an unruly, high-handed universe devoid of logic and evidence. Only within this universe does it make sense to say that the Earth is flat. Only within this universe does it make sense to inculcate the hermeneutics of suspicion in otherwise open-minded people. And, only if we question its authority can we destroy this shrewish universe of Milwaukee Rock Posters Blog and oppose our human vices wherever they may be found — arrogance, hatred, jealousy, unfaithfulness, avarice, and so on.
-Posted on a, um, blog about Milwaukee….
That’s some xkcd quality scriptage.
“inculcate the hermeneutics of suspicion in otherwise open-minded people…”
Wow, that could be, you know, the internet version of the Wilhelm Scream.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_scream
I actually like the phrase “uncouth, satanic sybarites” a lot. I think I may use that several times.
Googling the phrase “bleeding-heart ignoramuses” reveals that Julie Burchill also seems to be using the Letter-of-Complaint generator.
“Semantically recursive self negation…”
I’m going to have to start a collection of these. That was good, PeeJ.
I’m going to have to start a collection of these.
Won’t they cancel one another out?
Zeppo–Night of the Lepus just rules on so many levels. Those close ups man, in the little miniature towns, the bloody mouths, the DeForest Kelley….what a film!
ladies,
Sorry about the wait
I found this clump of youtube clips in my overflow lot this morning, in a bin labeled “Workers of eth World Unite.” If you can find a use for them, you’re welcome. Otherwise I’m just going to throw them away later this afternoon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BE0rc2aZpc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oishXfYKNmk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryCzNpFVd_E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73EmzKvukgc
I’ll be out the rest of the day; leave a vm if you need to reach me.
kthx – gotta go
Thank you very much.
As I went to refill my ice cream bowl, I thought I should have written “semantically self-contained paradox.” Now I can’t decide which is better. I’ve become dissentient.
“inculcate the hermeneutics of suspicion in otherwise dissentient people”
A little after 14:30 listen to John Bolton say this:
That’d be the Western alliance there John you fucking buffoon.
Miller is the same jackass who listed the top conservative rock songs, with the Dead Kennedys’ “Kill the Poor” on the list, as if the song weren’t ironic…
errr…make that Holiday in Cambodia…some other conservative jackass suggested Kill the Poor….
What are the best conservative movies of the last 25 years?
No love for W-o’C?
I think the Western alliance has been put into jeopardy by European weakness and Europe’s general unwillingness to tackle global problems.
This is in the same tradition as Condaleeza Rice’s
hortatoryminatory warning, back in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, that the Security Council risked “becoming irrelevant” if its members failed to do exactly what the US told them to do.Come to think of it, ‘minatory warning’ is probably redundant.
Sadly, it’s not just Hollywood that gets accused of treason and sedition. Over at Big Andy’s Big Hollywood Big Website, video game designer Doug TenNapel wanks about how “It’s Hard Out There For a Jeebus Pimp.”
Ha! I have it now.
You can lead a hortatory but you can’t make her sink.
[Joke requires knowledge of NZ geography].
You can lead a whore t’ a Tory
But you can’t make her change his diaper
Yeah, it’s a reach.
Red Dawn was the first medically and psychological accurate documentary about a conservative’s wet dream.
In Splooge-A-Round !!!
Duggie 10Napel: Can we agree that eating cute kittens alive for the fun of it doesn’t have as much merit as cuddling them?
Has he ever had eating-cute-kittens-alive urges? Could he suppress them if he did? Or is this merely destined to be another edition of SA2SQ?
A lovely US-UK wankfest here:
http://www.plumbbobblog.com/?p=2724
…He was a success in foreign policy, though a disappointment in domestic policy. We were safe in our country because of his integrity and persistence. His was the cleanest government of my lifetime…
Bonus from the comments:
…That a modern day president could be so clueless as to term Islam the “Religion of Peace” is truly mind numbing.v….
Anya,
Oh, how I miss the Scooby gang. I’m going to go geek out for a little while.
Heh.
I’ll bet they have to do a lot of phoning around to find historians who think Bush is a disastrous failure. It is sad that when they find them they are not actually real historians but partisans.
I checked this whole comment thread, so I’m on pretty solid ground here. Wow…how can anyone claim that “Red Dawn” from 1984 marks the beginning of the conservative movie genre and ignore all five of the “Death Wish” movies, beginning in 1974? We owe our very FREEDOMS to Golan/Globus.
In this article an unscientific but nevertheless nifty graphic.
The truly creepy thing about Red Dawn is how it’s premise is complete fantasy. As we now know, the Soviet Union was basically falling apart all on its own during that time. The eve-ull commies were never in a position to do what the film was claiming. It’s like an action film made by the Flat Earth Society.
I loved Red Dawn as as child, then I learned to masturbate, and that has made all the difference.
Even now, while mounting my wife she often hears the cry of “Wolverines!” as I climax.
btw, Red Dawn was written by John Milius, just another right wing gun nut who never served a minute in the Armed Forces, but at least had an excuse, asthma; but for Red Dawn, Milius has no excuse,
I actually wrote a piece of “film criticism” for my college paper back in the day entitled “Hollywood’s New Conservatism.” In it I reviewed such fine exemplars of the cinematic arts as “Red Dawn and the Chuck Norris laff-riot, “Invasion USA.”
CuboComms and dastardly mercenary Pinkos join RedskiKommiesar in takedown of Florida Everglades. Why do the Reds have such bad taste in invasion routes?
Both “Red Dawn” and “Invasion USA” were pitched with the same tagline: “It couldn’t happen here”
Apparently it can, since Palmer Raid discourse still works for the average conservative dimwit.
“Wildlife officials said a rhesus monkey known to throw feces when mad is on the loose in Tampa Bay.”
Who let Amy Alkon out? And how did she get to Tampa Bay?
How did she get over the shit moat? I thought that was supposed to keep her in and black people out.
No love for W-o’C?
Tee hee. I loved Patton Oswalt’s comment on 300 (Which will no doubt rank high in Miller’s list)
“gayer than eight guys blowing nine guys”
I’ve never seen Red Dawn, but if it starts out by Communist paratroopers dropping in *Colorado*, it’s already stupider than Plan 9 (“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”), and doesn’t appear to have Plan 9‘s camp appeal.
Besides, isn’t Patrick Swayze gayer than nine guys blowing ten guys?
Yes, but does Red Dawn have an operating system named after it?
Also, the dork pun-appeal of Plan 9 from User Space must never be underestimated.
> Miller is the same jackass who listed the top conservative rock songs, with the Dead Kennedys’ “Kill the Poor” on the list, as if the song weren’t ironic…
Probably the same genius who picked Colbert to roast El Chimpo at the Correspondents Dinner in 2006.
at this point, I expect one of you commiepinkofaggy ammerica hatin libruls to point me to a wingnut analysis point int the conservative principles on display in Manos: Hands of Fate
an unscientific but nevertheless nifty graphic.
Is that what it is? I saw it as a cubist portrayal of plumber’s crack.
“…the conservative principles on display in Manos: Hands of Fate”
Oooh let me guess! Endless endless endless driving around aimlessly? Wearing a bra & panties under your filmy nightgown. I bet that’s it!
Isn’t that 98-2 percentage about the same as the “Climate Change, Yes or No?” results when they poll climate scientists?
[Waving hand in air as if they care] “Oooooh! Oooooh! Teacher! Teacher! Palmer Raids. Democrats!! Woodrow Wilson!! Wooo! Liberal Fascist!”
The presidency has been somewhat more embarrassing and unpleasant.
Be still my beating heart!!
LIMBAUGH READS ANDREW KLAVAN’S BIG HOLLYWOOD MASTERPIECE
If this doesn’t work (& preview gives no indication it will) we all know the drill.
Fuck You Word Poo!
OK, it worked, no thanks to pre-view.
point me to a wingnut analysis point int the conservative principles on display in
Manos: Hands of FateBad LieutenantNext to Rush’s smiling face I see
When it comes to great conservative drama, we should not forget Amerika, the bizarre and mind-numbingly dull neo-McCarthyite 1987 mini-series about life in a dystopian USA that had mysteriously been taken over by the Soviet Union and the United Nations.
On second thought, we should forget it.
The portrayal of the Soviet Union as the evil empire was a convergence of three factors:
1) The Straussian -> neoconservative ideology demanding that the little people (who are stupid sheep who need to be lead around with calming and instructive lies to avoid becoming liberal degenerates, see also the Muslim Brotherhood and Strength Through Joy) needed an absolute enemy to regard as totally evil. This is stuff like Team B/Pipes proclaiming that the Soviet hive-mind had spontaneously generated out of pure malice for humanity a way to detect submarines without sonar and was quietly passing off as well-documented radar installations (which had been observed from as close as intra-Berlin, so one wonders why the Siberian data was necessary) what was really a series of space death lasers) – remember, this is in opposition even to prime-grade wingnuts like Bush Sr and Kissinger, who had no problems per se with incinerating third-world orphans but didn’t see doing so for the sake of chest-beating about Evil as constructive. This is why the Soviet Union, after being deprived of the clearly devious efforts at seditious detente, would obviously invade and wage total warfare.
