Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Accepting the Award for World O' Crap is Sacheen Littlefeather

We didn't get into blogging for the fame and the glory -- we're in it for the Love.  Mostly because nobody has ever offered us fame or glory (or even free DVDs of the movies Fame or Glory).  But our good buddy Ivan, who runs the Internet's indispensable nexus for audio-visual ephemera (Old Time Radio, TV, Movies, and more) Thrilling Days of Yesteryear has unloaded bestowed upon us the Liebster Blog Award, which, as Ivan writes:

“Liebster,” in the German and Spanish vernacular, means “beloved”…According to the Liebster Blog Award guidelines, I’m to link to the blog what gave me the award (check) and then pass it on to five equally worthy candidates.
We're very excited and humbly grateful, and are already taping our boobs into a scandalously low-cut gown for the ceremony.  Winnowing the list down to a mere five, however, is likely to be the most time-consuming part.  So let's begin the Beguine...

I'm going to start by cheating a bit and selecting a blog Ivan also tagged.  I apologize, but I just can't help it; I'm a film geek and it's one of my favorite destinations on the internet.

She Blogged By Night -- Stacia (who is probably familiar to many of you from the comments here) produces one of the most delightful movie blogs around -- snarky, savvy, and affectionate about all things motion picture, from silents to SyFy.  As it happens, Stacia is on holiday this month, but she's lined up an impressive roster of guest bloggers (and I don't say that just because she's very kindly invited me to contribute), so her place is still hopping.  In fact, she herself keeps dropping in to post, suggesting she's an excellent blogger, but a lousy vacationer.

FGAQ -- Mark H. takes a refreshingly unbloggery approach to blogging: no confessional tone, no rants, no cat photos.  Instead, he grabs whatever depressing outrage is at the top of the news and distills it into a weird little short story that's often dry, wry, and Onionesque.

The Bowery Boys: New York City History -- A terrific blog full of little known tales of the Big Apple, from events ("Who won the Great Gimbals Air Race of 1911," "The other Draft Riots: Brooklyn infernos, Queens bonfires") to historic buildings, to a survey of which superheroes were born on the Lower East Side.  If you have any fondness at all for NYC, The Bowery Boys is a fascinating but edifying time-waster.  If not, this might just give you the bug (or at least the bedbug).

The Bloggess -- A woman marooned in the middle of Texas with rheumatoid arthritis, crippling panic attacks, and a giant metal chicken, she's the Internet's richest source of absurdist, incontinence-inducing laughter.

Bats Left/Throws Right -- I'm sure anyone who reads WO'C also reads the Hoosier Sage, but on the off chance there are one or two newcomers who haven't yet caught the wave, Doghouse Riley is, in my opinion, the best writer in the medium.  Complex, yet effortlessly witty, informative, yet entertaining, with a tone of mixed exasperation and fatalism that only a few bloggers -- your Tboggs, your Roys -- can match.

Programming Note:  The final six contestants in the 2011 Miss Wingnut Pageant will compete tomorrow.  If you haven't cast your ballot yet, please click here to vote in Round One, and here for Round Two.

Remember, your votes will decide which of these lovely hopefuls will wear the tiara, and get to skip to the head of the NRO Cruise buffet table line.

Monday, August 8, 2011

2011 Miss Wingnut Pageant: Round Two

Thanks for joining our continuing coverage of the nation's most prestigious beauty pageant based on decade-old headshots, in which celebrity pundits from the NRO fund-raising cruise compete head to head for the honor of representing their own school of heavily-subsidized bullshit.  (Click here for Round One.)

Category:  Miss "I Thought I Was Posing For An Aramis Ad in 1964"
 Mark Steyn
Michael Walsh
Kevin Williamson

Talent:  Making sweet, sweet love to the Camera

Question From the Judges:  Where Do You Want to Be in Five Years?  I see myself as the spokesmodel for Smoldering Man-Scowl, my own line of imposter fragrances.

✿✿✿

Category:  Miss Most Likely to Be Cast as "Pop, the Creepy Loner Who Runs a Motel in a Remote Area"
Andrew Klavan
John Derbyshire
James Lileks

Talent:  Lulling Guests Into a False Sense of Security; Sharpening Cutlery

Question From the Judges:  Where Do You Want to Be in Five Years?  Peering through a peephole, watching you shower.  

