Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

The revolution will be supervised.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

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Early Morning Open Thread

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This year’s best First-of-April news article was scienterrific:

A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.
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The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment’s vending machines. He also claimed responsibility for the infamous baguette sabotage in November last year.
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Mr Cole was seized by Swiss police after CERN security guards spotted him rooting around in bins. He explained that he was looking for fuel for his ‘time machine power unit’, a device that resembled a kitchen blender.
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Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin. “Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I’m here to stop it ever happening.” …

It’s the Mountain Dew (state drink of WV) that convinces me Eloi must be a descendent of our honorable bloghost… that, and the deadpan affect.

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  2. 2.

    morzer

    Ah, the wells of human creativity. Still, I hope they put morlochs on the facility door, just to keep things safe.

  3. 3.

    Comrade Baron Elmo

    It’s the Mountain Dew (state drink of WV)

    Alabama too. At my high school, the soft drink machine in the boy’s locker room had five slots given over to Mountain Dew, one to Pepsi. A favorite prank was to use the tip of one of the pull-off tabs (remember those?) to jam down the Pepsi button, thereby ensuring that the next guy who put money into the machine was cheated of his Dew. Tempers flared, hilarity ensued.

    Decades later, a long-time resident of California, I still drink at least one can of the radioactive-green nectar every day… and have consumed enough of it in one lifetime to (as Lewis Black so charmingly put it), piss the stuff for a year.

  4. 4.

    Calliope Jane

    Is “It is a communist chocolate hellhole” going to be added to the rotating . . . tagline (? sig? masthead? thingamabob?)

  7. 7.

    morzer

    I still drink at least one can of the radioactive-green nectar every day… and have consumed enough of it in one lifetime to (as Lewis Black so charmingly put it), piss the stuff for a year

    You mean they don’t actually make it that way?

  8. 8.

    Yutsano

    Oh and late entry to the gag list: I subscribe to a far-left e-mail news forward service. One of the banner subject lines was “ISRAEL BOMBS NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN” then you opened it and it was a woman covered by a mushroom cloud and “April Fool!”

  9. 9.

    asiangrrlMN

    I gotta say, every time I see a new tagline in the revolving header, it makes my day. I just saw, “Where tasty lettuce and mustard isn’t elitist” or something like that.

    @Yutsano: Huh. That doesn’t sound so funny to me.

  12. 12.

    JSD

    @ Morzer,

    I’m surprised the reference made it into the 2nd comment. That was fast. No one reads Wells anymore, so I didn’t expect anyone to put that in…

  13. 13.

    morzer

    @JSD:

    It’s a story that made a deep impression on my childhood years. It’s a shame that people don’t read Wells, and I think it’s partly because you don’t seem to find good volumes of selections from him any more, and the same seems to be true of O Henry. I wish teachers would use Wells in English classes, because he really had a knack of saying a lot in terse, effective language, and his images stick with you for life. That said, I feel rather guilty about my dreadful pun on morlochs. *s* I wonder if we could get a thread on The Best HG Wells Story. I’d love to see what stories of his people know.

  14. 14.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: It wasn’t really funny ha-ha as much as a made-you-look kind of thing. It was mildly amusing, could just be that way to me.

    @morzer: This is either funy or sad, but I understood the reference even though if you had held a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to tell you for the life of me where it was from. I appreciate the clarification however.

    I go find pillow now. Night y’all.

  16. 16.

    Martin

    I think you have it wrong. Clearly it’s John that goes even more hippie as to change his name to Eloi in the future. I’m guessing that Tunch gets so big he forms a black hole allowing John/Eloi to travel back in time.

  18. 18.

    Moses2317

    This article in the Kaplan Daily is a real laugher.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/01/AR2010040101930_Comments.html

    Here is my comment on it:

    This quote pretty much sums up the absurdity of the teabagger movement:

    “Nance, of the Gibson County Patriots, said, ‘I don’t see the agricultural subsidy thing as an issue at all,’ adding: “If it were an issue, then we would never elect a farmer to Congress at all. Because basically, most farmers get agriculture subsidies. If they didn’t, they’d be broke, and we’d be buying our food from China.'”