2) The survivalist movement, at the time in full flowering; it relied intimately on the mostly Republican crime-wave/more-cops ratchet effect, and a collusion by suburban land developers, banks, and pet politicians of the same portraying the cities as overflowing with devious, thieving darkies and encouraging a belief that the best thing to do was to grab developed land wherever it was cheapest (which was always where it had been most recently developed) and mortgage and sell it as constructively as possible to avoid taxes, which were terrible. In fact, the main reason survivalism is so tainted with racism may just be the then-unbreakable policy of redlining and other strong measures in place internally to discourage black use of the development-capital system. Urban flight had no specific reason to be white flight, but rich white men just happened to be vile bigots at the time, so there you go. The upshot was that the people who took this message overboard wound up going out to the middle of nowhere, and to justify that flight generally developed a hyperbolic sense of threat – something that brought them into contact and collusion with other survivalists, who had conventionally descended from simple insane reactionaries, racists, frontierists, and similar jackasses. I’ve never been able to work out why exactly the survivalist impulse against the most basic elements of diplomacy dovetails so completely with the neocon ‘pure evil’ stuff, so I could be a little wrong on how well-connected it is. But in general, people were put into a milieu where survivalists were the dominant cultural influence and came out of it bulging with their cultural baggage. There was a big market for justifying living in the north Rockies / high southwest / etc beyond simple terror of coloreds – something that works just fine as a push, but doesn’t exactly maintain staying power as a pull. This is why the Soviet Union would invade – and meet meaningful resistance – somewhere like rural Colorado.
3) And, of course, a silent partner in the matter is the military-industrial complex, which profited a great deal from both domestic perceptions of insecurity and foreign contributions to that instability. While, as the 90s would demonstrate, it really only ever took the drop of a hat for the survivalist right to regard the army as the jackbooted thugs next door, while a MIC-friendly operator was in power and surrounded by suitable contractor shills, the Army was an object of unlimited affection and obedience rather than a thing of danger. This is why the US Army is a good guy in Red Dawn and a bad guy in Left Behind.
There are better examples of each of these on their own. (Respectively, Amerika – which might just be the best shit-eating neocon smarmfest ever, including an obligatory Zuidafrika fallen to Marxist-Mandelism; all fucking kinds of survivalist dross from the 90s; and Top Gun, which I agree with Adam Cadre to be my least favorite film.) Together, though, Red Dawn is a sort of confluence of influences of its time and place.
Wingnuts watching it today, more than simply doing what they always do (dextrobating to Ayatollah-approved ideological porn), are waxing nostalgic for a time when those influences were of paramount and unavoidable importance in American culture. No one is actually convinced that the Horrible Arabs are an evil, invincible forever enemy with whom we have always been at war, and until the stealth Communism of Putin’s Russia (no, really: they think this exists!) is revealed for all to see, all they can really do is look back to a better time: their neighbors shared in their suckerdom, didn’t complain about shooting at passing birds, and most importantly were white.
When it comes to great conservative drama, we should not forget Amerika, the bizarre and mind-numbingly dull neo-McCarthyite 1987 mini-series about life in a dystopian USA that had mysteriously been taken over by the Soviet Union and the United Nations.
On second thought, we should forget it.
Curse you Snorghagen I was getting ready to mention Amerika. One critic called it a duller stupider Red Dawn.
From Jonah’s paean to Groundhog Day:
COVER STORY?
Really, the first sentence of that excerpt is the perfect argument against EVER wanting to take the action suggested by the second sentence.
The presidency has been somewhat more embarrassing and unpleasant.
And less easily fixed with putty.
Wildlife officials said a rhesus monkey known to throw feces when mad is on the loose in Tampa Bay
Quick! He’s in Washington – I can hear him on the radio right now.
Exactly. Duller, stupider, and bigger budget.
That was one weird-ass mini-series, totally inappropriate for when it was released. It was as if extreme Cold Warriors from 35 years earlier had traveled forward in time and seized control of my television.
Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found Up my Butt One Midsummer Morning after Fixing the Pipes at Tigrismus’ House.
OT, but I’ve been listening to El Chimpo giving his last – thank god – speech, and have been tallying up the lies. So far, it has worked out to an average of 1.88 lies per sentence.
I believe this is a new record for a farewell speech.
It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky kitchen light,
While the Plumber did laugh, and angry did bray,
Knees down on the linoleum that day,
Oh! ill-fated sight on the linoleum that day,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That some nice suspenders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported to hide his buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the higher our pants, God knows,
The less chance our ass to expose.
I never meant to say that bad persons are generally Righteous Bubba. I meant to say that Righteous Bubba is generally a bad person. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
Night of the Lepus is totally conservative: the scientists are messing with God’s Domain, the ranchers just want to shoot the cute little bunnies, what you are supposed to fear the most just makes you collapse in helpless laughter, and my favorite quote in the movie:
Attention! Attention! Ladies and gentlemen, attention! There is a herd of killer rabbits headed this way and we desperately need your help!
There’s your call to action, right there.
Righteous Bubba is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
M. Bouffant said,
January 16, 2009 at 2:16
Be still my beating heart!!
LIMBAUGH READS ANDREW KLAVAN’S BIG HOLLYWOOD MASTERPIECE
=====================================================
Damn they’re stupid. Didn’t Limbaugh used to be slicker than this?
(Obviously, I have no idea…maybe Limbaugh was always like this.)
I never meant to say that bad persons are generally Righteous Bubba. I meant to say that Righteous Bubba is generally a bad person. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
That is all well said but we must tend to our garden.
Shorter Red Dawn:
“Told You So !!!! Nyeah, Nyeah, Nyeah”
with guns.
You
maymust head on over to the House of RB and scold the not-gentleman in question.~
Dunno myself, never awake to hear his sorry a. m. ass. Doubt if I’d listen even if I were conscious. It’s bad enough (or hurts so good) reading this junk, but at least reading is quicker than listening.
Looks like it’s “provide one’s own entertainment” here again tonight. (No offense intended, I’m very glad to have someplace just to sit for a while, before a cop runs me off.)
And amusement is but a click away at …
Breitbart’s Big Hollywood.
Does anyone feel sick & dirty after that? I hope so.
With the help of Smut Clyde AND Righteous Bubba, I have killed, raped and stolen.
I’d like to repent now…
mikey
Hey Bouffant.
Just be glad he’s not a fuckin BART cop.
Y’know?
mikey
I never meant to say that bad persons are generally Righteous Bubba. I meant to say that Righteous Bubba is generally a bad person.
I would advise the gentleman who threatened Vogon poetry not to bring a life form to a bum fight.
Breitbart slowly approached the woman and unveiled his Big Hollywood. She gasped, but created no words
Intense laughter causes gasping shortness of breath. Woman later sues for false advertising*.
*I just watched The Naked City. Talk about disappointing.**
**:-p
As a noble and anonymous crusader for Big Hollywood, I have decided to dive on the grenade for all conservatives and date One Liberal a week. The following self mandated criteria must be met weekly.
* She has to be a confirmed liberal
* I can not tell her I’m a conservative until mid way through the date
* I shall report in excruciatingly painful detail my ultimate demise on a weekly basis
Since conservatism is so wonderful I will subject my political opponents to one calculated bad night a week.
Does no one want to discuss the muslo-avian-jihadists that struck New York?
The funny thing is that of all the people I’ve ever known, political affiliation is a deal-breaker right out of the gate maybe a third of the time and only if it translates into absolute personal shittiness a third of the time.
Seriously, I suspect that someone would have to be in the business of cripple-fucking Iraqi orphans on the first date to produce the kind of reliable crash and burn he thinks he’s going to get.
Shh! Bush is still in office. Keep it down until he’s done protecting us from terrorism.
the muslo-avian-jihadists that struck New York?
Fuckin’ pelicans.
Another interpretation of Red Dawn is to see it as a warning to occupiers that the lands and people they occupy will wreak a bloody vengeance. That one’s not going to be as popular with neocons.
If you really want a good laugh, watch the Chuck Norris ripoff of the same formula, “Invasion USA.” Siskel & Ebert had a good laugh mocking its incidental soundtrack music.
No, geese. And Big Ho is all over it. Thinking they’re funny. Seriously.
John Milius, the guy that wrote and directed Red Dawn, is a neighbor and friend of the Coen brothers. He supposedly was one of the inspirations for the Walter Sobchak character in The Big Lebowski. Makes perfect sense.