✿✿✿

Category:  Miss Eerie, Vacant, Dead-Eyed Stare
Dr. Charmaine Yoest
Kathryn Lopez
Victor Davis Hanson

Talent:  Lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes.

Question From the Judges:  Where Do You Want to Be in Five Years?  Feasting on your soul.

Please vote for your favorites in each category.  This week, one of these lucky contestants will be crowned Miss Wingnut, 2011!

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Wingnut War of Attrition! Join Now!

Over at Roy's place, Jay B. (ace blog remarker and thrower of fine barbeques) mentioned that NRO is having another of their fund-raising cruises -- a sort of Love Boat meets Ship of Fools meets Titanic mash-up, with Kathryn Jean Lopez as the Unsinkable Molly Brown, S.E. Cupp as Julie Your Cruise Director, and Jonah Goldberg as Some Unidentifiable Flotsam -- and it features many of the leading voices in contemporary conservative commentary.  Alas, if you embark on this voyage of intellectual discovery, you also have to see their faces, and I imagine most passengers' reaction will be similar to mine when I clicked over and viewed the staff's mugshots: slack-jawed stupefaction, followed by two hours of lost time.

Still, these are all Randian Übermenschen und frauen, who firmly believe that cut-throat, unregulated competition strengthens both a nation's economy and her people, so let's take these glamour shots and hold a beauty contest!

I'll arrange the portraits by category, and you vote for the winner in each one -- and feel free to come up with  your own (and no doubt better) captions.  Ready? (If not, you can just skip to the cat pictures below.)

Category #1:  Miss Smug
Tony Blankley

 Cal Thomas

Jonah Goldberg

Talent Portion:  Smiling with pursed lips.

Question:  Where Do You Want to Be in Five Years?  Leading the unexamined life.

Category #2:  Miss Old Man and the Sea
Bernard Lewis
John O' Sullivan
Fred Dalton Thompson


Talent Portion:  Storing scotch in my jowls for the winter.

Question:  Where Do You Want to Be in Five Years?  Enjoying the sweet release of death.

Okay, that's it for Round One.  Please cast your ballots in Comments, and best of luck to all of our lovely contestants!

Post-Friday Beast Blogging: The Cat Scanner Edition


Moondoggie:  Hey...My brain hurts.  And I didn't even know I had one. 
Riley:  C'mon, explode, already...Explode...!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Idiocy: The Antidote to Satire

You may have seen this Onion story:  Obama Turns 50 Despite Republican Opposition.  Well, today Joseph Farah, the editor in chief of World Net Daily and the man who inherited Harry Reems' upper lip, decided to prove that WND is immune to mockery:
Happy birthday?

How much don't we know about Barack Obama as he nears the end of his third year of White House occupation?

Well, he claims today is his 50th birthday.

Yet, incredibly, it is still only an unsubstantiated claim – and, perhaps, more suspect than ever. 
I hadn't really expected Farah to put on Marilyn's dress from The Seven Year Itch and breathily croon "Happy Birthday, Mr. President," but this seems a bit overboard.  Still, Joe is a dynamo when there are sheep to be fleeced, and pigeons to be plucked:
Since I carried the ball on this issue when no one wanted to talk about it, I am actually stepping up my own activism on the eligibility issue through 2012.
Sadly, WND special offers like this are no longer the reliable rube bait they once were:

I blame the recession, or perhaps a drop in home-schooling.

Thus, even in a world of Earl Grey-guzzling neo-bats, a man's gotta have a gimmick, and just because the Pure Food and Drug Act has outlawed your Professor Farah's Rejuvenating Essence of Rattlesnake Vitals doesn't mean you can't add a drop of castor oil and a pinch of opium and re-patent your nostrum as Dr. Farah's Invigorating Tincture of Viper Sputum.
Because of the overwhelming evidence put forward now from document experts who have examined this official White House deception, it's all a matter of public record. Obama's birth certificate fraud is indefensible. In desperation, like others in his position in the past, he has decided to cover up the original crime with an even more serious crime.
A birthday party.
How long will it take to see him frog-marched down Pennsylvania Avenue?
One hopes Obama will keep his charade going just long enough for Joseph to bulk-buy another year's supply of Luscious Lip Shoe and Philtrum Polish®.
We're not nearly as far away as you might think. While the media and the failed Washington political establishment would like it to just go away, that will never happen.

