Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

How stupid are these people?

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

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

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

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

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Their freedom requires your slavery.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

No one could have predicted…

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

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Point & Mock Open Thread: “Palace Intrigue”

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.
Ancestral war cry: Confusion to our enemies!

The Trump-minions look pretty confused right now…

Lord of all the flies!

Meanwhile…

Reader Interactions

241Comments

  2. 2.

    El Caganer

    Yes, but he’s lord of all the best flies, very bigly and classy! They said, the FAKE NEWS said, your flies all have tiny wings! They’ve got the biggest wings! SAD!

  3. 3.

    jl

    I saw a pic of Scaramucci and thought two things. First, a pre-depraved young Jack Nicholson, but that is probably very unfair to Jack Nicholson. Probably I am mentally confusing him with one of Nicholson’s less savory characters. The Shining?

    Or, as I typed last night, a young Joker right before he went psycho and started smearing himself with clown make-up.

    So, I think it will go ultra-Spicey soon, except uglier. Maybe we should expect the ‘toast’ scene from Five Easy Pieces, or full on Joker at the communications office. That is assuming the communications office continues to ‘communicate’ in any way a normal person would understand.

  6. 6.

    debbie

    Lord of the Flies was my favorite book in high school.

    I heard that back in the early times of the administration, Trump had yelled at Spicer because of his poor clothing choices (talk about lack of self-awareness). Sarah’s fashion choices are no better, from the press conference clips I’ve seen. Will he bully her into better clothing? Will he muse out loud that she’s a 5 or maybe even a 4?

  7. 7.

    WaterGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus: I can’t decide whether the Carpool Karaoke with Michielle Obama was my favorite, or this one:

    J.D. Evermore‏Verified account @jd_evermore 23h23 hours ago
    Replying to @Scaramucci
    Every breath you take
    Every move you make
    Every bond you break
    Every claim you stake
    I’ll be watching you

    -Robert Mueller

  10. 10.

    Felonius Monk

    @debbie:

    Will he bully her into better clothing? Will he muse out loud that she’s a 5 or maybe even a 4?

    Only after SNL really starts making fun of her and the way she dresses.

  16. 16.

    Patricia Kayden

    @jl: You’re hilarious!! Scaramucci is a decent youngish White conservative male. Why else would he want to work for Trump?

  17. 17.

    dexwood

    @Felonius Monk:
    Given the downward direction of Traitor Trump’s reign, she might not be there when SNL returns to the air in late September or early October. Not to worry, many other targets to mock.

  18. 18.

    Brachiator

    @debbie:

    .I didn’t realize you could respond to a five-year-old tweet.

    The Internets, and rock and roll, never forgets.

    — Admiral Horatio Nelson

  19. 19.

    WaterGirl

    Okay, just one more:

    Nicola Kraus‏Verified account @NannyDiaries Jul 21
    Replying to @Scaramucci
    This administration is like a box of chocolates, you never know what moron you’re gonna get

  20. 20.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Omnes Omnibus: The funniest ones for me were the “quotes” by Jesus Christ and Nelson Mandela. Scaramucci seems to be another Rightwing poser. He must think we’re all thick headed like his President,

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I went to see Valerian in 3-D this afternoon. Visually stunning. As far as the rest goes, it is a Luc Besson movie. If you like his stuff, you will probably like it. If not, then you won’t.

  29. 29.

    Baud

    Oh, are we playing fake internet quotes….

    My anaconda don’t want none
    Unless you’ve got buns, hon     — Abraham Lincoln

  30. 30.

    Felonius Monk

    The Mooch is an arrogant asshole. Those two qualities (arrogance and assholishness) will result in his nuts being in Trump’s vice grip within six months. Get out the popcorn, the show is about to start.

  31. 31.

    Bex

    If you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain,
    If you like
    making love at midnight in the dunes of the cape,
    I’m the love that you looked for
    write to me and escape

    –Vladimir Putin

  33. 33.

    Jeffro

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m dyin’…

    Anyway, Trumpov’s a human dumpster fire…the only folks he draws to him are lesser fires, less odiferous dumpsters.

    Would not shock me to see Mueller drop a few charges on key players as early as next week. That way, when Trumpov reacts (whatever form that takes) it’s just that, a reaction. But we’ll see.

  36. 36.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I went to see Valerian in 3-D this afternoon. Visually stunning. As far as the rest goes, it is a Luc Besson movie. If you like his stuff, you will probably like it. If not, then you won’t.

    But was the science accurate/correct????? Or were there key errors in things like the Gravitational Constant, or whether the time-travel assumptions were valid???

    Anyway, glad you (I think) enjoyed it, sounds like the “10 Worst” blurb I mentioned earlier was probably not justified.

  38. 38.

