Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

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

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

When we show up, we win.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Books are my comfort food!

Shut up, hissy kitty!

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: Probably Not the Next Star Wars Trailer

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67Comments

  1. 1.

    Uriel

    I’m pretty sure it’s the Vincent Chase vehicle ‘Aquaman.’ Although I thought James Cameron was set to direct that…

  4. 4.

    PsiFighter37

    On the top of Mauna Kea, 14,000 feet high… just saw the sun set here. Incredibly gorgeous, even if I’m a bit lightheaded right now.

  10. 10.

    Keith G

    @NotMax: In the climactic scene, Bieber pisses in a bucket just before he kicks it?

    Re Gaga…Fun stuff. She is out there trying. Sometimes it’s a home run, sometimes a whiff. If one were to doubt her talent may I suggest her duet with Tony Bennett – one of the best jazz/swing vocals I have heard in a long time.

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    @Liquid

    Ah, but in the final scene of JBvP, Predotor leans over Bieber’s body and pulls up his pants.

    The audience rises as one in a standing ovation.

    Predator then nailgunning suspenders onto him is icing on the cake.

  12. 12.

    The prophet Nostradumbass

    Thunder, lightning, and rain in the Bay Area this evening. Not completely unheard of, but certainly unusual!

  16. 16.

    jank_w

    I’m amazed that nobody got the hint the other day that: if you were against something when it happened under Bush, but OK with it under an Obama administration, that makes you a hypocrite.

    And yet, the commentariat here…these can’t be self-identifying democrats who attempt to defend this misbegotten public/private security state, can they?

    I did not know lines could be drawn any dearer.

  17. 17.

    Mnemosyne

    @jank_w:

    Well, that’s certainly a different interpretation of the trailer than anyone else has come up with. So Malkovich is Bush, or Obama?

  18. 18.

    YellowJournalism

    @NotMax: Bieber plays 30 seconds of his newest album for the Predator. Predator immediately sacrifices himself to an Alien to escape the pain.

  20. 20.

    max

    If that was John Malkovich at the end, I won’t be watching regardless.

    It wasn’t Malkovich. Title, Stranger, followed by a pan down from a starfield, which reeks of either Starman or Stranger In a Strange Land, but then the dude has got cut rope around his wrists, and he’s washed up, implying he was drowned, and then we get the dude with the sewed-up lips. ‘What is that again…?’ I said.

    Ah:In Haitian voudou superstition, a zombie is a dead body revived by magic to act as a soulless robot. In recent years stories of zombies have spread throughout Western countries in Hollywood horror films about the walking dead. According to the folk tradition, the houngans, or voudou priests, are said to dig up corpses and reanimate them by magic rituals. Another way of creating a zombie is to feed the victim a preparation that stupefies the soul, leaving the body a living corpse. To cure a zombie, it is said one should give it saltwater to drink. Special burial techniques are sometimes used to prevent corpses from being used as zombies. The corpse may be buried face down and its mouth filled with earth; sometimes the lips are sewn together, presumably to prevent the soul from leaving by the mouth. A somewhat naive custom is to strew handfuls of sesame seed on the grave (a common practice in eastern Europe to entertain vampires), so that the spirit of the deceased will always be occupied in counting the seeds.

    Right. Old school zombie, or not, but the sewed-up lips are to prevent the exit of the soul. Got it. Black and white film…GOT IT!

    Undead Starman!

    max
    [‘What?’]

  21. 21.

    jank_w

    I guess it’s Bush vs Obama, and only the tactics (if that’s the right word) change.
    meant as reply to mnseysoyome

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    @max

    Zombie trivia the younger set may not know.

    When the Comics Code Authority was put in place, it banned the use of the term “zombie” in any comics seeking its seal of approval on the cover.

    After a short period of compliance, the company which eventually was named Marvel Comics invented and used the word “zuvembie” for their stories instead.

  24. 24.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    Not gonna click. I’ve never quite recovered from the shock of seeing full frontal Malkovich in “Al di là delle nuvole,” and even if it’s not Malkovich, just the thought of him would put me off my Wheaties.

  25. 25.

    jank_w

    @FlipYrWhig: Fact is, if swooping up all info on everyone without a warrant was a problem for you until 2009, but not so much after because a different team was in charge, you might want to look in the mirror and repeat these words. “I am a big fat hypocrite.”