Not as long as I am around to sit on Obama's birthday cake.
If I'd known you were coming I'd have baked a hemorrhoid cushion.
Certifigate will be his undoing – as long as you won't let it go.
The first step will be getting people to stop snickering when they hear the word "Certifigate."  Or we could skip the whole thing and just send Joseph a copy of Mean Girls.

Gretchen: That is so fetch!
Regina: Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen! It's not going to happen!
Would you like to see those billboards all over America in 2012? Do you think it will make a difference in undermining his illegitimate authority and his prospects for extending it?
Absolutely!  Although this time I'd like the billboards augmented with a bigger-than-life cartoon of Joseph flogging the exhumed corpse of Secretariat.
If so, I hope you will join me in making an Obama birthday pledge to support the "Where's the real birth certificate?" billboard campaign.¹
¹ Link removed to avoid becoming an Accessory After the Factlessness.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Cousin Oliver Is On The Warpath!

I did a search for Sher Zieve (fondly known to World O' Crap as "Moe Howard's Separated-at-Birth Twin," or "Shermp, the Forgotten Stooge"), because I was curious if she had modulated her demands for violent resistance to Barack Obama (or "The Usurper" as she likes to call him), in the wake of the mass murder in Norway.  Predictably, she's pretending it didn't happen, but I did come across a piece I'd missed (probably because it was published by Michnews, rather than her usual enablers at RenewAmerica), written back in March.
Obama: The Rights of the Many denied by the Tyranny of the few

While We-the-People of this formerly-and-to-be-again great nation every once in awhile need to take a break and a few hours rest from our mission of saving our country and defeating the enemies already firmly planted within our gates
I'm no expert in medieval siege tactics, but if they're already within our gates -- in fact, firmly planted there -- maybe we took a longer break than we should have.
Obama & Co continue legislation and executive fiats designed to destroy it. 
Destroy what, our gate?  No, that was the Homeowners Association; they claimed it was a non-standard design.  They also took down our oversized mailbox and confiscated our lawn flamingos.
Disastrously, evil never sleeps.
Evil is a tweaker.
Since the 2010 elections, Obama & Co have actually picked up the pace of their assault on the United States of America. Instead of listening to we the voters, Obama has chosen sides against us and is now almost shouting ‘Your elections do not count and never will mean anything at all unless you vote for me and my wants and desires! You won’t nullify me--I’ll nullify you‘! 

He has also been known to rise unsteadily from his club chair, white tie askew and eyes a'blaze, and bellow, "I'm Charles Foster Kane...!"
And…so he is doing it. In mid-February, Obama first came out against recently elected Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and We-the-People who elected him in favor of the unions who helped place Obama into the power over us all he enjoys today. [...]

As We-the-People (and once in a great while Fox News) are the only ones who have spoken out strongly against having to pay for government employees who now make more money than do we, Obama’s warning shot came for us when he said: “I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified, or their rights are infringed upon." Denigrated and vilified? Hold it. Unlike your slathering bought-and-paid-for media, we told the truth about the situation. And ‘rights’? When did you Unions obtain the “rights” to steal from us in the first place and what “rights” do they have to now steal even more? 
If the right to collective bargaining is theft, I wonder what you'd call the extortionate techniques used by the GOP in the debt ceiling negotiations?  Probably something like "freedom leverage."  After all, you can't blackmail a black male.
We are being forced to finance those government-school “teachers” who are now openly indoctrinating our children in both Marxism and Islam!
On the bright side, Timmy graduated the third grade with a double major.  Next year we're thinking of enrolling him in either Libertarian Colonialism or Anarchist Catholicism.
When was the exact date the rights of We-the-People were usurped and bludgeoned by the tyranny of the few?
I believe it was St. Swithin's Day.
Mr. Obama, we know you were trained by your masters to destroy us and our country, in order for the ruling elite to rise up, rule over and squash us.

