Man, I can’t even get my shooting stance this solid when I’m standing still:
[YouTube direct link] (Viewer #230,279)
And, no, there’s no truth to the rumor that Seal Team 6 did anything like this before taking out bin Laden.
Obviously they did something even cooler.
I was considering making this a Link of the Day because it’s a truly awesome and heartfelt rant, but it’s got a couple f-bombs in it, so I’d caution the PG-13 readership about visiting.
But if hippies make you feel like laying down a couple of your own f-bombs, reading this will probably give you a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Excerpt:
Washing your reusable bamboo panty liners in a stream with a rock does not make you Gandhi. Not that he wore pads, but that’s not really the point I’m trying to make.
And really, more often than not, these people who live so simply would be thrilled to do their laundry at your place. Hippies are not Amish, they’re broke. And they’re usually broke because they don’t want to work, or they can’t get real jobs because they have a lotus tattooed on their face and smell like kefir.
Hippies also hate the government, but wish the government would give them more money. And they believe that the country’s financial problems could all be solved by legalizing marijuana.
Brief explanation about the target site:
Etsy is a site, vaguely similar to eBay, which specializes in connecting the buyers and sellers of hand-made crafts.
Regretsy (which the above link goes to) chooses some of the more egregiously tasteless, talentless, and downright revolting Etsy products and malicioulsy ridicules them. Although the owner of the site can be (and usually is) quite mean, her targets are, without exception, deserving of the derision they get.
One of my daily reads and guilty pleasures.
[High Praise! to EdthePastor]
It’s only 2 paragraphs, so it’s actually a LOT easier than the post title implies. Give it a shot:
Can you see what’s wrong here?
[Think you have a link that’s IMAO-worthy? Send it to harvolson@gmail.com. If I use your link, you will receive High Praise! (assuming you remember to put your name in the email)]
HOLLYWOOD (AP) – With the record-breaking box-office success of “The Avengers,” Time Warner Studios is hoping to bounce back from its disappointing “Green Lantern” entry into the superhero-movie genre with a new film designed to give a dark, gritty reboot to DC Comics’ “Aquaman”.
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Time Warner spokesman Eric Mangan enthusiastically explained the studios’ vision.
“Most people only know Aquaman from the horrid 70’s ‘SuperFriends‘ cartoons, said Mangan, “and they tend to remember him as some loser in green tights who was so lame that he was frequently upstaged by Wendy, Marvin, and WonderDog. Still, other than being completely helpless on land, he was actually stronger than Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman combined. At least in the area of piscine communication skills.”
With few people – even Aquaman’s biggest fans (assuming he has any) – knowing or caring anything about America’s most bedampened superhero, studio execs felt they had the advantage of having a completely blank slate as far as creating a compelling backstory for the watery wonder.
“We’ve already hired the country’s foremost Aquaman expert, Frank Fleming, to spearhead the script-writing process,” said Mangan. “This thing is going to be box office gold. GOLD, I say!”
Speaking from his secluded mountain shack in darkest Idaho, Fleming could hardly contain his excitement.
“Yeah, I’ve made up stuff about Aquaman before,” said Fleming, “so I’m pretty sure I can do it again. You know, except all dark & gritty instead of him being a wimpy, fish-talking fruitcake. I’ll probably start off with vignettes of him getting beat up by his enemies, like a maple leaf, bedbugs, and high gas prices, just to give him the bitterness and anger that drives all dark & gritty superheroes.”
“I’m not sure who I’ll show him battling successfully at the end, yet,” Fleming admitted, “but I’m currently toying with some sort of epic final confrontation with Barack Obama at an algae biofuel plant where he dramatically reveals that they aren’t really using high-energy plankton – sorta like the end of ‘Soylent Green’.”
Hunter (who you should remember from his previous appearances) offers this updated version of the Parable of the Talents.
