Girl, You Make My Day*

Heartless jerk Steve Spruiell continues to flop, flail and moan like an Italian soccer player in the middle of a penalty dive because we made fun of his outmoded Byron-Yorkish locks. I didn’t see all of the tweets shown below when Steve first spluttered them out yesterday, mainly because Steviekins doesn’t have the Twitter reply thing quite figured out yet, but I thought that all you SadlyNauts! might find them amusing.

Notice he goes on and one about everything BUT what started this in the first place — namely, my query as what kind of hypocritical simpleton complains, on a site that doesn’t allow comments, about Krugman putting a limit on the length of comments at his own blog? Hey, Stevie, come on. Step up to the plate on this one and take your best swing whiff at it.

Not bloody likely, of course. Steve-o would rather whine about how I was making fun of his kid, which I wasn’t (unless, of course, the haircut was the kid’s idea, which, frankly, seems unlikely). But this effort by Steve to fall on his Sarah Palin memorial fainting couch clutching his progeny to his breast is, frankly, pretty lame given that I showed more concern for the little tyke, by pixelating his face, than Spruiell did when he posted the identifiable picture in the first place. Steve at first seemed to concede this until he got all tanked up on Cap’n Morgans and Sunny Delight last night in his double wide and started tweeting again.

For continuing coverage go to my Twitter page and Stevie’s Twitter page. (Note: Sadly, No! is not responsible for any trauma caused by viewing the background design on Steve’s page.)

UPDATE: Oh, and how about we place a little side bet on how long it will be before Steve calls me a fag?


*Cf.

 

Comments: 811

 
 
 

WHY WON’T YOU PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! (soils self in incontinent rage)
July 31 – August 2 via web

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

What the hell are “Fedrist Papers”?

 
 

I like the kid’s sweater, it’s super-cute. The guy, however, is a classic douche.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

The guy, however, is a classic douche.

Vinegar and water?

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

Mebbee I’ll get me on a’ them tweeters just so I kin ask what teh Angerous Geometric sed t’udder day.

“Mr. Sprewell, did you kill irony? Or did Rod Dreher and Jonah Goldberg do it and you merely fucked the corpse?”

Cuz, I don’t think that can be improved upon.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

Steve tweets that he enjoys bison sausage.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

This may actually cause me to break my rule of not following rightwingers on Twitter because they piss me off too much. At least for a while.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

BTW, does this man shave only, like, once a week? Every picture I’ve seen of him, he has this sad, scraggly stubble.

 
 

The guy, however, is a classic douche.

Vinegar and water?

Designed by the patriarchy, marketed to women as essential, annoying at best, dangerous at worst, actually unnecessary.

 
 

Quality haircuts are the well-conditioned and flowing locks of liberal fascism.

And I don’t recall anyone making fun of his kid — just lamenting that the poor tyke has a historically-huge douche bag for a father.

If anything, we’re trying to help the little dude (the kid, not Daddy Douchebag).

 
Ted the Slacker
 

For the record… Tintin, you are braver than the biggest sammich in the NRO canteen.

More to the point, though, I think we are seeing exactly why ASW doesn’t have a comments section. Not because it would be over-run by trolls, but that dweebs like Spruiell would behave like complete dickheads.

 
 

A couple tidbits from this entry made giggle.

Also too at no point did anyone make fun of that child. Daddy’s funny, baby’s off-limits.

 
Captain Industry
 

Oh, and how about we place a little side bet on how long it will be before Steve calls me a fag?

Psh, that’s what you get for hanging out all the time with a alcoholic sea captain, Tintin. He’s probably planning out the slash fanfiction this very minute.

 
 

Fedrist Papers?

Is that what Britney trained her ex-husband on?

 
 

“actor212 said,
August 2, 2010 at 19:11

Fedrist Papers?

Is that what Britney trained her ex-husband on?”

Ok, that was funny.

 
 

UPDATE: Oh, and how about we place a little side bet on how long it will be before Steve calls me a fag?

Publicly, I have Wednesday, Noon PDT.

Privately, I have the “already happened” lock of the week!

 
 

Fedrist Papers?

Roger’s permit to play tennis?

 
 

This person needs to take a deep breath & accept reality: orchids gotta bloom, fish gotta spawn, birds gotta hatch, & Sadlynauts gotta put the serious hurts into soft vulnerable wingnut ass. Their aversion to this might be satisfied in short order – if only they’d get far enough away from their Inner G.I.-Joes to stop dropping trou & presenting themselves (while strapped down onto the shiny hood of the Interwebs & oinking wildly for more) in public.

The poor bitchy himbo is trapped on the “Ad Hominem Express” & the door is welded shut just like his head. He’s pissed because he knows your original point is both cogent & unassailable.

I cordially invite him to STFU & go suck on a big plush toy until all the nasty baaaaaaaaaw goes away.

 
Ted the Slacker
 

Actually, here’s an idea Tintin – why don’t you use your twitter-skillz and invite Spruiell to Sadly No HQ and let him have his say here. I’d quite welcome the chance to ruffle his hair share a few ideas on irony.

 
 

I have the “already happened” lock of the week!

*WIN*

 
 

Steve Spruiell continues to flop, flail and moan like an Italian soccer player in the middle of a penalty dive because we made fun of his outmoded Byron-Yorkish locks.

Personally, I’d be jealous that this jackass still has his hair, but I’d have to stop laughing at him first.

 
 

What the hell are “Fedrist Papers”?

Bill Frist describing his erectile disfunction.

 
 

Who knows when he’ll call Tintin a fag; it’s not important anyway. I want to know when he calls him French.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Who knows when he’ll call Tintin a fag; it’s not important anyway. I want to know when he calls him French.

Isn’t that the same thing?

 
 

Ben Shapiro is an asshole.

http://www.postchronicle.com/commentary/article_212313322.shtml

“That’s just an excuse. The Obama administration is racist. They are using that racism to let black criminals off the hook, justify illegal immigration, hamstring law enforcement across the country, and push redistribution as a solution to supposed continuing discrimination against “people of color.” The predictable result of this policy will resemble the results of the 1876 election: federal abdication on racial violence, state abdication on racial violence and local abdication on racial violence. The next race war will come not from racist whites, but from racist blacks and Hispanics who feel empowered to act on their racism by an administration that excuses all minority misbehavior.”

 
 

The next race war will come not from racist whites, but from racist blacks and Hispanics who feel empowered to act on their racism by an administration that excuses all minority misbehavior.

I defy VBen to cite one example in history where a slave race, after having been given their freedom and opportunity to make their mark in the world, turned around and started a race war with the slavemasters.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Thank you ohsomuch for dragging that turd back here, gocart mozart. BRB: Imma gonna bang my head against the wall for a couple of minutes.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

BTW, that shit is STRAIGHT out of StormFront rhetoric. I mean, literally.

 
 

Imma gonna bang my head against the wall for a couple of minutes

Just don’t smudge my etchings!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Just don’t smudge my etchings!

But they’re EVERYWHERE!

 
 

Don’t dent the wall!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Don’t dent the wall!

Hey, my head’s not that hard!

 
 

I defy VBen to cite one example in history where a slave race, after having been given their freedom and opportunity to make their mark in the world, turned around and started a race war with the slavemasters.

Well, durr. Civil War, you loony lib. Good thing that can’t happen again, because we have big, strong, courageous men like Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani to protect us from the evil…menacing….(fapfapfapfapfapfapfap)

 
 

My eyes!!!

What an awful background on that page, but the content is even worse :p

Your tweets are funny, make me want to get an account to subscribe. Maybe I’ll go as Captn Haddock or that nutty deaf professor. Or the twin policeman :p

 
 

I’m sure Jonah Goldberg gets 100x more insulting email/twitters/mocking photoshops that Spruiell, yet handles it with far more composure than American Psycho here. I don’t know if that’s just sad, or if it means Spruiell might just have some vestige of a sense of shame left.

 
 

The next race war will come not from racist whites, but from racist blacks and Hispanics who feel empowered to act on their racism by an administration that excuses all minority misbehavior.

Empowered! Oh my God, what could be worse?! If/when the VB’s “race war” actually arrives, it will be minorities seeking the same rights and privileges that whites have enjoyed for generations. But don’t let that stop you from whipping up fear among the Depends set, Shapiro, you fucking useless fuck.

 
 

Don’t dent the wall!

Hey, my head’s not that hard!

I think he’s more concerned about the walls, which were built to NYC code.

 
 

Oh yes, and all the Krug-drama is total bullshit. It’s funny to watch these free-market conservatives try to justify leeching off another bloghost to find a place to post their drivel. Start your own blogs, you lazy hippies!

 
 

Shorter Spruiell:

MO-OM! The liberals are being mean to me again!

 
 

the fact is, you liberals are simply showing how much you hate children by internetically abusing spruiell’s infant son by pixelating his face and thus ensuring his anonymity, which is like aborting him electronically and in public.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I think he’s more concerned about the walls, which were built to NYC code.

Heeeey…wait a minute…this was supposed to be a secret!

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

Hey, my head’s not that hard!

VPR.

That is all.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

the fact is, you liberals are simply showing how much you hate children by internetically abusing spruiell’s infant son by pixelating his face and thus ensuring his anonymity, which is like aborting him electronically and in public.

I’m not sure which I like better, “internetically” or “aborting him electronically.”

 
 

“aborting him electronically.”

We’ve had high tech lynchings, why not high tech abortings?

 
 

Conservatives never engage in looksism. They didn’t just call all the guys on JournoList ugly. And they aren’t constantly telling us that we dislike hawt conservative women like Sarah because, as you know, all us liberal ladeez are fat and ugly.

 
 

The Obama administration is racist. They are using that racism to let black criminals off the hook, justify illegal immigration, hamstring law enforcement across the country, and push redistribution as a solution to supposed continuing discrimination against “people of color.” The predictable result of this policy will resemble the results of the 1876 election: federal abdication on racial violence, state abdication on racial violence and local abdication on racial violence. The next race war will come not from racist whites, but from racist blacks and Hispanics who feel empowered to act on their racism by an administration that excuses all minority misbehavior.”

In “Conscience of a Liberal,” there’s a moment during the discussion of the Gilded Age when Krugman reproduces a good old boy quote about the imminent danger of being overrun by darkie foreigners. Too bad I’m at work and don’t have the book with me, because I swear it sounded just like this.

 
 

Oops italicsfail.

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

The predictable result of this policy will resemble the results of the 1876 election

A Democratic victory?

 
 

I defy VBen to cite one example in history where a slave race, after having been given their freedom and opportunity to make their mark in the world, turned around and started a race war with the slavemasters.

Really? You libruls have already forgotten how the New Black Panthers just killed hundreds of elderly white voters with their long black hardened baton?

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

The predictable result of this policy will resemble the results of the 1876 election

A Democratic victory?

Oh crap, Hayes was a Republican. But it was back when the Republicans were liberal and the Democrats hated black people. Or something….

 
 

I guess it’d be rude to point out that the Presidential election most resembling the 1876 awarding of the Presidency to a candidate who probably wasn’t the winner, was, um, you know, like, nine years ago.

 
 

“.:. their long black hardened baton?”

Go on…

 
 

I defy VBen to cite one example in history where a slave race, after having been given their freedom and opportunity to make their mark in the world, turned around and started a race war with the slavemasters.

Are we counting that revolution in Zimbabwe?

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

I defy VBen to cite one example in history where a slave race, after having been given their freedom and opportunity to make their mark in the world, turned around and started a race war with the slavemasters.

Are we counting that revolution in Zimbabwe?

Is your name VBen?

 
 

You libruls have already forgotten how the New Black Panthers just killed hundreds of elderly white voters with their long black hardened baton?

By shoving it down their throats, you should add.

 
 

Is your name VBen?

Touché.

 
 

Steve calls me a fag

I would never call you a fag, fag TinTin!

I was wondering why I signed up for Twitter (it wasn’t just to read the curse-filled musings of one TruculentandUnreliable). I may have to get involved.

 
 

@gocartmozart:

Good gawd! How did you find this Shapiro creature?? He’s still bitching about the uppity darkies empowered by the Evil Reconstruction! Wow. What a fucking relic.

@TruculentandUnreliable:

Why not combine the two and say “aborting him internetically”? Awesome. How long does it take for these thingies to incorporate into the interweb lexicon?

 
 

I’m thinking of following some conservatives now too. Because my blood pressure isn’t high enough.

 
 

Ben Shapiro is an asshole.

http://www.postchronicle.com/commentary/article_212313322.shtml

I don’t knwow. I think Bennie is just misunderstood. Take this for instance:

The moral of this story is simple: Racial violence can only flourish with the approval or apathy of federal, state and local government.

See what I mean?Benjamin is easily misunderstood because he’s so fucking dumb.

 
not defending the rhetoric
 

I defy VBen to cite one example in history where a slave race, after having been given their freedom and opportunity to make their mark in the world, turned around and started a race war with the slavemasters.

Not quite the same, but Imma gonna guess some allusion to Sub-Saharan Africa would follow.

 
 

I’m thinking of following some conservatives now too.

I would, too, but there’s that restraining order …

Or are we talking about just on that Twitterspacebook thingy?

 
 

Twitterspacebook

That’s where Obama writes his race war strategy.

 
 

Is your name VBen Spruiell?
Douche

 
 

“I would, too, but there’s that restraining order …

Or are we talking about just on that Twitterspacebook thingy?”

Twitter. Making it a “spacebook” makes it sound much more fun/interesting/useful than it really is.

 
 

Racial violence can only flourish with the approval or apathy of federal, state and local government.

Um. ALL violence flourishes with the approval or apathy et alia…

 
 

Actor, Ben just took it to heart when his mommy told him he was the smartest and bestest looking home-schooler she’d ever taught.*

*Note that Ben Shapiro is an only child.

 
 

“America’s Next Race War” sounds like the name of a reality show.

 
 

Read my book, fuckers!

http://www.amazon.com/Project-President-Botox-White-House/dp/159555100X

Mom said it’s really really good. 🙂

 
 

Even I didn’t read it.

 
 

Wow, this guy lost his shit quickly, huh? Has he called you a leftist internet thug yet?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

“America’s Next Race War” sounds like the name of a reality show.

Oh, it will be…just you wait!

OH OT BUT: Did you guys know that the Left Behind dudes make books for CHILDREN now? Some lady was looking for them at the library yesterday. It took all I could muster not to leap across the desk and punch her in her bulbous nose.

 
 

Uh, I’d kinda like to hear more about T&U fapfapfapfapping if that’s alright.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Also, too, it’s always weird to me when people come to the library and look for books for their kids. What’s the point of kids getting books from the library when they don’t even get to go there? Are they afraid it’s some weird den of iniquity?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Uh, I’d kinda like to hear more about T&U fapfapfapfapping if that’s alright.

Wait, what?

 
 

it’s some weird den of iniquity
It is a weird den of iniquity. Ideas are dangerous. So is thinking. Children are much harder to control when they think for themselves rather than what they are told to think.

 
 

OH OT BUT: Did you guys know that the Left Behind dudes make books for CHILDREN now? Some lady was looking for them at the library yesterday. It took all I could muster not to leap across the desk and punch her in her bulbous nose.

You should have told her that as per Bush’s no child left behind policy you did not carry such nonsense.

 
 

BTW, if any of you Twits want to Twitter with me, I’m “manipwitch” over there, not “vacuumslayer”.

 
 

Also, too, it’s always weird to me when people come to the library and look for books for their kids. What’s the point of kids getting books from the library when they don’t even get to go there? Are they afraid it’s some weird den of iniquity?
Well, i have walked into some wierd shit in the Boston Public Library, but when i want some good iniquity, it’s not my first stop.

 
 

Sorry T&U, that was Virgin Ben.
I guess, um, I wanted it to be you. Yeah, let’s go with that.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I guess, um, I wanted it to be you. Yeah, let’s go with that.

Hey, you can hear about it, but it’ll be $5.99 a minute.

 
 

but when i want some good iniquity, it’s not my first stop.
Of course not, because…
it’s some weird den of iniquity
it should only be you first stop for weird inequity. Which, I belive, is inequity while Eat It plays on the stereo.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I also liked the mom who redacted the “racy parts” out of Twilight for her 13-year-old daughter. Shit, most girls I knew were reading VC Andrews at that age.

 
 

you can hear about it, but it’ll be $5.99 a minute.

That’s a bargain!

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

I also liked the mom who redacted the “racy parts” out of Twilight for her 13-year-old daughter.

You mean like all the parts where they’re not having sex because vampires, apparently, are all about the abstinence?

 
 

but when i want some good iniquity, it’s not my first stop.
Of course not, because…
it’s some weird den of iniquity
it should only be you first stop for weird inequity. Which, I belive, is inequity while Eat It plays on the stereo.

Christ, i think that’s the best description of the 80s I’ve ever seen.

 
 

vampires, apparently, are all about the abstinence

Not entirely, they do like to Suck.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

That’s a bargain!

It’s my introductory price. I like to reel ’em in with low costs.

You mean like all the parts where they’re not having sex because vampires, apparently, are all about the abstinence?

Yeah, those parts. Although they must have sex at some point in time, because Bella has a vampire fetus that tries to eat her.

I can’t judge too much, because I wouldn’t let my kid read Twilight at all. Not because it’s racy, but because it’s fucking horrible.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

Although they must have sex at some point in time, because Bella has a vampire fetus that tries to eat her.

Godammit SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

(I’m watching the movies because, uh, my wife likes them.)

 
 

Bella has a vampire fetus that tries to eat her.

I have a really crass joke but I’m going to keep it to myself and laugh.

HAhahahah

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Godammit SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

So are you Team Edward, or what?

 
 

I have a really crass joke but I’m going to keep it to myself and laugh.

“…only during her period.”

I’m not afraid to stoop.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I have a really crass joke but I’m going to keep it to myself and laugh.

Yeah, I know, right? I did not know how else to put it, though…

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I’m not afraid to stoop.

This is not a revelation.

 
 

I’m not afraid to stoop.

Wow. I missed this place.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

So are you Team Edward, or what?

Are you kidding me? That Edward’s so…

Oops, I mean, what?

 
 

So this Twilight shit has crested by now, right? I keep seeing people with the “the girl with …” books now instead, so i was hoping.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

HAHAHAHAHAHA! I was just complaining about the heat index here on Twitter and a woman who also lives here said, “I’m so glad I’ll be gone for a week to NYC!” Because NYC NEVER has heat indices of 110 in August…

 
 

Because NYC NEVER has heat indices of 110 in August…

She’s going to be pissed later this week, alls I’m saying.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

So this Twilight shit has crested by now, right? I keep seeing people with the “the girl with …” books now instead, so i was hoping.

Not for 14-year-olds. “The Girl With…” books aren’t much better, as far as I can tell.

 
 

Not for 14-year-olds. “The Girl With…” books aren’t much better, as far as I can tell.

Aren’t the “Girl With…” books adult murder mysteries?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

She’s going to be pissed later this week, alls I’m saying.

I know! I can’t stop laughing. I think we get more humidity here, but you guys are an urban heat island! And while we have ragweed, you have stinky trash.

Oh, and here, you can pretty much avoid the heat other than walking to your air-conditioned car. At least if you’re middle class, which she is.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Aren’t the “Girl With…” books adult murder mysteries?

Yes, I was saying that the Twilight books are still popular with teens/tweens, but adults have probably moved on.

 
 

“The Girl With…” books aren’t much better, as far as I can tell.

