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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open thread

Open thread

by Tim F|  August 20, 201212:00 am| 47 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Pulling a late-night shift in your Agenda 21 black helicopter? Make a cup of coffee and enjoy some links.

The Onion: Ground Emerges As Tim Tebow’s Favorite Target

FILM CRITIC HULK SMASH! talks about Prometheus and Damon Lindelhof. Not breaking news, but a good distillation of why I am still grumpy about that one.

Krugman vs. Paul Ryan.

Max goofing around with a seven month old labrador pup.

Chat about whatever.

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Reader Interactions

47Comments

  1. 1.

    Corner Stone

    August 20, 2012 at 12:01 am

    Fucking authoritarians.
    That is all.

  2. 2.

    gussie

    August 20, 2012 at 12:05 am

    That critic guy is talking about a movie?

  3. 3.

    Mark S.

    August 20, 2012 at 12:07 am

    I don’t even remember Prometheus coming out. Was in theaters for only a week?

  4. 4.

    Dr. Squid

    August 20, 2012 at 12:08 am

    It’s almost football season, which means it’s almost time for tbogg’s weekly series about St. Timothy of the Red Zone Interception.

  5. 5.

    Yutsano

    August 20, 2012 at 12:14 am

    MAXPUPPEH!!

    @Dr. Squid: Since I’m pretty much agnostic on the Jets, I say welcome to the life that is Seahackitude.

  6. 6.

    Hill Dweller

    August 20, 2012 at 12:15 am

    Krugman’s evisceration of Niall Ferguson(and Newsweek) was also good.

  7. 7.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    August 20, 2012 at 12:17 am

    Here’s something weird, directory Tony Scott commits suicide in LA.

  8. 8.

    Mark S.

    August 20, 2012 at 12:19 am

    I love that Krugman hates Ryan even more than I do. It’s galling to see such a stone cold idiot be lauded as some serious intellectual. I swear, Ryan really isn’t much smarter than Palin, Gohmert, or Bachmann.

  9. 9.

    Corner Stone

    August 20, 2012 at 12:20 am

    @The prophet Nostradumbass: God. He left a Prius behind.
    Really sad for him and his family.

  10. 10.

    Redshift

    August 20, 2012 at 12:21 am

    We were over at a friend’s house, and his friend who is one of those Heinlein libertarians but amazingly enough, quite pleasant in general, had given him a copy of Atlas Shrugged, Part I. I don’t know what possessed us, but we watched it, and actually made it all the way through. Without alcohol.

    I had heard a lot about it, of course, and he had actually already watched it (assuming, probably, that no one would want to watch it with him), so he warned us that there would be numerous points where we would want to yell at the screen “Why are you doing that? No sane person would decide to do that!” But we went ahead anyway.

    It is indeed quite dreadful, in that it manages to hit near the bottom of the “bad” curve, without getting anywhere near “so bad it’s good.” And unusually for bad movies, not a lot of the badness is in the technical aspects (at least on the small screen.) The aspects that are monumentally bad are the wooden acting, the dreadful dialogue, and of course, the completely insane Ayn Rand world.

    It actually reminded me of Left Behind (or at least what I’ve read of it) with Rand’s twisted ideology taking the place of Revelations. What the text dictates is paramount, and even if it means the characters have to do ridiculous things that no real person would do, that’s what they must do.

  11. 11.

    Mark S.

    August 20, 2012 at 12:21 am

    @The prophet Nostradumbass:

    Geez.

  12. 12.

    daveNYC

    August 20, 2012 at 12:24 am

    Trinity on the UES. Best bar ever. Been going there through at least six bartenders and it still maintains the same vibe. Plus they have good buy backs.

  13. 13.

    ? Martin

    August 20, 2012 at 12:27 am

    @Redshift:

    What the text dictates is paramount, and even if it means the characters have to do ridiculous things that no real person would do, that’s what they must do.

    So it’s just like the Republican party.

    Seen it already.

  14. 14.

