ZARDOZ SPEAKS TO YOU, HIS CHOSEN ONES. REHAB IS ALMOST OVER, AND ZARDOZ IS FEELING GREAT. ZARDOZ’S NEW FRIEND HAS OFFERED TO LET ZARDOZ STAY IN HIS DEN, WHILE LOOKING FOR NEW JOB.
WHILE ZARDOZ PACKS HIS BELONGINGS, ENJOY SOME LINKS, CHOSEN ONES.
Blog
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ZARDOZ FRIDAY NIGHT LINKS
ZARDOZ TO RECEIVE WARM WELCOME? -
Belly Up To the Bar – Special Drinking Games Edition
DOOM’s Drinking Game Guide
By 1337n00bers – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, LinkSometimes, friends get together and make an evening consuming alcohol together. People they don’t know get invited as well, and people start looking to activities to help them drink. Some games we play are social and involve some planning. Games like beer pong or flip cup. Those games, while fun, are a bit too boring sometimes. So I thought today I would share a few of the games my friends and I play.
First, the games we always play. 24/7, 365.
Game Of Life
This one is rather easy, but requires cans of beer. Although they do can wine at this point, so who knows. The rules are simple. The goal is to keep the tab at the top bent to a side. When you open your beer and take a sip, the beer becomes ‘in play’. You turn the tab off to one side, and keep drinking and socializing like normal. An opponent attempts to move the tab back to the 12 o’clock position without you noticing. If you take a sip with the tab at 12, and get called, you finish you beer. That’s it!
Our house plays this every day. It also helps with ID’ing your beer (my tab always goes to the right, 2-3 o’clock)
BUFFALO
By Ikiwaner – Own work, GFDL 1.2, LinkAnother game we play everyday all day. This game requires some knowledge of your peers, but is pretty easy.
You can no longer drink with your dominant hand. All drinks must be held by your off hand, in my case left. If someone catches you holding your drink in your dominant hand, they say “Buffalo!” and you have to take a good swig. It was originally the whole drink, like Game Of Life, but we changed that after a half liter of vodka was being passed around. I suppose it’s mostly on an honor system in the house at this point. There’s a great twist! If someone calls buffalo on you and you were not using your dominant hand, they drink. If you have a drink in both hands, they must drink the beverage in your dominant hand. This leads to great trickery; you can hide your beer under the table and let people call you out.
I have to note, I was introduced to this game back in Montana- I have no idea where it came from.
Now some games that require some planning.
Chandelier
Warning! This game will get you drunk very fast.
Players:3-as many as can fit.
Needed items: pong balls, solo cups, beer.
Table, preferably round.
This game needs at least 3 people, I’ve found that 4-6 is pretty ideal. A version of this can be found online, but is far slower than I like. For the ease of explaining, I’ll pretend there are 5 people playing.
To set up, we need 6 solo cups. Everyone gets one, and one is filled with water*.
Place the water cup in the middle of the table, and spread the people around the table as evenly as possible.
Everyone’s cups go in front of them, somewhere near the center cup. I prefer a few inches between center cup and the player cup, but you do you.
For a game of 5 players, 3 pong balls are needed. This step is the most important when it comes to what pace you want.
Everyone puts some beer in their cup, and we are ready to start.
To begin, 3 players grab a pong ball each. They try to bounce the ball off the table into an opponents cup. If the ball goes in an opponents cup, they take the ball, drink, and then shoot at another opponent. They then refill their cup as quickly as possible.
If a ball is thrown and it misses, it is free game. There are no turns. Whoever picks a pong ball up gets to throw. If the ball goes in the center cup, the whole game changes.
At that point, everyone playing must play a modified flip cup. Everyone chugs, and places their cup at the edge of the table. They must flip the cup over, so it lands upside down on the table. The last person to accomplish this must drink an extra time.
The game then resets. Everyone refills their cup, people grab pong balls, and its back to it.
You should probably do this game in short periods. Maybe with a mandatory water break half-time or something.
*this cup could be beer to drink after flip cup. I think it depends on what’s being consumed and desire to not share germs.