I’ve read the first two and liked them. But the only other books I’ve been reading are House of Cards and every Lee Child novel ever written. “Escapist Gold” (not a Glenn Beck commercial).

 
 

Not for 14-year-olds. “The Girl With…” books aren’t much better, as far as I can tell.
Dammit. Yeah I didn’t think they were any better, although I was told the movie was decent. I just want people to stop colonizing my childhood nightmares for their own weird sexless purposes.

 
 

I just want people to stop colonizing my childhood nightmares for their own weird sexless purposes.

I long since moved on from vampires and werewolves to things like flesh eating bacteria to nightmare over.

MRSA at least has the charm of being impossible for Robert Pattinson to portray on screen.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Yeah I didn’t think they were any better, although I was told the movie was decent.

If you like extremely graphic and traumatizing rape scenes filmed in a weirdly sexualized way, then yes, it was decent.

I did NOT know what I was getting into when I saw that movie, and I have to say that I had to shut my eyes for extended periods of time and it still made me cry. And I’m not a wimp when it comes to violence in movies.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I long since moved on from vampires and werewolves to things like flesh eating bacteria to nightmare over.

Yeah, I was never afraid of monsters. Just killer bees, the thinning ozone layer, and falling down wells. Can you tell what era I grew up in?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Oh, and the apocalypse, of course. But what nine-year-old isn’t?

 
 

If you like extremely graphic and traumatizing rape scenes filmed in a weirdly sexualized way, then yes, it was decent.
Oh. Didn’t know that part, I was just told it was a good thriller. Maybe i’ll give it a pass. I have a long enough list of movies that i haven’t had the internal strength to watch yet.

 
 

Speaking of the Corner, I like this post up right now (shortered, of course):

When I went to college thank god there were no chicks and no chick writers, not that I read the books anyway. George Stephanopolous is a booky fag and he likes girls!

 
Marion in Savannah
 

adults have probably moved on.

I caught our nurse practitioner with “Twilight” this morning… At least she didn’t buy the POS, but borrowed it from the library.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Oh. Didn’t know that part, I was just told it was a good thriller. Maybe i’ll give it a pass. I have a long enough list of movies that i haven’t had the internal strength to watch yet.

Yeah, I didn’t really even find it to be that. And I love dumb shit about hackers. The subtitle in some countries was “Men Who Hate Women,” if that tells you anything.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Speaking of the Corner, I like this post up right now (shortered, of course):

He even uses the word “girls”!

Did you know that Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley, and Virginia Woolf were 13-year-olds? It’s true! They even read Tiger Beat!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Willa Cather was more of a Seventeen fan, though.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

Did you know that Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley, and Virginia Woolf were 13-year-olds? It’s true! They even read Tiger Beat!

Pfah. Too much Byron, not enough Yeats

 
 

“Every man in this class has read Plato’s Republic, Oedipus Rex, the Symposium . . .” As he said this, guys all around me were glancing at each other and giggling, no doubt thinking the same thing as me: “Speak for yourself, pal.”

This explains a lot about what passes for critical thinking on the right, Fred Schwarz.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Simon de Beauvoir read Cosmo because she always put out.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

This explains a lot about what passes for critical thinking on the right, Fred Schwarz.

Um, yeah. I went to a shitty public university and half-assed my way through it and I read all of those.

 
 

Too much Byron, not enough Yeats

I don’t think they’d know how to handle a Yeats infection.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

mark f’s shorter is dead-on-balls accurate. Damn.

 
 

I went to a shitty public university and half-assed my way through it and I read all of those.

Which is why the valedictorian was who he was, the salutatorian was Stephanopolous, and poor lil Fred Schwarz was a failed chemist who writes for the world’s shittiest website.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

I don’t think they’d know how to handle a Yeats infection.

Burning and burning in the widening gyre

 
 

I like how the snickering 22 year olds who can’t be bothered to read Plato are “men” but published female authors are “girls” with trivial and naive concerns.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Burning and burning in the widening gyre

*sigh* I love this place…

 
 

Read my book, fuckers!

Michael Barone calls it “a romp through American History.” And if there are two guys who know from romps, it’s Barone & Shapiro.

If you like extremely graphic and traumatizing rape scenes filmed in a weirdly sexualized way, then yes, it was decent.

Yeah, that really cheesed me off (glad I watched it at home and could just fast-forward through). You really don’t need to show the actual rape to morally justify the act of retribution. Like there are people who would normally think rape was OK, so you have to really sell it as one of the bad kinds of rape. WTF.

The book itself’s pretty nasty, but at least it’s sort of making a point — it’s unfortunate that they didn’t keep the original Swedish title, “The Man Who Hated Women”. I’m not sure if it’s sophisticated enough to make the leap from potboiler to Serious Art, but the movie sure as hell isn’t.

 
 

Burning and burning in the widening gyre

Those dudes don’t even know about the First Coming.

 
 

And if there are two guys who know from romps, it’s Barone & Shapiro.

I think you misspelled “rumps”, there.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

You really don’t need to show the actual rape to morally justify the act of retribution.

I didn’t need to see the act of retribution, either. That was fucking traumatizing, too!

 
 

I like how the snickering 22 year olds who can’t be bothered to read Plato are “men” but published female authors are “girls” with trivial and naive concerns.

There is a “how they separate the men from the boys” joke in there somewhere.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

Hey, Schwarz(!) was a chemistry major, just like that cocktail waitress on Big Brother.

 
 

I didn’t need to see the act of retribution, either. That was fucking traumatizing, too!

I’m not gonna disagree with you there. Too bad M. Night Shymalan didn’t direct it, The Last Airbender-style. Have a 5 minute clumsy voiceover explaining the rape/retribution part over some B-roll of a majestic-looking mountain.

 
 

I didn’t need to see the act of retribution, either. That was fucking traumatizing, too!

We live in a society that doesn’t do metaphor well.

 
 

“Ben Shapiro is an independent columnist, and author of […] the bestseller Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth.”

Bestseller, eh?

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #521,764 in Books

Gotta give that one to him…it does have a Bestsellers Ranking. That it’s behind over half a million other books is of no consequence, right?

 
 

We live in a society that doesn’t do metaphor well.

What’s a metaphor?

 
 

T&U and Angry Geometer: Sounds like that is basically Irreversible. Or I Spit On Your Grave, too.

 
 

What’s a metaphor?

For breakfast!

 
 

Irreversible made me uncomfortable from start to finish. It thought it was extremely well-done, though. The back to front format never felt gimmicky to me. I Spit on Your Grave didn’t traumatize me the way I expected to be traumatized.

 
 

Here’s an interesting take on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” which touches on some of the issues discussed here.

 
 

What’s a metaphor?

A tag that provides metadata — usually includes content, http-equiv, name, and another attribute I can’t remember right now …

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

The back to front format never felt gimmicky to me.

That’s exactly what DKW’s mom said.

 
 

Did you guys know that the Left Behind dudes make books for CHILDREN now?

After “The O’Reilly Factor for Kids,” it was only a matter of time.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

After “The O’Reilly Factor for Kids,” it was only a matter of time.

“Sharing is theft.”

 
 

What’s a metaphor?

A thousand gigaphors.

 
 

After “The O’Reilly Factor for Kids,” it was only a matter of time.

Get In The Van with Uncle Bill was really popular too

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

T&U and Angry Geometer: Sounds like that is basically Irreversible. Or I Spit On Your Grave, too.

I haven’t seen either of them. Which is fine with me.

 
 

Wait, the same asshole who sneered that a young woman who died from lack of health care had it coming is complaining that Tintin has wounded his tender fee-fees?

 
 

Someone made a movie about Steve Spruiel. It’s called “The Girl with Zombie Regan Tattoo.” He does not get raped, however he does perpetrate rapes with the help of his friends.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

“The Girl with Zombie Regan Tattoo.”

Well, I *was* going to get those lilies done next, but I just changed my mind.

 
Pupienus Maximus
 

Meanwhile, in other important news, Monkeys hate flying squirrels report monkey annoyance experts.

 
 

Read my book, fuckers!

http://www.amazon.com/Project-President-Botox-White-House/dp/159555100X

Mom said it’s really really good. 🙂

Ye Gods, even the title is awful.

 
 

Someone made a movie about Steve Spruiel.

“Peggy Spew Got Married”? “Leaving Last Vagus”? “The Codfather”?

 
 

Someone made a movie about Steve Spruiel.

“Apopsicle Now”? “The Fountainpen”? “177dreck”? “Honey, I Blew Up The Baby”?

 
Forest Ranger Bob
 

Never met a forest I didn’t like.

 
 

OT, but after reading a lot of reviews and comments on reviews about “Inception” in a failed effort to discover what so many people thought was so “deep” about the movie, I’d say nolan-fanboys are the most singularly vitriolic demographic in the nation. This guy is a total wimp.

 
Typical Conservative
 

Never met a foreigner I didn’t like.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

OT, but after reading a lot of reviews and comments on reviews about “Inception” in a failed effort to discover what so many people thought was so “deep” about the movie, I’d say nolan-fanboys are the most singularly vitriolic demographic in the nation. This guy is a total wimp.

Ha! Inception was as “deep” as The Matrix was “deep”. In other words, it wasn’t “deep” at all. And it basically had the exact same fucking character arc as Momento did…

 
Typical Conservative
 

Excuse me, ‘did’ not ‘didn’t’.

 
 

Memento…great flick. Where the heck is Guy Pearce? Anyone seen him? Love that guy and his amazing cheekbones.

 
 

Never met a foreigner I didn’t like.

Oh no?

 
 

Inception was as “deep” as The Matrix was “deep”

Why does everything have to have some deep meaning? Can’t it just be cool?

I hate the Matrix comparisons too. Just because they were in zero gravity for a bit it’s the new Matrix?

 
 

Ha! Inception was as “deep” as The Matrix was “deep”. In other words, it wasn’t “deep” at all. And it basically had the exact same fucking character arc as Momento did…

Harsh words from T&U. I haven’t seen Inception, but I have seen The Matrix. That was no compliment.

 
 

Never met a foreigner

The Daily Caller’s tagline.

 
 

Where the heck is Guy Pearce? Anyone seen him?

Well, he did make Hurt Locker and The Road, and I think he’s got four films in development or shooting this year. I hear he likes to do a lot of theater and spends most of his time in Australia.

 
Wes F. in Hapeville
 

“A man’s speech should exceed the dullard’s grasp, or what’s a metaphor?” – anon.

WF

 
 

Good to know, actor. I’ve had a thing for him for awhile. He’s got this smoldering intensity thing I really approve of.

 
Federalist LXXXVI
 

TO the people of the internet,

These Times being Strange and sore wond’rous and the current fashions in the area of the coiffure of respectable gentlemen being so woefully difficult to judge as the distance to any star, it does Seem to Seem that the adoption of the masque of Anonymity in order to criticize the chosen hairstyle of An Other be an act of such beastly cowardice as to make even a Tory blush.

And yet upon my word as a gentleman and scholar, three score fortnights ago as I tippled back glasses of malt with a certain bastard peddler’s brat that aforementioned brat (who was observed to prefer wine to malt like a girly man) had plastered his hair back with some sort of Cream or Ointment such that it did cleave unto his scalp like certain Gentlemen of Boston are observed to cleave unto the antediluvian and intolerable reign of an old, mad, blind, dying and despised King, it must be admitted that even yo homey Publius must upon Occasion take up the pen and say unto even his colleagues “Dude, you got some fucked up hair.”

When that aforementioned gentlemen with the gayass haircut hath arrogated unto himself the advantage of penning, what, the last 20 of these motherfucking Federalist Papers then truly it doth grate even more Greatly upon my nerves because what, I want to be remembered as some kind of chump while Hamilton goes down as the great boy genius and gets his face on paper money? Fuck that noise. Get a haircut, Hamilton, you pompous little limpdicked bitch.

Y’r obd’nt s’vn’t,

Publius

PS As my head doth throb in the harsh light of late afternoon Publius would also remind you, gentle readers, when tippling back the glasses at thy pub, remember, “Vine or grain but ne’er the twain.”

 
 

Never met a foreskin I didn’t snip.

 
 

The girl who snipped the foreskins. A cutting edge movie.

 
 

The girl who snipped the foreskins...and the foreskins who loved her?

 
 

What’s a metaforeskin?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Why does everything have to have some deep meaning? Can’t it just be cool?

I don’t care if everything has a deep meaning or not…it just annoys me when people act like something does when it really doesn’t.

I hate the Matrix comparisons too. Just because they were in zero gravity for a bit it’s the new Matrix?

I actually think it was better than The Matrix. It was certainly prettier. But it’s got that same pseudo-intellectual “OMG I’M GONNA FUCK WITH YOUR MIND” shit that really isn’t all that mind-fucky, IMHO. I think Momento was better, and more of a mindfuck. I’m also kind of sick of dead wives who are ciphers aside from the way their deaths torment their husbands.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Also, too, I’m a snobby bitch, so don’t take me too seriously.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Federalist LXXXVI said,
August 2, 2010 at 23:10

*despairs of the inability to write anything this awesome EVER*

 
 

What’s a metaforeskin?

Wasn’t that one of the Power Rangers?

 
 

What gets me is the number of fanboys saying that it doesn’t matter whether or not the last scene was real or a dream, because the dream is just as real. Solipsism appears to be on the upswing and is being taken to a dizzying new low. I liked the movie, thought it was delicious visually, but don’t think it either deep or a masterpiece. “Memento” was also entertaining, but I can’t take anything from it but that the main character was stupid to think that because the material world exists outside his awareness that he was capable of the reasoning and judgment necessary to investigate the murder of his wife. A lot of the nolan fanboys look to me to be the same victims of dizzy deep-ities. Maybe they’re just young.

 
 

What’s a metaforeskin?

A certain arc of a circumscribed penis?

 
 

Since we’re a-discussin’ it…

[SAHpoiler alert already!]

I thought Inception was cool. Not deep. Just cool. And for the last scene to be an indication that it was a dream would render the entire movie meaningless. Ooooh, you can’t tell if a fast one was pulled on you and a bunch of stuff didn’t.really.happen. Oh, f*&(off! It was a cool mixture of multiple levels of dreamscape and reality and dude got to go home and see his kids’ faces again. The end. Nothing more to see. Next please.

Amiright?

 
 

Google tells me . . .

“Dear Fellow Tight Foreskin Sufferer,”

“My name is John Rooney and if you will allow me just a few minutes of your time I will share with you a secret that the medical profession would prefer you not to know – How you can cure your tight foreskin or phimosis in just 5 minutes a day without the pain and trauma of circumcision!”
http://www.cureyourtightforeskin.com/?hop=31702

 
 

I should have said PENIS!

 
 

But did you think it was genius? Did you think that it was the best movie ever? Did you think it was so brilliant that anyone who didn’t get how marvellously brilliant it was is too stupid to “get” the “it” that no one, as far as I can tell, has explained except for the “movie as a metaphor for making movies” schtick? Because these fan-boys went ballistic over any criticism at all, no matter how good the overall review was.

I don’t think the movie has enough there there to sustain a philosophical argument, I’m just struck by the ardor and vitriol of the fan-boys—it’s the most over-the-top character assassination I’ve seen outside of the tea party and it’s on a topic that is really of little consequence.

My favorite visuals were the ones during the tutoring session. I wish I could have been stoned for that, mostly because I wish I could be stoned though.

 
 

From the cureyourtight foreskin ad

“We men are not very good about discussing our bodies – and in particular our penises. ”

Reminds me of a conversation in which someone said, “We were all sitting around chewing the fat about our penises…”

 
 

Here’s an interesting take on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” which touches on some of the issues discussed here.

Ah. Good take that is. I was told by a friend to check it out and have just started it but already feel that I have to push myself forward into each new chapter. Wooden story telling, and yes, stereotypical characters. I was hoping it would pick up quickly.

With this review in hand, I believe I will abandon it altogether.

Thanks, VS.

 
 

Oh, and I am Captain Clueless (Lit Division).

Obviously.

 
 

YW, Looch. I was actually planning on giving the books a try before I read that review.

 
 

Damn, this thread is all over the place, not sure where I should jump in, so I’ll just throw out my own thing here. WTF is up with every goddamned book being titled “The So-and-So’s Wife” or “The So-and-So’s Daughter”? The Time-Traveller’s Wife, The Beekeeper’s Daughter, and on and on and on. Has the novel format entirely devolved into a gynocracy?

 
 

Hey, since things are off-topic, a little help, y’all. I’m going to Montpelier, Vermont, next week to visit friends and we’re going to take a day-trip to Montreal. Anyone got any suggestions of things to see and/or do?

 
 

“The Daughter of the Tight Foreskin Sufferer”

Just trying to tie the thread together.

 
 

Saw TGWTDT movie (review: meh), read the second book because I was trapped in an airport w/o reading matter (review: worse than meh), have moved on to greener pastures: Clarence Darrow’s memoirs.

 
 

. Has the novel format entirely devolved into a gynocracy?

As long as the bearings hold out, you’re never off course.

 
 

A lot of the books on the top 100 are about vampires and it looks like half of those are about a cocktail waitress named Sookie. Anyone have recommendations for very good contemporary novels? I’m finally getting bored with non-fiction.

 
 

http://www.infocirc.org/gazette.htm
The unkindest cut of all?
Circumcision No Longer a Popular Choice
by David Johnston

Offices in Montreal. Does that help Matt T?

 
 

“This explains a lot about what passes for critical thinking on the right, Fred Schwarz.”

and this:

“Now it’s coeducational and they’ve changed the curriculum to include more books written by girls, so there is probably less hubris and more about sharing and caring and building consensus.”

He says this like its a bad thing. Why do I always get the feeling that these fuckers are pining for the 1750’s..

 
 

have moved on to greener pastures: Clarence Darrow’s memoirs.

Let me know what you think of those, if you don’t mind derailing a future thread. I read them when I was a kid, and even then I was disappointed. His accounts of the famous trials of his career are slapdash and lacking in detail, especially the Monkey Trial. He was a great lawyer, but he should have used a ghostwriter.

 
 

For given definitions of “contemporary”…

I recently finished a book called Roman Blood by Steve Saylor. It’s a murder mystery that takes place during the reign of Roman emperor Sulla, first century B.C. It’s not only a pretty decent whodunit and howcatchem, but it’s also got some nifty factoids about life in Rome in that era. I’ve just started Tim Powers’ The Anibus Gates and it promises to be pretty decent. I really liked the other book of his I read, On Stranger Tides, which featured zombies, voodoo and pirates and you can’t be that.

I’ve also been leafing through House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, and it promises to be a meaty Pynchon-esque sort of read. Note: all of these books are at least ten years old. I don’t really pay attention to modern culture, so take it with a grain of salt. None, however, feature either vampires or waitresses named “Sookie”.

 
The Kid from Kounty Meath
 

@ T&U: Unless you count “Following” (which a lot of people don’t), Al Pacino in “Insomnia” is the only Christopher Nolan protagonist without a wife/girlfriend, and in all the rest, said woman is either dead or about to die. Something to share with the class, he maybe haz wun?

 
The Kid from Kounty Meath
 

Also, @wiley: I’m a total Dennis Lehane junkie. I’ve really liked all the movies they’ve based on his work (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island) and their respective books, but I think his best is probably the yet-unfilmed Darkness, Take My Hand.
Oh, and most everything by James Ellroy is fantastic (particularly the epic-ass trilogy he just wrapped last year, American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and Blood’s a Rover. He’s probably the only wingnut novelist I’ve ever read whose wingnuttery actually kind of makes his writing better.

