malle_babbe

So, saw "The Hounds of Baskerville" last night, and my mind, she is blown...

So much so that I was inspired to do another Macro... It is a bit spoilerish...

( click here for LOLs )

Once again, I use my really good binoculars and catch some good TV over in the UK.  I haven't been this full of squee over something in a while.  I'm a right "Beeb Dweeb", I am...

So much so I been inspired on the macro front again,  here is the first of several, and already one of the several Sherlock macros referring to MST3K...

A guy named Derek Waters has a web series called "Drunk History", which is pretty much what you'd expect.  In this episode, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover (who doesn't age... Seriously, the guy must have a hideous painting of himself stashed somewhere) and a adorable, and really drunk guy dramatize the conflict between Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison over the use of direct and alternating current.  Man, I thought *I* was a rambling drunk...

A word of warning, the drunk guy vomits around the 4:00 mark...

Two years ago today, I packed up everything I could fit into my first car I bought ever, and hit the road from Duncansville, PA to Santa Fe, NM.  If I recall correctly, around this time I was grumbling about Ohio being way bigger than it looks on the map.

Also, just finished seeing the season premiere of Doctor Who, and all I have to say is, "YES!" Sure, it borrows a lot from "Smith and Jones" and "The Girl in the Fireplace", but the Whoniverse is finally FUN again!  Adventure and really hyperactive people saving the world, what's not to love?

Or , How many nuts could a could a wingnut nut if a wingnut could wing nuts?

I had the sinking feeling that the passing of health care legislation would send the last of the cheese flying off of the respective crackers of the Right Wing, but I thought it would manifest as a spike in purchases of fertilizer and Ryder truck rentals.

Item 1 - Gas line cut at the property of the brother of Rep. Tom Perriello.  Here's an interesting detail:

Lynchburg Tea Party member Mike Troxel claimed responsibility for posting the home address of Rep. Tom Periello, encouraging people to drop by for a “good face-to-face chat”:

"Just in case any of his friends and neighbors want to drop by and say hi and express their thanks regarding his vote for healthcare. I personally believe it’s so important for representatives to remain fully grounded and to remember exactly what it is their constituents are saying and how they are telling them to vote. Nothing quite does that like a good face-to-face chat. It has a much more personal touch to it."

I know questions of what is appropriate in a death threat is an bizarre issue to raise, but being all passive aggressive in that situation just make you look like MORE of an asshole.

What is really creepy about this is the similarity to an incident (which I was told after the fact) during the effort to make MLK's birthday a national holiday.  See, I and the rest of the Babbe family just happened to have the last name as a then member of the US Congress.  One night the phone rings, Dad picks up, and is told by the goon on the other end of the line that if he were to vote for that [REDACTED]'s birthday, he'd come to our house and kill everybody.  Said goon was not only visited by the FBI, but more humorless members of the Air Force.

Item 2 - Assassination threat at family of New York Representative discovered after office vandalized.

Because demanding that health insurance companies not dick over customers over preexisting condition bullshit is worse than suspending habeas corpus...

Item 3 - Geo. W Bush speechwriter states the obvious, and has another Cassandra moment.

David Frum has the same expression on his face as a lot of the callow/arrogant College Republicans I'd see during my years in college in the 1990s.  Still, I almost feel sorry for him; he manages to lucidly see the sitch that his party is in, tells the GOP to stop stepping on its own dick, and STILL gets blown off. 

I love how even after the GOP defeat of 2008, when Frum made the obvious less obscure and flat out stated that the GOP will continue to lose the middle class vote by sneering at the idea that competence is important and praising ignorance (point 4 in the article), he got shut down by his own party with the most toxic of slurs, "Canadian". 

It is almost as if he genuinely believed that 40 years of conservatism making "Intellectual" a dirty word would lead to a result OTHER than that of the rise of the Tea Party and Sarah Palin.  How much coke was he and every other Reagan Revolution type snorting back in the day to this to seem like a good idea? 

Speaking of Sarah Palin,

Item 4 - Palin PAC posts US Map with crosshairs over states with Dems standing for re-election this year.

If you have a Facebook account, you can see it live here.

As a blonde, I am SO glad this twit is brunette...

Before calling me a paranoid liberal gun-hater, let me point out that if a middle schooler posted a similar map of their neighborhood on their Facebook page, they'd be getting a body cavity search at the principal's office.

All I have to say is that in the event OKC 2.0 happens, I don't want to hear the right wing in this country whining about being accused of having blood on their hands afterward, or spend a generation or more being as marginalized.  For all of their freaking out about Bill Ayers, they are standing on the knife edge of making the same mistake.

UPDATE: David Frum let go from conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.  The Right is *totally* eating its own at this point. 

Saw this for the first time on St. Patrick's Day 2008...


In other news, the roaming mountain lion has been caught, and is currently sleeping off the tranquilizer dart.

My brother F posts the pictures of the occasional moose that strolls through the base where he's stationed in Alaska.  Me, I get an email from a coworker stating that she just got a bulletin from her kids' school that a mountain lion was spotted this morning in downtown Santa Fe.  Nice.  On one hand, I have a handy excuse for not being at the gym, on the other (if the one comment in the linked article is accurate) it was prowling around a mile and a half from my place.

