Enjoy the Streisand Effect, boys!
ZOMG, have you seen The Innocence of Muslims? Oh My God, OHMIGOD, omigod! It is the dumbest thing ever.
The trailer, anyway. As far as anyone knows, that’s all that’s out there. The longest clip I could find is 13:51 and it is pure triple-A tincture of stupid. (The link is a generic YouTube search of “Innocence of Muslims” – I wouldn’t worry too much about the clip coming down. There are dozens of copies, including the one I saved locally).
It’s a dozen or so American community theater refugees hamming it up in front of a green screen, mostly against a backdrop of desert dunes. So nobody casts a shadow and the sand doesn’t move when they walk on it. Oh, it’s rich.
And, boy, were those poor bastards set up — they were acting a perfectly innocent generic sand epic. The inflammatory parts were dubbed in later, in different voices, with different mics, in a different room. The lips don’t synch at all.
“Is Mohammed gay?” “Of course!”
You can clearly see the original line was Gamera is a friend to all children.
Seriously, you’d have to be a platinum ‘tard to be the slightest provoked by this silly pile of fluff.
Which is, of course, entirely not what happened. I mean, look at those scruffy young men shouting in the streets. They obviously don’t have YouTube accounts. If they had access to funny cat videos, would they be that cross?
September 14, 2012 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 27
Jimmah? That you?
Ugh. I’m sorry. I keep pulling the cord, but the engine won’t start. I’ve been staring at my Twitter stream today, swinging between horror and smoldering resentment. And, at this stage of the game, I don’t know how much of the information I’m getting is true.
There is that eerie familiar Jimmy Carterish stench hovering over the whole business, though. Which made me think…for as long as I can remember, excitable young men periodically pour into the Arab street, go “rabble rabble rabble!” and burn an American flag. I’m still unclear what they hope to accomplish by this.
September 13, 2012 — 11:26 pm
Comments: 29
Use the word, Lefties
Oh, man. I thought I was angry yesterday. Today, I am apopleptic.
Sorry, y’all. I’m not a very good angry blogger. It’s just not my thing. “Happy, poo-flinging monkey” is more my style. I’ll just sit over here and seethe for a bit.
Go read Ace. He’s a much better angry blogger than I am. He makes an excellent point: by calling for sanctions or consequences or shunning or jail or something against this anti-Muslim filmmaker or that yahoo Koran-burning preacher or whoever, what American ‘liberals’ are really asking for is American legal recognition of the crime of blasphemy.
Blasphemy laws.
They can’t say it. They can’t think such a thing of themselves. Blasphemy is such a crude and un-nuanced and illiberal idea, calling it by that name is like biting down on a scrap of aluminum foil. But that’s the proper word for the thing they’re demanding today.
Make them call it by its proper name.
September 12, 2012 — 9:46 pm
Comments: 41
Gone dark
September 11. I hate this fucking day. If that angry knot of memory has faded at all, it’s not by much.
I hate to blog on 9/11, but I can’t just walk right past it, either. So, new tradition: I’m going to stick a surly graphic up and close comments on this one post. Feel free to hang out on the other threads and whatever. We’ll leave this one a sullen silence.
September 11, 2012 — 3:27 pm
Comments: none
Um, ow
Soooo…I had a mammogram today. The way they do it under the NHS, they go ahead and schedule you an appointment and send you a notice and then hope enough people turn up to make it worthwhile. See, they drive up in a 40-foot tit wagon with a receptionist in one end, changing rooms in the middle, and an X-Ray tech in the back and then just gram mammoes all day.
That poor tech must handle a whole, WHOLE lot of knockers.
My nurse friends have all had similar gigs. One spent, like, eighteen months doing nothing but pap smears in a similar mobile clinic. Goodness me. She had nightmares about fighting her way out of Carlsbad Caverns armed with nothing but a Q-tip.
Oh, and then there was the one who processed stool samples. Worst part of that one, she said — if you’re going to mail people large manilla envelopes and ask for a sample, you really really need to define what you mean by “sample.”
September 10, 2012 — 10:19 pm
Comments: 21
Round 37: Indian Summer edition
AltBBrown takes the dick with everyone’s favorite Korean, Sun-myung Moon. If you click the link, you’ll find an image of Rev Moon’s body in a big glass display box, which isn’t at all creepy and horrible.
The dicks are flying thick and fast this Summer! I’ll drop Aunty a line and tell her to make more.
Ready?
0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody.
1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).
2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.
3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.
4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay?
5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.
6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.
7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you don’t want the fabulous prize, you’re too smart to be a regular. It takes me forever to put them in the mail, packages go by slow boat, typically take minimum eight to ten weeks and lose the will to live along the way.
8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.
What do we want? Aunty’s dick! When do we want it? When it gets here!
September 7, 2012 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 116
Most unsatisfactory
Hello. Remember this guy? This is a mug shot of Shepard Fairey, the HOPE poster dude. And the Feds want him to do time in federal pound me in the ass prison.