 
 

TruculentandUnreliable said,

August 2, 2010 at 19:37

Don’t dent the wall!

Hey, my head’s not that hard!

Hee hee. Mine is.

 
The Kid from Kounty Meath
 

FYWP for not closing my parentheses for me. I shouldn’t HAVE to ask.

 
 

Why do I always get the feeling that these fuckers are pining for the 1750?s..

**shoots hand in air, waves frantically**

OH OH OH I KNOW! I KNOW!

 
 

‘E’s pining for the Henry Fjords.

 
 

gocart,

I don’t think so. I’m not sure I have the extra skin to spare, one way or another.

Also, I need something to do besides eat ice cream, smoke pot, and play with my friend’s dogs. Actually, now that I think about it, no I don’t.

 
 

vacuumslayer said,

August 2, 2010 at 23:01

Never met a foreigner I didn’t like.

Oh no?

NOT cool. not.

 
 

Dead wife, and perhaps a theme developing for killing the same person repeatedly. Not familiar with “Following”.

Haven’t read Pynchon at all. The most contemporary authors I’ve read are Vonnegut and Heller (if you don’t count the Kinsey Milhone murder mysteries) which makes me feel like a fuddy-duddy because they’re way more than just five minutes ago.

 
 

Let me know what you think of those, if you don’t mind derailing a future thread. I read them when I was a kid, and even then I was disappointed. His accounts of the famous trials of his career are slapdash and lacking in detail, especially the Monkey Trial. He was a great lawyer, but he should have used a ghostwriter.

Lawyers in general, IMO aren’t great writers. He has moments of genius describing the wealthy versus the common man embedded in the somewhat slap-dash style, and I’m reading more for historical interest.

Matt – Saylor’s whole series is good stuff.

 
The Kid from Kounty Meath
 

Oh, and such as, also: Don Winslow’s “The Power of the Dog” is pretty much four hundred pages of “the War on Drugs is bullshit and here’s how” (albeit fiction), but it’s still hugely exciting and well-written. It’s kind of like “Traffic: The Book”, only with 100% less Catherine Zeta-Jones.

 
 

Inre: Pynchon I really liked Gravity’s Rainbow, but if I ever meet Thomas Pynchon – which is a longshot, of course – I’m going to punch him in the side of the head over Against The Day. Man, what a wank.

 
 

Can we maybe just replace all these tiresome and unsatisfactory narrative experiments in celluloid, electrons, and wood pulp with Tintin slashfic? ‘Cause that’s what I’d vote for. You know, you can never get enough Tintin slashfic.

 
 

Well, he did make Hurt Locker and The Road

He made those PoS, I’ll have to reassess….. I never made it to the end of either, so I never saw the credits. The latter was absolute bollocks, on so many levels, poor Viggo looked constantly embarrassed.

 
 

N_B,

I think I will explore more. It sort of reminded me of Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael series. Good mysteries with historical info dolloped on top. I love shit like that.

 
 

Dennis Lehane looks interesting, Kid. I’m thinking I should get serious about a Kindle now because I want to jettison most of what I own and not add to the pile. I want a portable life. Moving books is a bitch.

 
 

With whom do we slash Tintin?

 
The Kid from Kounty Meath
 

I think Pearce’s latest is “Animal Kingdom”, which is some manner of Australian mob drama.
(I’ve heard good things, but I doubt I’ll get to see it, since I live in a town so uncultured that we only have a single two-screen theater that plays any non-mainstream stuff. A few years ago, I swear to God, the only Best Picture nominee that played anywhere other than this one place was “Juno”).

 
 

Here’s an interesting take on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” which touches on some of the issues discussed here.

Thanks for that, was given the book the other day, but cant get into to it at all, with the torturous, wooden prose.

Inre: Pynchon I really liked Gravity’s Rainbow, but if I ever meet Thomas Pynchon – which is a longshot, of course – I’m going to punch him in the side of the head over Against The Day. Man, what a wank.

I’m with you there, I’ve read most of his other stuff (“The Crying of Lot 49” being my favorite book evar), but “Against The Day” sucks. He must have been on acid, or something when he wrote that. Man, would even read Cormac ‘look at me, mum’ McCarthy over that nonsense.

 
 

wiley – I’m reading John Irving’s Last Night in Twisted River right now. You really can’t go wrong with Irving; he’s such a great storyteller. And even though you may be getting burned out on nonfiction, that Good Germs, Bad Germs book by Jessica Snyder Sachs was really fascinating – I wrote a bit about it a few weeks back at my place. Or if you’re looking for something fun, you might want to check out Mario Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, or for something funny AND kinky without being smutty, Vargas Llosa’s In Praise of the Stepmother and The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto.

 
 

Anyone have recommendations for very good contemporary novels? I’m finally getting bored with non-fiction.

Jasper Fforde is imaginative, entertaining and IMO, intelligent. YMMV.

 
 

And, yes, Jasper does do a bit o’ pining…

 
 

while we’re on the subject of books, any of you embraced the Kindle revolution, am debating it myself, but dont know if I want to have yet another electronic gizmo to fuck up my life when lose the charging cord?

 
 

I’m going to punch him in the side of the head over Against The Day. Man, what a wank
As a personal favor, I’m going to ask you not to punch him. Even if it was a letdown, his body of work is worth an occasional dud. Tell you what, let’s find Clive Cussler and show him what his canon is worth.

 
 

Looch – have you read The Fourth Bear? Funny stuff.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

Has the novel format entirely devolved into a gynocracy?

Well, kind of. Women make up at least 60% of novel buyers. It would not be a surprise to find that books for women have become a majority of what you see in the bookstore.

Regarding the linked article at the Corner:

– “more books by girls about feelings”. Jesus wept. Yeah, dickweed, the only things women write about are shoes, shopping and sex. It’s Bridget Jones all the way down.

– Holy crap, Columbia was all male until 1983?

 
 

lobbey – I think I can pretty safely say I’ll never embrace Kindle. I like holding a book and turning pages. And I just don’t think I’d ever be able to get into a really comfortable reading posture with a Kindle.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

I defy VBen to cite one example in history where a slave race, after having been given their freedom and opportunity to make their mark in the world, turned around and started a race war with the slavemasters.

Oh, and this is from way up, but…I believe things in Haiti got unpleasant for the former masters after the slave revolt of Toussaint l’Ouverture. Then again, things in France, only a few years earlier, got even more unpleasant for the former masters after the not-quite-slave revolt of Robespierre.

There’s a common element there, but it sure as hell isn’t race.

 
 

Looch – have you read The Fourth Bear? Funny stuff.

Read them all, I believe.

Shades of Grey

Much more complex and imbued with social commentary. Not heavy-handed in that regard.

I loved SoG and can’t wait for the next two installments of the trilogy. I was sad when I finished it because I had so looked forward to picking it up each evening.

Again, YMMV.

 
 

Lurking Canadian – see, that’s a problem, because the authors I like most are male. I think a lot of the stuff written by women is just TOO heavy on the feelings, at least for my taste. The men seem to do a better job of moving a story along – IN GENERAL. I read plenty of novels by female authors, but I can’t think of one of them in my top 5 favorite writers…maybe not even in the top 10.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

I don’t think authorship is skewed nearly as heavily as readership. It wouldn’t surprise me, given the nature of the society in which we live, that most novel writers are men, even if most novel readers are women.

As to what they write about…well, that’s genre dependent. Mary Gentle doesn’t care about your feelings, except when she wants you to throw up, to take just one example.

 
 

Since I’m laid off and nothing’s on the table (yet..!), I’m going to try to start Ulysses. Cuz I’m like that. And Paris Vendetta isn’t out in paperback yet (I don’t think) and I’m all caught up on my Lee Child and John Sanford.

 
 

I’m probably going to buy a kindle before the month is out so I have to remember all these reading recommendations are on the thread about that guy tweeting to defend his hair’s honor.

Lobbey, my s.o. has researched kindles for me and he recommends one that has native PDF support, so I can download anything from my kindle onto my computer and vice versa. It also charges with a usb, and we have plenty of those lying around. It’s still probably a couple of hundred, and it probably won’t last more than three years, but my desire for one seems to be lasting and getting one will reduce my desire to throw out everything I own in a fit of pique, or burn down the house.

 
 

It all makes sense, once you’ve earned it–but having earned it you don’t want to explain it anymore so what’s left but rotted bridges, rusted-to-shit clockworks and vices torn? I mean–perambulate the modern scene, proscribe circle wherever you choose and pantomime your own best notion of an Archimedian melodrama but don’t forget Farina, the Bodine clan, undisturbed vegetated Grail-legend graves of dead logicians and the spectre who finally haunted Roky Erickson straight out of his mind.

Oh and any chump who thinks he’s going to clock me in my fucking face mark this down (this mark down)–I’ve taken Michiko Kakutani’s biggest handbag (a Coach knockoff she bought in Little Zembla) upside the face and I’m still standing.

 
 

Lurking–The Haitian slaves weren’t given their freedom. They took it. There’s a big difference.

Slaves in the Caribbean islands belonging to the British Empire were liberated by Britain in 1833, peacefully. The same for France and the Antilles in 1848. When you give people their freedom, they generally tend not to kill you for it. If they have to kill some of your kind to get it, sometimes it’s not so easy to get them to stop.

 
 

Anyone have recommendations for very good contemporary novels?

Iain Banks. Under that name for “ordinary” fiction and Iain M. Banks if you like sci-fi.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

Bitter Scribe, sorry. I totally misread the original quote and missed the word “given”.

 
 

The fact is, have you read The Da Vinci Code? That shit is deep.

 
 

The fact is, have you read The Da Vinci Code?

I read the newspaper while watching the movie. Does that count?

 
 

Not as deep as the Animaniacs painting the Sistine Chapel white—that’s brilliant. That’s inspired. That’s art.

 
 

Tell you what, let’s find Clive Cussler and show him what his canon is worth.

or David Baldacci

 
 

The fact is, have you read The Da Vinci Code? That shit is deep.

I read it when Umberto Eco wrote it first and probably much, much better.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

The Da Vinci Code is closer to Holy Blood and Holy Grail (in the sense of “plagiarizes from”) than it is to Foucault’s Pendulum.

Of course, Eco could write circles around all of them while sleeping off a three day bender, so your point is still valid.

 
 

lobbey – I think I can pretty safely say I’ll never embrace Kindle. I like holding a book and turning pages. And I just don’t think I’d ever be able to get into a really comfortable reading posture with a Kindle.

yes, I’m kind of the same, but I’m now traveling a lot, and have to do it lightweight, and books are a bit of a luxury. I was reduced to David Baldicci on this last trip, as it was the only English book in the guesthouse I was in. Kindle would kind of relieve me of that.

Jennifer, wrt, female authors, I love Margaret Atwood’s stuff, particularly the more recent novels.

Other recommendations would be Douglas Coupland and Paul Auster, although for my pulp fiction reads, I would recommend a Scottish author, Christopher Brookmyre. Kind of like Iain Banks before he got all full of himself.

 
 

Paul Auster

*Spoiler warning* Do not read if you have any depressive tendencies.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

T&U: Unless you count “Following” (which a lot of people don’t), Al Pacino in “Insomnia” is the only Christopher Nolan protagonist without a wife/girlfriend, and in all the rest, said woman is either dead or about to die. Something to share with the class, he maybe haz wun?

Um, yeah. And maybe this isn’t fair, but I’m pretty fucking sick of the whole substitution of “my wife/girlfriend is dead/dying” thing in movies for, you know, an actual character. I see the same thing with female characters, but instead of their partners, it’s usually their children…

Anyway, that’s one of the reasons I wasn’t a huge fan of the story in Shutter Island, though I do think that the visuals and the music were fan-fucking-tastic.

 
 

Patricia Highsmith is my homegirl.

 
 

Books I am reading: “Beyond Belief” by Elain Pagels and Mind, Language and Society” by John Searle. Haven’t read fiction in a long time but the last was “Blindsight” by Peter Watts. His ideas are interesting but his writing is not.

I saw “Inception” and I enjoyed it but I think “The Cell” had a better conception of what being in someone else’s inner life would be like. It was so militaristic. I liked the ending to Inception mostly because it was left ambiguous and I prefer to have some things left up to me and for films to not be quite so didactic.

As far as “depth” in movies I’d say the master is still Hitchcock with David Lynch a close second. Though von Trier’s “Antichrist” is still fucking with my head.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I’m a little behind the curve when it comes to contemporary stuff, so if you’re all like, “No shit, EVERYBODY’S read that,” please don’t be too mean.

One author I will always recommend when contemporary literature comes up: Donna Tartt, Donna Tartt, Donna fucking Tartt. A Secret History is about 15 years old, but it’s fucking meticulous and fantastic and one of my favorite books of all time. The Little Friend is this weird almost-but-not-quite modern Southern Gothic novel. She’s one of those authors who spends years and years on a novel, and you can tell. As I said, she’s meticulous, but I mean that in a good way.

Um, Middlesex, The Poisonwood Bible, anything by Ishiguro, Saramango’s The Cave and Blindness (Blindness was reeeeeallyyyyy good, and I actually didn’t think the movie was that horrible). I loved The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and need to pick up some more Murakami.

Am I the only person in the world who found that, other than The Road, Cormac McCarthy’s books are basically unreadable? Am I also the only person in the world who can’t stand Ian McEwan? I found Saturday to be fucking obnoxious and wanky as hell.

 
 

Anyone have recommendations for very good contemporary novels? I’m finally getting bored with non-fiction.

I’m part way through ‘Carter Beats the Devil’. So far so good.

Matt T:

I recently finished a book called Roman Blood by Steve Saylor…Good mysteries with historical info dolloped on top. I love shit like that.

Saylor is excellent.

Check out Michael Pearce (early 20th century Egypt) or Robert van Gulik (medieval China). Or try Alan Furst for some choice murky, morally ambiguous WWII-era intrigue – ‘The Polish Officer’ or ‘Night Soldiers’ are both fine.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

*Spoiler warning* Do not read if you have any depressive tendencies.

Oh, snap. Maybe I need to take him off my list…

 
 

Am I also the only person in the world who can’t stand Ian McEwan? I found Saturday to be fucking obnoxious and wanky as hell.

He lost me with “Atonement,” which put me into a murderous rage that lasted a week. His older stuff though – say, The Comfort of Strangers or The Innocent – is good.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

He lost me with “Atonement,” which put me into a murderous rage that lasted a week. His older stuff though – say, The Comfort of Strangers or The Innocent – is good.

I started Atonement a couple of times and couldn’t even get into it…Saturday threw me into a murderous rage, but more because I was pissed that it was even published and that people actually thought it was good. Ugh.

I’ll check out his earlier stuff eventually.

 
 

He lost me with “Atonement,” which put me into a murderous rage that lasted a week. His older stuff though – say, The Comfort of Strangers or The Innocent – is good.

I started Atonement a couple of times and couldn’t even get into it

My rage concerned his plot ending. No trick elsewhere – and I include O.Henry and The Matrix – was ever pulled from so far up the intestinal tract.

 
 

I love Donna Tartt, who I found through Bret Easton Ellis (who always reminds me of Borges’ famous quip “Each book makes us long for his previous book.”).

Couldn’t stomach Blood Meridian, though I tried. Owen Wilson’s character in The Royal Tenenbaums, btw, is, according to Anderson, “an amalgam of the worst qualities of Cormac McCarthy with Jay McIerney.”

Also, to Tigris, never got into Eco though I appreciate his elegant mind. Something about his prose style rubs me wrong–I read him as cloying and tres Sensitive Euroman-nish.

My own recommendations for living authors are Chabon, older Murakami (Hardboiled Wonderland in particular), James Ellroy (if you like your prose hardboiled, priapic, and posturing), and Kaz Ishiguro. Joan Didion’s best work is long behind her but her older work is also worth reading and she does count as “alive.”

David Foster Wallace remains my sort of literary God. Nabokov and Pynchon too. Delilo too. Will Self but not Martin Amis. Terry Southern absolutely. It occurs to me that more/less half of these authors are alive, half are dead but I’m rattled by a rush.

 
 

Ursula K. Le Guin – everything she wrote, and speaking of which:

Tales from Earthsea by Gor? Miyazaki, Hayao’s son is being released in the US by Disney.

The Lathe of Heaven The entire 1980 PBS video on Google. Very good.

“Clarity is to be preferred.”

 
 

As far as “depth” in movies…

‘Bambi Meets Godzilla’ says all that needs to be said. Kubrick, Fellini, Kurosawa – they only wish that they could’ve created something like that.

 
The Kid from Kounty Meath
 

Oh, and I can’t believe I didn’t mention her earlier: Sarah Vowell mostly writes nonfiction, but it’s just as entertaining and distinctive as most fiction.

 
 

Saturday was one of a series of more or less vaguely 9-11 books that came out nearly at the same time, including Falling Man and Dead Air. All were worse than average efforts for their respective authors.

 
 

Terry Southern absolutely.

Yes. I laugh to the point of breathlessness with him.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Couldn’t stomach Blood Meridian, though I tried. Owen Wilson’s character in The Royal Tenenbaums, btw, is, according to Anderson, “an amalgam of the worst qualities of Cormac McCarthy with Jay McIerney.”

Ha! I did not know that. Awesome.

 
 

Maybe some Atwood. I don’t know. I read “Cat’s Eye” and though a lot in it stuck with me—-like the best description of the meanness of girls I’ve ever read and the relationship between the painter and her paintings—she would sometimes spend so much time describing every little bit of detail in a scene that I almost hated her for it. I do believe I threw that book across a room once and considered stomping on it.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Oh, and I can’t believe I didn’t mention her earlier: Sarah Vowell mostly writes nonfiction, but it’s just as entertaining and distinctive as most fiction.

I love Sarah Vowell. She’s my new David Sedaris, whom I still love, but is starting to feel a little…stale(?) to me.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Oh, and John Hodgman’s More Information Than You Require had me laughing hysterically quite often, though I do think it got a little to precious at times.

 
 

I like books and movies that are good. I don’t like books and movies that are bad.

 
 

I like books and movies that are good. I don’t like books and movies that are bad.

I disagree.

 
 

I see pilchard is one of those “intellectuals” that thinks a movie has to be “good” for him to like it.

 
 

I liked the movie version of “Atonement.” Any movie that stars Keira Knightley without Johnny Depp has a big head start with me.

 
"Scarface" fans
 

pilchard, you are COMPLETELY missing the point.

 
 

I liked the movie version of “Atonement.”

Well made, well acted. Same insane-making plot as the book.

 
 

Conservative:
Books and movies that tell me how wonderful I am and that stroke my ego are good.

Liberal:
Books and movies that tell me how awful I am and that deflate my ego are good.

 
 

I can’t remember the last time I really got sucked into a story. I finally just gave up and am currently reading “The Mists of Avalon” for the third time. *sigh*

 
 

I can’t remember the last time I really got sucked into a story.

Pr0n is three aisles over, behind the curtain.

 
 

I don’t like books and movies that are bad.

I dunno, some hydroponic bud and “Megashark vs. Giant Octopus” can provide lots of lulz.

 
 

I just read “Heart of Darkness” for the first time on gutenberg and got sucked into the story. Of course, in the story there is a guy telling the story so it’s real story-tellingey, and I wasn’t aware that it was a novella, so suddenly the story was over, but it was a good story that I got sucked into.