    Just One More Canuck

    If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends
    Make it last forever, friendship never ends. – Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery (Military Spice)

  44. 44.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @hueyplong:

    But was the science accurate/correct????? Or were there key errors in things like the Gravitational Constant, or whether the time-travel assumptions were valid???

    I’m a fucking lawyer. How the fuck would I know? It fucked up neither US law nor Earthly military tactics. It was a great popcorn movie. My only real complaint was that the dude sitting next to me was wearing a “smart” watch that would flash occasionally and cause him to check his phone – asshole.

  45. 45.

    jl

    Oh, but the prestige and the glory
    Another human interest story
    You are that

    Jane Austen

  47. 47.

    Baud

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    My only real complaint was that the dude sitting next to me was wearing a “smart” watch that would flash occasionally and cause him to check his phone – asshole.

    That’s funny.

  53. 53.

    Chet Murthy

    @SiubhanDuinne: It’s tough not to notice that she’s (at least her face) is not symmetrical. As in: very much not so. And yeah, hate being lookist, but it’s there. And then (of course) there’s her cruella de ville impression.

  56. 56.

    mai naem mobile

    @SiubhanDuinne: it’s not just the looks. It’s the whole package. She doesn’t have a sense of humor. She’s not a good liar. She’s not good at her job. She wouldn’t even do a good job if she was working for early second term Obama.

  57. 57.

    TriassicSands

    @debbie:

    Lord of the Flies was my favorite book in high school.

    Now, you’re scaring me.

    Hmm. I guess that’s better than Atlas Shrugged.

  58. 58.

    Mnemosyne

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    If have a friend who resembles SHS physically, but is an actual nice person and not someone whose soul is dead, so my friend is quite pretty at the same weight and with the same hairstyle.

  59. 59.

    mai naem mobile

    @SWMBO: I think SHS gets her style advice from Mama’s Family. I know that’s really really mean.

  60. 60.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    ETA: Read the comments.

    Oh yes. My sides hurt. Tears run from laughter.

    Did Scary Monkey really tweet the original? I can see that communications from this guy are going to be the best. The very best.

  66. 66.

    jl

    Because I’m easy come, easy go, little high, little low
    Any way the wind blows doesn’t really matter to me, to me

    George Washington

  67. 67.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Chet Murthy:

    It’s tough not to notice that she’s (at least her face) is not symmetrical. As in: very much not so.

    Yes, her mouth tilts down on one side and her eye on that side tilts up. Whereas, contrariwise, the opposite is true on the other side of her face.

    (But also — I swear I don’t mean this to sound like “advice to Hillary,” which was so fucking annoying and offensive last year — but seriously, if SHS could just smile occasionally or look even a little bit interested and engaged, she would make a much stronger, more positive impression.)

  68. 68.

    lurker dean

    not a surprise, but looks like the GOP is all-in on looking the other way if mueller is fired.

    Mark Murray‏ @mmurraypolitics
    Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) to @mitchellreports: If Mueller were fired, you’d see a tremendous backlash, incl from House Republicans

    Ned Price‏ @nedprice
    Rep. McCaul walked this statement back only a few hours later during an @AspenSecurity session. Almost like someone got to him.

    twitter.com/nedprice/status/888901832432644098

  70. 70.

    jl

    @SiubhanDuinne: Trump makes a ‘looks’ exception for ladies who will get his business done, by hook or crook. He sees them as a kind of third gender. Seriously. I came to that conclusion during the campaign when reading interviews with women who have done well working in his organization.

  71. 71.

    jl

    Here is a real Twain quote. Seems like some kind of oracle. I’m trying to figure out what it foretells.

    Tell the truth or trump—but get the trick.

  72. 72.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @WaterGirl: I know that. Science errors tend to pass by me unnoticed though; types of errors that could bother me tend not to occur in movies set 800 years in future.

  74. 74.

    Mnemosyne

    @TriassicSands:

    That’s a potentially interesting thread for some weekend night: what was the best book you were forced to read for school?

    I actually really liked The Scarlet Letter. Even in-class discussions couldn’t ruin it for me.

  81. 81.

    schrodingers_cat

    Husband kitteh’s neighbor from India and her husband were visiting this morning. The two of them became citizens about a couple of years ago. They are a chemist and a pharmacist respectively. They were telling us horror stories of their Trumpian neighbors in Connecticut. The ex-neighbor was driving herself crazy by checking T’s tweets, during breakfast.

    BTW I just filled out my voter registration application.

  83. 83.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I’m a fucking lawyer. How the fuck would I know?

    WaterGirl @ 64 has it right (re: the catalyst for my comment).

    I sometimes wonder if, when people hear “science fiction,” they think that it’s only “fiction” because the characters are made up, but everything else must conform to our reality. Yes, my life is dull.