Please note that the “ruler” in this piece is not Obama, but rather more along the lines of the imaginary President who Hunter recently had lecturing Congress on fiscal restraint.
By the way, I’m pleased to announce that, after some encouragement (and maybe a TINY bit of waterboarding), Hunter has taken my advice and started his own blog:
Stop by and wish him well on his new adventure.
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The Parable of the Talents, 2012
(with deep apologies to Matthew 25:14-30 and Luke 19:12-28, and with no claim or attempt to represent this version as being strictly biblical)
…Therefore stay alert, for a nation turning its attention to its own affairs and not being mindful of its elected representatives is like a wealthy ruler going on a journey, who summoned his bureaucrats and after drawing up a contract between he and them, placed into their keeping the divisions of his government. To one he gave oversight of five departments, to another two, and to yet another one, each according their popularity and personal appeal, saying “promote and enable the nation’s businesses with these so that they flourish and grow until I return, drawing responsibly from my Treasury only what you need”. Then he went on his journey.
The bureaucrat who was given five departments went off right away and began hiring additional staff, diversifying and expanding his influence, spinning off narrow oversight functions into separate departments, building his scions up into full-fledged divisions, constructing beautiful, ornate, and highly-secure premises within which to office his staff, requisitioning soldiers to guard all his facilities, showering largess upon all who looked in his direction (most heavily upon his subordinates), and institutionalizing his expansion policies until the number of offices and sub-bureaus under his control could only be drawn as an increasing geometric curve, with each org chart only as stable as the sand in which it was inscribed, giving chronic nightmares to the royal actuaries.
The bureaucrat who had been given two departments did likewise.
The bureaucrat who had been given one department feared his master, so he did all he could to support the kingdom’s merchants with his meager staff, and yet he refused to expand his authority. Quickly realizing that no amount of under-spending on his part could make up for the actions of the other two, he counseled them to reverse their course and return to the contractual boundaries in place with their king. When they didn’t listen, he found he could not get his message to the people because the Heralds’ Union was now highly regulated, and happily so, and they did not wish to endanger their new pension plans.
After a long time, the ruler returned and summoned his bureaucrats to settle accounts.
The one who received five departments came and said “Master, you entrusted me with five departments, and now they are as many as the stars in the sky!” The one who received two departments came and said “Master, you entrusted me with two, and now they are more plentiful than the sand along the sea!”
Then the one who had received just a single department came and said “Master, I know you are a hard man, and will not wish to harvest what has been sown! I was afraid, and I and my staff worked tirelessly day and night to facilitate trade, and to enact as little restraint upon business as we could ethically manage, so that the economy might not be stifled! But the public has been turned against me. For trying to keep the kingdom on the path you decreed, I have been accused of wanting to slay children and the elderly, and hating those who look different than me, and of being insensitive to the endless needs of our invaders (this last I will admit is true, but feel that it is a strange accusation nonetheless).”
“I have had to fear for my life, the lives of my family, and for my diligent servants because my reluctance to, for example, provide public funding for the arts is now equated with attempts to both censor and enslave the citizenry! These others have rendered for naught all of my efforts!”
The ruler sat quietly on his throne, aghast in the dawning realization of what had been done in his absence. Turning to the first bureaucrat, the one who had received five departments, he asked “How stands my Treasury?” Seeking to dissemble, the man replied “My lord, there is some disagreement among the royal accountants, what with different accounting standards, closing schedules, and economic schools of thought…”
The ruler asked again “How stands my Treasury?”
Continue reading ‘The Parable of the Talents: 2012 Version’ »
* So the socialist won the French presidential election. I know what you’re thinking, “Great! That exactly what France needs to turn itself around: be more socialist.”
Anyway, what they’ve been doing in Europe is this thing called “austerity.” That just a fancy word for “doing the only sensible thing.” You see, the governments there are spending way more than they take in, so they’re trying to cut spending because that’s really your only option in that situation.