Gotta admit, it is a bit exciting, but I imagine it it because I am currently not being chewed on. 

God help me, I love this kid.  She's basically Klaus Nomi's long lost kid sister; I have always been fascinated by artist's who charge into doing full-on balls out spectacle, and unlike Marilyn Manson, she seems to be more positive and adventurous.

Below is her latest video for "Telephone" which has gotten mixed reviews, but already got one outraged commentary on Fox News.  This video looks like Quentin Tarantino and David LaChapelle got put in a blender...

ETA:  Not safe for work....

First off, if the Screen Gems logo wigged you out as a kid (it is a little before my time) you might want to avoid this post. 

Saw this on Boing Boing.  It is a short documentary on the the 1964 Screen Gems logo, and the inadvertent dread it evoked in countless TV-watching kids growing up in the US in the 1960s and 1970s.    While kids in the UK were watching Doctor Who from behind the couch, The S From Hell and its assorted brethren had American kids diving for the dial at the end of the closing credits for the Flintstones.

Maybe this is why Mom had me watching PBS when I was little...

Here it is below:


A few thoughts:  I think a really big clue is the one interview subject mentioning the stylized S and its similarity to the radiation symbol, and all the fears of nuclear doom that were in the back of one's mind in the Cold War Era.  Like I said, I'm probably a decade too young to have been wigged out by this, but I do remember being weirded out by those American Tourister ads that featured gorillas pounding the shit out of innocent suitcases.  I got the impression that there were randomly placed rooms around the world with enraged primates lying in wait to go apeshit (**rimshot**) on anything (or anyone) tossed inside.

Weird music aside (I wonder if kids' sharper ears were more irritated by it), I wonder if one part of the creepy factor is how the animation sequence can't seem to make up its mind if it wants to be a flat image, or maintain a illusion of depth.  The two parallelograms appear to be on the same plane, but then switch to the top one coming at you and the bottom one falling away from you, causing a weird moment of disorientation in the viewer.  If you are a little kid, for whom reality can seem weird and a more fluid than you like, the TV going from flat to something that you could fall into or fling things out at you could be a bit much.  Kind of like when you are watching "The Ring" for the first time, wondering how a video tape could frighten someone to death and then [[ OH MY GOD!!! SHE'S COMING OUT OF THE TV AND SHE'S GOING TO EAT THAT GUY'S FACE]] and then you realize [[that the movie was made before YouTube]] and [[ OH MY GOD WHAT IF 
SOMEONE MADE A DIGITAL COPY AND PUT IT ONLINE?!?!  THOSE PEOPLE ON /b/ WILL BE THE DEATH OF US ALL!!!!]]
Nothing quite like the Motif of Harmful Sensation, is there?

or... "I want to hear those lovely Yinzer vowels...."

According to io9 and other sources, RTD and Julie Gardner are putting together an American version of Torchwoood to be handled by BBC Worldwide.

If nothing else, it would be interesting to see how RTD would deal with actually having to learn how the US government works (the President-Elect negotiating with other countries? Really?).  At least the US Gwen would actually know how to use a firearm and handle a standoff.  The first season's dependence on her developing plot-Induced stupidity on a regular basis was a) annoying and b) led to her getting a lot of fan hate that I feel is undeserved...

I can't blame RTD for heading to the US to make serious bank in his chosen field, but has he  talked to Joss Whedon yet?  Has he seen what has happened to "Dollhouse" and "Firefly"?  How could they make it different from "Fringe"?

Still, if he keeps in the cheerfully pansexual office romances, it could very well equal plenty of Fox News Outrage (and tons of free publicity).  That, and the chance of RTD and Bill O'Reilly duking it out on the air.  It would be epic. 

I wonder though if it would be less Whoinverse-flavored and more like RTD's original "Excalibur" which was tinkered into "Torchwood"

Still, I wonder if they would base it in one particular US city, or would they go from place to place every week?  The discussion on io9 and elsewhere make a couple of interesting suggestions, esp. on the subject of what US city could be like Cardiff. 

Given Cardiff's industrial past, I imagine that any Midwestern to Northeastern industrial city would be a good fit.  Besides which, climatewise that would be one of the places in the US where Jack wouldn't be risking heatstroke in his greatcoat. 

Chicago would be an interesting choice.  It has the Crown Fountain, history of city government shenanigans, and the possibility of epic car chases on Lower Wacker Drive.

That, or Pittsburgh. 

Pennsylvania is rainy and hilly, with a history of coal mining.  Picture it as Wales, only landlocked and all of the sheep replaced with white tailed deer that insist on jumping into traffic.  There are plenty of gravel pits and slag heaps around, so the BBC location scouts won't feel too homesick. 

The 'Burgh also has the revitalized industrial city thing going on, and the original Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead were filmed nearby.  That, and it is hilly as all get out, plenty of opportunities to catch air in any car chases.  Plenty of skyscrapers too for brooding.  Maybe they could have an episode where the Centralia Mine Fire is an interdimensional abomination that got stuck...

"But the SUV needs washed! Yinz guys totally wrecked the inside when yinz went dahntahn to wrangle weevils n'at!  And you forgot to go a get me coffee at the Sheetz, you jagoffs!"