    Spaghetti Lee

    August 20, 2012 at 12:31 am

    I tried reading that movie column, but I can’t do the all-caps thing. I get that it’s his shtick or whatever, but I might as well be looking at hieroglyphs.

    But, as long as we’re complaining about pretentious movie critics, I present Zach Baron: http://www.grantland.com/search/_/query/zach-baron

    His latest gem: a self-consciously old-school action film that doubles as an argument for the continuing existence of self-consciously old-school action films — i.e., the type of film that would never in one thousand bloody years come packaged with a meta-textual plea for its basic right to exist.

    He’s talking about The Expendables 2, by the way.

  15. 15.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    August 20, 2012 at 12:37 am

    Is it just me, or does Julian Assange, with his haircut, look kind of like Glenn Beck?

  16. 16.

    pseudonymous in nc

    August 20, 2012 at 12:42 am

    @Hill Dweller:

    Krugman’s evisceration of Niall Ferguson(and Newsweek) was also good.

    Krugman really fucking dislikes Ferguson, because Ferguson is a bandwagon-jumping poseur and lickspittle who decided that academia bored him and that pontificating about things he knows very little about pays a lot better.

  17. 17.

    Yutsano

    August 20, 2012 at 12:47 am

    @The prophet Nostradumbass: I saw what you did there. :)

  18. 18.

    Bobby Thomson

    August 20, 2012 at 12:48 am

    @Mark S.: I don’t remember him oming out either. I thought he stole fire for a woman.

  19. 19.

    MikeJ

    August 20, 2012 at 12:51 am

    Pulling a late-night shift in your Agenda 21 black helicopter?

    Just got back from dinner at Place Pigalle. French is the same as the UN, right?

    Had rabbit two ways, a burgundy, and a rainier cherry-pecan torte.

  20. 20.

    Corner Stone

    August 20, 2012 at 12:53 am

    @MikeJ:

    Had rabbit two ways

    Disturbing.

  21. 21.

    Redshift

    August 20, 2012 at 12:55 am

    @? Martin:

    So it’s just like the Republican party.

    Pretty much. If reality doesn’t match ideology, reality must be wrong. But it’s funnier when the result is a bad movie rather than real people suffering unnecessarily.

  22. 22.

    MikeJ

    August 20, 2012 at 12:58 am

    @Corner Stone: It was good, but not that kind of good. Braised leg meat and saddle of rabbit stuffed with duck sausage. The sausage made it. Spicy and delicious.

  23. 23.

    Yutsano

    August 20, 2012 at 1:02 am

    @MikeJ: I’m quite fond of rabbit, despite the cuteness factor. I’ll have to find a butcher that carries it.

  24. 24.

    Jewish Steel

    August 20, 2012 at 1:12 am

    Midnight walk with basenji Cisco. Something startles him and makes him snort and jump. Which startles me and makes me jerk his leash. Which startles him further making him lunge. And this is why no one ever asks us to go on important secret missions.

  25. 25.

    Gian

    August 20, 2012 at 1:13 am

    Hank Williams Jr made a Hank WIlliams Jr of himself…

    Following the song “We Don’t Apologize for America,” a chant of “USA, USA” broke out among the crowd. Williams smiled, telling the crowd that he was their mouthpiece and adding:

    “We’ve got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the U.S., and we hate him!”

    The cheers that followed were loud and enthusiastic.

    http://www.freep.com/article/20120819/ENT07/120819009/Hank-Williams-Jr-bashes-Obama-at-Iowa-State-Fair?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

  26. 26.

    Mark S.

    August 20, 2012 at 1:22 am

    Has anyone else seen that weird ad for “Become a Social Worker” with some weird baby?

  27. 27.

    Mnemosyne

    August 20, 2012 at 1:24 am

    @Redshift:

    I’m almost tempted to watch it for the train trip through the vast deserts of Wisconsin.

  28. 28.

    Villago Delenda Est

    August 20, 2012 at 1:25 am

    @Redshift:

    What the text dictates is paramount, and even if it means the characters have to do ridiculous things that no real person would do, that’s what they must do.

    “You can write this shit, George, but you can’t say it.” — Harrison Ford

  29. 29.