 
 

Someone was watching SyFy tonight.

 
 

“Pr0n is three aisles over, behind the curtain.”

The Red curtain. There is a dwarf, a giant and a cow. I know my cow is not pretty, but she is pretty to me.

 
 


N__B said,
August 3, 2010 at 3:54

I can’t remember the last time I really got sucked into a story.

Pr0n is three aisles over, behind the curtain.

I know, I know. But but I really want to get lost in a non-jizz filled world.

 
 

But but I really want to get lost in a non-jizz filled world.

Not current fiction, but vastly under-read: Dashiell Hammett. The Glass Key is, IMO, the best American novel of the 20th century and The Maltese Falcon is not far behind. (And as much as I like John Huston, he left a critical part of the book out of his movie.)

 
 

I’m gonna look that up on Amazon.

 
 

Well made, well acted. Same insane-making plot as the book.

The plot of “Atonement” didn’t make me insane, exactly. It made me marvel, for about the 483th time, at the arbitrariness and complete insanity of the British class system.

 
 

But but I really want to get lost in a non-jizz filled world. (imagine this in italics)

That narrows it down.

Dashiell Hammet is a kick in the butt. I found a collection of his stories in a book lying around a v.a. waiting area, and since I had about six hours of waiting time it was one of my favorite finds ever. Having onced asked “What is the Maltese Falcon,” and feeling dumbfounded by the answer that there is no Maltese Falcon, the story made me laugh. All the stories made me laugh. His style is kooky.

 
 

N_B, your recommendation got me thinking: “Rebecca” is one of my favorite movies, yet I’ve never read the book! I’m ordering it this instant.

 
 

The plot of “Atonement” didn’t make me insane, exactly.

SPOILER WARNING FOR EVERYONE WHO’S NOT BITTER AND NOT A SCRIBE.

.

.

.

She literally destroyed two lives. If she hadn’t lied in the first place or had owned up to being “confused” when questioned, her sister and her sister’s lover would not have died the miserable deaths that they did and might well have still been alive…and fictionalizing their lives to reduce her own culpability, pretending that they didn’t die miserable deaths and lived happily ever after, is her atonement? Really? She reveals a small piece of the truth (her lying) to the public in a novel 50 years after the fact, but only reveals the full truth in a TV interview that will reach far fewer people than her fiction and that’s atonement? I have rarely hated a fictional character as much as I hate her and I hate McEwan for creating her.

.

.

.

 
 

I dunno, some hydroponic bud and “Megashark vs. Giant Octopus” can provide lots of lulz.

Even without herbal enhancement I loves me some bad sci-fi, esp 50s-60s.

 
 

For interesting plot movements…for thrillers, anyway…and some astonishing historical stuff, try Steve Berry. I’ve read them all and am waiting for Paris Vendetta to go paper. It’s maybe somewhat fluffy in places as they are pulp spy thrillers, but all the historical tie-in stuff is pretty cool. Library of Alexandria, three secrets, life in the Vatican…and more.

 
 

As for deeper stuff, you can always find an English translation of Don Quixote at the library. Oh that Dulcinea…

 
 

As for deeper stuff, you can always find an English translation of Don Quixote at the library. Oh that Dulcinea…

I once multimediaed by listening to the Broadway cast album of Man of La Mancha while reading DQ.

 
The Kid from Kounty Meath
 

@N__B: Maybe you can get some catharsis by watching the movie version of “The Lovely Bones” and pretending they’re the same character. Although from what I read, watching that would just transfer your hatred to Peter Jackson.

 
 

Maybe you can get some catharsis by watching the movie version of “The Lovely Bones” and pretending they’re the same character.

I found the book to be cloying and boring. Skipped the flick.

 
 

“The Lovely Bones”. Want my money back.

 
The Kid from Kounty Meath
 

I didn’t bother seeing it based on the bad reviews, but I will say I was fairly disturbed by how many reviewers seemed to hate it mostly because she wasn’t raped in the movie version.

 
 

I hated Anna Karenina. I couldn’t wait for that miserable bitch to throw herself in front of a train. I’m sorry for her iron deficiency or what the fuck ever it was, but I think Tolstoy failed to develop his main character in that one. It felt like he was stalking her with sad eyes and no particular insight into her character.

 
 

Didn’t see the film, just disliked the book.

 
 

I will say I was fairly disturbed by how many reviewers seemed to hate it mostly because she wasn’t raped in the movie version.

Huh. I didn’t read the reviews because I knew I wasn’t going to see it. That’s some fucked-up shit.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Yeah, had no interest in the book or the movie. A LOT of people in my teen literature course liked it, though a lot of them also thought this was a good book. Fucking horrifying.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I hated Anna Karenina. I couldn’t wait for that miserable bitch to throw herself in front of a train. I’m sorry for her iron deficiency or what the fuck ever it was, but I think Tolstoy failed to develop his main character in that one. It felt like he was stalking her with sad eyes and no particular insight into her character.

I don’t know if you’re serious or not, but either way, I loled.

And, yeah, well, you know, I think that’s a problem with a lot of male authors who write female main characters.

 
 

a lot of them also thought this was a good book.

From the title, I thought we were talking about shamblers. Then I made the mistake of reading the synopsis. What the hell?

 
 

I think that’s a problem with a lot of male authors who write female main characters.

Men understand women better than women do because we spend more time thinking about breasts.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

From the title, I thought we were talking about shamblers. Then I made the mistake of reading the synopsis. What the hell?

I know, right??? I did NOT read it. It makes Push look like a fucking walk in the park.

That’s not even the worst one, I think. I remember reading a review that discussed an incredibly explicit and disturbing sexual abuse scene, and I was like, “WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK ARE THESE KIDS READING???” Twilight’s not so bad after you learn about these books.

 
 

Don Quixote is on gutenberg.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Men understand women better than women do because we spend more time thinking about breasts.

I dunno, dude. I think about breasts an awful lot.

 
 

Men understand women better than women do because we spend more time thinking about breasts.

I dunno, dude. I think about breasts an awful lot.

I’m speaking on average (of my observations) and most women suspect but don’t really get how much of men’s brains is composed of porn. While in Chicago I saw a store called “Nordstrom Rack” and…well, you get the idea.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

While in Chicago I saw a store called “Nordstrom Rack” and…well, you get the idea.

Ha! Okay, yeah, I’m not that bad…

 
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
 

300th?

 
 

300.

Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist said,

August 3, 2010 at 4:46 (kill)

300th?

Needs more homoeroticism.

 
 

Which reminds me—I am not one to heckle at the theater, but during some preview I saw recently I shouted out, “Give the man a microphone!” What is with these shouty men in leather body armor in trailers? Are they all deaf from the bow fire?

 
 

shouty men in leather body armor in trailers

They got kicked out of their condos and trailers were the only option.

 
 

They got kicked out of their condos and trailers were the only option.

That’s what they get for bellowing like that. I got some new neighbors who look to be on their way out for that very reason. This is a quiet neighborhood.

 
 

Too quiet. I fear shamblers.

 
 

I’m already planning to be a big fan of Inception because, whatever its other faults may be, it’s a chance to see Tommy Solomon all grown up with a slick new hairstyle.

 
 

Someone mentioned Dashiell Hammett. The Thin Man, I think, is easily his most accessible and enjoyable work. I also dig me some Raymond Chandler, but unless you really dig that hard-boiled style, a little of him goes a long way. I recently read The Road, and while I liked it, I thought it’d made for a better short story. I second Ursula K. LeGuin, and I’ve recently discovered her stuff. I like Umberto Eco, as well, though I preferred The Name of The Rose. A muder mystery interspread with historical facts about 12th century monastic life and scholasticism, so it’s like porn for me.

Also, I’m a big fan of Graham Greene and Phillip K. Dick, but both are depressing as hell so I never know how I feel about recommending their stuff. And up yours, Pynchon. I’ve bitched out Dave Marsh, I ain’t afeard of you.

 
 

it’s a chance to see Tommy Solomon all grown up with a slick new hairstyle.

First episode of 3RFTS: Sally Solomon sez “Is anyone else sweating under their breasts?” See, T&U, SEE?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I’m already planning to be a big fan of Inception because, whatever its other faults may be, it’s a chance to see Tommy Solomon all grown up with a slick new hairstyle.

I know, I was all like, “Awww, he’s all growed up!”

Now that I check his IMDB, though, I see that he’s only a little younger than I am. Some people just have baby faces, I guess.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Also, I’m a big fan of Graham Greene and Phillip K. Dick, but both are depressing as hell so I never know how I feel about recommending their stuff.

Me, too, although I do get annoyed with PKD’s Mary Sue-ism quite a bit.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

First episode of 3RFTS: Sally Solomon sez “Is anyone else sweating under their breasts?” See, T&U, SEE?

How do I know that you’re not just obsessed with John Lithgow?

And sweating under the breasts sucks. Very uncomfortable.

 
 

The synopsis for Living Dead Girl reads like a gender-switch on “I know my first name is Steven” about the Stainers. Same deal. Boy growing older and told to find the next one for the predator/abuser Parnell. And it was true! It was so bad, in fact, that Steven’s (don’t remember if it was his real name) brother Cory (real name) Stainer went on a killing spree in Yosemite. So kudos to the author for taking a real story, probably acted out way too many times, sensationalized in a TV movie and then doing a twist – this time it’s girls! I mean, really?

 
Shell Goddamnit
 

Where the heck is Guy Pearce? Anyone seen him? Love that guy and his amazing cheekbones.

Guy Pearce’s cheekbones haven’t aged all that well. Guy’s doin okay though.

 
 

How do I know that you’re not just obsessed with John Lithgow?

Ever since “Blow Out”…

And sweating under the breasts sucks. Very uncomfortable.

Isn’t grooming of that type Mr. T&U’s job?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Isn’t grooming of that type Mr. T&U’s job?

The man does love soapy boobs.

 
 

Me, too, although I do get annoyed with PKD’s Mary Sue-ism quite a bit.

I dunno. Guy was shot in the head with God’s pink space laser, so I’m willing to cut him some slack. I sorta prefer his gnostic-leaning stuff, but I have done McKenna-esque levels of psychedelics, so I might not be the best to judge.

 
 

What’s a “mary sue-ism”? Does it have something to do with soapy boobs?

 
 

I’ll basically seek out and read anything written by these authors:

Salman Rushdie
John Irving
Mario Vargas Llosa
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Louis deBerniers
William Faulkner
Gunter Grass
Mikhail Bulgakov
Charles Dickens
Toni Morrison
and (not a fiction writer) Michael Pollan

 
 

T&U – swear to god, I’m going to invent “the Cool Bra”. I can’t take the fucking heat rash anymore. I was telling my mom about it, how even powdering with Caldescene doesn’t help, and she laughed and said, “yeah, I know…when you take off your bra at the end of the day, it’s like you’ve made your own gravy.”

 
 

Really?

Tit gravy?

That’s all it takes to kill a S,N! thread?

 
Stag Party Palin
 

English major checking in here – I’ve read all three of the Stieg Larssons and am baffled by those who found the writing wooden – it’s heavy on plot, which may not please those who want more. I wouldn’t discourage anyone from trying them – everyone’s mileage varies. Don’t let the Larsson fanboys discourage you either.

Nobody’s mentioned Carl Hiaason – funniest novelist in the last 20 years and a raging commiefascisttreehugger to boot. Can’t be beat for summer reading. Winner of the Palme de Sangue for most inventive ways to kill bad guys.

SciFi – try Cordwainer Smith, if you can find him (it’s been a while). Hi-tech, mystical and romantic is hard to find all in one place.

 
Shell Goddamnit
 

Oh pooh. Not dead yet.

Paris Vendetta is out in paperback as of July 27, per Amazon.

Now it’s dead.

 
 

Sweaty breast bacon, now there’s a product we could go for.

 
 

Am I the only person in the world who found that, other than The Road, Cormac McCarthy’s books are basically unreadable? Am I also the only person in the world who can’t stand Ian McEwan? I found Saturday to be fucking obnoxious and wanky as hell.

T&U, with you both, but I even found The Road unreadable. MacEwan’s not as bad, but still clunky and difficult to read. When I read reviews of both of them, I wonder if I’m missing something, Emperor’s New Clothes IMHO.

I have ‘The Little Friend’ kicking about at home, but have never got round to reading it, will give it a go.

 
 

Stag Party – another cool thing about Hiassen – he was buds with Warren Zevon and wrote lyrics for at least one of his songs.

I haven’t read any of his stuff in quite awhile, but I greatly enjoyed Tourist Trap years ago where some Seminole revolutionaries were kidnapping tourists and retirees and feeding them to a huge alligator.

 
 

Re: the Little Friend – by far the better of Tartt’s books, AFAIC. Something about the Secret History was way too contrived and precious for me. Or maybe I just decided that I hated everyone in the whole fucking book. In any case, nothing about it struck me as remotely plausible, though I will grant that Tartt is a very good writer.

 
 

What’s a “mary sue-ism”? Does it have something to do with soapy boobs?

You cannot combine a question with a reference to soapy boobs and expect an immediate answer.
In lieu of an answer, here’s the Whackyweedia.

 
 

Seminole revolutionaries were kidnapping tourists and retirees and feeding them to a huge alligator.

As someone who has spent many years working with tourists, I approve of this plan.

 
 

Winner of the Palme de Sangue for most inventive ways to kill bad guys.

“Sex-crazed dolphin” gets my vote.

 
Adventurous Swimmer
 

I really shouldn’t leave the boat as much as I do.

 
Stag Party Palin
 

Smut sed ““Sex-crazed dolphin” gets my vote.”

Lonely iconoclast, in the only room, with a stuffed swordfish.

 
 

I rise in defense of sluts!

Take the rise part as you may. There really aren’t a lot of good women around and they mostly marry at a very young age. Once you get past, say, mid-twenties, you’re in the world of sluts and nuts. I’ll take a good honest slut anytime over the woman who pretends to be a good woman. Whatever you women think about them, there really are women who think like women think men think; they just want to get laid. Often men think that way too, but we do kinda pay attention to whether we’d like to have children with the woman usually.

The woman who just wants to get laid is an OK thing, I guess, so long as you understand that’s where you are. I’ve spent a lot of evenings at hotel bars alongside some woman who just left her husband/SO in SFO or LA and is really PO’d at him over something and knows how to get even. A couple of drinks, some glib words, and before long you’re in the room watching a porno movie and playing, “let’s do what they do.” Other than the occasional fatal attraction nobody gets hurt unless somebody has a compelling desire to confess their sins.

The horizontal career mover is a much more dangerous variety; play wth her and you get burned. That woman believes that men are weakminded creatures that can be totally controlled by a certain part of their body; often they’re right.

In Vino Veritas

 
 

That was awkward.

 
 

Nobody’s mentioned Carl Hiaason…

I forgot about him, absolutely hilarious, and although i have never been to florida, he describes it and the locals really well. Christoper Brookmire, who I mentioned upthread is a Scottish version of Hiaasen, and I think was inspired by him.

 
 

I can easily picture Scotland with a Florida-esque level of absolute lunatics running about.

Or the other way round, too.

 
 

Oh, and back on topic,

Hey, Stevie? What’s the ugliest part of your body?

 
guitarist manqué
 

I’ll check in here on books cause I read way too much. I really like Cormac McCarthy and thought his first was the only bad one. I thought “Last Night in Twisted River” to be unreadably dumb, threw it against the wall in disgust. David Mitchell is wonderful, “Cloud Atlas” absolutely brilliant. In the ‘obscure but excellent’ category I recommend Rohinton Mistry’s “A Fine Balance”, Guy Vanderheighe’s “The Last Crossing” and Peter Akroyd’s “Hawksmoor”. McEwan, meh. Hiasson is juvenalia. I agree with the ups for Hammett and Chandler, especially ‘The Big Sleep’. And if you’re wondering about the cult around Roberto Bolaño I thought “The Savage Detectives” was astounding and great although very little happens in it.

 
 

Tit gravy?

That’s all it takes to kill a S,N! thread?

We all went to our bunks.

Another vote here for Peter Ackroyd.

 
 

The fact is, why must the lovers of gay lifestyle always attack small busness with boycott because of some gay thing, I mean Target and Best Buy should not suffer because they support family values politicians, they hire gays which is why I only shop where gay is not allowed.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

T&U, with you both, but I even found The Road unreadable. MacEwan’s not as bad, but still clunky and difficult to read. When I read reviews of both of them, I wonder if I’m missing something, Emperor’s New Clothes IMHO.

I think I liked The Road because I love post-apocalyptic, um, pretty much anything.

Re: the Little Friend – by far the better of Tartt’s books, AFAIC. Something about the Secret History was way too contrived and precious for me. Or maybe I just decided that I hated everyone in the whole fucking book. In any case, nothing about it struck me as remotely plausible, though I will grant that Tartt is a very good writer.

I can see that. I’m sure part of the reason I loved it was because I was about the same age as the characters when I first read it (maybe a little younger). So they seemed very smart and interesting to me, even if they kind of sucked as human beings.

I think the plausibility factor is interesting, especially since The Little Friend isn’t particularly plausible, either…I can’t figure out if that’s a device, or just the way she writes…I’m excited for her new book, which is slated to come out in 2011.

 
 

I think I liked The Road because I love post-apocalyptic, um, pretty much anything.

So you’re the one who’s been buying the Left Behind action figures…

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Oh, and re: tit gravy…I think that’s still better than shoe gravy, which, as far as I can tell, is really the only use for shoe powder. Yuck.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

So you’re the one who’s been buying the Left Behind action figures…

Look, I’ll watch/read almost anything post-apocalyptic, but even *I* won’t sink that low.

Wait, those actually exist?

 
 

There are people who would give anything for some shoe gravy.

 
 

Wait, those actually exist?

Made you look!

 
Family Values Politician
 

Admit it! My family is clearly more valuable than yours.

 
 

“Family Values Politician said,
August 3, 2010 at 14:05

Admit it! My family is clearly more valuable than yours.”

Didn’t I see you at that circuit party?

 
 

Fuck all a y’all with your Cormac h8tr-ade.

Which of your lit masters ever came up with carnal knowledge with a watermelon as a plot device?

And plus, Richard K. Morgan: “the prison of our own flesh, and the inevitable doom of our own mortality, ” done as 23rd century hard-boild defective.

 
 

I think I liked The Road because I love post-apocalyptic, um, pretty much anything.

Worst. Pulitzer. Winner. Ever.

The movie was only slightly better at outlining the backstory. Look, I get the kid and the dad had to be on the road, and that the dad was giving up his life for the kid. I get that the book was more of a tone poem of love than a novel.

What I don’t get is how a rewrite of Mad Max became a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. The best I can figure out is that McCarthy earned it for his body of work, but in that case, why the hell not give it to “No Country” which was actually a decent novel and actually had character development?

Watch The Road. Then watch Book of Eli. Tell me which was the more interesting story.

 
 

Which of your lit masters ever came up with carnal knowledge with a watermelon as a plot device?

Philip Roth. I’m guessing you never read Portnoy’s Complaint.

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

Worst. Pulitzer. Winner. Ever.

Yeah, but it was the best Oprah Bookclub selection ever.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Worst. Pulitzer. Winner. Ever.

Yeah, I’m pretty floored that it got a Pulitzer, too, actually.

I think if I had read No Country first, I would have liked it better…but by the time I read it, I realized that the writing style he used in The Road was, you know, his writing style in general. Which I found to be a little obnoxious.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Yeah, but it was the best Oprah Bookclub selection ever.