Screw Chuck Norris. (Painfully.)
Go for the original, when men were men & commies were commies. Do you think that exercise boy Norris is man enough to smoke? I doubt it.
Another interpretation of Red Dawn is to see it as a warning to occupiers that the lands and people they occupy will wreak a bloody vengeance. That one’s not going to be as popular with neocons.
—
Erm … Sadly, No !!
Because the black teacher ruthlessly killed by teh commiez for trying “to make peace” is specifically supposed to represent all those gaii traitors who tried to stop our valiant anti-commie carpet bombing and napalming the untrustworthy “gooks” of Vietnam and Laos.
Tired of these clowns.
PUMA HUAGHUAGL
You know what still cracks me up about the term PUMA? It’s that for the longest time I didn’t know what it was an acronym for, and was connecting it to the term “cougar”.
Oddly appropriate mistake, I think.
Oddly appropriate mistake, I think.
Hee hee
So – is everyone here planning to do some online or in-person gloating on inauguration day, either at PUMAe or Redoublechins who are vowing to recapture their permanent majority?
I’m actually not, but I’m planning to have a lot of fun reading teh Sadlies et al making fun of the whining from those quarters.
It’s hard to gloat when you consider the smoking wreck of the sector of the economy you make your living in.
*that would be every one of us, right tiny tim?*
Hear the mighty hamster squeak
Like it hasn’t squeaked all week
It’s hard to gloat when you consider the smoking wreck of the sector of the economy you make your living in.
Part of why I’m not planning on it myself – but I can understand those who do.
ITTDGY – I feel ya, bro. I’ve been living in that crater for the past month. Seriously, everyone keep your fingers crossed that the job for running the green building council falls my way, because in another 3 weeks or so, the money is going to run out, and I really don’t want to go do typing or something for $10 an hour for several months while I wait for a real job to pan out.
I’m too weak to squeak.
*squawk!*
“…One critic called it a duller stupider Red Dawn…”
A Red Dawn as written by Jonah?
And please, what did Doughy say about Groundhog Day? Was his approval because all the free “Do-overs” (as I wrote earlier) or…what?
Subject Change: I have been reading the suggestions on the Obama Web Change.Gov, and some are pretty funny. I am shocked at how poorly people who claim to be educators or educated professionals write. Don’t they know about spellcheck?
After about an hour of reading I ascertained that 1. About 1/4 to 1/3 of the suggestions were for legalizing Pot. 2. Quite a few were pleas to fund schools (in fact my suggestion was that schools should be funded & made into low-priced or free (taxpayer paid) Daycare centers, as well as other Community things) 3. A fair number of folk think the Federal Reserve is to blame for our dismal economy.
Good luck, Jennifer. From my vantage point in Ohio, there’s an economic whirlpool coming from Michigan, and it’s just getting bigger and bigger.
P.S. I occasionally check on Time Swampland, but even K.T. aggravates me these days. I guess I’ve grown a short fuse.
Let the Right One In was a good conservative film, since it made Sweden look scary.
So did Bergman.
Teh funny in that Andrew Roberts piece is that not only does he reframe every point by projecting some improbable alternate history on Bush (just try diagramming the tenses in that piece, whew) but he also hits the fail button on nearly every more or less meaningless contemporary detail. Doh, it’s Oliver Stone, not Oliver North; Kerry’s grades were a bit better than Bush’s; Afghanistan was bombed but not exactly invaded in Oct. 2001; Bolton, not Bush, described Libya as part of the “axis of evil” and so on. Presumably, Roberts treats Bush and Co. as primary source material for the big picture stuff–WMD/democracy/terrah/etc.–and leans on shitheads like Limbaugh, Hansen, and, oh, Coulter, for the details. Roberts is like an alien trying to write a history of WWII after watching two episodes of Hogan’s Heros.
If you’re going to come over all Bergman on us, then The Magician is clearly a conservative movie because von Sydow’s titular character — a fraud and a fantasist who resorts to lies and cheap conjuring tricks to fool his audience — is presented more sympathetically than the rationalists who attempt to unmask him as a charlatan.
Big Doh. To me. Of course, Andrew Roberts treats Bush as a What If? (What if Iraq becomes Costa Rica? What if Saddam had WMD? What if Islamist take over South Dakota?) I completely forgot about this gem:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Might-Have-Been-Historians/dp/0297848771
(Note: David Frum on Gore, Conrad Black on Pearl Harbor! Fun history!)
Andrew Roberts is the _perfect_ historian of the Bush administration.
And now I think about it, some 18 months ago various plonkers were ranting about Bergman over at Roy Edroso’s place — if Bergman was so good, then where are the Hollywood remakes of Virgin Spring?
ehhh, Bergman.
‘Fanny and Alexander’ FTW. That was a great movie.
Now in terms of reality, standing down an MI-23 Helicopter, at range, during daylight, that’s Fucking Entertainment.
That would be like taking your kids to soccer practice at the Gaza UN building.
Wolverines!
Since when is Mr. Meltyface an historian? Much less a “leading historian”, per the book’s title.
I did enjoy this review, though:
He’s confident he can get a date a week?
I dunno.
He’s at least confident he can annoy one liberal a week, which seems to be the Eternal Conservative Quest.
Does no one want to discuss the muslo-avian-jihadists that struck New York?
Froley, yes they’re obviously jihadis. Now they’re enjoying their 72 virgin birds in heaven and fertilizing all the eggs they can.
“Shoot straight for once, you Army pukes!”
HA HA HA HA HA ..!!!!!!
> He’s confident he can get a date a week?
The going rate in Hollywood is $100 for an hour, I think.
Holy shit. I just went and actually watched that piece of bile on google video. This is conservative movie making at its finest?
Too bad he’s not dating conservatives; the going rate is a bag of Cheetos.
He’s confident he can get a date a week?
Remember, he’s never actually met any liberal women and he thinks they’re a bunch of undiscriminating sexbots.
The Chuck Norris Invasion USA was brilliant. Saw it when it came out. About thirty dudes were going to take over America one neighborhood at a time. Until Chuck steps in.
“Not this time Rostov. It’s time to die.” Delivered with an absolute lack of modulation, like he was buying a book of stamps.
>the release of Red Dawn in 1984
– A year that also saw the release of Michael Radford’s great film of Orwell’s 1984.
But re Red Dawn, I think that a bit of research on the proto-wingnut John Milius, the writer/director of the film, would’ve deepened your focus. Milius savors his self-crafted myth of being a conservative contrarian in a lefty/lib context (as he came up with Lucas, Spielberg, DePalma, & Coppola), and is blind to the godawful messes that he made in Red Dawn and also Conan the Barbarian. And he’s a picture-perfect chickenhawk who couldn’t accept an invitation to Vietnam (but through Apocalypse Now has fought him some war in his own mind).
Please, for the love of all that is holy, spend a post ripping up this fucking idiotic Bill Frist column:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/15/frist.bush/
from some fundy website:
‘The doughnut giant released the following statement yesterday:
“Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American’s sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20. By doing so, participating Krispy Kreme stores nationwide are making an oath to tasty goodies — just another reminder of how oh-so-sweet ‘free’ can be.”
Just an unfortunate choice of words? For the sake of our Wednesday morning doughnut runs, we hope so. The unfortunate reality of a post Roe v. Wade America is that “choice” is synonymous with abortion access and celebration of ‘freedom of choice’ is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand.
President-elect Barack Obama promises to be the most virulently pro-abortion president in history. Millions more children will be endangered by his radical abortion agenda.’
. . .
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jan/09011502.html
The unfortunate reality of a post Roe v. Wade America is that “choice” is synonymous with abortion access and celebration of ‘freedom of choice’ is a tacit endorsement of abortion rights on demand.
Hoo boy.
You know, I read that Krispy Kreme press release very carefully and I completely failed to interpret it as a pro-abortion political statement.
Then again, I also failed to notice that Rachel Ray’s scarf meant that THE INVASION WAS AT HAND, so what do I know?
Those 10 million people were at death’s door until GWB saved them. I’m a physician and I saw them on TV so that’s a diagnosis you can take to the bank. On second thought, take it to an investment ….stick it under your mattress.
Free doughnuts? That’ll keep the NRO crowd busy. If Frito-Lay offers free Cheetohs too we won’t see Jonah until Groundhog Day.
As you can imagine, this recession is not being all too kind to the freelance writing market.
Do you have any morals? Have you ever considered a JT LeRoy/Laura Albert (or Romain Gary/Emile Ajar) type scenario? Invent some sexy conservative alter ego and rake in some of that sweet sweet foundation money.