    PurpleGirl

    August 20, 2012 at 1:30 am

    @Bobby Thomson: The movie is a prequel to the Aliens series.

    ETA: I don’t remember when it came out but I think my dentist mentioned seeing it. (We both like SF movies.)

  30. 30.

    RadioOne

    August 20, 2012 at 1:32 am

    I thought the Tebow trade to the Jets was inevitable, after Peyton Manning was dealt to the Broncos.

  31. 31.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    August 20, 2012 at 1:40 am

    @Gian: He’s probably trying to pull a Ted Nugent.

  32. 32.

    PurpleGirl

    August 20, 2012 at 1:41 am

    @Redshift: Have you ever visited Slacktivist? Fred Clark has been doing a deconstruction of the Left Behind series for a few years now. Currently he is critiquing the third book. He usually posts those pieces on Friday. He has also done posts of the movies made from Left Behind. Good stuff. (Slacktivist is on JC’s blog roll.)

  33. 33.

    Pavonis

    August 20, 2012 at 1:47 am

    Famous pseudohistorian Niall Ferguson just wrote a long article for Newsweek, “Why Barack Obama Needs To Go”.
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/19/niall-ferguson-on-why-barack-obama-needs-to-go.html
    Ironically, every graph he includes can be interpreted as proving Obama’s policies are working.

    1) Unemployment is decreasing. But Niall’s upset because the original predictions were too rosy. And why is going back to Bush’s policies going to help?

    2) Oh no! China’s GDP is going to overtake America’s! But look closely… America’s GDP is growing quite a bit faster than Europe’s. And China has 4X the population of the USA. If you think any US president could stay ahead GDP-wise without pretty much nuking China back to the stone age, you are delusional.

    3) Niall’s “Epic Budget Fail” graph is the third. It looks like Obama has significantly decreased the deficit. The original predictions were too rosy again but does anybody care about that?

  34. 34.

    Yutsano

    August 20, 2012 at 1:51 am

    @Pavonis: Oh Gawd. I stopped reading when it became obvious he was just spouting talking points. Go back to Britain and suck Cameron’s dick Niall.

  35. 35.

    Redshift

    August 20, 2012 at 1:58 am

    @PurpleGirl: Yeah, that’s where most of my knowledge of Left Behind comes from. I haven’t kept up with it, though. I should read some more.

  36. 36.

    Narcissus

    August 20, 2012 at 2:00 am

    I would join a conspiracy if they gave me a black helicopter.

    Is it like Kitt? Does it have an erudite computer I can verbally spar with I mean

    Also I go both ways so if anybody belongs to the homosexual agenda I can do double agent work

  37. 37.

    Brachiator

    August 20, 2012 at 2:01 am

    “Prometheus” turned out to be one of the least interesting movies of the summer. Nobody much cares about it anymore, or reactions to it. Hulk Smash wastes time in beating up on Lindeholf; the sadder thing is that Ridley Scott could not steer the movie away from incoherency.

    @Redshift:

    What the text dictates is paramount, and even if it means the characters have to do ridiculous things that no real person would do, that’s what they must do.

    Atlas Shrugged isn’t much of a novel, but I doubt that her acolytes care. They see it more like the parable of the cave in Plato’s Republic.

    I saw some stuff about the Hank Williams diatribe. This dovetails with the last minutes of a talk radio show I caught on the way home on Saturday. The callers kept talking about how they just couldn’t trust Obama, and how he just wasn’t right for the country. One caller actually believes that Paul Ryan is trying to save Medicare.

    The fomenters of hate among conservatives should pat themselves on the back. They have thoroughly convinced a segment of the electorate to vote against their own interests.

  38. 38.

    PurpleGirl

    August 20, 2012 at 2:09 am

    @Redshift: Me too. I would not read the books if paid to do so.

  39. 39.