  27. 27.

    YellowJournalism

    @max:

    A somewhat naive custom is to strew handfuls of sesame seed on the grave (a common practice in eastern Europe to entertain vampires), so that the spirit of the deceased will always be occupied in counting the seeds.

    Well, they are dead, so what else they got to do?

  29. 29.

    jank_w

    @Yatsuno: Actually, i kind of am but happen to agree with a previous commenters that the comments are a cesspool. Since you are a frequent commenter, you might know how a cesspool gets made? Thxinadvancebye

  33. 33.

    Amir Khalid

    @max:

    A somewhat naive custom is to strew handfuls of sesame seed on the grave (a common practice in eastern Europe to entertain vampires), so that the spirit of the deceased will always be occupied in counting the seeds.

    I learned about this one on The X-Files. Mulder wards off an attack by a vampire/pizza delivery guy by scattering sunflower seeds to distract him. (Sunflower seeds are Mulder’s favourite snack.) Before breaking off his attack to pick up the seeds, the vampire scolds him: “Now why’d you have to go and do that? You are in big trouble, mister.”

  35. 35.

    ? Martin

    @max:

    A somewhat naive custom is to strew handfuls of sesame seed on the grave (a common practice in eastern Europe to entertain vampires), so that the spirit of the deceased will always be occupied in counting the seeds.

    That goes back quite a ways, at least to ancient greece. It was believed that evil spirits were compulsive. Sieves play a prominent role in wedding ceremonies, mainly to occupy the evil spirits with counting all the holes. In various other cultures (I’ve heard it found in the southern US as well) collanders were hung outside doors so the spirits would have to count all of the holes and not get around to finding the keyhole.

  36. 36.

    Anne Laurie

    @? Martin: Yeah, one of the reasons for throwing rice at weddings is supposed to be that the demons who’d otherwise spoil the festivities will get distracted counting every grain. Same for throwing dried beans out of the front door at New Years, which I’ve heard about in China & Japan as well as Ireland & Wales!

  38. 38.

    wasabi gasp

    Tonight I went to youtube and listened to too much Barbra Streisand.
    Tonight I went to youtube and listened to too much Barbra Streisand.
    Tonight I went to youtube and listened to too much Barbra Streisand.
    Tonight I went to youtube and listened to too much…

  39. 39.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @max:

    In the link I provided up top, there’s an interesting theory that it’s a remake (?) of an early ’70s pilot about an astronaut who lands on Earth’s twinned dystopian planet that is always on the opposite side of the Sun. I’m putting my money on this one.

  40. 40.

    PsiFighter37

    @Jerzy Russian: Saw the outside of them – not the inside. Phenomenal view of sunset…not as bright as on Haleakala, but more spectacular colors.

    You also have some spectacular stargazing as well – no wonder all the telescopes are up there.

  42. 42.

    gene108

    @NotMax:

    He seems to be in really good shape for his age.

    @NotMax:

    Needless to say, it’s not a feature-length production.

    Beiber would just punch through the Predators chest and rip its heart out. Laugh at the haters and reveal himself to be the dark and angry God Beliebers have secretly been worshiping and now his legion of faithful will go on a crusade to purge the world of unbelievers in an orgy of blood and human sacrifices to appease the newly arisen God.

  46. 46.

    NotMax

    And the ante has now been upped.

    Mohamed Badie, 70, the Brotherhood’s general guide, was taken from an apartment in Nasr City in northeast Cairo, the area where protesters demanding Mursi’s reinstatement had staged a vigil for six weeks before they were violently dispersed.

    He was charged in July with incitement to murder during protests before Mursi’s overthrow and is due to stand trial on August 25 together with his two deputies.

    Footage circulated on local media showed the bearded Brotherhood leader sitting grim-faced on a sofa in a grey robe, hands folded in his lap, while a man with a rifle stands by.

    The release of the images seemed designed to humiliate the Brotherhood’s most senior chief, whose arrest means the top echelon of the Islamist movement is now behind bars.
    [snip]
    The whereabouts of many other senior Brotherhood politicians are unknown. Those who had been posting frequently on social media have stopped in the last two days. Arrests have extended beyond Cairo, netting provincial leaders of the movement.  Source

    Related:

    Following the arrest of its Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie on Tuesday, the Muslim Brotherhood has announced that the Deputy Supreme Guide, Mahmoud Ezzat, will take the role of spiritual leader temporarily. Source

  49. 49.