See, funny thing about that: back when it was just something we wogs got het up about, abortion was one of a series of issues basically targeting the reluctance of society to actually care for those who had no business caring for themselves. So sure, let’s think twice about that abortion, but how are you doing with universal access to higher education, a full safety net, and a safer and less retribution-happy society?
Lemme put it a different way. If you pressed me to tell you how many Americans face a real danger of spending some of the next 14 days starving, I would say between one in eight and one in five. Is it really appropriate for your precious Culture of Life to take a stance against free donuts? (Of course, I’m just being deliberately naive: once womb infants have been saved from the Marxist threat of their parents aborting and/or providing non-earned prenatal nutrition to them, it’s their job to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Everyone knows that.)
So once Shania law is in effect on Wednesday, do we all have to participate in the forced gay abortions or can some of us set to work on building the islamohomo grill confiscating caliphate?
I need to set my schedule.
Also, George Bush didn’t save the 10 million lives Frist offers up at his altar – he took twice that many by sharing the big-little-government anti-medical horseshit view with Frist that it’s fitting to make access to healthcare a binary choice between the hospital billing an insurer for $5000 and billing the state for $10000 and the hospital billing a victim for $5000 and the state for $10000.
It’s just that he’s had the noteworthy innovation of exporting it, adamantly refusing to consider access to AIDS sufferers in Africa who don’t meet his rigorous religious-right imprimatur – in other words, almost exclusively American organizations that have no choice but to patronize private American companies for AIDS drugs – that is to say, little to no access to contraception (which is both preventative and dirt-cheap) and the medication needed for pallative care costs several times what it ought to.
The 10 million Frist offers to his good liege Bush II the Manly-Appendaged are simply the survivors of a full-scale invasion of Africa by vile American-style gunpoint healthcare. The only thing he regrets is that, unlike the 90s, it is no longer feasible to export the system itself. All those markets begging for enormous markups on basic care – all those economically inefficient blind, halt, and lame milling around without a copay in the world to worry about. Makes him sick. (Good thing, too – if it had made him sick any earlier, do you really think he could handle that on a senator’s salary?)
do we all have to participate in the forced gay abortions or can some of us set to work on building the islamohomo grill confiscating caliphate?
They’ll send our assignments around on Wednesday afternoon, through the new extra-super-socialist postal system (now with more Marxism). If you donated to the campaign, your request for assignment is supposed to receive a higher priority, but I think it’s probably more based on how much you hate freedom, as measured by the number of comments you make on liberal blogs.
I asked to be put on the gun confiscation team. Here’s hoping!
Frist adds, “And the global gag rule, reinstated by President Bush, has worked wonders the world around!”
What do you wanna bet those were Canada Geese?
Watch your ass, America – we’ve got plenty more where those came from … & the fuckers are BIG & amazingly MEAN. If they could crap in mid-air, the Canadian traditional headgear would be hardhats.
Do NOT hold out food to them – etiquette is not their strong suit, & they’ll see your fingers as a dandy dessert.
Hey, look on the bright side: at least you weren’t watching the monument to tertiary syphilis that is An American Carol. Next to fail like that even Red Dawn looks like The Dirty Dozen.
I see someone didn’t get up early enough to snag the pissing on crosses gig.
> “Not this time Rostov. It’s time to die.” Delivered with an absolute lack of modulation, like he was buying a book of stamps.
The mother of a friend of mine dated Chuckie for a short while (she was divorced). My friend got to know him a bit, and he said that Chuckie was the stupidest human being he ever met.
True, non-ironic, story.
What happened to Brad?
Did the bondservants edit him out?
Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because he only recognizes the element of surprise.
There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another empty cranium.
A not for profit prostitution ring seems like a good idea to me. Perhaps I could get a Republican grant for that.
Also, where have all the cute bunnies gone?
http://www.spamalotshop.com/accrab1.htm
Groundhog Day as a conservative movie? The reviewer pretty much failed to watch the last half of the show didn’t he? Probably got all caught up in the fantasy of being able to lie with impunity?
Missed the fact that none of the lies worked?
Missed the fact that the hero was forever stuck in the same hole because of all the lies?
Missed the fact that the hero was finally reduced creatively killing himself over and over again because all the lieing had NOT worked.
Missed the fact that until the hero stopped trying to ‘bull-shit’ everyone and instead improved himself, he was stuck in that vicious cycle.
You know, on second thought? I think Groundhog Day is the perfect “Conservative” movie…
hehe
oops
“Hey, look on the bright side: at least you weren’t watching the monument to tertiary syphilis that is An American Carol. Next to fail like that even Red Dawn looks like The Dirty Dozen.”
Let’s do our own version of American Carol: We can call it “Amurrrikan KKKarol”, the heartwarming tale of a greasy, lying, demogogic, gigantically fat, drug addicted, draft dodging, self-styed “super patriot” talk radio host named Flush Rimjob, who’s visited by the Ghost of Joseph Goebbels, who warns him that he’ll be visited by 3 spirits on the evening he’s all set to receive his Lifetime Achievement Award from the Military/Industrial/Oligarchic Complex. (This award – “The Fat Bastard” – is made entirely of solid gold, and is all the more valuable because so much of the shiny stuff went into the making of it, it being sculpted in the blubbery shape of ol’ Flush himself!) I suggest Jim Carrey (in a fat suit) to play Flush, and Chevy Chase in the role of Goebbels!
Uh-oh. If Dunkin’ Donuts is pro-Islamofascism and Krispy Kremes is pro-abortion, where’s a wingnut supposed to get his doughnuts? There’s obviously some deep, dark connection between delicicious deep-fried pastries and liberal degeneracy.
Is it merely a coincidence that the Tim Horton franchise and the muslo-avian-jihadists that brought down US Airways Flight Flight 1549 are both from Canada? I think not.
The whingers heads are exploding already. Courtesy Human Events:
In a perfect world, on Wednesday I’d get my assignment to test the soldiers’ ability to perform homosex well enough to remain in the, ummm, service.
Oh, please. You were calling John McCain ‘far-left’ a year ago, you idle-wild fuckwit.
This is tangentially related to something I’ve been really interested in – the government’s constant efforts to placate the hard right and bring the echo chamber into the nation’s bedrooms has resulted in apopleptic, mind-boggling levels of faux outrage over everything now that they’re out of power. It is worth remembering that the Arkansas Project taking place a year and a half into the new administration was seen as excessive and overreaching – a transparent attempt to destroy the President more or less exclusively on the basis of his party alignment – but it at least had some claim to being an organic product of Clinton policies and Clinton behavior. It sputtered out, of course – the 15% of the population that actually gave two shits about Whitewater couldn’t vote against him three times, the local GOP’s best efforts aside – and sustaining that level of outrage in the long term is close to impossible.
The 2012 election is far, far away; everyone within shrieking distance of a ham radio has heard everything the vast right-wing conspiracy has to say about Obama; and these idiots are already moaning and whining about the terrible, oppressive Obama Administration before he actually takes office. Their overconfidence in their own ability to control the narrative has lead them off a sort of cliff; no one who isn’t deeply and personally invested in Pravda’s version of events is going to take Pravda seriously as it lunges at shadows, pretending to have been persecuted by the jack-booted federal thugs of a man who will be a private citizen for a week.
Long story short, the Right might just make history by being the first to go broke overestimating the stupidity of the American people.
How open and should I bring cameras?
Oh, come on now (tracking IP), that’s just crazy talk. Everyone knows that Canada is a perfectly peaceful & progressive (IP confirmed, ComSat triangulation sequence initiated) nation that has had a long & warm friendship (location-lock complete, releasing tactical squadron of hunter/killer beavers) with America, & that we’d never do anything (activating beavers’ cranial-implant guidance systems, all readings are go) to jeopardize that. Now you just stay right where you are & reconsider (goniometric vector program successfully inserted & activated, all beavers converging on target at cruising speed) that crazy idea for oh, say, at least the next 45 – 90 minutes or so, eh?
Heh. Yeah, McCain. Not to mention Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili. And Bob Barr. Bob fucking Barr fer chissake!
I hope you’re right alec – they’re rabidity is turning off everyone except the crazyhead extremists. *sigh* But it was fun while it lasted.
I asked to be put on the gun confiscation team. Here’s hoping!
I sent in my app early and hope to be on the UN Black Helicopter sreet sign coding crew. I hear the job entails driving around all day in a global warming lie promoting electric car. Super-plus-good bonus: It’s a no wingnut contact assignment, as they’ll all be in their basements hiding from your gun confiscation team with eight years worth of Cheetos and Mountain Dew their only comfort.
I sent in my app early and hope to be on the UN Black Helicopter sreet sign coding crew.
That sounds fun!
If I don’t make the gun confiscation team, maybe they’ll put me on the helicopter painting crew. You can have ’em any color you want, so long as it’s black.