  86. 86.

    jl

    @WaterGirl: ” Why is it that the inner ugliness of republican women shows on their faces more than the inner ugliness of the men? ”

    Huh, what? No way. Most of the Trumpster and GOP congress nutcase men’s faces scream ‘run fast as you can away from this shit!’ to me. But I am a man, so maybe I read other men’s faces in a different way than women do.

    Edit: I see guys like that in real life, my hand reflexively heads south to see if my wallet is still there.

  88. 88.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @WaterGirl:

    I wonder if anyone has turned that look into a meme on the internet?

    It’s surely only a matter of time. (I’m not skilled at making memes, or I’d get things started.)

  89. 89.

    Chet Murthy

    @WaterGirl: Gottta demur. Chimperor. Darth Cheney. Putinfluffer. Ghouliani. Bannonazi. Yertle. I could go on, but shit, they’re all uglier than sin, ain’t they? That said,when any human snarls in their rage and hate, it’s not a pretty sight, is it?

  92. 92.

    WaterGirl

    @jl: I think Omnes has hit on something. There’s an ugliness that shines through in the women, and a creepiness that shines through with the men. The “run away” feeling is from the creepiness.

    Trump himself, he is hideous. Sorry, that’s what I think.

  93. 93.

    lollipopguild

    @Mnemosyne: I was forced to read” A Tale of Two Cities” and really ended up liking it. Not so much for so much else that I was forced to read.

  95. 95.

    jl

    @Chet Murthy: They are walking examples of the old saying, at fifteen you have the face you were born with, after fifty you have the face you deserve.

  96. 96.

    frosty

    @SFAW: That’s sort of true. The science has to have internal consistency, and if possible be something that could be extrapolated from what we know now. FTL drive and time travel obviously fAil the latter, but if it hangs together in the story, it’s acceptable. And all the author really needs is a name for it: warp drive, inertialess drive, flux capacitor, etc.

  100. 100.

    SFAW

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Laws of physics are not going to change in 800 years.

    And the Sun still revolves around the Earth.

    In other words: the laws of physics might not change, but our understanding of them may change.

    [Yes, I realize the Sun/Earth thing is not really a physic-laws thing.]

  101. 101.

    WaterGirl

    @Chet Murthy: Ugly, yes, but I don’t see the hate in the men as much as the women. You’ve got me on Darth Chaeny, there’s visible hate there. And Trump.

    Ghouliani, Bannonazi and Yertle – very high creep factor there. Trump kids and spouse – major creep factor there, regardless of gender. Ugh. shudder

  103. 103.

    frosty

    @raven: Shit. Sorry to hear that. I hate it when stuff breaks that I don’t know how to fix. Which is most everything these days. Used to fix my car, I don’t even look under the hood any more.

  104. 104.

    WaterGirl

    @Mnemosyne: Laughing. I was thinking of regular people posing with that face. But you’re right that photo itself is a meme.

  105. 105.

    schrodingers_cat

    @frosty: Newton’s Laws are still valid, they just need to be corrected for extremely large planet sized objects and extremely small, atom sized objects.

    Newton was wrong about light but Newtonian mechanics works just fine for most RL applications not on the galactic or quantum scale.

  108. 108.

    NotMax

    Remnants of what was Hurricane Fernanda moving in and gonna be with us until Tuesday, so they say.

    @jl

    It’s as if a concerted effort is underway to seek out people who score in the lowest decile when it comes to social skills.

  109. 109.

    Mnemosyne

    @lollipopguild:

    I somehow managed to get through school without ever being assigned to read Dickens. I’m still not quite sure how. Somehow, I never ended up with a teacher who assigned it.

    It helped that I was always in the advanced English classes where the teachers allowed us to be more self-directed. I still bless the teacher who introduced me to P.G. Wodehouse.

  113. 113.

    raven

    @WaterGirl: Yea, I wasn’t convinced when he left that it was fixed. I’m thinking we have to replace it, it’s over 20 years old.

  114. 114.

    jl

    @lollipopguild: I contributed ‘Tell the truth or TRJMP’ to the new rotating headers. If it is not chosen I expect all good BJ commenters to support me in my lawsuit!

    Edit: I knew it referred to Bridge. I suffered enough people trying to teach me that game. The first part just seemed a little too relevant to the current mess.

  116. 116.

    frosty

    @schrodingers_cat: True, but Newton didn’t know that. If you dropped him into the present (using the flux capacitor, of course) he’d think the laws of physics had gotten very weird. Or maybe not and he’d catch on that he was dealing with a small subset of all possible conditions. I hear he was a pretty smart dude after all.

  118. 118.

    WaterGirl

    @Major Major Major Major: Just trying some stuff. I thought maybe adding someone by # instead of typing the name might fix the Chris chris problem, but it didn’t. I opened GitHub in a window, i’ll just have to try to remember my password.:-)

  121. 121.