At long last, the ruling elite is finally getting to rule.  Being on the bottom rung of the politico-economic ladder for so long, they were starting to feel a little self-conscious about their name.
But, we’re not ready to be defeated. In fact, we plan to win this war against us begun by you and your cronies. 
We're going to start by asking you to please stop planting yourselves inside our gates.  From now on, we'll be captain of our own crop rotation.
And as you, your family and Marxist friends take extravagant after more extravagant vacations on our money and continue to host your weekly hedonistic parties at what was once OUR White House, we are planning your defeat and our return to both our Republic and our liberty.
I don't see much difference between the parties the White House currently hosts and those thrown when George Bush was president, but I suspect that even if Obama eschewed the fancy French wines and served only malt liquor at state dinners, Shermp would still be cheesed because he'd splurged on 40s.
While you play the libertine and then hire the very Muslim Brotherhood members sworn to destroy us, we are increasingly turning back to God and His counsel.
After noticing that Muslims were worshiping Him without the express written permission of Major League Christianity, God decided He'd better lawyer-up.
We have protested peacefully, thus far. However, as you and your minions carry on your increase of destruction, dictatorial dominance and stranglehold over us and our country--and then vilify and demean us when we balk at our bondage--we become less peaceful every day. Sir, you are neither our king nor our master and it is becoming clearer every day that you may not even be our legitimate president. 
As I said, this was written a little over four months ago, and climaxed with the usual cry for the exsanguination of patriots for landscaping purposes:
We have reached the tipping point, folks. This current lunacy of oppression can no longer be tolerated. It’s time. Soon we will hear from our own mouths and all of our communities “Let’s roll!”
Cousin Oliver kept her rhetoric at a boil all through Spring and early Summer, until the terrorist attacks in Oslo.  She hasn't yet alluded to these particular crimes against humanity in her column, but four days after the massacre Sher published a surprisingly mellow piece in which she merely referred to the President as "Dictator-in-Chief" and declared that "[t]he Obama syndicate is also a patently criminal organization," which for Sher is like replacing your usual sprinkling of Tabasco Sauce with a dollop of cold ketchup.

However, two days later she was back with this:
With no additional doubts — whatsoever — Democrat Senators have now come out into the open and are shouting that they rule over us all, they have ended our Republic and that we'd better shut up and get used to taking anything they and their Emperor-and-usurper-in-Chief Obama decide to employ against us. In other words, these beings have openly announced that they now own We-the-People "body and soul," we can't do anything about it and "if you want us to be benevolent slave masters, you'd better smile and say 'Yes Massa' when we speak and give you one of our new commandments!"=
As you can see, she's starting to shake off the ennui caused by wish-fulfillment and get back to the hard work of supplying reading material to people who thought The Turner Diaries was "too subtle."

She concludes with a spasm of eloquence:
Folks, we're quickly approaching — actually being unmercifully pushed into by those we elected to office who now contend they are our "betters" — the time when we will have to actively and physically fight back at our oppressors or live in a police state that we allowed to take us over. Chillingly, we're almost there and Congress and the dictator-in-chief are working on driving the final nails into our coffin. Be both forewarned and as prepared as possible for yourselves and your families. Unless we stop it, the deep darkness will continue to descend upon us...
Experience has taught me that when Shermp addresses her readers as "folks," a St. Crispix Day speech is about to be served in a heaping bowl.  Or bowl cut.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Previously, on...The Internet!

Some friends took us to see Cowboys & Aliens on Saturday, and for a 7 PM show on opening weekend, the crowd was surprisingly light.  Jon Favreau, who was introducing a Q&A for Attack the Block next door, wandered in just before the lights went down, surveyed the sparsely populated auditorium, and said, "So you're the people who couldn't get into The Smurfs?"

There's been some speculation -- which Favreau alluded to -- that moviegoers have reacted like the antagonists in a Reece's Peanut Butter Cup commercial, complaining about cowboys in their aliens, and vice versa, without actually tasting it.  For the record, I enjoyed the movie -- as a western, and as an alien invasion movie, both of which forms are a little neurasthenic and overbred by this late date, and both of which could benefit from the kind of genre-splicing that stops just short of parody.  It's sort of a steampunk Independence Day, without the constant, rash-inducing, sand-under-the-waistband-of-your-swimsuit irritation of Judd Hirsch and Bill Pullman, who I think has finally found the role he was born to play, the pedophile serial killer on Torchwood: Miracle Day.

However, as longtime readers have probably noticed, I don't write about films I like, partly because there are plenty of people on the internet who do that sort of thing better, but mainly because my critical faculties have been warped by years of looking at any moving image with the jaundiced, Better Living Through Bad Movies eye, leaving me to promptly and often pointlessly reach for the reductio ad snark. So instead, check out D.Sidhe's thoughts on the flick (Can We Try Cowboys And Sharks Next?), then enjoy her take on Piranha 3D.

Speaking of razor-toothed horrors of the sea, our friend Actor212 has some pensées on Shark Week from the perspective of a man who spends almost as much time underwater as a mako.

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