Oh Candy! Some years back I had the urge to secretly recruit a number of people across the country to covertly spray the back sides of road signs with some paint visible only under infrared or something. Just put up some weird symbols we’d deesign. At some point, after sufficient coverage, we would “leak” the fact of their existence. I got distracted and never pushed the idea.
I wonder, is it too late? Has it already been done?
I wonder, is it too late? Has it already been done?
That is an awesome idea. If it hasn’t been done, it needs to. I bet you could find paint that was usually invisible but glows under UV.
Plain black barcodes would work pretty well too – I bet you could print a bunch of them on stickers, then apply them to sign backs. You could cover a pretty good sized area in a single afternoon.
Warriors!! Come out and Play!!!!:
The guy’s name was Randy. I mean, come on.
Lieutenant Sweetpea, the one they call ‘Candy’ is on to our plan!!
The Sign Painting Committee will be following orders:
To be really effective, the “secret code” should be suggestive enough to send black helicopter conspirators into paroxysms.
Also, it should be nationwide. And invisible until the Illuminati/Bilderbergs/fnord/et’ al. inadvertently reveal the plot.
I’m less than busy these days and have lots of time for hoaxing. A big challenge in executing the punk is how to recruit members into the cabal. (pssst – don’t tell anyone…) Any ideas?
stryx, you got it baby.
I’d make the iris of the all-seeing eye a crescent for starters.
AVENGE MEEEEEEE
I would make the
sphincteriris a bar-code bent around into a circle, to heighten the impression of a data-encryption system that is several steps ahead of civilian use.He’s confident he can get a date a week?
Remember, he’s never actually met any liberal women and he thinks they’re a bunch of undiscriminating sexbots.
Hell, I can’t manage a date a week, and I’ve been “ruined as a man by feminism”, I’ve been told. And come Wednesday, I want to be in charge of making white people listen to hip-hop and watch “Def Comedy Jam”.
The pupil is the UN globe.
Come to think of it, bar codes are obsolete and all the cool kids are using QR grids.
Tacmars’ are used to encode the following information:
Those directions make it sound an awful lot like this system.
FYWP
all the cool kids are using QR grids.
Indeed, but IMO bar codes are more iconically sinister. I agree that whatever is painted on the signs should look, as you say, like a higher-grade version of the bar code – but are QR grids as widely recognized?
These Data Matrix grids are turning up a lot as stamps on machine-franked envelopes.
Bonus paranoia:
If I were a Bad Person, I would be selling data-matrix temporary tattoos for kids to wear when they want to freak out the Mark-of-the-beast Revelations nuts.
They’d also look good as those paid-admission wrist-stamp markers at a concert.
Surely Marilyn Manson already has a contact lens set of these.
Wikipedia informs me that there are these polar-coordinate barcodes specifically designed for contact lenses.
jim
Arghhh. The beavers! They’re killing us! Send help! It’s almost like they’ve got guidance system implants.
They got Mr. Fluffy! NNNNnnnnnoooooooo. . . . .
OOoooo, those ShotCode things do look pretty neat.
From the article: The technology reads databits from these datacircles…
Paging The Goddamn Batman – I think they’re trying to steal your tech-naming style.
In Miike’s “MPD-Psycho” mini-series the weird cult people have bog-standard bar-codes tattooed on their eye-balls. I like to think that in the inevitable US re-make, the barcodes will use one of these more contemporary formats.
If I were to have anything tattooed on my eyeballs, it would be a few decoy sets of pupils and iris, to make it harder to tell when I am staring at cleavage.
Oink like a pig, Smut, oink like a pig!
(Sunglasses.)
Did Bush mention the pilots of Flight 1549 (hmm thats awfully close to m y PIN. Better change it) in his FareWell (FairWell?) Speech?
Tough on him having a REAL Hero save the day, with a couple hundred more (Firemen, Ferry personnel etc) rushing to the rescue. Such a contrast with “It was all someone else’s fault!”
“…covertly spray the back sides of road signs with some paint visible only under infrared…”
Remember the ads for Aqua Teen Hunger Force? Heh.
Millions more children will be endangered by his radical abortion agenda.
As if they care if actual children were endangered instead of blastocysts.
I was going to be a soldier in the war on Pentecost, but I’m not gay so I was disqualified. Instead I have to go out with conservatives and exploit their insecurities, which means I won’t meet my abortion quota, either.
There was a National Lampoon cartoon once that had a tough guy standing outside the men’s room saying “A real man can hold his urine.”
I’ll bet you could make some bladders explode with that treatment.
NeoCon “I’m going to date 1 liberal woman a week, and annoy them by saying I’m consservative” Here’s how it’ll go:
NeoCon: Will you go out with me Friday Night?
LibWoman: No, I’m having an abortion that night.
NeoCon: Well, what about next week?
LibWoman: Sorry, I’m going out with a (insert minority)
NeoCon: What about 3 weeks from now?
LibWom: I’m going to choose to become gay that week.
Some excellent content here and a nice writing style too – keep up the great work!
“A real man can hold his urine.”
Testing…
testing…
testing…
No, it keeps dribbling through my fingers.
No need to get all fancy with barcodes and shotcodes and whatnot. Just a plain old UN-style globe-and-olive-branches above a string of sinister-looking alphanumerics. Remember, these are conservatives we’re talking about here — we have to keep things very simple and easy to understand.
I’ll bet you could make some bladders explode with that treatment.
“Some say that’s how Tycho Brahe died, and he was from Yurp… you’re not gonna let some guy whose nationality sounds like breakfast make you look like a big baby with a Ronco mini bladder, are you?”
Then I punch him in the gut and run like hell.
Btw, already got my assignment — I’ll be part of one of the church-to-mosque conversion units.
Sheesh, Smut, the secret is to freeze it. WHILE IT’S STILL IN YOUR BLADDER, RAWR!!
I’ve already done my part, really…
Tycho Brahe = personal hero, what with the death-by-drinking-bout, the beer-drinking pet moose, and the range of prosthetic noses for different occasions.
I have to go out with conservatives and exploit their insecurities
In my comprehensive experience of humiliation, being thrashed at pool is always good.
Conspiracy theories come in all shapes and sizes these days.
You guys got all the easy jobs.
I have to go to the corporate CEOs and board of director meetings, overthrow them, and nationalize their corporations for public use.
Some asshole already did the last part, so all I get to do now is push them out of windows while singing the Internationale.
Some asshole already did the last part, so all I get to do now is push them out of windows while singing the Internationale.
Do you need an assistant?
I could book your flights, keep track of your calendar on Outlook™, and such as.
Tycho Brahe’s body is currently interred in a tomb in the Church of Our Lady in front of Týn near Old Town Square near the Astronomical Clock in Prague.
I have been on the pilgrimage to his tombstone. Any excuse to drink Czech beer.
I saw a thread earlier in the day about proposed titles for a Cheney autobiography (at FDL I think). For me, the clear winner:
Quail Before Me
That’s pretty funny, but I’d go with After the Gore.
Damn, those are both good.
Part 1, Quail Before Me (birth through Nixon years on into Halliburton and PNAC).
Part 2, After The Gore (the very special VP years).
Part 3, Sequel: Hung at the Hague.
I’m pretty sure DICK! sums it up nicely.
That’s tough. The Yes Men have a reasonably large network of highly successful pranksters. Dunno how they’ve done it. If you keep the details on some kind of private forum, and rely mostly on direct invites (web of trust style), it could work.
It’s a beautiful idea. Do it right, and it could be bigger than crop circles.
Quail Before Me
“Other Priorities”.
Darn it, I can’t find the section where it lists the right code to use on my homegrown PGP software.
Darn it, I can’t find the section where it lists the right code to use on my homegrown PGP software.
Hey, do you have a steganograph I can borrow?
I have been on the pilgrimage to his tombstone. Any excuse to drink Czech beer.
Pivo! Yummmmmmm. The technical museum up on the hill also has a few telescopes and other instruments owned and used by Brahe and Kepler. Prague’s a great town.
After I got done writing about him having increasingly implausible forced sex with celebrities, astronauts on Mars, and his own clone, I once wrote a script for a comic I used to do (which I am not, but occasionally, in the business of sharing these days) which involved Dick Cheney planning to go back in time to 1900, abduct Eugene Debs, and take him into the present for some unsavory reason. Upon learning from an aide that this would not, in fact, be the first time there had been a Jew in the White House (the specific counterexample being Paul Wolfowitz), which sends Cheney into a rage and causes him to change his plans – instead, he goes back in time to 1932 that he may sic Hitler on Wolfy. During the course of his brief, horrible adventure, he abducts the Lindbergh Baby and frames some foreigner for it, buys Robert Johnson’s soul, and – upon finding Hitler, who speaks entirely in pseudo-Teutonic gibberish – takes him back to the present, only to find he has inadvertently produced a horrifying nightmare-world in which neither the Holocaust nor World War II nor the Cold War were necessary; after briefly wandering the cocktail circuit in despair, he settles down with Hitler and raises a series of suspiciously Aryan children.