    Another Scott

    @raven: Bummer.

    I assume you’ve gone through checklists like this since you’ve tried to replace the capacitor a couple of times. Maybe it’s the contactor relay?

    Good luck getting it figured out!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  124. 124.

    frosty

    @Mnemosyne: I loathed Great Expectations, dunno why they though teenagers should read it. Anything else by Dickens would be more appropriate.

    Trying to remember what they made us read…

  125. 125.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @jl:

    I’d say it’s not gender-specific…

    Trey Gowdy, Gohmert, Fiorina, Palin… they’re inner Hexenbiests comes out pretty clearly regardless of sex.

  126. 126.

    Mnemosyne

    @lollipopguild:

    G decided to give that old high school chestnut A Separate Peace a chance as an adult. Nope. It still sucked.

    I was forced to read that shitty book twice but no Gatsby.

    And I was shocked to read Wuthering Heights as an adult and discover that Heathcliff is the villain! He fears that Cathy’s ghost is going to murder him, and for good reason.

  127. 127.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: Yep, not big surprise but it sucks to have lost the time today. And I bet it’s hot as hell, which sucks.

    One thing i learned when this happened to me is that they really do respond to calls in order. A lot of people don’t think to phone on the weekend, so if you haven’t already called all 3 places back, you could think about doing that tonight in the hopes of being a bit higher on the list than if you wait until Monday.

  128. 128.

    jl

    @frosty: Had to read Great Expectations in HS. Yuck. Got an abridged version of David Copperfield, that was better. Wish they had done it the other way.

  130. 130.

    Major Major Major Major

    @WaterGirl: Yeah, it saves the names case-sensitive but doesn’t seem to read them that way, or something, I don’t know, I’m tired and I didn’t do it!

    @Mnemosyne:

    G decided to give that old high school chestnut A Separate Peace a chance as an adult. Nope. It still sucked.

    I was forced to read that shitty book twice but no Gatsby.

    I didn’t learn until I was like 30 that A Separate Peace is actually not supposed to be queerer than a three-dollar bill.

  132. 132.

    Mnemosyne

    @frosty:

    I read Great Expectations as an adult and liked it. Teenagers are too young to understand the tragedy of Miss Havisham’s actions, which ensured that the person who should have loved her like a mother never would.

  133. 133.

    lollipopguild

    @frosty: It was the literary equivilent of eating your vegetables. “Here Read this! It’s GOOD for you!”

  134. 134.

    raven

    @Another Scott: Yea, I did all that and THEN called the pro. I’ll call the weekend service number in the morning but I’m not going to pay another for another weekend call. We agonized about this when the built our addition our general and HVAC contractor felt the system was ok but it was over 4 years ago. I think we stretched it pretty well and it’s going to have to be done at some point.

  135. 135.

    artem1s

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Laws of physics are not going to change in 800 years.

    Um, Newtonian physics vs, Einsteinian physics. QED, actual physics won’t change, but human understanding of the ‘laws of physics’ will almost certainly change in the next 800 years. or at least, the FSM help us, they better change

  136. 136.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    It’s Trump, but reading the full list of them it sounds like he had a melt down this morning on Twitter. What way to start the day; get up, get out of bed and start screaming at the world. ROFL

  137. 137.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The cretinous stupidity of the Village continues, even when they’re being lied to constantly.

    And Rinse is totally hosed. A Chief of Staff who doesn’t control the flow of information to the President is as useless as tits on a boar hog.

    BTW, got back from Valerian haven’t read the thread for other comments on it, but it’s fine eye candy. Just don’t think too much about the plot.

  138. 138.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I didn’t learn until I was like 30 that A Separate Peace is actually not supposed to be queerer than a three-dollar bill.

    Maybe not 30, but it took me a while to realize that the reverse was true with Bridehead Revisited.

  141. 141.

    artem1s

    I kinda want to hope that Spicey and Boehner are somewhere sharing a whiskey and a Marlboro in some dark, smokey bar.

  142. 142.

    Jeanne

    @SiubhanDuinne: Same here, but she just looks so very, very dumb. Like those slack-jawed, slatternly girls in high school whose best outcome was domestic violence victim.

    Yes, I feel bad writing that.

  143. 143.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    didn’t learn until I was like 30 that A Separate Peace is actually not supposed to be queerer than a three-dollar bill.

    I think that’s a case of the author’s subconscious jumping up to bite him because, yeah, the repressed homosexuality is just aching to burst out in that book.

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    You made me laugh so loud I scared the cats. ?

  145. 145.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    Besides the ones mentioned above which enjoyed at the time also recall being forced to plow through The Marble Faun and thinking “I’d probably like this better if I were 40.”

  146. 146.

    Yarrow

    Maybe this was discussed in a previous thread, but wow.

    WH aides had no idea about Trump's NYT intvw.

