Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

In my day, never was longer.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

People are complicated. Love is not.

The willow is too close to the house.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Fuck This Year Case #icantcountthathigh

Fuck This Year Case #icantcountthathigh

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Iconic Star Wars Actress Carrie Fisher Dies at 60: ‘She Was Loved by the World and She Will Be Missed Profoundly’

Yesterday, George Michael.

I can’t even make a joke about who might be next as I don’t want to give the Fates any ideas.

Open thread, and yes I’ll make those site changes soon. Other things are taking my attention today.

 

Reader Interactions

62Comments

  7. 7.

    Cris (without an H)

    And right after Rogue One tried to give her eternal youth. I, like most of the world, loved her 30 years ago, but she had a fantastic second act, kind of like George Takei. We do her honor to remember not only Leia but also her straight talk about mental illness and addiction, her utter hilarity in interviews, and her dog the Twitter celebrity. Goodbye, Carrie.

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    Very sad.

    Condolences to her family

    ETA: I understand she had quite a career as a script doctor, contributing uncredited to a number of Hollywood films. A woman of many talents.

    And always, our Princess

  12. 12.

    Roger Moore

    I can’t even make a joke about who might be next as I don’t want to give the Fates any ideas.

    It would be rude to name names, but I wouldn’t complain if the next to go were a guy who got famous for developing New York real estate in the 1980s.

  13. 13.

    Betty Cracker

    Aw, man, this is seriously upsetting. Carrie Fisher was funny, brave and smart. Now she’s gone way too soon.

  15. 15.

    Brachiator

    Another notable passing in 2016

    Vera Rubin, astronomer who helped find evidence of dark matter, dies at 88, December 25

    From the Guardian obituary:

    Scientist from Philadelphia helped find powerful evidence of dark matter by discovering galaxies don’t quite rotate in the way they were predicted….

    She was the only astronomy major to graduate from Vassar College in 1948. When she sought to enrol as a graduate student at Princeton, she learned that women were not allowed in the university’s graduate astronomy program, so she instead earned her master’s degree from Cornell.

    Rubin earned her doctorate from Georgetown University, where she was later employed as a faculty member for several years before working at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, a nonprofit scientific research centre.

    I am always appalled to read about the bullshit barriers erected in the past to keep women out of the sciences, especially when these same fools also claim that women just aren’t as interested in the subject as men, or that they lack the right stuff. Rubin’s achievements shine all the more given the crap that she had to bypass.

    One other little bit of trivia.

    Dark matter, which hasn’t been directly observed, makes up 27% of the universe. This suggests that the 27% of boneheads in America may be a universal constant.

  17. 17.

    Elizabelle

    @Roger Moore: When I read on Christmas night that George Michael had died, I was wishing that Donald Trump’s days were severely limited too.

    Of course, we would get Pence. But still …

  18. 18.

    Chris

    I can’t even make a joke about who might be next as I don’t want to give the Fates any ideas.

    Last week, I posted on a friend’s profile that “I really wonder how 2016 is going to manage to top itself before it’s done.” A few days later, Carrie Fisher has a heart attack, and he responds: “Now look what you’ve done!”

  22. 22.

    SenyorDave

    Prince, David Bowie and a string of amazing artists are dead and Donald Trump, a racist sexual predator who has a long history of cheating hard working people out of their money is not just living, but is president-elect. All right, God, WHAT’S THE FUCKING PUNCH LINE???

  23. 23.

    Elizabelle

    In positive news, Antonin Scalia remains incontrovertibly dead.

    So 2016 did us a solid. Although we did not get an Obama replacement Supreme Court nominee because fuck the fucking Republicans.

    So: fates: Mitch McConnell is still out there, walking around. You could even the balance a bit, just sayin’ …

  24. 24.

    hedgehog the occasional commenter

    Dammit. First saw her in Star Wars and fell in love with Princess/General Leia. I never read any of her books–guess I’m going to be adding to the Kindle. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck. 2016 can go DIAF, the sooner the better.

  30. 30.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Brachiator:

    Dark matter, which hasn’t been directly observed, makes up 27% of the universe. This suggests that the 27% of boneheads in America may be a universal constant.

    The fraction of dark matter is thought to increase as you go to larger scales. So galaxy clusters and the halo of our galaxy have large dark matter fractions, whereas the fraction of dark matter in the solar neighborhood is thought to be considerably lower. If only this were also true of Stupid Matter also.

  35. 35.

    Brachiator

    @efgoldman:

    I sort of remember, for instance, when Clark Gable, John Wayne and Gary Cooper died, They made all the newspapers and I’m sure the TV news, and must have been very big deals in the LA area and Daily Variety, but there wasn’t this huge public mourning that we’re seeing now.

    Rudolf Valentino’s death caused quite a stir in 1926.

    I recall a lot of spontaneous memorials all over the world when John Lennon was killed. But I take your point that the connectedness of social media allows for a more intense and often global reaction.

  36. 36.

    Aleta

    Who might be next? Maybe someone or another, who sings or acts or makes jokes, killed for driving while black, (reaching in a pocket–waiting for someone-having a breakdown–walking away–running ) while black. etc. The same as the year before.

  40. 40.

    Calouste

    @Jerzy Russian: You could compare say Norway or New Zealand to the United States and think about whether larger countries have larger fractions of Stupid Matter or not.