That’s a joke, right?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

The sky really is falling!

Thanks. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Now I’m going to have to go back and re-do my survival gear budget…

 
 

Now I’m going to have to go back and re-do my survival gear budget…

Don’t forget to budget my etchings in.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Readers-Guide-to-The-Road-by-Cormac-McCarthy

I meant the “best” part, not the “Oprah’s Book Club” part. I knew that…I think the copy I borrowed from my MIL even said some shit about Oprah on the cover.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Don’t forget to budget my etchings in.

But I was going to spend that extra three dollars on chocolate!

 
The Kid from Kounty Meath
 

“Yeah, but it was the best Oprah Bookclub selection ever.”
Grapes of Wrath, son.
Aw, shit, what’d I start?

 
 

From the Oprah Book Club site:

Use this guide to jump-start your journey on The Road, a tender, harrowing novel of unfailing hope amid epic devastation by acclaimed writer Cormac McCarthy.

Yea. See. Here’s the problem: you spend 250 odd pages telling us what a piece of shit the world has become, and then, all in one sweeping Irving Thalberg moment, the kid is saved from the wilderness by a family that happens along? And he shows nearly no hestitancy about hooking up with potential cannibals? So basically, he learned nothing from his dad.

About the only thing missing was a line of minstrels strumming banjoes and singing about the archangel Gabriel.

 
 

hestitancy

Clearly, I’m having maternal issues today. Hesitancy, I mean.

 
The Kid from Kounty Meath
 

@actor: I imagine in a post-apocalyptic world, they’re just singing “Fucking banjos, how do they work?”

 
 

I imagine in a post-apocalyptic world, they’re just singing “Fucking banjos, how do they work?”

Considering the only people dumb enough not to drop dead when the bomb goes will be Keith Richards and the kid from Deliverance, I doubt that will be an issue.

 
Kid from Deliverance's mom
 

STOP PICKIN’ ON BOBBY RAY!

 
 

Oh. And here I thought I was picking on Trig…

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

On the Twitter machine, Tintin sez: Reliably loathsome @kathrynlopez complains about federal funds spent on breast cancer reasearch http://bit.ly/cOzS5x Karma can be a bitch

I don’t get it…

 
 

Actor – thanks for the CME warning. I will be spending a lot of time at spaceweather.com and SOHO today. So much for the AGW deniers “new Maunder minimum”.

Anyone know a good way to shield electronics?

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

In Mississippi it’s only going to be 100 today, whereas it was 101 yesterday, so global warming is a myth.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

In Mississippi it’s only going to be 100 today, whereas it was 101 yesterday, so global warming is a myth.

But in Missouri it’s going to be 100 and it was 98 yesterday, so global warming is a myth.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

T&U FTW

 
 

In Mississippi it’s only going to be 100 today, whereas it was 101 yesterday, so global warming is a myth.

Given Mississippi’s unfortunate history and the fact that Centigrade degrees are three-fifths five-ninths of Fahrenheit degrees, it was quite thoughtful of you to avoid saying it will be 38 today.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

Anyone know a good way to shield electronics?

What about this stuff?

 
 

Whoops, math fail. Fahrenheit’s 5/9’s of Centigrade. You may, however, continuing laughing uproariously at my joke.

 
 

Anyone know a good way to shield electronics?

Build a Faraday cage around them.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

Whoops, math fail. Fahrenheit’s 5/9?s of Centigrade.

Something about adding or subtracting 32 or some shit, too. I used to have the formula programmed into my calculator until I realized how fucking lame that was.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Build a Faraday cage around them

Or just put them in the microwave.

 
 

Something about adding or subtracting 32 or some shit, too.

That’s only if you want the right temp. I was talking about degree size because degree size is very important to men.

 
 

Fahrenheit’s 5/9?s of Centigrade. You may, however, continuing laughing uproariously at my joke.

I usually divide by two and then say “around…”

 
 

Or just put them in the microwave.

I don’t know about you, but I doubt my iMac will fit.

 
 

Well, in Arkansas yesterday it was 104 with a heat index of 112 and today it’s supposed to be 105 so YOU CAN ALL GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

I was talking about degree size because degree size is very important to men.

So when we say “nine” we really mean “five.” Sounds about right.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I don’t know about you, but I doubt my iMac will fit.

You’re gonna need a shitload of aluminum foil, then.

 
 

You’re gonna need a shitload of aluminum foil, then.

What? Take apart my hats????

 
 

You know, I hardly ever read new books, but I just remembered I read “The Anthologist” and enjoyed it. Not sure it’s for everyone, but if you’re the the sort who likes informative books, poetry, and schlimazels you’ll love it.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Well, in Arkansas yesterday it was 104 with a heat index of 112 and today it’s supposed to be 105 so YOU CAN ALL GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!

Our heat index yesterday was 104, and it’s 110 today. And I don’t live in the south!

Why the fuck is it so humid here? I hate it. It fucks up my hair.

 
 

I was talking about degree size because degree size is very important to men.

I use Mitchum, myself.

 
 

I hate it. It fucks up my hair.

Fucking hair…how does it work?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

What? Take apart my hats????

You can buy more, you know. Or did you not have the foresight to put foil in your survival budget?

 
 

Or did you not have the foresight to put foil in your survival budget?

I invested my mad money in etchings!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I invested my mad money in etchings!

You can’t have any of mine. I’m making solar cookers.

 
 

You can’t have any of mine. I’m making solar cookers.

With my etchings? I think they’d make better funnel bras.

 
 

I wouldn’t have thought of the microwave – interesting. Easier than doing the whole house like Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State

 
 

Which of your lit masters ever came up with carnal knowledge with a watermelon as a plot device?

A Melon For Ecstasy (well, that’s a partial lie– the main character seems to be more of a tree rapist.)

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

With my etchings?

No, I’m making cat toys out of those.

 
 

“Well, in Arkansas yesterday it was 104 with a heat index of 112 and today it’s supposed to be 105 so YOU CAN ALL GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!”

Yikes. Ishould call my dad and make sure ge hasn’t melted.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I wouldn’t have thought of the microwave – interesting. Easier than doing the whole house like Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State

How did they do that? I don’t remember.

 
 

No, I’m making cat toys out of those.

Sharight. You can’t fool me! Those will be worth real money one day.

 
 

No, I’m making cat toys out of those.

Sharight. You know those will be worth something some day…

 
 

Oops. Foiled by my “cleverness” again.

 
 

“his outmoded Byron-Yorkish locks…”

“I’ll have the roast duck with the mango salsa.”

 
 

Don’t be dissing bears.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Sharight. You know those will be worth something some day…

As post-apocalyptic cat toys? Yes.

 
 

He had a big copper cage in a warehouse.

 
 

As post-apocalyptic cat toys? Yes.

I’d horsewhip you if I had a horse.

 
 

He had a big copper cage in a warehouse.

A Faraday cage.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

He had a big copper cage in a warehouse.

Okay, I don’t remember that at all. Maybe I never actually saw that movie.

 
 

“August 3, 2010 at 16:07

Don’t be dissing bears.”

I never diss bears–of any kind!

 
 

Over the Hills and Faraday.

 
 

A Faraday keeps the doctor away.

 
Antonio The Weatherman
 

Itsa Faraday outside.

 
 

diss bears repeating?

 
 

She was queen Faraday.

 
 

Diss bear’s got Faraday seeds caught in his teeth.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Don’t let me forget to vote today. There are some important issues on the ballot, like a law nullifying the healthcare bill! Because spending money on education and social services is BULLSHIT, but potentially tying up state and federal courts just to get the conservative vote out is totes fiscally responsible.

 
 

Re: Novels. Huge fan of Nicholas Christopher’s “A Trip to the Stars.” (Not SF, as the title suggests, but I’d file it under “magic realism.”) It’s an off-kilter look at fate and the nature of identity, and has the best character names since Dickens. I can’t figure why he isn’t better known–the writing is beautiful.

 
 

T&U: Don’t forget to vote.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

Anybody else read true crime?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

T&U: Don’t forget to vote.

Thanks!

I guess I should figure out who to vote for…

 
 

Anybody else read true crime?

You mean politics?

 
 

A Faraday keeps the Van Eyck Phreaks away

 
 

Anybody else read true crime?

Not much, but I love Against the Evidence by Andy Logan.

 
 

Don’t forget to vote, T&U

 
 

Diss bear’s got Faraday seeds caught in his teeth.

That’s what he gets for starting at the testicles.

 
 

You mean politics?

I like The Adventures Of Orange-Glo, or, Take That Bohner Out Of The House If You’re Not Going To Do Anything With It.

 
 

That’s what he gets for starting at the testicles.

That cue’ed up Redd Foxx for me.

“One cannibal says to another, ‘I’m having a ball!’. Other cannibal says ‘stop eating so fast!'”

 
 

Is That A Bohner In Your House Or Are You Just Glad To See The Constitution Shredded?

Also, don’t forget to vote, T&U.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Don’t forget to vote, T&U

Thanks. I just realized I took my car today and I’ll be driving past the polling place, so you guys can stop reminding me. Really.

 
 

OK, but we just want to make sure you remember: you have to vote.

 
 

“Rusty Shackleford said,
August 3, 2010 at 16:31

Anybody else read true crime?”

I did…I used to be really into it… but after awhile it started to feel a little soul-destroying.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Thanks. But I know I’ll remember now. Really.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

A candidate for judge’s “top issue” is “being fair and impartial in the courtroom.” Um, good to know, I guess.

 
 

Anybody else read true crime?”

I did…I used to be really into it… but after awhile it started to feel a little soul-destroying.

That’s why you should watch Cops instead.

 
 

That’s why you should watch Cops instead.

Wait…so Cops is more morally uplifting than True Crime?

Or is it the tube tops?

 
 

Cops…that’s gotta be a depressing show.

 
 

“Well, in Arkansas yesterday it was 104 with a heat index of 112 and today it’s supposed to be 105 so YOU CAN ALL GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!”

And it will keep getting hotter and hotter, on average, every year until one of two things happen. You move or you die.

The boulder is rolling downhill and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

The rich are already buying land around the future tropical seas of Hudson Bay. What are you doing?

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

I did…I used to be really into it… but after awhile it started to feel a little soul-destroying.

Yeah, you have to choose carefully.

 
 

What are you doing?

Looking at properties in my wife’s hometown of Novosibirsk.

 
 

“Cops…that’s gotta be a depressing show.”

If you want depressing watch Intervention and then follow it with Hoarders.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

The rich are already buying land around the future tropical seas of Hudson Bay. What are you doing?

Sitting around waiting for the next dust bowl.

 
 

What are you doing?

Raising camels in the Siberian desert.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

I read true crime but I can’t watch Hoarders. Turns my stomach.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I read true crime but I can’t watch Hoarders. Turns my stomach.

Yeah, um, I’m not so keen on making people’s serious mental illnesses into a fucking spectacle. Intervention was bad enough, but I find even the concept of Hoarders to be really fucked up.

 
 

Sitting around waiting for the next dust bowl.

For shame. You should be voting.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

What are you doing?

Stocking up on aluminum foil. For my window treatments, boogan-style.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

For shame. You should be voting.

Dammit, I will after work!

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

I’m not so keen on making people’s serious mental illnesses into a fucking spectacle.

No Toddlers & Tiaras then?

 
 

Yeah, um, I’m not so keen on making people’s serious mental illnesses into a fucking spectacle.

I can’t watch the TLC specials about ultrafat people. I can watch just about every disgusting physical malformation, like the guy who had elephantiasis and needed facial reconstructive surgery or the girl with eight legs, but for some reason, an 850 lb plus man turns my stomach.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

No Toddlers & Tiaras then?

I don’t even know what that is, but it can’t be good…

 
 

Dammit, I will after work!

Don’t forget to leave work.

 
 

I don’t even know what that is, but it can’t be good…

It’s a how-to on making bad jewelery from baby bones.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Don’t forget to leave work.

That won’t be a problem.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

It’s a how-to on making bad jewelery from baby bones.

Oooh, I love crafts!

 
 

I just wrote such a good comment, filled with brilliant reading selections and clever observations. Y’all would have been amazed and totally respectful of my readin’ acuity.

Then it got gone. It was not WP. It was me. Note to self: don’t go to S,N while under-caffeinated. I’m also experiencing powerful allergy symptoms from an assortment of pollen-spewing trees.

I’ll just put these writers out there for your consideration. Whatever.

Jo Walton, Nevada Barr, Mary Roach, Denise Mina, Donald Harstad, Connie Willis, Cecilia Holland.

 
 

Oooh, I love crafts!

Just don’t get started until after you vote.

 
 

Oh yeah: a combination of fiction, non-fiction, and true crime: The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr.

 
 

Mary Roach

No.

I’ve read her Reader’s Digest columns. I’m afraid I’d fall asleep driving if I was exposed to one of her books.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Oh yeah: a combination of fiction, non-fiction, and true crime: The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr.

OMG I LOVE THAT BOOK SO MUCH.

*ahem*

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I’ve read her Reader’s Digest columns.

You read Reader’s Digest???

 
 

You read Reader’s Digest???

Only for the centerfolds.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

T&U: don’t forget to vote today. Important.

 
 

You read Reader’s Digest???

My dad, in the depths of his dementia before he died in ’07, secured for me a five year subscription to the magazine.

And well…you know, it’s small enough to sneak into most bathrooms and some of the jokes pages are pretty funny…

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Actually, the way I was introduced to The Liars’ Club is that someone told me that my writing reminded them of Mary Karr’s…that’s the way to get me to read anything, for future reference.

 
 

The Liars’ Club is that someone told me that my writing reminded them of Mary Karr’s

Y’know, your writing reminds me of my etchings…

 
 

Mary Roach. Mary Roach? Author of Stiff, the reason I am gonna donate my carcass to science after I’m ded? How can you…what? Reader’s Fucking Digest? The publication that scarred my childhood with tales of people dying in quicksand, volcanoes, getting bit by cobras that crawled into your sleeping bag while you slept?

Dude, being excerpted in Reader’s Digest should not be the basis upon which one’s literary abilities should be judged.

 
 

“Yeah, um, I’m not so keen on making people’s serious mental illnesses into a fucking spectacle. “

I don’t have a problem with it. I think that Intervention and the other programs that cover hoarding and OCD are very well done and respect the people involved. I fail to understand how they are any different than the spectacle of say Linsey Lohan or any other celebrity.

The residents of the building where I live are all formerly homeless and for most all of us shows like Cops or Intervention are just what our lives used to be like. Now they are not (mostly) thanks to the intervention of the church that funded this project. Thank god for that.

So I don’t see the problem, I like the shows. They remind me of what happens if you don’t watch it.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

And well…you know, it’s small enough to sneak into most bathrooms and some of the jokes pages are pretty funny…

Yeah, I prefer just to stick to my home turf, especially if it means reading Reader’s Digest. Though I do think I’ve paged through it a couple of times at the in-laws’, along with some crap about houses and Oprah’s magazine.

 
 

Actually, Mary Roach’s book Stiff was pretty interesting. I understand the next one wasn’t so good; can’t remember the name of it now.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

T&U: don’t forget to vote today. Important.

THANKS IT’S UNDER CONTROL.

 
 

A moment of silence: the last roll of Kodachrome has been shot. Yes, Paul Simon was photographed.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Oh, yeah! I remember her! I was wanting to read Spook and Stiff.

 
 

Never watched Hoarders, probably never will, but… In the course of doing building inspections I sometimes have to go through people’s apartments. Collyer’s disease, as it’s known in NYC is both terrifying and smelly up close.

 
 

Bonk. And yes, not as good. But still eminently readable. Her new book is coming out soon: Packing For Mars. To the best of my knowledge, it was not co-authored with Temple Grandin, who has herself written some damn interesting stuff.

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

Actually, the way I was introduced to The Liars’ Club is that someone told me that my writing reminded them of Mary Karr’s…that’s the way to get me to read anything, for future reference.

Your really just throwing slow-pitch softballs out there today, aren’t you?

 
 

Dude, being excerpted in Reader’s Digest should not be the basis upon which one’s literary abilities should be judged.

If you can bore me in a thousand words, I don’t expect to hang on for another nine thousand.

 
 

I was wanting to read Spook and Stiff.

But after you vote today.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I don’t have a problem with it. I think that Intervention and the other programs that cover hoarding and OCD are very well done and respect the people involved.

Honestly, I’ve never seen it, and I appreciate if they do it sympathetically, but it still squicks me out a little.

I fail to understand how they are any different than the spectacle of say Linsey Lohan or any other celebrity

Well, I’m not a fan of that kind of shit, either. I couldn’t stand Britney Spears, but when it because clear to me that she’s bipolar, I was pretty sickened by the coverage of her.

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

Actually, the way I was introduced to The Liars’ Club is that someone told me that my writing reminded them of Mary Karr’s…that’s the way to get me to read anything, for future reference.

Your writing reminds me of Georges Bataille.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Your really just throwing slow-pitch softballs out there today, aren’t you?

Yup. It’s one of those days.

 
 

slow-pitch softballs

Veiled erectile dysfunction reference.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Your writing reminds me of Georges Bataille.

In the original French?

 
 

How to make a million dollars: Plus $1,000 bonus just for signing up!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

A moment of silence: the last roll of Kodachrome has been shot.

🙁

 
 

Packing for Mars was featured on Jon Stewart last night. Sounds interesting.

I usually prefer non-fiction. Or mysteries (have read all the Sue Grafton books, but I always wonder WHEN WILL KINSEY MILHONE GET HERSELF A CELL PHONE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD? Unfortunately, Sue is writing in the 21st century and pretending it takes place in the 1980s.

Just read Ford County by John Grisham. Funny and poignant short stories about the denizens of a rural Mississippi county.

My lastest non-fiction: Methland by Nick Reding. Scary stuff about the meth epidemic in small town America. Haven’t finished it yet, so I don’t know if Oelwein, Iowa has been able to escape its meth-fueled decline.

Oh, and for the animal lovers, Tell Me Where it Hurts, by Dr. Nick Trout, a vet surgeon in a large animal hospital. Well written.

 
 

Yes, the apartment next door to mine was a hoarders’ lair for many years. The occupants were an elderly couple, very prim and correct in their dress and bearing (she used to teach at a near-by private school) but then they fell into wackiness and/or dementia. The apartment managers and several of us neighbors tried to help, but the two weren’t deemed technically incompetent and they wanted NO interference. But the papers, the containers, the vodka bottles, the overflowing ash-trays, the stench. She died in the apartment; he was investigated briefly for possibly beating her, but there wasn’t enough evidence. (I think she probably fell.) Then he continued to live there, smoking smoking, smoking and drinking. Sometimes I’d knock on his door and ask him if he needed anything from the store (thank god he’d given up on driving) and then I’d fetch him some frozen chicken pot pies and some vanilla ice cream.

Eventually he became too ill and had to be moved to a nursing facility. It took weeks and at least one Dumpster to clear out this tiny apartment, and a lot longer to make it habitable again. They both should have gone into a retirement facility years earlier, but they were stubborn, and besides, them places is for those who has means. They didn’t.

 
 

I’m rereading the Count of Monte Cristo. I anticipate finishing just after T&U votes today.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

You know what? Now I’m not going to vote, just to spite all of you. SEE WHAT YOU DID???

 
 

That WAS a cool photo. But it frightened me. It frightened the vote right out of me.

Actually, I don’t believe there is any voting taking place around here.