Stump
This game also needs some things.
A stump or log- ideally 2-3 ft long, and from the base of the tree. A short barstool.
A hammer- I like a lighter ball-peen
Box of nails- no finishing nails, people.
2-6ish people
If you haven’t played Stump, you haven’t been to a summer party with me. Which is too bad, because I’m pretty good at it.
The idea is to strike your opponents nail into the stump before yours goes.
To start, someone puts all the players nails into the stump. The less the better, just enough to not fall out of the stump if there’s a poor hit.
Players stand in front of their nail, and open a beer, and pick the direction of play (clockwise?)
The player throws the hammer in the air, flipping it at least 360 degrees. The player can not touch the hammer until it has done this flip. They then catch the hammer, and in one motion, brings it down on an opponents nail.
If there is contact, and the nail goes in at all or is bent, the opponent who owns the nail must drink (proportional to the damage done).
The hammer is then passed to the next player, around and around.
If there is a glancing blow and sparks appear, someone yells “Sparks!” and everyone drinks.
If you drop the hammer, you must drink and you lose your next turn.
If the hammer is dropped but lands on the stump, the person the handle is pointing to must also drink with the person who dropped it.
When the head of the nail is fully below the surface of the stump, that player is out.
If it is your turn, you can use it to conduct “Home Improvement” and straighten your bent nail. You can take as long as you want but you will be mocked. You can not pull the nail further out. You do not get to throw the hammer if you use your turn for home improvement.
Well, those are the games I enjoy the most. Next time, I may do one on different drinking games for movies.
By Neptuul – Own work, CC BY 3.0, LinkDerpetologist’s Spot the Not: Louis Farrakhan
1. America is in trouble, and I say God is about to wipe this nation from the face of the Earth. I’m not crazy, I’m not drunk, how long do you think a nation can do evil and not face the wrath of god?2. You see everybody always talk about Hitler exterminating six million Jews. That’s right. But don’t nobody ever ask what did they do to Hitler.
3. The Mother Wheel is a heavily armed spaceship the size of a city, which will rain destruction upon white America but save those who embrace the Nation of Islam.
4. If somebody told me I only had one hour to live, I’d spend it choking a White man. I’d do it nice and slow.
5. White people are potential humans – they haven’t evolved yet.
6. Qaddafi is hated because he is the leader of a small country that is rich, but he uses his money to finance liberation struggles.
“I never said any of those things!” -
Firearms Friday: NFA Noncompliance
I have been a libertarian, to varying degrees and levels of enlightenment, for all of my adult life and probably most of my childhood as well. There is not really a defining event I can point to as a road to Damascus moment regarding politics. If there is one thing, however, that I can hold up as a shining example of why I believe that government is inept, corrupt, and generally full of more shit than the third member of the human centipede, it is the National Firearms Act. The NFA is quite possibly the worst law in America. It simultaneously violates the constitution, endangers human health, gives bureaucrats massive power, places unreasonable burdens on civil rights, bans or heavily restricts otherwise common products, and does all of this while not actually performing any useful function. Add in the fact that we have had this dumpster fire on the books for over EIGHTY FUCKING YEARS and the prospects for recovery are grim. In order to keep this post out of the novella section, I won’t go too deeply into details, but the cliff notes version is that rifles with barrels less than 16 inches in length are considered ‘short barreled rifles’ and are a royal pain in the ass to buy and make. They cost an extra $200 dollars per gun to register and registration can take up to a year. Silencers are also similarly restricted because… reasons? I honestly don’t know. I guess they just hated gun owners so much they wanted them all to blow their eardrums out. If you want to know more the Wikipedia page is linked above.