    Spicer, Bannon, Priebus had no idea about the Scaramucci offer either t.co/JzVYEamoks pic.twitter.com/Dr4qVnizkM
    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 22, 2017

    Apparently Hope Hicks was the only person in the NYT interview with Trump. Wonder if she’s Trump’s side piece.

  147. 147.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: When I got mine there were substantial tax credits if you got a unit that had a seer rating of over a certain number. I don’t know if that’s still in effect, but it might be worth checking out.

    My power and heating bill lowered substantially after I got the new system.

  149. 149.

    WaterGirl

    @Yarrow: Wowser!

    sir: “Other top aides, including Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon, also had no clue.” Reince isn’t a top aide, he’s the fucking chief of staff. No wonder he went nuts.

  150. 150.

    Mike J

    @West of the Rockies (been a while): All the Dickens and other stuff other people were forced to read I had to pick up on the streets by myself. I like ’em though.

    My HS English teacher was a published Faulkner scholar, so each spring we’d go to Yoknapatawpha (Memphis is only 1.5 hrs from Oxford). Most people don’t wind up freaked out by As I lay Dying until college, but we got all his biggest hits in HS.

  152. 152.

    Mnemosyne

    @Yarrow:

    I heard, like, 2 minutes of a reporter being interviewed on NPR this morning where she said the Oval Office is like Grand Central Station — pretty much anyone in the White House can just walk in and interrupt whatever is going on in there whenever they want.

    I changed the channel when they asked about Trumpsky’s “ideology,” though. He doesn’t fucking have one. Haven’t you morons figured that out yet?

  153. 153.

    mai naem mobile

    @raven: you might want to get one of those portable ac units to make it through. I think they’re around $300 at home depot. I don’t know how you’re handling the heat and humidity. We’ve had our ac go out a few times over the years and it’s absolutely miserable.

  155. 155.

    SFAW

    @Yarrow:

    Apparently Hope Hicks was the only person in the NYT interview with Trump. Wonder if she’s Trump’s side piece.

    Only when Princess Iv ain’t “available.”

  158. 158.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Major Major Major Major: When I was standing in line for Titanic I blurted out that the ship hits an iceberg half way through the movie.

    An acquaintance also in line nearby immediately rose to the offered bait and protested vehmently!

  160. 160.

    debbie

    @raven:

    How do machines know how to quit when they’re most needed? The boiler in my apartment building literally always died in February.

  164. 164.

    debbie

    @Mnemosyne:

    I went back and reread Catcher in the Rye a couple years ago and hated it. So much whining. It ended my project of reading many of the books that had really mattered to me.

  167. 167.

    Tenar Arha

    @Villago Delenda Est: Agreed. Visually beautiful, great intro. I really wanted to see more with the people from Mul, & I would have loved if Bubble the refugee could team up with Laureline. Unfortunately the central plot was formulaic, & the ending was meh

    I’d still recommend a matinee in the theater for the looks though.

  168. 168.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mike J:

    Most people don’t wind up freaked out by As I lay Dying until college, but we got all his biggest hits in HS.

    You poor bastard.

  169. 169.

    SFAW

    @lollipopguild:

    Can you see her and trump doing it on top of his desk in the Oval Office?

    And since FYWP won’t let me edit my previous comment:

    One can only hope that Hope Hicks is this year’s Megan Marshack.

  170. 170.

    TriassicSands

    @Mnemosyne:

    The book I liked best — though it was a book I chose for a book report, not an assigned book I was forced to read — was “The Moon And Sixpence” by W. Somerset Maugham. The life of Paul Gauguin inspired the story.

    It’s strange. As I think about it now, “The Moon in Sixpence” was written in 1919, which seems truly ancient, but that was 45 years before I read it and if you subtract 45 years from today it would yield a book written in 1972.

    Of the books I was “forced” to read — assigned would be a better word since I was a avid reader — “Ethan Frome” is the one that comes most readily to mind. Thinking about it now, I did like “A Tale of Two Cities.” But not “Great Expectations.”

    I re-read “The Scarlet Letter” not that long ago. I enjoyed it. (I rarely read fiction anymore, but I try to get in a few good novels each year.)

    (I read “Atlas Shrugged” in high school and thought “John Galt” was a long-winded blowhard. I read the complete Rand library — the non-fiction stuff, too — and thought she was full of it. I’ve never changed that opinion.)

  171. 171.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Tenar Arha: The plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark was formulaic as well. My thought is that Besson did it intentionally; sometimes one doesn’t want to think too much and one just wants to go alone for the ride.

  174. 174.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @Mike J:

    Faulkner does very little for me (As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury). I don’t think I will choose another work by him. Bleak and tedious, IMO.

  176. 176.