    Pavonis

    August 20, 2012 at 2:21 am

    @Brachiator

    I liked some parts of “The Republic”. For example, there is the scene in the “Tale of Er” where souls draw lots on whom they get (re)incarnated as. Whether you’re born rich or poor, smart or dumb, male or female, etc. is completely out of your control. Almost all the determinants of where you are and who you are in the world are just due to luck (quite the opposite message from Atlas Shrugged). I would have stopped there and said that for this reason we should give everybody a chance to live a good and happy life. But Plato continues and has the souls exchange lots with the point being that sometimes a life of wealth and power is not a life of virtue and exchanging your lot for one lower down on the ladder could make you a better person (again the opposite of Atlas Shrugged).

  40. 40.

    andy

    August 20, 2012 at 2:55 am

    Got the week off, so I started out taking a walk around the neighborhood, then made some stuffed tomatoes as a side for pork chops. Not quite as sturdy as peppers, they have a tendency to split if you hollow them out too far. Still tasty though.

  41. 41.

    Brachiator

    August 20, 2012 at 3:33 am

    Shit. I heard a news story earlier today about a man who jumped off the Vincent Thomas Bridge. This is pretty unusual.

    Very sad to learn that the man who jumped was Tony Scott, director of “Top Gun” and other movies, and brother of Ridley Scott.

    Also just heard that Scott MKenzie died. He sang the 1967 hippie anthem, “San Francisco.”

    Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

  42. 42.

    ChrisB

    August 20, 2012 at 7:07 am

    A writer at the New York Times noted the following about the Jets, who much to my enjoyment may be terrible this year:

    One of the two excerpts below is from an article inTthe Onion, the satiric Web site. The other is real, from an article in The Star-Ledger in May.
    In light of the Jets’ preseason loss to the Giants on Saturday night, it may be hard to tell which is which.

    Go to the article for details:

    http://fifthdown.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/jets-offense-supplies-the-comedy/?ref=sports

  43. 43.

    Mnemosyne

    August 20, 2012 at 11:19 am

    @Brachiator:

    Some directors can take a weak script, work with the screenwriter (or find someone else to revise the script), and salvage the film.

    Ridley Scott is not one of those directors. He can do a great job with a script that’s already strong, but he’s no good at shoring up a weak script.

  44. 44.

    Rex Everything

    August 20, 2012 at 11:22 am

    Every time I turn around, someone is bashing Prometheus for not being the movie they would have made or whatever.

    Meanwhile nobody EVER bashes fitfully-decent-but-mostly-crap TV fare, e.g. Mad Men or Breaking Bad, which are rife with shitty writing, shallow themes that collapse under scrutiny, tin-eared dialogue, Norwegian Americans who are Catholic not Lutheran, drug dealers who make Eminem look like a viable tough guy, etc.

    My prediction: Within 10 years Prometheus, like 2001 and Bladerunner before it, will begin to overcome its undeserved bad rap and be seen as the classic it is, and all this “great” television will have mercifully faded from the common memory as insubstantial ephemera tends to do.

  45. 45.

    Ben Franklin

    August 20, 2012 at 12:02 pm

    Australian Broadcasting Company has a video of the Assange Sex Charges, hosted by Craig Murray.

    Start at 20 min in.

    http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/08/assange-sex-charges-detail/

  46. 46.

    Julia Grey

    August 20, 2012 at 3:02 pm

    I tried reading that movie column, but I can’t do the all-caps thing. I get that it’s his shtick or whatever, but I might as well be looking at hieroglyphs.

    My brother.

    It looked like it was going to be interesting, so I plunged in and kept going as long as I could, but my eyes started to cross about 4 paragraphs in…so.

    Hmmm. I just thought of something. I’m going to take a Select All, paste it to Text Edit, and then use a set of conversion “Services” that I have from a forgotten provenance for “Upper Case at beginning of Sentences” or something like that. (I was afraid that I had lost all my services when I upgraded to OSX 10.6.8, but thankfully not. Probably would if I went to Lion, though.)

  47. 47.

    Julia Grey

    August 20, 2012 at 3:08 pm

    That worked. All the other formatting (like italics, bold etc.) was stripped out in its trip through the Clipboard, but it is far more readable in mostly lowercase.

    And it IS pretty good.

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