Ends up the only sensible thing is super unpopular.
So France has elected a socialist to end all that austerity. Greece also struck out against austerity. They’re going to grow their way out of this situation. Or maybe ride unicorns across a rainbow out of this situation — whichever is more realistic. I mean, how are they going to grow out of this? “Hey, businesses, ignore our oppressive taxation and costly welfare state and come here!” Any day now, Europe is going to get burned down for the insurance money as that’s the only option left.
* I think Obama also wants to grow us out of our current debt problems. Or give us free contraceptive until the problem is fixed. Or he just doesn’t care at all about it. Yeah, I think it’s the last one.
* Obama may not get to try his pro-“not caring about important issues” strategy as Romney is closing in on him in the polls. I still can’t believe Obama gets 47%. I mean, 47% of people are looking at what’s going on now and saying, “I want more of this!”? I understand people may think Romney won’t be a good president, but it seems ridiculous to think he’d be a worse president than Obama. I mean, what are the chances we’d get the most horrible president ever and then get an even worse one? It’s got to be minuscule by any statistical model. Voting against Romney because you think he’d be worse than Obama is anti-science.
* Biden says he’s “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage. I’m just surprised he didn’t say “literally comfortable.”
So what is Obama’s position on gay marriage? He’s against it but… not really… maybe. He has a Schrödinger’s cat position on that issue, and we never get to find out whether the cat is alive or dead until a bill actually ends up on his desk. And he’s going to do whatever he can to avoid that. At least until the election is over.
* Wisdom of the Day from Bryan Donaldson:
The most popular method of birth control for married couples is obstinance.
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UPDATE: Linked by Darth Chipmunk
A while back Frank asked people to describe a “visual representation of American awesomeness“.
I think this comes pretty close:
Burning red meat, 2 cars in the driveway, wifebeater, sunglasses, cigarette, and American flag.
Not sure where his beer is. I’m guessing he just finished it, and his wife is inside fetching him another one.
The image gets spoiled a little by the blue recycle bin in the background, but I’ll just tell myself that it’s been sitting in that exact same spot since the city issued it to him 10 years ago, and is now so full of cobwebs that if you dropped a bowling ball into it, it’d get stuck halfway down.
[Via Winning at Everything]
To complete the satire, shouldn’t Mel Brooks release a special edition of Spaceballs with unnecessary additions?
The more people stop looking for work, the more unemployment drops and the better things appear. Despair is Obama’s ally much more than hope.
Fonzie was apolitical.
Here’s the secret to my success: Just before I was born, I hit up up down down left right left right B A start.
So, internet, what’s happening today?
I don’t get the point of horse racing. They’ll never beat a motorcar.
Now, if they trained horses to drive motorcars, that would be quite the race.
I once drove a motorcar. I got it to quite a mighty speed before it caught fire. Then I wished I had a horse.
The more successful comic book movies we have the more likely we’ll finally get Aquaman on the big screen.
It will probably be a darker, grittier Aquaman. The Wet Knight.
The traditional Cinco de Mayo drink is one part tequila to five parts mayonnaise.
Being part of the Justice League is much better than the Avengers because you just sit around all day while Superman does all the work.
For a change of pace, I’m writing a screenplay about a some-nonsense cop who’s a little sketchy about the rules.
Game of Thrones is just a ripoff of those Capital One commercials with the Vikings.
Why do we still have courtroom artists? The legal system is aware of this thing called “a camera,” right?
I’ve always said the problem with France is it’s not socialist enough.
Wow. Over the weekend, the Avengers grossed 0.001% our national debt.
So is austerity just a fancy word for “doing what’s necessary”?
And who is all the money owed to since every single country is deep in debt?
If I had to guess what Samuel L. Jackson programmed his Siri to call him, it wouldn’t have been “Sam.”
With 13% unemployment for blacks but over 90% support for Obama, when do we get the book “What’s the Matter with Harlem”?