 
 

Now I’m not going to vote, just to spite all of you. SEE WHAT YOU DID???

My work here is done. Off to a construction site and then a meeting with a high-up gov’t official who will conclude that since I’m wearing jeans and he’s in a suit that he must know more about his building than I do.

 
 

Now I’m not going to vote, just to spite all of you. SEE WHAT YOU DID???

Kewl! Now I can download Danny Schecter’s new book and read it in peace.

 
 

“but it still squicks me out a little.”

I honestly don’t get that. Animals PLanet’s “Mosters Within” about parasites squicks the hell out of me. Seeing people in the midst of their disease finally choose to leave it does not. Almost everyone I know has had that struggle in one form or another. Some choose to stay in their disease, some eventually break free. I like seeing that and how it plays out with the various people involved.

It’s not all I watch.

 
 

pat, Methland was weird. It’s like, the factories and slaughterhouses close or reduce staff, and then locals say, hey, let’s make meth, and there’s this hideous, homegrown, incredibly lucrative industry, then all of a sudden I can’t get my usual Sudafed without showing my driver’s license, and then the regional buy-American suppliers fade away. And then, no more meth! No more widespread blight upon the populace and the landscape! Except, oh wait. It’s all coming in from Mexico and elsewhere now.

 
 

Actor, that photo looks like a Yes album cover from the ’70s. Far out, man.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

It’s not all I watch.

I’m not judging you–I’m just personally uncomfortable about it.

 
 

“…high-up gov’t official who will conclude that since I’m wearing jeans and he’s in a suit that he must know more about his building than I do….”

N_B, I so sympathize. For me, the conclusion is usually reached because I don’t have a penis and he does. It compels him to think he knows how to fix the copy machine because duh I’m a girl and he is a man and it is a machine! And then…well, it’s always highlarious to see a grown business man cry.

 
 

“Packing for Mars was featured on Jon Stewart last night. Sounds interesting.”

It was all about POOP.

 
 

My work here is done. Off to a construction site and then a meeting with a high-up gov’t official who will conclude that since I’m wearing jeans and he’s in a suit that he must know more about his building than I do.
Turn the tables on them. Show up at your next job site in a tuxedo.

 
 

I do have a non-fiction recommendation, Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. A disturbing look at how the denial machine works.

 
 

N_B, I so sympathize

I think he spells it “N__B…

 
 

It’s all coming in from Mexico and elsewhere now.

Meanwhile you still have to show your license…

 
 

Larkspur,
The interesting thing about Methland is the backstory of the rise of Big Ag and Big Pharma (the lobbyists lobbied mightily to prevent any accounting of the raw materials to make the meth, and as you say, the decline began when the meat packing packs were taken over, people laid off or wages and benefits reduced.)

I saw a lot of this happen in my home town, where the meatpacker that had sustained the town for generations busted the union and sold off the kill to a low-paying subsidiary. And one of the daughters of my cousin was hooked on meth for years. Not a pretty picture, at all.

T&U, you don’t honestly believe it makes a bit of difference whether little singular you vote or not, do you? How naive.

 
 

If I was a youngster just starting out, and could magically avoid being as stupid as I was the first time around, I think I’d be an epidemiologist. Or a geologist. Or perhaps a fighter pilot, or a grocer.

 
 

Except, oh wait. It’s all coming in from Mexico and elsewhere now.

Yes, it’s a measure of how far we’ve fallen that we now outsource production of our illicit drugs as well.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

T&U, you don’t honestly believe it makes a bit of difference whether little singular you vote or not, do you? How naive.

Um, it can’t hurt. And I get the chance to feel morally superior to other people, so there’s that.

 
Antonio The Weatherman
 

I went wilderness canoeing with this guy. Little did I know he would become the Meth King of Denton, TX.

The law became suspicious when his buddy bought two grocery carts full of pseudoephedrine tablets at a local Walgreens.

 
Antonio The Weatherman aka Willy
 

ach nymfail

 
 

If I was a youngster just starting out, and could magically avoid being as stupid as I was the first time around, I think I’d be an epidemiologist

Too hard. I’d find a rich heiress.

 
 

“I saw a lot of this happen in my home town, where the meatpacker that had sustained the town for generations busted the union and sold off the kill to a low-paying subsidiary.”

Austin Minnesota. Hormel, proud makers of Spam, busted the union and then brought in immigrants to take to jobs that had been held for over a generation. That’s where all the Teabagger rage comes from. I think they have a point but they’re delusional if they think that sucking moar corporate cock will make things all better.

 
 

I think that T&U must have left to go vote.

 
 

they’re delusional if they think that sucking moar corporate cock will make things all better.

Sucking moar won’t help, sucking harder might (so they think).

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

Your writing reminds me of Georges Bataille.

In the original French?

Votre écriture me rappelle de Georges Bataille.

 
 

Votre écriture me rappelle de Georges Bataille.

Your writing makes me jump off Georges Bataille?

 
 

(kidding, Rusty….)

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

Vote creature makes me knock on Georges Bataille.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

The rich are already buying land around the future tropical seas of Hudson Bay. What are you doing?

If anybody’s thinking of this, remember it’s trickier than it sounds. The land you want to buy has to be sufficiently inland so that it becomes the coast line after the seas rise. If you don’t buy far enough inland, then all you have is more water.

On the other hand, if you buy too far inland, then all you have is a blackfly infested, non-arable, rocky hellhole, where you can sit and be laughed at by the guy who guessed right and bought the plot right next to yours.

 
 

Ok, actor…I just got a frame job for free. I’m gonna give you penile-motivation on this one.

 
 

The land you want to buy has to be sufficiently inland so that it becomes the coast line after the seas rise.

Some of us own our own dive equipment.

 
 

I just got a frame job for free.

Is that where your bound hand and foot to a rectangle and stretched out over a whole bed of feathers, and then a fan is turned on?

 
 

Jesus. What kind of framing joints do you go to?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I think that T&U must have left to go vote.

NO I’M HERE, DAMMIT.

 
 

Yup, Austin, MN, aka Spamtown USA. The fight over who would go back to work (scabs!!) and who would nurse their grudges divided many a family.
The Hormel Corporate Offices are still there. Anyone who actually didn’t work for Hormel (there were a few) was afraid they would completely pull up stakes, leaving behind a place like Oelwein, IA, where the only way to make money was to start cooking. So it divided the town too, with many people tut-tutting but not taking a stand either way. The National Guard was called out at one point. I’ve forgotten a lot of the details. But the immigrant population grew (they were the ones who would take the minimum wage jobs in the hog kill….)

The beginning of the end of blue-collar workers having a secure future with benefits and health care…

 
 

What kind of framing joints do you go to?

Oh. Sorry. I thought…well, you know…

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Okaaaaaaaay, moving on!

Yup, Austin, MN, aka Spamtown USA.

Wasn’t there a movie about this?

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

People make money from meth? That’s not how it works around here. Meth isn’t really dealt like pot or coke. The users either make their own (shake ‘n’ bake) and use it immediately, or trade pseudoephedrine pills for cooked product.

 
 

The Spam Museum has a hilarious skit about Spamalot from… Geez, I forget. Monty Python?

And if you are ever in the neighborhood, that museum is worth a trip, just to see how many items can carry the word Spam. I think there’s even a grain of rice…

And there is a book that I must look up: I think it’s called Meatpacker’s Daughter (there’s that meme again.) Guess I’ll see if the library has a copy.

 
 

People make money from meth?

I don’t know how it is now, but at the time the book describes, yes, some people made a LOT of money from Meth.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

People make money from meth? That’s not how it works around here. Meth isn’t really dealt like pot or coke. The users either make their own (shake ‘n’ bake) and use it immediately, or trade pseudoephedrine pills for cooked product.

I don’t know. I thought that if it was dealt, it’s to a small circle of people, you know?

 
 

“NO I’M HERE, DAMMIT.”

If you don’t constantly remind me that you are here I assume that you must have simply ceased to exist. That’s logic!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

If you don’t constantly remind me that you are here I assume that you must have simply ceased to exist. That’s logic!

I didn’t know you were a conservative!

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

I thought that if it was dealt, it’s to a small circle of people, you know?

I believe it is sometimes exchanged for, uh, services.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I believe it is sometimes exchanged for, uh, services.

What? Like fixing someone’s plumbing?

 
 

If you don’t constantly remind me that you are here I assume that you must have simply ceased to exist. That’s logic!

Philosophy 101: If T&U is sitting at her computer but is not actively posting a Sadly, No!, does she really exist?

 
 

Existence is a HOAX! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

 
 

“Yup, Austin, MN, aka Spamtown USA. The fight over who would go back to work (scabs!!) and who would nurse their grudges divided many a family.”

Yes, I remember. It was very bad even though I didn’t live there. We really really really need better labor laws. That seems very unlikely in my lifetime.

 
 

And by hoax we mean liberal plot to destroy America.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Philosophy 101: If T&U is sitting at her computer but is not actively posting a Sadly, No!, does she really exist?

Hey, now. I am not fodder for your philosophical wankery.

 
 

“Philosophy 101: If T&U is sitting at her computer but is not actively posting a Sadly, No!, does she really exist?”

Don’t be silly, of course she still exists. Her cat is there to observe her.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Don’t be silly, of course she still exists. Her cat is there to observe her.

I’m at work! My cat’s not here!

 
 

For now I am going to go *poof*. I’ll re-substantiate at a later point in this timeline. Make sure you all keep observing the world of appearances while I’m away. Wouldn’t want to lose anyone.

 
 

“What kind of framing joints do you go to?

Oh. Sorry. I thought…well, you know…”

You were thinking trademarked actor thoughts. The inspirations for the etchings have to come from somewhere.

 
Ted the Slacker
 

For no particular reason,check out this David Frum piece.

I’m not about to forgive Frum certain past and present assholery, but there’s something very tidy about the way he calls out teabaggers as the biggest socialists on the planet.

 
 

If you don’t constantly remind me that you are here I assume that you must have simply ceased to exist. That’s logic!

Object permanence. It’s what’s for dinner!

Oh and T&U: don’t forget to vote.

Also, +1 for Richard K Morgan (Market Forces and Thirteen (Black Man) are amazing; his Takeshi Kovacs books are plenty fun). I’m a big fan of Ian M. Banks as well.

Also.

 
 

Thanks for the Frum.

Conservatives who fume against the president’s supposed socialism are chasing phantoms: railing against dead ideas while failing to notice the actual gathering dangers to economic liberty and American prosperity.

It’s not the red hand of socialism we have to fear. It’s the dead hand of the status quo.

Some truth to that, especially the “chasing phantoms” part. Amazing that in the twenty years since the end of the communist world, these people have actually gotten even more paranoid and terrified of communist infiltration.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

From Ted the Slacker’s link:

In a modern democracy, there are things that voters will demand be done one way or another. They will demand that the state provide an education to all young people for example. They will demand that it provide a safety net for the poor. They will demand that it support the retired. They will demand that it protect the environment. And in every country on earth except the United States, they have demanded that sickness not expose people to economic ruin.

This is David Frum spewing this shrill, commie vitriol people! What is the world coming to?

 
 

I am not fodder for your philosophical wankery.

*taking down T&U poster, replacing with Hegel*

 
 

I’m at work! My cat’s not here!?

What if her cat is really Schroedinger’s Cat?

 
 

And in every country on earth except the United States, they have demanded that sickness not expose people to economic ruin.

This is David Frum spewing this shrill

Whoa! Are we looking at the next David Brock????

I have the same question for Frum that I’d have for Brock or Arriana:

WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU WHEN IT MATTERED????????

 
 

Hey, now. I am not fodder for your philosophical wankery.
The wankery for which you are fodder is much less metaphorical and far more literal.
(I can’t believe I am the first one to make this joke)

 
Lurking Canadian
 

Now you’re threatening (well, threatening with 50% probability) to kill her cat, just because she won’t look at your etchings? What sort of scoundrel are you?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

*taking down T&U poster, replacing with Hegel*

Heigl?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

What if her cat is really Schroedinger’s Cat?

I was trying to do something with that, but couldn’t think of anything…

 
Ted the Slacker
 

Oddly, Mr Lurking Canadian, I question the certainty that Frum attaches to this part about “what voters will demand”.

It’s one of those things that sounds sensible, but I’m rather more from the all-politics-is-local school of thought. That is, people care a lot more that their local schools are excellent. That their neighborhood is clean. That crime rates in their district are low. But I’m a little wary of extrapolating this to mean voters want everyone to have what they have.

Maybe Frum is right though, that our socialist inclination spreads much more broadly than I assume. Central, ahem, to his point though is that those that most loudly denounce socialism are very likely to be dependent on the state.

 
 

Heigl?

Ew!

Well, maybe…

 
 

Now you’re threatening (well, threatening with 50% probability) to kill her cat, just because she won’t look at your etchings?

If she observes my etchings, I can guarantee the cat is still alive.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

If she observes my etchings, I can guarantee the cat is still alive.

Great. Another bunny boiler.

 
 

This is America dude, learn the rules:

1) The world is everything that is the case.
2) What is the case (a fact) is the existence of states of affairs.
3) A logical picture of facts is a thought.
4) A thought is a proposition with sense.
5) A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
6) The general form of a proposition is the general form of a truth function, which is: [\bar p,\bar\xi, N(\bar\xi)].
7) Where (or of what) one cannot speak, one must pass over in silence

 
 

Great. Another bunny boiler.

So we’ve met before.

 
 

This is America dude, learn the rules:

Shorter Angry Geometer:

“A=A”

 
 

Time for a new thread.

 
 

Some see threads which are there and ask “Why?” Others see threads that could be and ask “Why not?”

 
Lurking Canadian
 

Time for a new thread

Why would you say that? There hasn’t even been anything about pop music yet.

 
 

Why would you say that? There hasn’t even been anything about pop music yet.

Heh. True. But all the other usual suspects have popped up.

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

But all the other usual suspects have popped up.

Veiled penis reference?

 
 

There hasn’t even been anything about pop music yet.

I officially declare Stapp’s Law by invoking the name, Creed.

 
 

One would think that the difference between 5/9 and 9/5 would be kind of important to someone who does structural calculations.

Perhaps New York is more lenient with their professional certifications. Perhaps they just vote on it. Today.

 
 

The research could pave the way for advanced methods of enraging monkeys.

So all Boris Badenov had to do was to recruit some capuchins and Moose and Skvirrul would have been erased?

 
 

Of course! And we have officially proved my point.

That being said, everyone should probably not take anything I say too seriously right now. I’ve got a serious case of the grumpies. Grumpy people cannot be trusted.

 
 

Perhaps New York is more lenient with their professional certifications.

They’ll let anyone be a hot dog vendor, including…you know.. those kind! Engineers!

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

Creed? Fuck!

 
 

Off to a construction site and then a meeting with a high-up gov’t official who will conclude that since I’m wearing jeans and he’s in a suit that he must know more about his building than I do.

You should be wearing shorts, so he would be entranced by your legs. And if the shorts are loose, you could do a ‘Basic Instinct’ move….

 
 

And if the shorts are loose, you could do a ‘Basic Instinct’ move….

Yuck.

 
 

I would NEVER buy a street hot dog from an engineer. it would probably be 5/9 of a footlong.

 
 

PLEASE NOTE THE ZOMBIE MANAGED TO SQUICK ACTOR OUT. BOOKMARK IT.

 
 

PLEASE NOTE THE ZOMBIE MANAGED TO SQUICK ACTOR OUT. BOOKMARK IT.

Dude, you do that by exhaling. Two words: Tooth. Paste.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

And if the shorts are loose, you could do a ‘Basic Instinct’ move….

I don’t remember a manual ball-adjustment scene in that film.

 
 

I’m sorry, man. This is just wrong.

Altho I can understand why the kid bragged about it enough that the authorities were forced to investigate.

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

1. Student government president
2. Salutatorian
3. Banging the English teacher.

I’d say the kid was gifted.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I’m sorry, man. This is just wrong.

Um, yeah it is.

She’s really pretty, too! I don’t get it…

 
 

Dude, you do that by exhaling. Two words: Tooth. Paste.

you goof. Zombies don’t exhale. Are you distracted by the thought of N__B’s ball-adjustments?

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

She’s really pretty, too! I don’t get it…

Highschool boys are renowned for their love-making abilities?

 
 

1. Student government president
2. Salutatorian
3. Banging the English teacher.

I’d say the kid was gifted.

4. Narcs on teacher

Alternate answers:

– I dunno….seems kinda retarded, seeing as that’s the best he’ll ever do.

– Future Republican candidate.

 
 

Zombies don’t exhale.

I was going to say “belch” but I thought I’d be polite.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Highschool boys are renowned for their love-making abilities?

I laugh out louded.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

She’s really pretty, too! I don’t get it…

More to the point, he’s kind of…not? If they were the same age, I’d say, “She’s WAY out of his league.” I don’t get the motivation for breaking the law and throwing away one’s career.

 
 

I don’t get the motivation for breaking the law and throwing away one’s career.

Power. Gratitude. Enslavement.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

More to the point, he’s kind of…not? If they were the same age, I’d say, “She’s WAY out of his league.” I don’t get the motivation for breaking the law and throwing away one’s career.

Yeah, I was trying to be nice to the poor dork.

 
 

She’s really pretty, too! I don’t get it…

There have been cases of even hotter female teachers getting mixed up with even younger male students. Just because you’re attractive doesn’t mean your sexual wires can’t get crossed.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Power. Gratitude. Enslavement.

Well, that’s the second time today you’ve managed to thoroughly creep me out. Good job!

 
 

Even hot women need/want validation. It’s flattering to have a young man slavishly devoted to you and thinking you’re the shiz.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

There have been cases of even hotter female teachers getting mixed up with even younger male students

I actually think this woman is much, much prettier, but that’s obviously a personal preference…plus, it was Florida, so it makes sense.

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

There have been cases of even hotter female teachers getting mixed up with even younger male students. Just because you’re attractive doesn’t mean your sexual wires can’t get crossed.

Her eyes are….interesting.

 
 

She’s really pretty, too! I don’t get it…

Low Self Esteem + Popularity of “Twilight” + Cougarism =

 
 

Maybe he has other gifts.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

Even hot women need/want validation. It’s flattering to have a young man slavishly devoted to you and thinking you’re the shiz.

I assure you that at any time during my early twenties, I was prepared to be slavishly devoted to any hot woman who required it of me, and it would have been legal, too! I’m not sure the pool of volunteers is so limited that there’s a need to fish in the shallow end.

 
 

“Highschool boys are renowned for their love-making abilities?”

For the entire three seconds.

 
 

I was going to say “belch” but I thought I’d be polite.

FAKE ACTOR.

 
 

I assure you that at any time during my early twenties, I was prepared to be slavishly devoted to any hot woman who required it of me, and it would have been legal, too! I’m not sure the pool of volunteers is so limited that there’s a need to fish in the shallow end.

Obviously these women are taking that need to a pathetic/unhealthy level. I certainly don’t approve of this sort of thing…but there’s a part of me that sort of gets why it happens.

 
 

Shorter Angry Geometer:

“A=A”

You sound just like my girlfriend — she hates motionless tautologies. But my boyfriend loves them! It’s a dialectic dilemma, to be sure.

 
 

“….that there’s a need to fish in the shallow end. Kiddie pool.

FTFY.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Even hot women need/want validation

I know we do, but I still can’t imagine banging a student.

 
 

I’m not sure the pool of volunteers is so limited that there’s a need to fish in the shallow end.