I’m thinking about doing an adventure game with roughly this plot arc. I call it Win with Dick.
Hey, do you have a steganograph I can borrow?
Is that a picture of a back-platey Jesus lizard?
You certainly can’t lose w/ Dick!
Prague’s a great town.
Word. Though so as not to offend occasional commenter Bulbul, I should add that Bratislava is probably just as great though I have never been there.
I once wrote a script for a comic I used to do […] which involved…
Heh. The best I can offer is a story I wrote for Doktorling Sonja, in which Tycho Brahe served as a major inspiration, so Roald Amundsen became one central character (along with his purported false nose), with Pharaoh Apop-Tosis (cloned from his mummified nose) as a less important character.
I will now cite, in its entirety,
Chapter 9 ½
How many stories are there about Roald Amundsen’s false nose?
Countless. Some say that the surgeon on one expedition had to make a metal replacement, when the great explorer lost his real nose to frostbite. All because it was so large that the hood of his anorak did not shelter it enough in blizzards. Another story says it was pecked to pieces by a flock of jealous flamingos. Most of the stories are untrue.
Did Amundsen really have different noses for different occasions?
That much is certain. A formal silver one to wear to dinner, that could shake salt from one nostril and pepper from the other; and a lightweight aluminium one that he filled with brandy for emergencies and took on expeditions; and a blocked nose that he wore when he had a cold. But whoever started the story that he had a Swiss Army Knose, with useful tools folded up inside for when he needed them, had too much imagination.
What kind of useful tools?
A screwdriver. A compass. A sharp stick for dislodging the wrong ideas that get stuck in people’s minds.
Didn’t this handicap discourage Amundsen from polar exploration?
Not at all. Even before Antarctica, he made himself a place in history by becoming the first man to sail direct from the North Atlantic Ocean through to the Pacific. He threaded a path through the maze of icy islands north of Canada, while his hand-picked crew played Svendsen’s 1st and 2nd Symphonies all the way.
Why should I believe any of this?
Go and look at the bronze statue of Amundsen in Christchurch, in the Canterbury Museum. The statue is just of his shoulders and head, and its nose is so shiny that people suppose there’s a tradition about touching it for good luck. But really the nose was made that shiny. Since then it has been kept polished by people stroking it anyway.
Why do they do that?
The same way people throw coins in a fountain if they see coins already there.
So if they saw goldfish swimming in a pond, they’d throw in extra goldfish?
Now you’re being silly.
While Amundsen was still alive, did people stroke his real false nose for good luck?
Yes. No wonder he went away to explore the Poles.
But was Amundsen’s replacement nose the same size as the original?
There are rumours (the kind you whisper in a low voice) that it was larger.
Why would he want a bigger nose?
To increase his authority. Instead of a false beard.
What else is in the Canterbury Museum?
I’m glad you asked me that. The Museum has a fine collection of specimens of air plankton, donated by the Haast Expedition to New Guinea. Visitors ever since have always imagined that they’re looking at enlarged models of marine life, blown out of glass – jellyfish and sea-squirts and sea anemones. But in fact they’re the real thing, actual size, brought back from the Sargasso Sky.
Isn’t the false nose in the museum? Where is it now?
No-one knows what happened to it after Amundsen died in a ’plane crash. Collectors would pay a fortune. People have spent decades searching for it; they believe it has magical powers.
What has all this got to do with the story?
Godnose.
Heh heh, you said “hand-picked.”
Godnose
Going. To. Hell.
Troofie must have been home-schooled.
Um is not an acceptable way to begin a sentence for edumacated peoples.
This is central to my point.
“Fact that giddy liberals ignore: Most white people – and an even larger percentage of white men – voted for someone other than Obama.”
This middle-class, military-veteran, white male voted for Obama.
To further damage my reputation, here is
Chapter 12 [excerpt]:
Duff Guide to New Zealand: Tourist Advice (2013 Edition).
Canterbury Museum has a well-earned reputation for its unusual collections, and for the way they are organised. More than one curator has gone mad while trying to decide whether some new acquisition should be stored with the Things that Fit into Bottles, or in the Room of Things that at a Distance Look like a Dog.
Stairs behind the chemist’s shop in the Recreated Colonial Street lead down to the sub-basement that houses the Nose Collection. Here you can find a range of treasures, including plaster casts of every New Zealand Prime Minister’s nose since Vogel, a fine display of fossilised dinosaur snot, and a handkerchief owned by Te Rauparahau. For overseas visitors, hoping to see something a little less provincial, there is the gold-plated nose-hair trimmer used by King George VII during the Royal Tour of 1903, which needed three servants to operate.
The highlight of any visit is certainly the miniature nose-shaped mummy-case of the Egyptian pharaoh Apop-Tosis III. This exquisite work of art was brought back from an 1897 expedition to excavate the Emergency Back-up Sphinx. That expedition discovered the pyramid of Apop-Tosis III, itself nose-shaped, which people had always believed to be one end of a giant statue, mostly buried beneath the sands of the Egyptian desert. Which is why it had remained for so long untouched by grave-robbers.
The mummy-case is carved from a solid block of ambergris, wrapped in layers of gold-leaf, and smelling like the inside of a whale. The curators will already be watching you closely (in case you are actually a spy from the Geology Department, sneaking down to steal back the dinosaur fossils). So ask them to open it and show you the actual nose of Pharaoh Apop-Tosis. And in case you were wondering why the ancient Egyptian morticians mummified only his nose, and not the rest of him, it has to do with the way he died. Of a surfeit of crocodiles.
They will not be able to show you the preserved nose of Roald Amundsen. They will tell you that it is not in fit condition for public display: “After Amundsen’s encounter with a polar bear in Greenland, his nose was pickled in vodka, and sent home to Norway for decent burial in the family crypt. On its way, however, the ship was attacked by the pirate ship The Deathless Dolphin. Its notorious captain Gothic Tom made away with the cask of vodka containing the nose, and eventually sold it to the Canterbury Museum. But along the voyage, his crew had been helping themselves to the vodka, which was not good for the nose’s state of preservation.”
Truth to tell, the actual reason is that the nose was stolen one night. By rival curators in charge of Things that Fit into Bottles. No-one knows what happened to the polar bear’s nose.
And now I think about it, some 18 months ago various plonkers were ranting about Bergman over at Roy Edroso’s place — if Bergman was so good, then where are the Hollywood remakes of Virgin Spring?
Does no one remember Last House on the Left? Hell, it’s getting a remake this year!
Surely someone with some good design skills could come up with a nice graphic combining Obama and an eye-in-the-pyramid design. Put it on business cards and mail one, along with a short, weird, vaguely ominous note (“Thank you for your genetic scan. Our operatives will contact you soon.”) to every slobbering wingnut you can. Include a return address from some other slobbering wingnut and a phone number from another.
Wingnuts were just fucking craaaazy in the ’90s — time to exploit that some more…
Ruh roh. Can’t rule out pelicans just yet.
[link goes to salon.com – dunno if that gets you past Cerboreos, the cookie monster guarding the gate]
Also, FYWP with three dog heads.
Miniature nose-shaped mummy-case.
Excellent band name, or wot?
Have fun with your coronation next week.
Tell me, does it hurt to be so profoundly stupid?
Giddy fact: In 2000, most people voted for Gore. Then Bush was anointed by the Court to be the Boy King.
Remembering pointless facts such as this got me labeled deranged, and I was told to get over it.
In the spirit of sharing, I’ll just say
Shut your fucking piehole, you self-centered scumbag. Get over it, loser.
there is the gold-plated nose-hair trimmer used by King George VII during the Royal Tour of 1903, which needed three servants to operate.
Those wacky brits. In America our president is operated by just one person. And he isn’t called a “servant.” YOU! ESS! EH!
Tycho Brahe = personal hero, what with the death-by-drinking-bout, the beer-drinking pet moose, and the range of prosthetic noses for different occasions.
Pet moose?
“I know white people and white men in particular are hate figures for the left, but we haven’t dwindled down to a Zimbabwe or South Africa sized rump to be abused, assaulted, and scapegoated just yet.”
Fer fuck’s sakes: Human beings are actually being slaughtered wholesale in Gaza right now – all with this moron’s grinning approval, no doubt – and said moron is blubbering about white males being America’s new Apartheid-style victims?
Likewise, Georgie Boy Bush’s “supporters” (i.e. worshippers) followed the Boy King in what can best be described as a state of fanatical, blind, unthinking subservience, but Obama is “Black Jesus”? Projection, thy name is Rethuglican.