    NotMax

    Meanwhile, in Pakistan:

    A Pakistani court Tuesday indicted former president and army chief Pervez Musharraf on murder charges in connection with the 2007 assassination of iconic Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, deepening the fall of a once-powerful figure who returned to the country this year in an effort to take part in elections.

    The decision by a court in Rawalpindi marks the first time Musharraf, or any former army chief in Pakistan, has been charged with a crime.  Source

    And at Fukushima:

    The operator of Japan’s tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant said Tuesday that about 300 tons of highly radioactive water have leaked from one of the hundreds of storage tanks there — its worst leak yet from such a vessel.

    Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the contaminated water leaked from a steel storage tank at the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. TEPCO hasn’t figured out how or where the water leaked, but suspects it did so through a seam on the tank or a valve connected to a gutter around the tank.

    TEPCO said that because the tank is about 100 metres from the coastline, the leak does not pose an immediate threat to the sea. But Hideka Morimoto, a spokesman for Japan’s nuclear watchdog, the Nuclear Regulation Authority, said water could reach the sea via a drain gutter.

    Four other tanks of the same design have had similar leaks since last year.…
    [snip]
    TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono said the leaked water seeped into the ground after largely escaping piles of sandbags added to a concrete barrier around the tank.

    Workers were pumping out the puddle and the remaining water in the tank and will transfer it to other containers, in a desperate effort to prevent it from escaping into the sea ahead of heavy rain predicted later in the day around Fukushima. By Tuesday afternoon they had captured only about 4 tons of the 300, Ono said.

    The water’s radiation level, measured about 50 centimetres (2 feet) above the puddle, is about 100 millisieverts per hour — five times the annual exposure limit for plant workers, Ono said.  Source

  51. 51.

    Patricia Kayden

    @jank_w: Actually, I’m against “it” under Bush or Obama. However, I don’t see this as a mark against President Obama who has already said that he wants to see the rules reformed. It’s now in Congress’ court to do something about reforming the Patriot Act and hence putting some checks on the NSA’s surveillance powers.

  52. 52.

    Betty Cracker

    @Keith G: I’m a closet Gaga fan. Had to take my kid to a concert a few years back (kid is a HUGE fan and was too young to go without parental supervision but HAD to go). I was dreading it but left a convert.

  53. 53.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Ben Cisco: LOL

    From IndyWeek:

    Pittsboro, Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough, congratulations. You have the simplest of situations—one election and you’re done.

    Durham city residents, you’re so special, you can vote twice

    Wake County, you’ll need a flow chart.

  54. 54.

    jayackroyd

    When I set up a Gaga channel on Pandora, the third or fourth performer that played was Sinatra.

  58. 58.

    Rex Everything

    Gosh, Anne Laurie’s passive aggressive hatred for President Obama is particularly passive aggressive in this post.

  59. 59.

    malraux

    @max: What’s funny about the compulsive nature of vampires is that it means that Sesame Street’s Count Von Count isn’t all that different for counting things. He’s just a vampire.

    My favorite episode was the day that the number of the day was zero, so the count flipped out and went to the beach to count all the grains of sand.

  62. 62.

    Mnemosyne

    @Amir Khalid:

    IIRC, that episode (“Bad Blood”) was written by Vince Gilligan, who went on to create and produce “Breaking Bad.”

    @jank_w:

    So Malkovitch is playing both Bush and Obama? I mean, I know people think he’s versatile, but don’t you think that will become a little confusing for the viewers?

  64. 64.

    chopper

    @jank_w:

    I’m amazed that nobody got the hint the other day that: if you were against something when it happened under Bush, but OK with it under an Obama administration, that makes you a hypocrite.

    whew, thank god that doesn’t apply to me, or i’d really feel the wrath of ‘jank from the internet’.

  67. 67.

    jank_w

    @Patricia Kayden: And that’s OK, so long as you don’t advocate storing my, my child’s, my nephews, my unborn neices communication history information in a database, I have a problem with everyone who would claim the right to house that when we are unindicted and have no arrest/search warrants out for us.

    And for you!

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