Five Before Chaos

You know, Mr. “We Surround Them”. I don’t think you’ll ever find a more perfect specimen of what modern folklore calls the Whiny-Ass Titty Baby. Even conservative wannabe Rick Scarborough can’t keep from cracking up over this bit below. Seriously, the guy must’ve watched Michael Landon on Little House on the Prairie for hours to learn how to cry like that.

We mock them, as we’re not going to sit around waiting for them to “surround” us (as though it would ever happen in the first place).

Here’s the audio spot for our upcoming grindhouse film event, Saturday, August 18th in Montpelier, 9pm. Give the player a second or so to load. Enjoy. I’ll be posting it again shortly before ths show.

 Flight Night Promo Spot [2:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

…simply refuses to go away. I got to hand it to Joe, though, for an idiot who’s somehow managed to turn the art of saying moronic, uninformed things into both a high art and a career, he’s doing something that is rather brilliant in that regard. His latest thing he’s talking about out there that he doesn’t have a clue about is rallying against the EFCA legislation (the legislation that will make it easier to unionize and will NOT do away with the secret ballot option no matter how many times opponents lie that it will):

Joe the Plumber is hitting the campaign trail again! He’s been pressed into service to do a series of events throughout Pennsylvania rallying opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, the organizer of the events confirms.

Mr. Plumber will speak at rallies against the measure in Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia on March 30th and 31st, according to a spokesperson for the anti-EFCA group Americans for Prosperity.

“The public loves Joe the Plumber,” the spokesperson, Mary Ellen Burke, claimed to me. “They see him as a role model.”…

Pressed on whether Joe the Plumber has any particular claim to being a spokesperson on the issue, Burke replied that “he represents the American worker.”

Where, oh where to to begin? Hmm, a correction is apparently in order, about “representing the American worker”. First off, before the campaign happened, if I remember correctly, “Mr. Plumber” was unemployed. I know, a nitpick. But to be more accurate, the quote should have said “represents the thoroughly uninformed, uneducated worker incapable of critical thinking or factual analysis who buys into the perceptual victimhood portrayed by the WATB GOP”. Or something like that.

Apparently, real plumbers are pissed about this, too. From , Rick Terven, the political and legislative director for The United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada:

“Joe the plumber is selling out real plumbers. Right now, labor law is stacked against real plumbers. Real plumbers want and need the Employee Free Choice Act as a way to empower themselves to join a union, without fear of intimidation or losing their jobs. Joe the Plumber doesn’t speak for real plumbers.”

And about the spokesman saying how “the public” sees Joe as a “role model” (although I’d be hard pressed to find anyone to admit that an unemployed dunce who knows nothing except how to shill for people who work tirelessly against his own interests is somehow a “role model”)… I’m curious as to who else they may consider a “role model”. Howzabout this guy? He’s not funny either, isn’t really what he says he is, and makes a career out of being ignorant (although, admittedly, his is just an act):

I can’t fight the nagging suspicion that if the GOP were still in charge, Larry’d be in charge of the FCC or something. They do things like that, you know. They can’t help it.

(h.t to The Political Carnival)

Another on of those “so bad it’s amazingly awesome!” movies. I saw this one last week. It’s loaded with lots of hot women disco dancing, of course (and some bodybuilder guy with an afro and the tightest short shorts I’ve ever seen, doing roller disco), lots of horribly choreographed kung-fu (which, oddly, EVERYONE who fights seems to know), the unique “acting” of Rudy Ray “Dolemite” Moore, and some silly plot about the angel dust epidemic that was going on for a while back in the late 70′s/early 80′s. I thought cocaine was the disco drug, wha’  happened?