    Mnemosyne

    @Patricia Kayden:

    GE is kind of an odd book because it turns out that the main (narrating) character is peripheral to the actual tragedy that unfolds, while he ends up pretty much okay and happily married. That may be a hard thing to get across in a movie.

    @debbie:

    I’ve had pretty decent luck re-reading books that were important to me, but Catcher in the Rye is another of those books I never had to read in high school. I’ve read some other Salinger, but not that one.

    But, then, I’ve always been more of a pop culture fan, so I never really read all that many “deep” books. ?

  177. 177.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @artem1s:

    Their eyes meet over the ash tray, Spicy’s hand finds Boehner’s thigh, Sinatra plays on the jukebox….

  179. 179.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    Did anybody else see Scaramucci’s little show yesterday? I saw a little of it later last night. He said, among other horseshit:

    He’s the most competitive person I’ve ever met, okay? I’ve seen this guy throw a dead spiral through a tire. I’ve seen him at Madison Square Garden with a top coat on, he’s standing in the key and he’s hitting foul shots and swishing them. He sinks 3-foot putts.

    Is this guy for real? He can’t be for real. “I myself have seen Donald Tяump strike Babe Ruth out on three pitches! I saw him make an unassisted quadruple play!” Is this some kind of batshit crazy performance art? Nobody can be that big an asskisser. Right? Please tell me nobody would debase himself the way this guy is.

  180. 180.

    frosty

    @debbie: AC quits in the summer and boilers quit in the winter because that’s when the machinery gets stressed the most, running longer or at higher settings than usual. Sucks.

  181. 181.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @NotMax:

    The father of one of my professors at university reportedly tracked down a very drunk Faulkner to tell him he’d won the Nobel Prize for literature… Faulkner remained silent for long seconds before looking up in a haze and asking, “Does it pay?”

  183. 183.

    TriassicSands

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    When I saw the photo above, I thought about commenting, but I decided against it, because I don’t generally like to talk about people’s looks. My only comment would be she has a really unpleasant face — that may be because I know what is stored in her brain, but for a person who is not ugly, much less deformed, she is very hard for me to look at. It’s probably psychological.

    I guess I’d rather look at her than listen to her — ‘cuz then what’s in the head comes out and that is truly ugly.

  184. 184.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Well, I’ve enjoyed this literary discussion. I’m off to read another chapter or two of Tony Hillerman’s Dance Hall of the Dead before going to bed. My younger self aspired to be a Phd in German literature (talk about turgid!), but escaped before too much damage was done. Now I’m reading through the Leaphorn and Chee books especially for the local color.

  188. 188.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @schrodingers_cat: Speaking of literary references, I loved your quote in the doomsday thread.

    I have said this before but like Arjun on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, we have to fight not because we know we are going to win but because that’s the need of the hour.

  189. 189.

    Brachiator

    @lollipopguild:

    Maybe a common theme, I know a lot of people who rankled at being forced to read from the approved list canon. It made them hate books that they might have enjoyed, given other circumstances.

    I just plain loved to read. First read Great Expectations when I was 8 or 9, and it is still my favorite novel. But it also led me to dive into Dickens and other works, and provided me with a defense against dull, unimaginative teachers who made literature seem like eating cold vegetables.

    But this is why stuff like the Harry Potter books make me smile. Kids discovered the novels, not teachers or librarians. And kids who supposedly hated reading dug into these books like medieval scholars rediscovering Greek tragedies and comedies.

  191. 191.

    Mnemosyne

    @TriassicSands:

    The only Maugham I’ve read was Of Human Bondage and, again, I read it as an adult. I wanted to punch the whiny asshole of a narrator. If the woman doesn’t want to date you, then leave her the fuck alone! Don’t harass her until she deigns to give you a pity fuck and then whine about how she ruined your life!

    It was also weird that the baby is never referred to by name even though it doesn’t die until it’s, like, three years old. It’s always just “Baby.”

  195. 195.

    TriassicSands

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    …he’s standing in the key and he’s hitting foul shots

    What is this bozo talking about? The key is the area between the foul line and the basket, so if he’s standing “in the key” he isn’t making foul shots.

    He’s the most competitive person I’ve ever met…

    I’d rather someone say about my president “He’s the most cooperative person I’ve ever met.” Trump’s the kind of person who is only competitive when he can fix the game. And cooperative? Never.

  197. 197.

    WaterGirl

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I think Donnie likes him because he seems to mimic Donnie’s speech patterns. He says “okay” a lot just like Trump does, and he seems to use an excessive amount of modifiers, just like Trump does. I bet this is intentional, because Trump loves Trump so he will love the guy that reminds him of himself.

    edit: and Trump loves to be fawned over. I really get the feeling that this is a schtick this guy is doing to please Trump. Ugh. Who could debase themselves like that?

  198. 198.