The Associated Press took him to court for tracing the Obama picture used in the poster, which belonged to AP. You’ll find the court docs at the link. I gather (though I am no law-talking weasel), the main points are:
- He claimed he used the photo as reference, but it’s pretty obvious it’s a straight up trace (see overlay)
- He claimed he made around $150,000 off the image, but his companies seem to have pulled off a profit of around $12 million over three years, which surely wouldn’t have happened without the iconic poster
- Based on the above, he offered AP a settlement of a weak $100K, when they probably would have gone away for a substantially bigger sum
- He already has convictions for (reading between the lines, what I assume to be) public graffiti (that was his main gig before the poster: “street artist”
But the Feds are opting to ignore all that. They want him to do time for deleting some emails and fabricating others trying to game the case.
Sure. Okay. Fair enough. Coverup worse than the crime and all that, but leaving the whole rest of it unaddressed is really unsatisfactory. Because I (and millions like me) do what he did, every day — snag news photos, P’shop all over them and post them on the web. It’s a whole cottage industry. And we would really like some guidelines here.
How strong was the AP’s claim? Would any amount of artsy transformation weaken that claim? Did the fact Fairey made a shitload of money make a legal difference? They brought all these questions up, and then left them dangling.
Years ago, when I made art for a big corporation with deep pockets, I wouldn’t go NEAR anyone else’s copyrighted content. Not even for the most ephemeral images. The very idea gave me the shivers. And for the longest time, I wouldn’t do it as a blogger, either. And then I realized everyone — EVERYONE — was having a blast P’shopping photos and nobody was going to federal pound me in the ass prison and I was totally left out of the fun. So I gave in.
But there’s still that worried corner of my mind that knows everybody else does it is a lousy legal defense.
Okay. Back here. Tomorrow. Six sharp, WBT. Round Bzillion of the Dead Pool!
September 6, 2012 — 11:05 pm
Comments: 16
Aw, now, ain’t that purty?
This week is predicted to be sunny and warm — and we haven’t gotten a lot of THAT this Summer — so we decided to go out and roll around in it.
This glittery bit of postcard-perfect Disney fru-fru is Bodiam Castle, one of the prettier ruins in the neighborhood. You may know it as the Swamp Castle from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where they deliberately cropped out the moat and made it look…less than fabulous, on account of it was the establishing shot for:
All the kings said it was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same! Just to show ’em! That sank into the swamp; so I built a second one, that sank into the swamp; so I built a third one, that burned down, fell over and then sank into the swamp; but the fourth one…stayed up!
It’s roofless and spent a lot of years as a ruin, but it’s about the prettiest ruin I know (possibly after Battle Abbey). You’re allowed full access (the bridge over the moat is ’round the back) including to the surviving upstairs rooms. It’s covered in graffiti which, being hundreds of years old, is worn illegible but laboriously carved in tidy Times New Roman.
We ate sammiches by the moat, much of which went to the ducks. I wish we’d thought to throw a bit in water, where there were carp the size of toddlers. On the other hand — considering how many ducks tried to follow us back to the car — maybe not feeding the big ugly fish was a smart idea.
Oh, hey, we passed about TEN trucks on the road, loaded to the overflowing with hops. This area (and particularly Kent) were once gigantic producers of hops, but after the war, most were bought in from other countries. So what does a big local crop of hops mean? ARTISAN BEER!
September 5, 2012 — 9:46 pm
Comments: 26
I’m so confused.
I wonder what would happen if you walked up to this lady in the shiny pink vagina costume and said, “I totally see you as a big vagina with legs.” She’d probably poke you in the snoot. Feminists are so confusing.
I want to acknowledge that I owe a debt to feminists. It would be churlish not to. The original old broads, I mean. Some of the changes they made to society have suited me very well, thanks so much.
But isn’t it the essence of feminism getting a job and buying your own damn pills? What, you need the patriarchy to meet your most basic needs for you, honey? Isn’t that kind of 1950-think?
Eh. Sorry. I’m a bit grouchy. I’ve been listening to this whole Republican War on Women meme the Dems are trying to launch and it’s really getting on my tits. Like so:
Booker labored to keep the Democrats’ dopey War On Women narrative alive: “I heard people stand up and say, ‘I love women.’ I heard people stand up: ‘I’ve got a sister. I’ve got a mother.’ That’s like saying you’re not a bigot cause you have a black friend.
What the hell do you mean, ‘I’ve got a sister. I’ve got a mother.’ Yoo-hoo! Over here! Lookit me! I am a Republican and I AM A WOMAN!!!
It’s like only men can be Republicans. Because female Republicans are just Stepford voters, brainlessly doin’ what the menfolks say (in between squeezing out young’uns).
And they think WE are the throwbacks to olden days? Cunts.
September 4, 2012 — 9:38 pm
Comments: 53
I made you a chair that is empty
Happy Empty Chair Day! Today’s the day our tribe displays empty chairs prominently.
And because I assume my readers are all lazy sacks of shit like me, I made you a Photoshop Empty Chair Day kit! You can make fun of Dear Leader without leaving the snug four walls of mom’s basement!
You can choose from a folding chair or a lovely wooden chair, if you prefer. They’re .png files, so they’re openable by lots of graphics programs (not just Photoshop, which you probably can’t afford in Obama’s America), but the .png format allows me to give you a transparent background.
That’s right — I did all the cutting around the little irritating bits for you!
Oops, gotta run. Have fun!
September 3, 2012 — 1:10 pm
Comments: 19