Last week, I mentioned the project I have in the works to bring the art of the grindhouse to central Vermont, a place that it is sorely needed, as we do tend to be filled with a lot of easygoing, good-natured, kind people that are really sometimes a bit uptight once you take them out of their comfort zone. Although I’m going to break out the official press release sometime next week, here’s the gist of it: my friend Mike and I are starting something called Night Flight: Badfilm/Psychotronic. On Saturday, April 18th, at the Lamb Abbey in Montpelier, we’ll be giving a talk on the basics of grindhouse/exploitation cinema, then we’ll be showing about a half hour or so of trailers (just like the ones you see on here all of the time), followed by a showing of the blaxploitation classic, Three The Hard Way, starring Fred Williamson and Jim Brown, two of the genre’s biggest stars. It’s a ridiculous and highly entertaining film about some crazy white supremacist, oddly named “Feather”, who with his army of, oh, I don’t know, 15 people, hatch a nefarious plan to poison the water supply of three major cities with a poison that only kills black people. Yep. You read right. And of course, our heroes save the day with the usual barrage of guns, fistfights, kung-fu and all matter of jive-ass coolness that you don’t see anymore. I wrote a review of it a few years ago, which you can read here. Oddly enough, I can’t find a trailer for this anywhere.

More to follow… I hope those of you in the vicinity will show up and have a good time with us, we’re hoping to make this a regular event. There’s something guaranteed to offend everyone, one way or the other, so it will be a rather interesting evening, to say the least.

It’s been a while since I’ve added something to the blogroll (actually, that’s a lie; I added Undead Film Critic, a regular read of mine, only to have it fold a week later). It’s Unreasonable Faith, the blog of a guy named Daniel Florien, a former passionate by-the-book evangelical who has had a change of heart and mind and is now a skeptic. And, let me tell you folks, this guy is highly entertaining. One of his top posts is A Guide to Christian Clichés and Phrases:

“I believe this because the Bible says so.”

Translation: “I have no clue about the history of that big book I’m in love with, and I don’t care either, because it’s God’s Word, and if God said it, it must be true.”
Acceptable Response: “Amen.”
Unacceptable Response: “It also says to kill homosexuals.” They might heartily agree to that one, which in case the unacceptable response becomes, “It also says to kill your children when they talk back. Have your children ever talked back?” Or, “Explain to me the authorship and transmission of the Bible, and why you think it’s God’s Word.” Or especially, “Jesus said to give anything to those who ask of you – and not only to give what they ask, but more. So please give me your wallet and your car.”

“What would you say if you stood before God after you die?”

Translation: “I’ve got you now, sinner!”
Acceptable Response: “Please forgive me! I was so fracking stupid! How blind of me not to see you in everything you created!”
Possibly Acceptable Response: “Oops.”
Unacceptable Response: “If you wanted me to believe in you, why didn’t you show some kind of evidence? Why create everything through the painful process of evolution? Why did you let your creation suffer through hunger, neglect, disease, and war? Why incarnate yourself and then commit deicide/suicide? Why were you so bloodthirsty in the early years? If you’re God, you’re not a very good one.” Or, “Which one?”

I guess the blog is about his journey into skepticism and reason. He seems to have come about it reasonably enough:

I looked for evidence for many of the claims I believed and realized that there was no reputable evidence at all. I could believe Jesus was resurrected, or that Moses parted the Red Sea, but there was no evidence outside oral stories recorded by unknown biased authors many decades (or, as with Moses, many centuries) after the fact.

I asked hard questions and got tired of the final answers being “it’s a mystery,” which really meant, “it doesn’t make any sense to me either, but that’s what the Bible says.”

I learned about probability. Things I thought could not happen without divine intervention ended up being within the laws of probability. Coincidence really exists.

Welcome aboard, Daniel.

No, it’s not my latest grindhouse feature. It’s this special area in Knoxville, Tennessee (University of Tennessee’s Anthropological Research Facility), where human bodies are left to decompose, specifically for the purpose of studying how bodies decompose in various scenarios. There’s even one buried under a slab of concrete (as it is a rather common way of people covering up murder – to bury the body under a patio). It’s the work of forensic anthropologist Bill T. Bass, who started it back in 1980. He’s the author of “Death’s Acre”, which, if you’re into these kinds of things, I’d strongly suggest picking up. I read it a few years ago, and was pleasantly surprised to find the following min-documentary about Dr. Bass’ experiment. It’s about 15 minutes long, and fascinating.