People who were sexually abused often become sexual abusers. Sexual abusers don’t go for hawt, they go for vulnerable. Sorry to burst anyone’s “hot for teacher” fantasy but there you go.

 
 

There have been cases of even hotter female teachers getting mixed up with even younger male students.

LaFave did the Cuban slide with someone who wasn’t so….nerdy.

 
 

You sound just like my girlfriend — she hates motionless tautologies. But my boyfriend loves them!

Well, I can imagine your boyfriend would like them taut.

 
 

To ANGRY Geometer:

Mad props on dragging Wittgenstein into this, dunny. What I like to do, though, is juxtapose Wittgenstein with Schopenhauer viz:

The world is all that is the case.
The world is my idea of it.
THEREFORE my ideas are all that are the case.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum, Baybee. (Ooooh you speak French!@)

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

People who were sexually abused often become sexual abusers. Sexual abusers don’t go for hawt, they go for vulnerable. Sorry to burst anyone’s “hot for teacher” fantasy but there you go..

I know, I was just trying not to be a killjoy.

 
 

I validate hot girls all the time. Then I negate them. The key is to oscillate wildly between validation and negation. The vacillation keeps them so dizzy and confused they assume they’re aroused. This is the key to dealing with not only women but every other minor nuisance life throws your way.

 
 

I assure you that at any time during my early twenties, I was prepared to be slavishly devoted to any hot woman who required it of me

They didn’t have to be that hot, to boot. There’s plenty of women I’ve dated that I look at their photos and wonder if I really was that horny in my twenties.

Not that they were bad people and for most, I had a nice time with them, but I seem to have fonder memories of their physiognomies than evidence suggests.

 
 

What I like to do, though, is juxtapose Wittgenstein with Schopenhauer

That’s still illegal in at least four states.

 
 

I know we do, but I still can’t imagine banging a student.

Yeah. When I was thinking of hot wimmin, I wasn’t thinking of myself. 😉 I can’t imagine banging a student either. For too many reasons to name.

 
 

I can’t imagine banging a student either.

I’m just glad you weren’t my freshman English professor.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

And this is how you deal with homophobes.

Of course, we might have to set their houses on fire first…

 
 

Speaking of Hot for Teacher

 
 

The key is to oscillate wildly between validation and negation

Believe it or not, there are some guys who actually do stuff like that. Try to knock a girl’s confidence so he can maintain the upper hand. I think there are actually seminars that teach sort of thing!

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I’m just glad you weren’t my freshman English professor.

Was she a TA? Because that’s totally different.

 
 

Was she a TA?

No, but she had nice T & A.

 
 

Well, I can imagine your boyfriend would like them taut.

Taut? Ow! Oh Jeez!

I know, I was just trying not to be a killjoy.

I came here to chew bubblegum and be a killjoy. And I’m all out of bubblegum.

 
Disgruntled Lurker
 

Was she a TA? Because that’s totally different.

Teaching assistant? Or Tits and Ass?

 
 

That’s still illegal in at least four states.

Not to mention caning in Singapore, which is the sort of thing that normally runs upwards of 300 an hour at any reputable place around here.

 
 

Not to mention caning in Singapore

Depends on which cane gets used, of course.

 
 

“Was she a TA? Because that’s totally different.

Teaching assistant? Or Tits and Ass?”

She was an Professor of English. Must be Tennyson and Addison.

 
 

Not to mention caning in Singapore, which is the sort of thing that normally runs upwards of 300 an hour at any reputable place around here.
Earlier this year a friend of mine saw how I looked after a 120 mile training ride on my bicycle, and asked me “why do you do this to yourself?” my answer: “because I can’t afford someone to do it to me.”

 
 

off topic, but then this whole thread is off-topic and has been for awhile now: Who here is the keeper of the troll filters? Where do I get ’em and are they customizable? (Cuz you never know when a new troll’s gonna pop up).

 
 

Are we going for 1,000 posts.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Are we going for 1,000 posts.

Sadly, no!

 
 

There have been cases of even hotter female teachers getting mixed up with even younger male students.

Damn! I went to all the wrong schools.

 
 

The Landmarks Preservation Commission in NYC refused to grant landmark status to the building that is to house the mosque in lower Manhattan.

Assplosions in 3….2….1…..

 
 

For me, the conclusion is usually reached because I don’t have a penis and he does.

But you can rent or buy a penis, while I am stuck with my wardrobe.

Per the video above, I don’t feel tardy. Did T&U remember to vote?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Did T&U remember to vote?

Dammit, it’s only 3:00 here!

 
 

Did T&U remember to vote?

Oooh, thanks for reminding us to remind her.

 
 

Dammit, it’s only 3:00 here!

Which means you’ve had enough time to vote four or five times already.

Slacker.

 
 

Which means you’ve had enough time to vote four or five times already.

Really! What kind of Democratic activist ACORN member are you???

 
 

Over 600 comments and no trolls?

…I don’t know you anymore, S,N.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Look. I at least have to *pretend* that I’m working, especially since I’ve been gone 4 days. Nefarious socialist schemes will have to wait until another day.

 
 

The Landmarks Preservation Commission in NYC refused to grant landmark status to the building that is to house the mosque in lower Manhattan.

Would landmark status have prevented the mosque being built?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Would landmark status have prevented the mosque being built?

Yup. Hee hee hee.

 
 

Would landmark status have prevented the mosque being built?

As proposed, yes. I don’t know that the plans could have fit the existing building, either.

 
 

(Cuz you never know when a new troll’s gonna pop up).

Which makes our mission in Afghanistan all the more important.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Which makes our mission in Afghanistan all the more important.

Fight ’em there so they can’t get us here!

 
 

Would landmark status have prevented the mosque being built?

It would have made it more difficult and expensive, not stopped it.

The whole thing was odd: the buildings are old but heavily modified in the past and therefore would not normally be seriously considered for landmarking.

 
 

The Landmarks Preservation Commission in NYC refused to grant landmark status to the building that is to house the mosque in lower Manhattan.

Shorter Landmarks Preservation Commission: FYSP.

 
 

Shorter Landmarks Preservation Commission: FYSP.

It’s more like FY9/11 Families.

Not for nothing, and I grieve their loss, but they’ve decided to become a de jure purity board for anything going on with respect to any commemoration or tangential connection to the event.

This would be akin to families of the Titanic victims deciding which cruise ships can sail to England.

 
 

As proposed, yes. I don’t know that the plans could have fit the existing building, either.

I assume NY has a historical registry–not the same thing as being designated a landmark, right? This is good news for John Mc those who believe in freedom of religion.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Yeah, and living through a tragedy doesn’t give you the right to be racist.

 
 

People who were sexually abused often become sexual abusers.
So many defense lawyers have gone on about a “cycle of abuse” as a mitigating circumstance that it has become popular knowledge, but I am not aware of empirical evidence.

A Faraday keeps the Van Eyck Phreaks away
What does 77south have against oil painting?

[Insert joke here about Tempest Tsunami Shielding]

 
 

Dusky killers named Omar, Muslims controlling Manhattan – the Teabaggers will be running for the bunkers.

 
 

Fight ‘em there so they can’t get us here!

Fight em there, then in Pakistan, then at the horn, then inland Africa, then back in the Middle East–hey, it’s just like Whack-A-Mole, only way more expensive.

 
 

“Which makes our mission in Afghanistan all the more important.”

I thought we were fighting GOBLINS over there

 
 

The question still to be answered is,’Are people who twitter called twitters, twitterers, or just twits?’ People who watch way too much Monty Python want to know.

 
 

the Teabaggers will be running for the bunkers.

Where they’re likely to plan a “solution” to the Muslim problem. ((shudder)).

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

The question still to be answered is,’Are people who twitter called twitters, twitterers, or just twits?’ People who watch way too much Monty Python want to know.

“Tweeters.”

 
 

Yeah, and living through a tragedy doesn’t give you the right to be racist.

That, and there were innocent Muslims who were killed in the World Trade Center attacks too. What are we supposed to tell them, exactly? We’re sorry, but your relatives’ deaths don’t count?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Did y’all know that Newsmax has a print publication? How did I not know this?

 
 

I assume NY has a historical registry–not the same thing as being designated a landmark, right?

N__B can speak on this better than I can, but my understanding is, had landmark status been granted, the structure would have to have been left intact, meaning apart from any needed work to shore the building itself up, the framework would have to be maintained.

Apart from that, historical registries really come down to putting up a plaque when a building gets replaced. I doubt this building would even qualify for that.

Here’s the thing: the imam who heads the group seeking this Islamic center has been accused of making the following comments:

1) Refused to call the Palestinian group Hamas a terrorist organization in a 60 Minutes interview. This angered Jewish groups, of course, but Hamas’ actions lately do tend to mitigate the restricted view as a terrorist organization. I’m not saying I’d want them holding a bake sale at an elementary school, but….

2) “United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened [on 9/11].” This is a position any reasonable person can take and back up with proof: aggressive interventions in the Middle East, exploiting the oil resources of the region, supporting Israel at nearly all times, and so on. And you’ll note too that he called the attacks a crime. Not an act of war, a crime, meaning he did not support the attacks and in fact condemned them.

 
 

I thought we were fighting GOBLINS over there

If by fighting GOBLINS you mean getting defense contractors and Wall Street rich, while robbing the poor and needy, our infrastructure, educational system, etc, then yes, that’s what we’re doing.

 
 

Did y’all know that Newsmax has a print publication?

I’ve actually seen it.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

That, and there were innocent Muslims who were killed in the World Trade Center attacks too. What are we supposed to tell them, exactly? We’re sorry, but your relatives’ deaths don’t count?

Shit, I don’t fucking know. I don’t think that it even occurs to people that narrow minded that there were Muslim September 11 victims, too.

 
 

’Are people who twitter called twitters, twitterers, or just twits?

Morons.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

*sigh*

 
 

A Faraday keeps the Van Eyck Phreaks away
What does 77south have against oil painting?

Why is my sock drawer lead lined?
Just what was I doing in Antarctica From Oct 1999 to Oct 2000?
Why have I never been photographed in the same room as the Pope?
did I mis-spell Van Eck Phreaking or is there something more sinister going on?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking
Join us next week as we ask the unanswerable questions on “Mysteries of the inquisitive”

 
 

“The question still to be answered is,’Are people who twitter called twitters, twitterers, or just twits?’ People who watch way too much Monty Python want to know.”

I’d feel comfortable calling anyone who “tweets” more than twice a day a twit.

 
 

Oh tsam, there you go…being all realistic and NEGATIVE again…

 
 

That, and there were innocent Muslims who were killed in the World Trade Center attacks too.

Mayor Bloomberg, who, when he has his head screwed on properly, can use les mots juste, effectively said “Firefighters don’t ask what church you attend when they try to save you from a burning building. If we don’t allow this, the terorrists will have shown that our freedoms mean nothing”

 
 

1) Refused to call the Palestinian group Hamas a terrorist organization in a 60 Minutes interview. This angered Jewish groups, of course, but Hamas’ actions lately do tend to mitigate the restricted view as a terrorist organization. I’m not saying I’d want them holding a bake sale at an elementary school, but….

Hamas: By the same logic that one can label them a terrorist organization, you could do the same for the Republican party, as it has violent extremist factions similar to Hamas. Not as numerous, obviously, but they do exist.

And you’ll note too that he called the attacks a crime. Not an act of war, a crime, meaning he did not support the attacks and in fact condemned them.

Well that means he hates America. If you don’t support killing as many people as possible to get rich people richer and cut down the poor, then you hate America too.

 
 

Shit, I don’t fucking know. I don’t think that it even occurs to people that narrow minded that there were Muslim September 11 victims, too.

Probably doesn’t occur to them either that most of the victims of al-Qaeda, the Taliban and all these other people were themselves Muslims.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I’d feel comfortable calling anyone who “tweets” more than twice a day a twit.

Even Neil deGrasse Tyson???

 
 

Even Neil deGrasse Tyson???

Especially Neil deGrasse Tyson.

 
 

Oh tsam, there you go…being all realistic and NEGATIVE again…

I’m very very mad about that war and Iraq. Plus depressed and angry over the whole rest of my life.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

🙁

 
 

“Even Neil deGrasse Tyson???”

If you’re NDT you get a pass. But there’s only one NDT.

 
 

I know, tsam. I feel ya. If you ever need an ear, holla.

 
 

🙁

I can say that because he attended the *other* NYC high school, the one he shouldn’t have when there was a far superior school in his own borough.

 
 

Oh and re tsam, for fuck’s sake it’s about time someone started treating terrorism as what it is; a crime. Not a war, anymore than the war on drugs or the war on poverty was really one.

 
 

Oh and re tsam, for fuck’s sake it’s about time someone started treating terrorism as what it is; a crime. Not a war, anymore than the war on drugs or the war on poverty was really one.
As long as we are at it, can we treat war as a crime too?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

The irony of this, of course, is that we are currently discussing a post that wouldn’t be possible without Twitter. But just go ahead, keep on mocking…

*pouts in corner*

 
 

As long as we are at it, can we treat war as a crime too?

Oh, I like that idea.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

As long as we are at it, can we treat war as a crime too?

Oh, also? Can we prosecute war crimes, too?

 
 

Oh, also? Can we prosecute war crimes, too?
as long as the sentences are more severe than one might get for jaywalking while black/mexican/muslim, yes.

 
 

Oh and re tsam, for fuck’s sake it’s about time someone started treating terrorism as what it is; a crime. Not a war, anymore than the war on drugs or the war on poverty was really one.

A-fucking-men, brother. Amen.

As long as we are at it, can we treat war as a crime too?

FTW. Even if it is asking too much because Jesus says we should kill the infidels. Wait, that wasn’t Jesus, was it? I’m so confused. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is so ambiguous….

 
 

As long as we are at it, can we treat war as a crime too?

You mean like how Clinton did?

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

as long as the sentences are more severe than one might get for jaywalking while black/mexican/muslim, yes.

We don’t even have to prosecute Cheney if we just let his heart give out and nature take its course as it so clearly wants.

 
 

Did Clinton do anything besides get his dick sucked? I was under the impression that he didn’t do anything but attend to his cock.

 
 

As long as we are at it, can we treat war as a crime too?

You mean like how Clinton did?

Right answer, wrong reference. I meant: Oh and re tsam, for fuck’s sake it’s about time someone started treating terrorism as what it is; a crime.

 
 

Just what was I doing in Antarctica From Oct 1999 to Oct 2000?

“Drinking yourself to oblivion”, I had assumed.

 
Disingenious Lurker
 

The Landmarks Preservation Commission in NYC refused to grant landmark status to the building that is to house the mosque in lower Manhattan.

The shrieking harpy will not be happy. Heard her on the radio last night ranting about how the Muslims have always built community centers TRIUMPHIANT MOSQUES two blocks from RIGHT ON TOP OF CITIES THEY’VE CONQUERED!

She’s a strange one…

 
 

Did Clinton do anything besides get his dick sucked?

That depends on your definition of “sucked”. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to demonstrate this concept. I volunteer my services.

 
 

I’d feel comfortable calling anyone who “tweets” more than twice a day a twit.

I have a Twitter account but it’s mostly used as a news aggregator. I tweet maybe once a week, usually something I feel the need to say but don’t want to post on Facebook which would necessitate explaining to either my boss or my mother. I don’t post much on Facebook, either. It’s more a friend aggregator. I can keep up with folks not in New Orleans without actually having to communicate. In any event, I can’t imagine myself in the place of people who tweet (or Facebook post) constantly, as I realize I don’t have that much interesting to say that often.

I also realize I’m therefore missing much of the point of Twitter and/or Facebook by not tweeting/posting about the delicious sandwich I just ate, but c’est la vie.

 
 

The shrieking harpy will not be happy. Heard her on the radio last night ranting about how the Muslims have always built community centers TRIUMPHIANT MOSQUES two blocks from RIGHT ON TOP OF CITIES THEY’VE CONQUERED!

I’m stunned.

I didn’t think the FCC would permit a broadcast at those frequencies.

 
Disingenious Lurker
 

Who ate my strikethroughs?

 
Disingenious Lurker
 

I didn’t think the FCC would permit a broadcast at those frequencies.

It was on satellite radio.

 
 

“Drinking yourself to oblivion”, I had assumed.
At every opportunity.
But I also did so much more, I um, fixed computers, drank, installed cabling, drank, installed and terminated fiber optic cabling, drank, ran up multi thousand dollar phone bills, drank, worked out, drank and played air hockey.

 
 

Matt, I closed my Facebook account because I couldn’t be bothered with it. My Twitter account I have solely because I was advised that it would be a good annex for my site. I feel like I should hang out more there, but I just cant be bothered. But I recently stopped following funny celebs, so perhaps with my attention on people I actually care about, I’ll find it more useful. I need to be following Amanda Marcotte, not Stephen Colbert (much as I adore him).

 
 

I didn’t think the FCC would permit a broadcast at those frequencies.

It was on satellite radio.

Well, now I’m SURE the IGCC¹ doesn’t allow those frequencies

¹ InterGalactic Communications Commission

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

But I also did so much more, I um, fixed computers, drank, installed cabling, drank, installed and terminated fiber optic cabling, drank, ran up multi thousand dollar phone bills, drank, worked out, drank and played air hockey.

Sounds awesome. No, really.

 
 

Dis,

Use the full word and angle brackets.

 
 

That depends on your definition of “sucked”. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to demonstrate this concept. I volunteer my services.

I’m shocked–SHOCKED–that such language is allowed here. I’m gonna clutch my pearls as I fall onto my fainting couch.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Although I’m sure the food was *terrible*.

 
 

I’m gonna clutch my pearls as I fall onto my fainting couch.

Sily woman wearing a skirt in a parlor full of men….

 
 

Oh, and for the record I miss Speight’s Gold Medal and Steinlager beer. The NSF didn’t feel like shipping beer all the way from the US so we drank Kiwi beer.

 
 

Although I’m sure the food was *terrible*.
Aside from the lack of fresh food, not really. Over the winter it was the baker’s personal mission to put 10 lbs on all of us, and with the pastries coming out of that kitchen, she pretty much succeeded.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Aside from the lack of fresh food, not really. Over the winter it was the baker’s personal mission to put 10 lbs on all of us, and with the pastries coming out of that kitchen, she pretty much succeeded.

Oh, that doesn’t sound so bad. I was imagining, like, fruit cocktail and MREs.

 
 

Oh, that doesn’t sound so bad. I was imagining, like, fruit cocktail and MREs.
With food like that, there would have been a riot. there was even a vegetarian option for all meals. Food-wise, I have no complaints about Antarctica.

 
 

It’s sad that the mere suggestion that small groups of morons plotting bomb attacks don’t justify invading a country–even if that country harbors them or looks the other way, amounts to treason here. Just think about actually facing the reality that in large part, we have brought this upon ourselves with our hubris and imperial designs on controlling oil production. Trying to make people face that nearly brings a military response itself.

 
 

I’m shocked–SHOCKED–that such language is allowed here. I’m gonna clutch my pearls as I fall onto my fainting couch.

Shocked, are you? I’ll go ahead and clutch those pearls if you’d like.

 
 

Your best defense? Preparation, of course. Batteries. Lots of batteries. Capacitors, any type of electical storage that you can insulate from the grid will be safe unless it is directly attacked by the solar storms that will occur (remember, the night side of the planet will be relatively secure).

Great blog entry, Actor.

Good thing I still have all those Y2K provisions in my bunker.