Perhaps not, also, but it won’t be long, you betcha.
Sincerely,
A. White Male II (but not an asshole like you) in case you couldn’t tell.
Pet moose?
You think you got comprehension problems? I’m reading the BSG synopses after not watching for last three seasons because the Ho is making me watch the opener tonight. If only it were as simple as pet moosies/meese/moosi.
Perhaps not, also, but it won’t be long, you betcha.
As a white male my own self, I’ve purposefully chosen not to have kids so that the other races will overtake us more quickly.
…I’ve purposefully chosen not to have kids…
Or cause anyone else to, even if they’re interested.
Pet moose?
A pet elk if you’re going to be pedantic, but “moose” is an innately funnier word.
Actually, it was Bush in 2000 who had all the hallmarks of a coronation – right down to the enraged rotten-egg-lobbing peasants who damn near lynched his election-thieving ass before he could even get to the podium to be fawned over by an invitation-only cabal of cronies, elite bigwigs & salad-tossing pundits. Oh how soon they forget.
Funny – I’d swear this is the same Colossus of political wisdom who enlightened all us ignorant lefties as to how Teh Wrath O’ Blago would scuttle President Obama before he even got sworn in. Same one who refers to Harvard grads as affirmative-action leeches. Oh, the same one whose unofficial alias is now “Bookmark this, Liberals” … & has a big crocodile tear in his eye when he says he hopes Obama does well, even though he obviously can’t stand the man, & still keeps going back to that poisoned well of racial division any time he’s jonesing to yank some liberal chain.
Keep On Failin’ In The Free World!
Needs more IQ.
I’m reading the BSG synopses after not watching for last three seasons …
My wife is all about getting caught up with it, but I sort of lost patience with it early in season 3. I’m more interested in sugar-coated escapist stuff, probably because I was exposed to the Yellow Submarine movie at a very early age.
Facts, meet the liberals; liberals, meet the facts.
Here is how it will go down next week. First, the results from Virginia and North Carolina will come in, and they’ll be declared for McCain. You’ll be disappointed, but “no big deal, change can’t come overnight” will be your comment. Florida will go red, and a little nervousness will creep in. The usual suspects will fall into the usual categories. As the night drags on, Ohio, Colorado, and (much to your horror) Pennsylvania will be too close to call.
My advice at this point to you will be to go to bed. You will wake up to a McCain presidency and the Great Liberal Freakout will be on.
Bookmark this, liberals, as this is exactly how it is going to go down. You will be wonder how the hell I was able to call this.
Hi Shoelimpy Clone™, we don’t care what you think you’re not gonna let someone get away with.
Scoreboard, Beaches!
We’re going to rendition your ass to the gayislamobortion clinic so fast your head will spin.
And there’s not damn thing you can do about it besides quiver in eager anticipation in your basement while eating Cheetos™.
Damn you, Gilchrist, let a guy have a chance!
Damn you, Gilchrist, let a guy have a chance!
Sorry. Don’t let me stop you, though – it may need to be posted again, so that Troofie will realize it’s really McCain’s coronation coming up next week, just like it said.
Just under half of us said,
I like pie!
Oh, come on – the fraction of people who like pie must be more than half.
Boy, it’s really going to suck for you when you finally try emulating the Turner Diaries, and then either get shot by the cops or the FBI for your attempted insurrection of the nation. But keep dreaming about that white power rebellion, dickweed.
I like pumpkin pie and cherry pie quite a bit.
Also, blueberry pie is awesome.
But maybe the best pie of all is key lime pie.
There’s a lot of good things to be said about pie. (Tedious troolz, not so much.)
If you guys are having a hard time finding inspiration for a new thread, may I suggest this fine jewel:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/another-good-reason-for-n_b_158392.html
Y’know, I’ll be honest.
I don’t much care for pie. Cake’s pretty good, though.
Here is how it went down Election Day. First, the results from Virginia and North Carolina came in, and they were declared for Obama. Troofie was disappointed, but “no big deal, the sheeple will come crawling to McCain” was his overriding thought. Florida went blue, and a little nervousness crept in. The usual suspects fell into the usual categories. As the night dragged on, Ohio, Colorado, and (much to his horror) Pennsylvania went right to Obama.
At this point Troofie’s only option was to go to bed. He woke up to an Obama presidency and the Great Troofie Failapalooza was on, and continues to this day.
“Bookmark this, liberals” was what he dared us to do, and we did. We still wonder why the Hell he even bothers anymore.
No, it isn’t George Bush’s fault. It was called colonialism. Mostly the province of European males, especially for the last couple of hundred yrs. As it requires nuance, a lack of racial stereotypes & prejudices, and an understanding of geography & cultures, it can’t be explained to you.
So I won’t. There is a whole wide internet out there w/ answers to all your questions, by the way, but it won’t be easy, & you’ll have to stay away from Stormfront & such sites.
Also, don’t forget after we won, his super secret that was totally going to put us to shame just as we were starting to gloat about the election!
I don’t much care for pie. Cake’s pretty good, though.
Ice cream? Sherbet? Thoughts?
Also, don’t forget after we won, his super secret that was totally going to put us to shame just as we were starting to gloat about the election!
Yeaaahh, whatever happened with that?
Leftists love to imagine the power of the State being used to crush dissenters…
And that’s why we call them parody trolls.
Ice cream? Sherbet? Thoughts?
In order:
Love chocolate, like rainbow, always appreciate well-formed ones.*
*Which of course leaves out your average troll.
Ice cream? Sherbet? Thoughts?
My favorites are tiramisu and gulab jamun. As a liberal, I can’t approve of any desserts that come from America, and I have standing orders from Hussein X Obama to poo immediately in any apple pie I see.
Green tea ice cream
Try it, you like it!
Shecky, don’t carry your AmeriKKKa-hating to absurd lengths. Everybody knows that while non- or anti-AmeriKKKan entrees & even appetizers are fine, other than FRENCH pastry, no furriners can beat Ben & Jerry, sweet potato pie, chocolate cake, & cheesecake.
Also, abortion dough-nuts. (Spotted at TBogg’s.)
Oh, my lawd, Miz Twoofy, whatevah shall we do? That Michelle Obama is such a racist! Why, she even picked Radical Black Panther Woman Jackie Norris to be her
WhiteBlack House chief of staff! Lawdamussy, Miz Twoof, whatevah shall become of theConfederateYewnited States of Merka?Catch Miz Twoofy before she faints! Now where’d we put those cyanide smelling salts?
By the way, in case anyone missed it, the article I posted is Alan Dershowitz arguing that we shouldn’t try to prosecute Bush officials because they could just show the jury the SECRET EVIDENCE against the terrorists that were tortured and the jury wouldn’t convict them because they wouldn’t convict JACK BAUER, would they?
But maybe the best pie of all is key lime pie.
Steak and kidney, hands down.
The best dessert, bar none, is another beer.
The only dessert I don’t like is tapioca pudding. I’m really easy to please when it comes to sugary things.
Lemon pie sans meringue is probably my very most favorite, though.
Curse you guys! Now I’m going to go eat my son’s last ice cream bar. There will be shrieking when he discovers my perfidy.
Has anyone here had tempura ice cream? That was the best but I haven’t had it in a long time
The best dessert, bar none, is another beer.
The fact is, BBBB wins teh internets.
Beer is actually really good with key lime pie. It stands to reason when you think about it.
Shecky, don’t carry your AmeriKKKa-hating to absurd lengths.
If it were up to me…but I have my orders. Delivered by blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers right to my door from their black helicopter.
‘Instituted radical anti-white policies’ is an interesting way of explaining Zuid-Afrika. Mandela, a well-known revolutionary Judeobolshoislamofascist, took power and then sneakily governed as a moderate for his entire tenure, and then once out of office made the true terror of his reverse racism known by spurning the 5% of world leaders who actually backed Bush’s insane Iraqi boondoggle.
It is so innovative that it would probably surprise even the oppressed white innocents of South Africa, who have been brainwashed into believing their true, racially pure state’s brave preemptive action against teenagers, Anglican bishops, and other Judeobolshoislamofascist radicals was a mistake – and that the current government was both legitimate and either right-headed or worthy of forming a loyal, non-racialized opposition.
In fact, one might even be tempted to look at the situation in South Africa, where the large and historically excluded Zulu population has been the single major racial political bloc (excluding Afrikaner revanchists, whose support is dwarfed by the Greens, the Communists, and other minor parties), and conclude that the American notion of ‘black’ as a politically viable distinction doesn’t apply except in the most ridiculously uninformative sense. Of course, to conclude such would be to conclude that you’re full of shit, and after all you won this election, so that can’t possibly be right.