Something you didn’t know about me… way back in another lifetime, when I first started college, I was actually a criminology major. I remember reading a lot of forensic investigation books (ever see a person commit suicide by cutting themselves in half on a band saw?). Let’s just say I can identify a lot of exit wounds. I didn’t stick with it, as I came to realize that if I didn’t go to med school, I’d probably have to be a cop for a while. No friggin’ way on that.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3

Those of you who follow science news are probably familiar with Ötzi the Iceman, a mummy from 3300 B.C. that was discovered sticking out of a glacier in the Italian Alps back in 1991.

His discovery and the subsequent research on him was quite informative, as he has tattoos, an arrowhead lodged in his shoulder, and they could even tell what he had eaten shortly before his death. He’s Europe’s oldest mummy (so far) and is a virtual fountain of knowledge about how people in what we call the Copper Age lived.

Anyways, if you’re looking to pass some time, there’s an incredible internet exhibit you need to check out called the Iceman Photoscan:

The Iceman Photo Scan is an innovative project which records the complete photographic documentation of the body of the Iceman mummy.
Thanks to 12 differing angle-shots it is possible to see the whole body of the mummy.
The intuitive zoom function enables a high-resolution navigation, from a total body image down to millimetric detail.
The image at any enlargement guarantees both a perfect view and accurate colour reproduction

The detail of this photography is truly breathtaking in the amount of detail. I was able to actually zoom in on the Iceman’s front tooth with the kind of detail I wouldn’t see had I been in front of him shoving my eyeball into his mouth. If you happen to have a pair of red/blue 3-D glasses lying around, there’s even a 3-D exhibit to check out on there, too. Cool stuff.

Have a great weekend.

You’d be reading garbage like this all day:

Who knew Italian prog rock could be so exciting?

Mmm, new Rock Art 8% brew.

Be glad I’m not.

Hey, any of you in the central VT area have a decent sized movie screen you could lend out for a couple of days in mid April, or know someone who might? Drop me a note on the contact page if you can. Thanks.

I don’t deal with the right-wing blogs too much, as I can usually get more enlightened and informed conversation from my cat or from the clumps of hair that accumulate in the bathtub drain. Cons seem to love making a mockery out of common sense truths, like that idiotic time McCain mocked Obama for suggesting people check their tire pressure for maximum fuel efficiency. When actual facts are constantly treated with disdain, it’s easy to do. Anyways, I haven’t done a bit on Charity, VT’s own resident wingnut, simply because it’s usually the same ol’ same ol’ right-wing talking points and other reality-challenged nuttery. Most of us go over there for a laugh, nothing more.

So her latest post is on the latest right-wing idiocy from the wingnuttosphere is so vacuous I couldn’t let it pass… Obama uses a teleprompter!!! Oh, my god, horror of horrors!!! A president using a teleprompter! They’re allowed to do that? Since when? They’re finally figuring this out after 50 or so years? There’s even an incredibly stupid blog about it, which I’m not about to link to.

Let’s take a look at who else uses a teleprompter (images thx to Americablog, but these images are everywhere dealing with this nonsense)…

I know, it’s just a coincidence that these pictures happen to be of some the biggest purveyors of braindead bullshit to ever grace the public airwaves, but it’s a safe bet cold, hard truth that even our best and brightest, when giving a speech, use a teleprompter, if they’re not reading it from a paper. It’s certainly not the teleprompter’s  fault the above people are such jackasses, moreso that they’ve signed off on the content on the teleprompter that makes them jackasses. So is Charity so stupid she didn’t realize this? Compartmentalized thinking? Or just hoping the rest of you are too stupid to figure this out? Even her hero, the “only true conservative”, Grampa Fred Thompson uses one. The scary thing is even with Bush using one, 1t didn’t stop him from sounding severely retarded.  That’s the thing with most conservative humor… it’s not really funny unless you’re as stupid as the person telling it.