    Sab

    @debbie: Catcher in the Rye is a book for teenaged boys. My husband loved and still loves it. When I read it in high school I thought “what a whiny twerp” and 35 years later I still think that. I love a lot of Salinger’s other books.

  199. 199.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @NotMax: By that standard, MCU stuff is formulaic, but it’s so well executed that you don’t mind. Raiders shared that.

  200. 200.

    TriassicSands

    @Mnemosyne:

    When I was younger and reading a lot of fiction, if I read a book by an author and liked it, I would proceed to read one book after another. “Of Human Bondage” was my second Maugham book and I didn’t care for it.

    I’ve gone back and re-read books I really liked and often the second reading is disappointing. Have you ever read any John Barth?

  201. 201.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @West of the Rockies (been a while):

    Ah, yes, The Trials of Young Werther… blech.

    There was a sort of update, Die Neuen Leiden des Jungen W., written in the 1970s and set in the DDR. Long time since I read it, but as I recall “The New Trials” had the disillusioned angsty young man feel of Catcher in the Rye. Which I never liked, even as an adolescent.

    ETA: I see I have used three different forms of punctuation – and non-punctuation – for book titles. I’ve joined the Rebellion!

  203. 203.

    Amir Khalid

    @Baud:
    Remember smart watches? Their main selling point was that they could tell you that your phone was ringing. For some reason, the public decided it could get by without that.

  205. 205.

    TriassicSands

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I don’t know why I read so much; it isn’t that I found it compelling philosophically. It was probably where I was and when. Her philosophy, such as it is, always struck me as selfish and cruel — she would approve of the former.

  206. 206.

    TriassicSands

    @Yarrow:

    She has a lot of company in the Trump Cartel with the same internal ugliness. I suppose it is re-enforcing to be around nothing but people who are just like that.

  208. 208.

    Mnemosyne

    @TriassicSands:

    Never read any Barth. Perhaps unfairly, I’ve always lumped him in with people like John Updike who write about an upper-class East Coast milieu that I’m just not interested in.

  209. 209.

    workworkwork

    @SFAW: We saw it today as well, mainly because I like Luc Besson.

    It was gorgeous to look at, but the story was pure Besson. (As anyone who saw “Lucy” or “Fifth Element” will recognize.)

    My main problem (no spoiler) was that the leads looked too young. I found out that the actor who played Valerian was thirty. He looked thirteen.

  210. 210.

    workworkwork

    @Baud: My smartwatch has a ‘theater mode’ that silences any alerts and you can only see the face by tapping it. I also hit ‘do not disturb’.

    You’re welcome.

  212. 212.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne: I read The Razor’s Edge after seeing the Bill Murray film adaptation. Later I made a point of seeing the 1946 film version of the novel. Liked all three in different ways. I’ve heard that the negative response to the Murray remake led him to avoid making movies for a time.

  213. 213.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @workworkwork: I also like Besson. The male lead basically told people that he was 30ish very early in the movie. I saw him as that age. It may help that I got seriously carded into my 30s.

  217. 217.

    Ruckus

    @GxB:

    “It’s like the four quarters of her face are experiencing completely different emotions simultaneously…”

    And she doesn’t understand any of them.

  218. 218.

    TriassicSands

    @Mnemosyne:

    Try The Sotweed Factor. My good friend would recommend Giles Goat-boy. I’ve read 100 pages of GGB several times but never gotten farther.

    The Sotweed Factor is one book I read a second time without loss of appreciation. I lost interest in Barth after about 1980. Barth can write. He can do just about anything in fiction. But for me The Sotweed Factor was truly memorable.

    From Wikipedia:

    A satirical epic set in the 1680s–90s in London and colonial Maryland, the novel tells of a fictionalized Ebenezer Cooke, who is given the title “Poet Laureate of Maryland” by Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore and commissioned to write a Marylandiad to sing the praises of the colony. He undergoes adventures on his journey to and within Maryland while striving to preserve his virginity. The complicated Tom Jones-like plot is interwoven with numerous digressions and stories-within-stories, and is written in a style patterned on the writing of 18th-century novelists such as Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne and Tobias Smollett.

    That may not be your cup of tea, but it doesn’t sound much like Updike, does it? It’s probably your age, meaning what he was writing when you became aware of him might well have been what you wanted to avoid. But The Sotweed Factor was published in 1960.

  219. 219.

    frosty

    @TriassicSands: My English major brother got me to read Sotweed Factor and I liked it. He also got me into Pynchon to the point I read Gravitys Rainbow five times. Haven’t been back to it in decades. I expect it would hold up better than Catcher in the Rye.

  220. 220.

    workworkwork

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Okay, Grandpa.

    In my defense, my watch helps remind me to take my insulin at the right times during the day, as well as other stuff, like controlling the thermostat and giving me travel directions without having to look at my phone.