 
 

Thanks, tsam. It’s not tonight’s solar flare I’m worried about, but the ones NASA is predicting for 2013. I figure it makes sense to start preparing now.

 
 

I understand they have pretty good chow on submarines for similar reasons.

 
Rusty Shackleford
 

Preparing for 2013? You’re so naive, Actor.

 
 

Shocked, are you? I’ll go ahead and clutch those pearls if you’d like.

Oh, SNAP. I can’t tell if you want to rip off my necklace or strangle me with it.

 
 

Hey, I love Twitter. It’s how I stalk Mindy Kaling, and it’s also how I learned (through Kanye West) that “toothpaste is great for cleaning diamonds.”

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Preparing for 2013? You’re so naive, Actor.

I know, right? You have to get past 2012 first.

Incidentally, there’s supposed to be some nasty astrological shit on the 6th and 7th, if you’re prone to believing such things. I do not. Most of the time.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

Or “I am not.” Wev.

 
 

Missing Speights beer is a sad, sad thing. It is not nice.
Steinlager is all right in a limited kind of way for an off night.
Usually anything that big breweries make in NZ is good for killing snails but not much else.
Emersons beer is the stuff to get,

 
 

Steinlager is OK as a cooking beer.

 
 

I see everyone has been rolling merrily along without me, but maybe noen is interested in the book that I just found about the Hormel strike. It’s No Retreat, No Surrender–Labor’s War at Hormel, by Dave Hage and Paul Kauda.

 
 

Did Clinton do anything besides get his dick sucked? I was under the impression that he didn’t do anything but attend to his cock.

Considering how this seemed to affect the economy, I suggest we work on getting Bubba’s pipes cleaned as often as possible.

 
 

strangle me with it.

NO NO…no, I’m not the violent type. That was a lame attempt at one of those flirty jokes. Swing and a miss, as they say in baseball.

 
 

strangle me with it.

Should have offered to give you a pearl necklace instead…

 
 

Considering how this seemed to affect the economy, I suggest we work on getting Bubba’s pipes cleaned as often as possible.

John Kass, aka “the lump of pork fat who is occupying Mike Royko’s space at the Chicago Tribune,” used to harp endlessly about how Clinton had a conversation with some congressman about Kosovo while Monica was also on the line, so to speak. Kass thinks it’s just horrible that someone would venture to make important decisions while etc. etc. Considering that Kosovo was arguably the last U.S. military intervention that went right, that’s another argument for Bubba pipe-cleaning.

 
 

Tsam, I was just teasing you. 😉 I’m pretty certain you only have one mean bone in your body.

Zrm, no kidding.

 
 

I’m pretty certain you only have one mean bone in your body.

Awesome.

 
 

The rich are already buying land around the future tropical seas of Hudson Bay.

Ah, so when they bribe politicians and fund lobbyists to obstruct any action against AGW, they are merely protecting their investment. That’s a relief. I would hate to think that they are sociopaths.

 
 

I’m pretty certain you only have one mean bone in your body.

Wait, wait, are we talking about bacula? Again?

 
 

*pouts in corner*

Don’t you have to go vote?

Wait, wait, are we talking about bacula?

No, Blackula. Who was, as you may know, deadlier than Dracula.

Re landmarking: The US has a national register and it has no meaning for conservation. As Actor says, it means plaques. Actual protection is left to the states and incorporated localities; NYC has the strictest law in the country. An NYC landmark can be altered only with explicit approval (and “alteration” includes painting the front door) and can only be torn down if the owner can prove that (a) it is not possible to sell the building and (b) owning the building is creating financial hardship. The purpose of landmarking this building would be to harass the Cordoba people by making their alteration more expensive and subject to more review.

 
 

Wait, wait, are we talking about bacula? Again?

I, for one, am getting oosik of such things.

 
 

The purpose of landmarking this building would be to harass the Cordoba people by making their alteration more expensive and subject to more review.

Wha?

Oh. Now I have to go back and read eleventy-gillion comments to figure out what that’s about.

*begins searching for “cordoba”*

Bastard.

 
 

Bacula? Is Quantum Leap coming back?

 
 

Oh. That wasn’t so bad.

As you were.

Puns, anyone?

 
 

Bastard.

“Ground Zero” “mosque”

 
 

“Landmark” did the trick.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

I voted! I even have the sticker to prove it!

 
 

Hey – anyone know a non-asshole capable of development for Apple iOS? I have a relatively simple app that I would really like to have…

 
 

The US has a national register and it has no meaning for conservation. As Actor says, it means plaques.

Also, tax credits.

 
 

Also, tax credits.

When the stars align and you’ve blown the right SHPOs.

 
 

Jeeezz… is this thing still on?

 
 

Hey – anyone know a non-asshole capable of development for Apple iOS? I have a relatively simple app that I would really like to have…

Forgot to add two things:

1. This is a business issue so actual cash would be on the table.

2. T&U, are you sure you voted?

 
 

When the stars align and you’ve blown the right SHPOs.

Trying to sing this to the tune of “Age of Aquarius” proves to be more trouble than it’s worth.

 
 

Hey – anyone know a non-asshole capable of development for Apple iOS?

Hey–anyone know a Republican with a brain?

 
 

Shit, y’all. This is like a Huffingtonpost-length thread. Except not about Lindsay Lohan. Go figure.

In other words, I can’t keep up.

 
 

“I voted! I even have the sticker to prove it!”

We vote next Tues. But then, my congress critter is Keith Ellison and my senator is Al Franken. Pawlenty is leaving and no one, I mean no one, will miss him.

 
 

Pawlenty is leaving

He’s a super-genius.

 
 

VS beat me to the punch. Ah well, I’m usually far to slow for this crew anyway.

 
 

The beauty of Pawlenty leaving is only exceeded by the joy I will get from watching the uber-wingnut Emmer getting trounced this fall and watching TPaw work his ass off for 3% in Iowa in 2012.

 
 

watching TPaw work his ass off for 3% in Iowa in 2012.

He’s going to pole-dance in Des Moines?

 
 

“Hey – anyone know a non-asshole capable of development for Apple iOS?”

I think there is already a ‘pull my finger’ app.

 
 

Considering how this seemed to affect the economy, I suggest we work on getting Bubba’s pipes cleaned as often as possible.

No kidding, this dry spell is murder.

 
 

Hey–anyone know a Republican with a brain?

Sure. Dick Nixon, Rupert Murdoch, Karl Rove. You don’t get to where they are without a lot of brains.

OTOH, I’ve never met a Republican voter with brains.

 
 

“The beauty of Pawlenty leaving is only exceeded by the joy I will get from watching the uber-wingnut Emmer getting trounced this fall and watching TPaw work his ass off for 3% in Iowa in 2012.”

Target is finding out there how much people appreciate them donating to his campaign. A pretty conservative guy I know around here said he liked Mark Dayton. I had to do a double take, I was flabbergasted.

Populist rage knows no party affiliation. I don’t know why the Dems don’t at least try to tap into it a bit more than they do.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

2. T&U, are you sure you voted?

Unless somebody completely recreated my polling place in excruciating detail, down to the fancy new computer system, then yes, I’m sure.

 
 

The T & U Show? Could be, better go vote again.

 
 

OTOH, I’ve never met a Republican voter with brains.

True, true. Although if you’re already rich, I guess being a Republican voter does work for you. I suppose in some ways that counts as having brains.

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

The T & U Show?

OMG MOST BORING SHOW EVER.

 
 

OMG MOST BORING SHOW EVER.

That depends on which channel it airs, and the content rating. So speak for yourself, missy.

 
 

Populist rage knows no party affiliation. I don’t know why the Dems don’t at least try to tap into it a bit more than they do.

I haz it in a borderline dangerous way these days.

 
 

By the way T&U, we vote in the primary here in Minn next Tues. Don’t let me forget. 😉

Pawlenty move it up a month and hardly anyone knows. It’s his last big “Fuck You”.

 
 

OT (is there one?) The real story today is that ESPN got punk’d

 
 

FYWP. Stop drinking my beer!

Once again, since WP is that gross stuff one finds stuck to the bottom of a shoe, prompting the debate over just throwing them over the back fence or suffering through cleaning the mystery shit off the sole…

Recognize, fools!

 
 

Who here is the keeper of the troll filters? Where do I get ‘em and are they customizable? (Cuz you never know when a new troll’s gonna pop up).

“The problem” is idiots like you. nt

 
TruculentandUnreliable
 

That depends on which channel it airs, and the content rating. So speak for yourself, missy.

Maybe, but you’d still have to sit through hours of me sitting at my desk, talking to my cats, and fucking around on the internet before you’d be able to see anything remotely sexy.

 
 

Ahem.

The research could pave the way for advanced methods of enraging monkeys.

I blogged about this yesterday at my joint.

RE: Hormel – the movie is called American Dream.

And although we reached the 105 degrees predicted for today, we ONLY got to 111 on the heat index – a whole degree less than yesterday.

The forecast for tomorrow? 105, with a heat index of 117.

SO YOU CAN ALL GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!!!!!!

 
 

Goodness, a whole 24 hours and this thread is still running, have you folks nothing better to do? Dont know if your still talking about books, or have run through DCW Mom or T&U’s breasts yet? Guess I have to read through the ramblings….

I think I liked The Road because I love post-apocalyptic, um, pretty much anything.

‘Country of Last Things’ by Paul Auster…..

 
 

Jody said,

August 3, 2010 at 21:46

Over 600 comments and no trolls?

…I don’t know you anymore, S,N.

They exist mainly in the fervid brains of mindnumbed lefty journolists anyway; you know, the urban castrati who think they run the Country and who are afraid of guns. The People of the US outside the urban cesspools are, however, heavily armed. When Comrade Obama can no longer borrow enough Chinese money to pay the urban masses to be quiet they will attack the businesses and the suburbs. That’s when all the hopey-changey fools on the left who want a revolution will learn that the first casualties of any revolution are the revolutionaries.

 
 

“The problem” is idiots like you. nt

Fuck you, asshole. Go to hell and die.

 
 

Maybe, but you’d still have to sit through hours of me sitting at my desk, talking to my cats, and fucking around on the internet before you’d be able to see anything remotely sexy.

Totally worth it.

 
 

have you folks nothing better to do?

No, why?

Guess I have to read through the ramblings…

That could take some time…

 
 

That could take some time…

Well yeah, if you tried to do it all at once. The trick is to spend a little bit of every hour (45 minutes is “a little bit” right?) throughout the day.

 
 

The shrieking harpy will not be happy. Heard her on the radio last night ranting about how the Muslims have always built community centers TRIUMPHIANT MOSQUES two blocks from RIGHT ON TOP OF CITIES THEY’VE CONQUERED!

We’re not talking about fear of their evil cult we’re talking about revulsion. They want to build a triumphal mosque on the site of their conquest and fools like you think that it is some show of enlightenment to let them. I’d prefer to kill them, and perhaps you as well. And, no, I’m not afraid of either them or you.

In Vino Veritas

 
 

(45 minutes is “a little bit” right?)

When I’m at work, it’s a mere pittance of time.

 
 

I am going to post a comment. That is often a convenient way to ensure there’s a new thread, and that I will be ignored.

tsam: hey, guy, it done slipped my mind that you are prolly still all bruised and bleeding. You should go find a friend with a puppy and play with the puppy. I am not being sarcastic or, you know, mean. It is totally therapeutic.

Has anyone else read Kristin Breitweiser’s book Wake-Up Call: The Political Education of a 9-11 Widow ? Ann Coulter just hates this woman. But Breitwesier is smart and capable, and although I don’t know her opinion about mosques and Ground Zero and any of that, I am 99% certain I’d approve of it.

Also, a helpful hint about disaster preparedness, Storing Water division. Over the years I have bought gallon jugs of drinking water and stashed them around my apartment (because why would I keep them in one place). I write the dates on the labels. I knew some of them were getting old, so I wouldn’t be drinking those. I just figured I’d use them for plants, washing, or flushing the toilet.

What I didn’t realize is that the containers themselves will expire. Ugh. Mini-floodlets around my apartment, including one that, overnight, soaked the contents of my Primary Handbag (which I carelessly didn’t put on its shelf). So I spent the weekend drying out my checkbook and notebook and datebook and everything else. So please remember and do not forget: plastic may last forever, but the seams and stuff won’t.

 
 

Larkspur said,

Who are you again?

 
 

Actually didn’t’ take too long, good thing I’ve got sod all work to do today…

In other news, Pammycakes is going into meltdown….

 
 

Ooh, Whaler Chowder, I am very very cross with you. I am going to re-name you Whale Chum. You won’t last 15 minutes.

 
 

tsam: hey, guy, it done slipped my mind that you are prolly still all bruised and bleeding. You should go find a friend with a puppy and play with the puppy. I am not being sarcastic or, you know, mean. It is totally therapeutic.

Thank you! I don’t know anybody with a puppy, but thus far alcohol and some other stuff is carrying me along until I decide I’m ready to deal with it and own up to my own stupidity. I’m not very good at that. Besides, I’m told that chicks dig scars. I appreciate the thought, larkspur. It helps more than you can know.

 
 

In other news, Pammycakes is going into meltdown….

Gah! Save the boobs! They’re worth something!

 
 

What I didn’t realize is that the containers themselves will expire. Ugh. Mini-floodlets around my apartment, including one that, overnight, soaked the contents of my Primary Handbag (which I carelessly didn’t put on its shelf). So I spent the weekend drying out my checkbook and notebook and datebook and everything else. So please remember and do not forget: plastic may last forever, but the seams and stuff won’t.

Yikes! I don’t store water. Like the song says “I got the pistols so I get the pesos water, yeah, that seems fair.”

 
 

In other news, Pammycakes is going into meltdown….

Gah! Save the boobs! They’re worth something!

So please remember and do not forget: plastic may last forever, but the seams and stuff won’t.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Thread Convergence.

 
 

…Like the song says “I got the pistols so I get the pesos water, yeah, that seems fair.”

Ha. So when I cut your pistol-packin’ self with the carefully honed edge of a defunct plastic water container, you’re gonna wash the blood with, um, your pistol.

I doubt I’ll survive a Gigantic Holy Rumpus from Hell, but I’ll go out making a big noisy fuss about it. And I’ll take any or all of y’all down with me.

(See how I managed the strikethrough within the italics? I am clever, yes?)

 
 

Yay, Looch! I will harmonize on your Convergence.

 
 

I doubt I’ll survive a Gigantic Holy Rumpus from Hell, but I’ll go out making a big noisy fuss about it. And I’ll take any or all of y’all down with me.

That’s RIGHT!

(See how I managed the strikethrough within the italics? I am clever, yes?)

Like a fox.

 
 

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Thread Convergence.

That was AWESOME.

 
 

Synchronicity indeed.

 
 

The last time our power went out, I considered storing lots of water so we could at least flush the toilets.

Then I remembered, we live NEXT TO A LAKE.

So I just need enough to brush my teeth and drink for a few days.

Oh, and the drinking could be covered by the wine….

 
 

I just hope it happens in the winter so I can easily get ice for my drinks.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

So I just need enough to brush my teeth and drink for a few days.

If you’ve got fire and a big pot, you don’t even need that much.

 
 

Hats back on, gentlefolk: an idiot:

8. Education ,let us put phonics back in school if you can not read you can not do History, Math, English. And that where we are now. Let make it mandatory in high school to read the minutes to the U.S. Congress , the Congressional Globe the real history of the U.S

Robert Marceaux the face of the Republican party, is back with a new campaign ad. Get the fringe off that flag!

 
 

Pammycakes is going into meltdown

Did someone throw water on her?

 
 

If you’ve got fire and a big pot, you don’t even need that much

Umm, well I guess I’ll have to lay in a stock of firewood and a few matches too. Or a second tank for the Weber. Not a bad idea, actually, Thanks.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

I’m willing to be real money that the members of the US Congress do not read the minutes of the US Congress. Couldn’t we start with, I don’t know, making the students read the New York Times, or Hamlet, or Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?

It is true that a lot of young people can’t do math. I am far from convinced that it is because they can’t read.

 
 

If you’ve got fire and a big pot

You may be Cheech and Chong.

 
 

Make sure that if national insurance is put in place, I will make sure the roots of such bill with not inclued any type measuring of the waist like other counties. quoted on 1/3/09

oh shit, Gary is running for governor..

 
 

Whoa, H.R. That guy needs some serious meds. And an English teacher.

 
Lurking Canadian
 

Make sure that if national insurance is put in place, I will make sure the roots of such bill with not inclued any type measuring of the waist like other counties. quoted on 1/3/09

I’m going on thirty-eight years of socialized medicine, and nobody has ever measured my waist unless he was a tailor about to make me a pair of pants (well, or a kilt). I think this risk might be overblown.

 
 

Oh shit, its like a political version of the Timecube guy:

1. Can a higher court say no to 2nd traffic stops And a county court say yes overruling the higher court, No they can not! But they everyday in Tennessee. Are you duly convicted? No I would take 12 stuns’ to protect a citizen . Would a lawyer? No they will not! They do not even read Knowels vs. Iowa? Tenn vs. Pucket

4. My friends a beer stores say they must check 200 D/L a day that 400 minutes a day per clerk which is over 6 hours at $ 7.00 a hour that $ 42.00, with it mandatory then we must pay them.

Because the last republican form of government which was 1866 thought they would rather have 50 murders on the street than one constitutional violator, now in 2008 all office holders break their oath the next day

I love you guys, only in the US do you allow the certifiably insane to run for office.

 
 

I’m going on thirty-eight years of socialized medicine, and nobody has ever measured my waist unless he was a tailor about to make me a pair of pants (well, or a kilt).

Sociamalized medicine leads to cross-dressing!

 
 

VOTE FOR ME AND IF I WIN I WILL IMMUNE YOU FROM ALL STATE CRIMES FOR THE REST OF YOU LIFE! (Except violating a citizen rights this would be a special punishment ) Making Tennessee the first state in the United States to actually listen to the U.S.and state Constitution ,and all cities charters

This guy has awesome oozing out of every pore on his lumpy brainless body. It makes me feel dumb that I can’t even figure out what he was trying to say. I so wish I was as high as this guy. He’s as high as an elephant’s eye.

 
 

I love you guys, only in the US do you allow the certifiably insane to run for office.

We’ve managed to elect them for about 40 years, too.

 
 

“Whoa, H.R. That guy needs some serious meds. And an English teacher.”

Luckily Pastor Swank was an English teacher. So he’s set.

 
 

Luckily Pastor Swank was an English teacher. So he’s set.

That wasn’t English he was teaching.

 
 

What’s not to like about Basil Marceaux? He wants to plant vegetation and then use that to make ethanol. He wants flags to fly right, judges to obey the oaths they swear to and put an end to speed traps (which is what I guess he is really complaining about there). Lastly he wants to rid the world of that stupid ugly gold fringe on state flags. So you see he’s really a progressive!

 
 

I love you guys, only in the US do you allow the certifiably insane to run for office.

hell, it’s practically a requirement here.

 
 

What’s not to like about Basil Marceaux?

he WILL NOT SCUZE HIS FIN-GAHS!!!

 
 

…. and put an end to speed traps …

you know who else didn’t have speed traps………

 
 

I keep checking my speed traps but there is NO METH.

 
 

That ice may not be such a sure thing soon

Whatever you do, don’t Google about the Arctic expedition this spring that had to abandon its ice measurements IN MAY because they ran out of ice….

 
 

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