    Just like the fact that a big teabagger rallying cry was “keep the government out of my Medicare,” that many of the teabagger leaders are on government assistance, or that the teabaggers are organized by Freedom Works – a corporate backed political organization that is more than happy to support more taxpayer spending on wars and corporate subsidies, these teabaggers are nothing more than uninformed hypocrites.

    They rail against the common sense, middle-of-the-road efforts by President Obama to save our economy and improve our broken health care system. Yet, where were they when President Bush was driving our economy into a ditch and running up our deficits with unneeded wars, handouts to the rich, and a prescription drug plan that did not pay for itself?

    Perhaps the teabaggers are less concerned with “ideals” than they are with the fact that President Obama is a black Democrat?

  27. 27.

    arguingwithsignposts

    Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin.

    This article doesn’t ask the really pertinent question: What about his sheets? Did they match? We demand thread counts!

  28. 28.

    Panurge

    a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age

    I see the “forward into the past” trend begun in the late ’70s is still continuing. Ah, well. I guess I’ll just have to come up with my own FutureWear…

  29. 29.

    Chris W

    Later in the article:
    Professor Brian Cox, a former CERN physicist and full-time rock’n’roll TV scientist, was sympathetic to Mr Cole. “Bless him, he sounds harmless enough. At least he didn’t mention bloody black holes.”

    Mr Cole was taken to a secure mental health facility in Geneva but later disappeared from his cell. Police are baffled, but not that bothered.

    Love it.

  31. 31.

    scav

    Bow Tie and rather too much tweed? And the 11th Dr Who up this weekend?

    I’m trying too hard for a link. Use this this

  35. 35.

    capt

    “Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age,”

    Just wonderin’ has anybody seen Tucker Carlson? Could he be this buy Cole?

  36. 36.

    jrosen

    A toast to the memory of Sidd (for Siddharta) Finch, who could wing a fastball at 160 mph. (For you young ‘uns, that was the creation of George Plimpton for SI about 25 years ago.) He played the French Horn too.

  38. 38.

    Linda Featheringill

    OT.

    Back to the Church and pedophilia. Yes, I know we sort of resolved not to go there again.

    However, a guest essay by Chris Matthews appears in todays WaPo. One of the better comments from readers is this one:

    The answer should be clear, based on the recent past. We should invoke the Bush doctrine and invade this country called the Vatican, find the pope while he’s hiding in his spider hole, and bring him to justice. It’s the American way!

    [Posted by: johng1 | April 2, 2010 10:00 AM]

    I like the way that man’s mind works.

  39. 39.

    Mike Toreno

    A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future.

    Not so hard to believe. I’ve traveled here from the past.

  40. 40.

    JScott

    Anybody try the Mountain Dew Throwback? My first sip and I was hit with a temporal fugue myself.

  41. 41.

    morzer

    @cleek:

    C’mon, a lifestyle based on Pocky and Calpis sounds totally American. Seriously! Now, all we need are the hentai manga and the MidWest is set… Come to think of it, I can see Republicans agreeing to become the Lolicon party.

  42. 42.

    morzer

    @arguingwithsignposts:

    Folks, that’s obviously George Will. Look at the hatred of kitkats and the attempt to destroy science. (Plus the tweed and the bowtie and the paranoia about revealing his base).

  43. 43.

    scav

    @Linda Featheringill: This comment you cite presumably followed something about the Vatican hierarchy providing cover for priests wielding weapons of Mass Destruction, no?

    sorry, WaPo is personal NoGo.

  44. 44.

    goblue72

    @morzer: One of my favorite books from childhood. I remember seeing some 1970s TV movie remake of the Time Machine. Then I read the book and realized that television should just leave Wells alone, there was no improving on it.

    Not sure anyone picked up on it, but Cole is the name of the time traveling character in Twelve Monkeys, played by Bruce Willis.

    As for the tweed and bowtie, as others noted, sounds like Doctor Who #11.

  45. 45.

    JGabriel

    Eloi Cole:

    It is a communist chocolate hellhole …

    While it’s disappointing to learn that there are still wingnuts in the future, it is gratifying to know that they lost lose. (Tense is a bitch once time travel is involved.)

    .

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