  42. 42.

    ThresherK

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s the movie, not the book. The allegories in The Plague Dogs (I’m remembering mental health experimentation, electro-shock, brain surgery, and treatment of animals for research, etc) are a new level, especially as they are man-made.

    One can read the book of Watership Down and the happenings of the battles, the violence, can be determined largely as the course of nature. I found the nearly sci-fi concepts presented as fact in The Plague Dogs harrowing.

  43. 43.

    Roger Moore

    @Calouste:

    You could compare say Norway or New Zealand to the United States and think about whether larger countries have larger fractions of Stupid Matter or not.

    You need to be careful not to cherry pick when you do that. Yeah, Norway and New Zealand look good compared to the US, but how about Palestine and Moldova, which are in the same general size range?

  44. 44.

    JC

    I saw Rogue One yesterday.

    (spoiler below, so stop reading if you don’t want)

    That last scene, with the young Princess Leia, though computer image, and she says something like, ‘this is hope’. Which then leads into of course, into the first movie.

    And today, Carrie Fisher is dead.

    What does that say, about the hope for the future, embedded into Star Wars? Embedded into Star Trek?

    The hope, embodied by Obama – and yes the hope and optimism that was brought to the Democratic convention – ‘when they go low, we go high’?

    It seems to be the death of hope. Hope is a beautiful flower, crushed by reactionary forces, and greed.

    In that sense, Watershed Down, is more grounded. That beauty and innocence of what we think of as bunnies, nature, etc – forced into the realpolitik of actual power politics.

    There is no choice but to continue doing the right thing – be strong, tough, optimistic, and yet still cling to that hope. What other choice is there?

  45. 45.

    Citizen_X

    @Brachiator:

    Dark matter, which hasn’t been directly observed, makes up 27% of the universe. This suggests that the 27% of boneheads in America may be a universal constant.

    Well, information does pass through them without any effect whatsoever, so you may be on to something.

  46. 46.

    Adam L Silverman

    @ThresherK: I’m aware. From what I understand they went with the original narrative for the book treatment, not the final published ending of the published/finished book, for The Plague Dogs when they did the movie.

    And there is a new Watership Down mini-series coming out on Netflix that is, supposedly, not quite as graphic as the 1970s movie.

  48. 48.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @JC:

    In regards to your Star Trek comment, that show–that universe–represented my hope and expectation for our world, our people. Kirk’s “we overcame our differences” observation I thought of as prescient. Yes! We will overcome our differences.

    Well, I don’t think hope is dead. We just need to be more vigilant. They go low, we go high.

    But….

    They punch us? We punch back. No more Ms./Mr. Nice Gal/Guy.

    Dems, do not just roll over and pee on yourselves.

  50. 50.

    Miss Bianca

    @PaulWartenberg2016: Oh, man. Him, too? Watership Down will always be one of my favorite books.

    ETA: “Traveller”, his “autobiography” of General Lee’s horse, is also oddly charming, with a last scene that would melt a heart of stone, even if you hate the leader of the Great Rebellion.

  51. 51.

    mai naem mobile

    @ThresherK: I saw that in the obit but not sure if I’m up to reading stuff like that right now. I’ve been kinda sorta planning on going back to reading during Lumpys term. I mean good literature but I have a feeling I’m just going to want to read escapist stuff.

  53. 53.

    Chris

    @JC:
    @West of the Rockies (been a while):

    It’s lame to say, but yeah, watching Star Wars and Star Trek growing up definitely became part of my worldview. For Star Trek it was the hopeful and optimistic vision of a future in which we’d overcome our difficulties of the moment and gone on to the stars. Star Wars was the simpler epic war story with Freedom overcoming Fascism, but there’s nothing wrong with that either.

    I think what really makes me sad is the thought that in the late 1970s, fascism was something the Star Wars creators picked as the template for their generic villains (something that would be made more literal a couple years later when a lot of the same crew invented Indiana Jones). The logic, one assumes, was “okay, no matter what our differences are and all the complicated debates we’re having over today’s issues, we can all agree that fascism is bad, right? And that we’d all want our heroes to fight it?” Fast-forward to the last two months of November 2016, and that now sounds like a bad joke.

  54. 54.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @PaulWartenberg2016:

    Ah no.

    I read Watership Down on a series of trains from Edinburgh-Glasgow-Mallaig in the summer of 1975. The book and that wonderful Scottish trip are inextricably linked in my memory.

    RIP, Richard Adams.

  56. 56.

    Pogonip

    @Betty Cracker: I keep seeing Carrie Fisher described as “funny, brave, and smart.” From whence comes the “brave” part? Did she do something heroic that I missed? (I am only peripherally aware of celebrities.)

  57. 57.

    Pat B

    @Brachiator: I’m hoping it’s possible that Vera Rubin and Carrie Fisher meet somewhere and celebrate the fusion of art and science. In the meantime, I love Fisher’s line: “My BODY hasn’t aged as well as I have.”

  62. 62.

    J R in WV

    @mai naem mobile:

    It wasn’t meant to be funny. Come on, really?

    Surely you didn’t think I intended it to be funny, except in the sense that if things are too serious to take seriously, you have to laugh at them!! Really?

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