Under that crazy, uninformed paradigm, we would probably be forced to examine your direct comparison of Barack Obama (a Luo-English biracial born in Hawaii and raised in Chicago largely after the major successes of the American civil rights movements and the development of substantive legal mechanisms against institutional racism) and Nelson Mandela (a born-and-raised Xhosa in a country which had wide-spread Western support in instituting a system that came close to legalized slavery – one in which ancestry directly decided human rights, including economic rights, freedom of movement, and the most basic political participation), and I almost suspect that the conclusion would be that you’re not comparing apples to oranges but apples to wienerschnitzel.
Oh, but the situation in South Rhodesia is perfectly germane to the election! After all, Barack Obama was swept into power by revolutionary cadres angered at a half-century of profoundly racist and violent rule by a tiny minority, whose close allies in the country continued to actively disrupt the economy and polity to the point that the continued rule of law required some manner of sanction against them. It couldn’t be that you’re a hysterical, pathetic bigot whose horrifying childhood spic dick trauma has lead him to regard anything but perfect blanch-white as a creeping horde trying to defy nature by enslaving you.
You’re right that you don’t represent one in four Americans, though. You represent about one in 1500.
Have fun convincing people you’re being oppressed by President Obama. I’m sure it’ll work out great for you, as long as your version of ‘great’ accomodates plenty of medication.
I doan unnerstand. What about the children? What about the chifferobe?
PS – I got my assignment under double secret secrecy. It’s so DULL! I have to rewrtie the Constitution in ebonics, *sigh*
Oh, and obviously Michelle Obama is the most racist First Lady in decades. (She’s been First Lady since 2007, don’t you know.) Everyone’s seen the tape with her calling for the unconditional destruction of Whitey.
How’s it feel earnestly trying to believe things a child can tell are crass lies?
‘Zat like baked Alaska, the tempura ice cream? Or is it tempura-flavored?
I ask this mainly because I’m really curious about what you’re gaining here. I don’t think in your situation I’d be ranting about Obama and Desmond Tutu conspiring to keep the white man down, but then again I’d regard losing around 10% of the electorate in a single election as something of a crisis.
Really. I’m not even being cynical or trying to rub your face in it now. I just cannot possibly get what’s fucking driving you to dive into the same asinine racist kabuki show that you and people like you have been driving Republicans away with since 2005. My guess is that you still think convincing people Kerry was a fag means you’re entitled rewrite history so Abraham Lincoln was worse than Hitler, and by God you’ll keep at it if it drives everyone but Ron Paul and his immediate family out of the real, true new permanent Republican majority. Maybe you’ll even throw adorable little shadow elections in which only ‘non-Fourteenth Amendment citizens’ with property and triple unbroken descent from an American revolutionary are allowed to vote. (You know, like the South Rhodesia that lives on in all free men’s hearts.)
Of course, that would take a sort of courage or effort, so I know it’s beyond you.
You’re too lazy to be Timothy McVeigh. Your mother must be proud.
Here is how it will go down on Inauguration Day. First, the uprisings from Virginia and North Carolina will come in, and they’ll be declared independent. You’ll be disappointed, but “no big deal, change can’t come overnight” will be your comment. Florida will rise up, and a little nervousness will creep in. The usual suspects will fall into the usual categories. As the night drags on, Ohio, Colorado, and (much to your horror) Pennsylvania will also join the White Power Revolution.
My advice at this point to you will be to go to bed. You will wake up to the triumph of the Aryan Master Race and the Great Liberal Liquidation will be on.
Bookmark this, liberals, as this is exactly how it is going to go down. You will be wonder how the hell I was able to call this.
Shecky, that “following orders” thing doesn’t always end well.
And tell your blue-helmeted minders about the intertoobze. We’ll never defeat the mind-warriors w/ old tech.
jp: Nice alt-history you got going there. I like a good story about drowning German babies now and again.
Shecky, that “following orders” thing doesn’t always end well.
I am allowed some discretion. Cherry Garcia is ok.
We won’t be hearing from Troofie for a while.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/16/steven-joseph-christopher_n_158703.html
I’ve never had baked Alaska, but if it involves flash frying ice-cream in batter, then yes?
We won’t be hearing from Troofie for a while.
Oh, good grief – a would-be assassin asking to borrow a gun?
There’s some parallel there with the Doughy Pantload and research, but I’m not clever enough.
cploar: Funny thing is, I think I found what got him worked up again.
Investigating assassination threats? Arresting Hitler? This must be the hardest the police have gotten his pud in years.
alec @0703.
Well put. I’d assume that, intentionally or not, they’re purging those they see as RINOs, & in general thinking they must return to the “core values” of the authoritarian, obscurantist a-holes who’ve been their base since the Southern Strategy.
Of course, I’m about as RW as Mr. Parody Troll hiss’ef. There’s really no telling what goes through their minds, & they’re the last ones to ask, what w/ their un-self-or-anything-else-awareness problems.
Reduced to posing as a dumbfuck racist and making up readily-disproven shite about South African laws in order to piss off a bunch of blog readers?
Trolling FAIL.
So, real dumbass racist or fake dumbass racist? In the end, only his hairdresser knows for sure.
As a long-term white troll, I do have to take exception here. It is kind of rare to encounter a troll with such coherent obsesions, and the chain of logic (Obama -> Rhodesia -> MANDELISMO HRRRRP OH GOD MY HANDS ARE ALL MESSY AGAIN) does have its fuck-nut bonafides.
Even if it is a troll, it’s an instructive one. The tiny little core of loud nuts in the GOP who look at Obama and see Mugabe are a major reason why the Republicans are currently on their way out.
Tell me, does it hurt to be so profoundly stupid?
Not enough, stry. Never enough.
You’ll pardon me for being late to the table. I was out at a modern dance hip hop balinesian bollywood recital.
Am I to understand that the newest Twoofie is claiming that the sins of Mugabe are all Michelle Obama’s fault?
Creative, that.
I think Das Twoof is also pinning the blame for his large man-titties and tiny balls on the Obamas as well.
Pardon us for not waiting, eating everything, & then stealing the silver.
Now I must go out to listen to shit-kickin’ music.
Smut, ‘elk’ is a pretty funny word. Look at Anne Elk (brackets Miss close brackets). That’s A-n-n-e, Anne, not an elk.
And Miike – wottaguy! Completely barking mad, as only a Japanese filmmaker can be. I did a review of MPD Psycho, for anyone who’s brave enough to read it.
Miike has scarred me for life, and made me what I am today. (sob)
Well, no.
The only failed troll is an ignored troll.
Permenant Republican Control
Whenever I see a thread at over 300 posts, I know that Troofie has come by and spread his special brand of feces all over everything again.
C’mon, new content already! Entertain me for free, dammit!
Jacob–well, until then, here’s some really funny Joe the Plumber coverage from Sderot.
Well, muchas gracias!
Well, I found it rather humorous personally. Someone emailed it to me.
Damn, still no new thread? I guess I’ll go make some delicious pancakes.
I hope things will get better.
I hope, as things get better, it becomes obvious who was responsible for them getting so bad.
I hope ring-wing thought inspires thoughts of fear and hunger and poverty upon the average person as a result of these experiences.
I am a hopeful person.
And dibs on the position of Tolerance Police, where I have to go around and make sure everyone treats everyone else with respect and consideration.
We are authorized to use the Baton of Shame and the Taser of Self Awareness.
The only failed troll is an ignored troll.
If we all pitch in we can make a better world.
Also: Smut, if you publish that book you’ve already sold one copy. I hope Apop-tosis’ crocophagy merits at least one wood engraving.
Ice cream? Sherbet? Thoughts?
Ice cream: okay in small doses.
Sherbet: Awesome, so long as I remember it’s not spelled ‘sherbert’.
Thoughts: Deeeeee-licious.
Of course, my all-time favorite desserts are Italian ices. A childhood favorite that never left me.
Don’t worry, Truthy – the race war you crave is on its way!
http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090117/NEWS/90117001/-1/NEWS19
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – Three men who authorities say were angered about Barack Obama becoming the first black president were arrested Friday on civil rights charges for allegedly torching a predominantly black church hours after the election.
The Nov. 5 fire destroyed the Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield, causing $2 million in damage to the building, which was under construction.
The suspects, Benjamin Haskell, 23, Michael Jacques, 24, and Thomas Gleason, 21, who are all white, were held without bail after a hearing in federal court in Springfield later Friday. No pleas were entered at the hearing, which was continued until Wednesday.
You can certainly see your skills in the article you write.
The sector hopes for even more passionate writers like you who aren’t afraid to mention how they believe. At all times go after your heart.
Wow, superb blog format! How lengthy have you ever been running a blog
for? you made running a blog glance easy. The overall look of your website
is great, let alone the content!