    It also tells time.

    As my brain gets older and dumber, I need smarter gadgets to take up the slack. But I’m still considerate at the theater.

  221. 221.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    The Murray version of the film is not bad except that Catherine Hicks is horrendously miscast as the man-eating vamp. She just can’t pull it off.

    ETA: For perspective, Hicks plays the same role that Gene Tierney plays in the 1946 version. Hicks and Theresa Russell should have switched roles, because Russell could pull off heartless but attractive.

  223. 223.

    TriassicSands

    @frosty:

    Did you read Giles Goat-boy? I keep thinking about going back to it, but I can’t imagine why I would be able to get through it now, when five or six previous tries came up empty. I guess I’m looking for encouragement.

  224. 224.

    SWMBO

    Many many years ago in January, we went to see The King and I with Yul Brenner. He just got to A Puzzlement and some guy a few rows ahead of us had his (Christmas gift?) watch start playing The Yellow of Texas. In a loud tinny watch kind of way. He hadn’t had the watch long enough to know how to shut it off. Or mute it. Or anything. He wound up with it in his armpit. Brenner was on stage waiting for the bullshit to stop. He finally looked up with one eyebrow cocked as if to say ,”mind if I get on with my part?”

  225. 225.

    Tenar Arha

    @Omnes Omnibus: True. It was complete popcorn, and I enjoyed most of it. Just felt the end was a let down. **spoiler alert** ( if you don’t want to be)
    –
    ETA oops, spaces before the spoiler.
    –
    –
    –
    –
    –
    —
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    The romantic subplot felt unnecessary and more than a little creepy. There’s been about 20 years between the Fifth Element and Valerian. I would have preferred buddy cops or if necessary the same levels of banter with an underlying sexual attraction like in Lucy, rather than that mess; it kind of pulled me out of the picture. And IMHO, I think Bubble was great and I wanted more of her.

  226. 226.

    SWMBO

    For those who like Hideo Miyazaki’s film, tomorrow they are showing Kiki’s Delivery Service. It is a Fathom screening and shows at 12:55 Sunday. This is the dubbed version. The subtitled version is Monday evening at 7:00.

  227. 227.

    pappenheimer

    I don’t remember the required reading I did in high school, but I do remember devouring Mary Renault’s historical novels out of my teacher’s personal library, starting with The King Must Die, along with Frazier’s Golden Bough. She got a funny look in her eye when I’d finished The Persian Boy and asked about The Charioteers.

  228. 228.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Tenar Arha: Spoiler response:

    I saw it a different way. He was making assumptions. “I am pretty boy soldier/hero, you will sleep with me because that how it works.” And she said “No. No mistresses, no going back to that one because it ‘doesn’t count’.” Besson is French. He is going against a standard cultural tradition.

  232. 232.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I was actually asking a serious question. To me, Raiders was a throwback to the weekly movie-theater serials (NOTE: this view is heavily influenced by my father’s assessment; he used to watch them when he was a kid). Does that make it formulaic? I don’t know. But I didn’t watch it expecting any great insights about the human condition, unlike Interstellar.

    [In case it wasn’t obvious: my “Interstellar” comment was only thrown in there because of yesterday’s Judean People’s Front/People’s Front of Judea argument about it. But the rest of my comment was serious. Stupid perhaps, but serious/sincere.]

  234. 234.

    GregB

    @WaterGirl:

    Have you seen Mitch McConnell?

    He looks like his soul is leaking out of his sphincter and it is taking his skin with it.

  236. 236.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I did not see Interstellar.

    If you had, you could have participated in yesterday’s religious wars over it. Aren’t you sorry you missed it?

  237. 237.

    SFAW

    @swbarnes2:

    “Sorrows of Young Werther” was the “Twilight” of its day.

    I thought Goethe was big on lemurs, not vampires and werewolves?

  240. 240.

    Robert Sneddon

    @schrodingers_cat: No, Newton’s Laws are wrong. The real-world effects of what they predict aren’t wrong by very much and the errors don’t show up clearly until their effects are examined very closely or in specific circumstances (very large objects, very small objects, very high speeds). For all practical purposes like driving a car the errors are insignificant, but they’re always there. Just because some measurement is a trillionth out doesn’t mean that size error doesn’t exist.

    It’s entirely possible Einstein’s General and Special Relativity theories are wrong too but they’ve been shown to be less wrong than Newton was after experiment and observation.

    Science! Always wrong, getting less wrong every day.

  241. 241.

    J R in WV

    @Jeanne:

    she just looks so very, very dumb. Like those slack-jawed, slatternly girls in high school

    Thank you women for going there before me, so I can agree with you. She isn’t even well spoken, which would make up for other failings… and she does nothing to try to address her shortcomings. How did she wind up with so much responsibility when she so obviously can’t cope with it?

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