The gun on the left is considered a short barreled rifle, subject to heavy regulation and a federal felony for unlicensed possession. The gun on the right is an AR pistol, legal almost everywhere with no special permits. Fortunately, like most bad laws, the NFA is complex and poorly written. This allows freedom loving capitalists to find loopholes to exploit for fun and profit. And exploit them we have! Using just a bit of technical understanding and a careful reading of the law, some clever individuals have found suitable workarounds for most of the restrictions that the NFA has created. The most common of these available are AR/AK pistols. As I stated before, if you have a rifle with an overall length less than 26 inches or a barrel less than 16 inches, it is considered a sbr. If the gun does not have a stock, however, then the ATF has decided in their benevolence that this is a pistol. I wrote about these kinds of pistols in my last post so I won’t repeat myself too much, but these can be extremely fun and useful guns if you need something handy and compact with lots of firepower. By themselves, these guns are fairly awkward to handle, but if you attach a single point sling or an arm brace (more on that below), they become extremely viable systems. They are very common and affordable. You cannot, however, just take a normal rifle and cut it down. If you make a pistol out of a rifle, then by law you have made a SBR or AOW even if you remove the stock. It has to come from the factory as a pistol or you have to build it as a pistol from parts. You can take a pistol and make into a rifle though, and then take that rifle back to a pistol with no problems. The other thing you cannot do is attach a vertical foregrip to a pistol, ANY pistol. Doing this makes the gun an AOW in the eyes of the ATF and you go to prison. Angled foregrips, however, are completely kosher. I told you this law was retarded.
I mentioned before that a SBR is a gun that has a barrel length less than 16 inches or an overall length less than 26 inches. What if you have a gun with no stock, a barrel length less than 16 inches and an overall length greater than 26 inches? Is it a rifle? Nope. Is it a SBR? Wrong again. Is it a handgun? Not that either. What you have is a class of weapons known simply as ‘firearms’. This is a relatively new breed of gun that first came to the forefront when a company named Franklin Armory debuted their XO 26. It is an AR with an 11 inch barrel, no stock, and a foregrip. Normally foregrips on this type of gun are verboten, but because it is longer than 26 inches it is beyond the purview of the NFA as long as you don’t put a stock on it. The vertical foregrip doesn’t sound like much but it actually does make a gun like this a lot easier to shoot. Plus it’s a nice fuck you to the gov, which is a reward unto itself. You don’t have to buy that version, you can make your own if you like. As long as the gun was not originally a rifle, it can be made into a firearm. Just make sure the overall length is greater than 26 inches.
Dual wield for extra DPS. Okay, so a foregrip on an AR is probably not the most exciting thing ever. How about a short barreled pistol grip shotgun? As I said before, a shotgun must have a barrel length greater than 18 inches. Unlike rifles, there are no pistol loopholes in regard to smooth bore guns, so you can’t simply build a stockless shotgun and call it a pistol. BUT, if you have a shotgun with an overall length greater than 26 inches, a barrel length less than 18 inches, and no stock, you officially have a ‘firearm’. Enter the Mossberg Shockwave. This is a pump action 12 gauge with a 14 inch barrel. The secret is the shockwave birds head grip. The grip sticks out almost inline with the barrel, unlike a traditional pistol grip. This grip is what gives the gun the overall length needed to beat the NFA and escape regulation. They still lack a stock so they are not the most stable shooting platform, but they are definitely useful at close range, and they are short enough to be holstered like a large handgun. They would make an excellent car gun or even home defense weapon. I plan on picking one of these up when prices level off.
Now let’s get into some really fun stuff. How do you get around the machine gun ban? When you get right down to it, the functional difference between a semi auto gun and a full auto one is simply a matter of how fast you can pull the trigger. Some of you may be familiar with a technique known as bump firing, in which you hold a gun in such a way that the recoil of the gun causes your finger to bump the trigger, resulting in what appears to be fully automatic fire. A company figured out a way to design a stock that slides freely and allows you to bump fire the gun while actually controlling and aiming it. Enter the slide fire stock. They make models for ARs and AKs that start around $200. It is a bit gimmicky and it takes some practice to get used to it, but it does work. It’s still more than I am willing to pay for such a device, but anything that make gun grabbers shit their pants can’t be a bad thing.
So slide fire stocks are a good first step, but let’s take things to the next level. The legal definition of a machine gun is any gun that fires more than 1 bullet per motion of the trigger. The ATF considers pulling the trigger and releasing the trigger as two separate motions. Some clever guy decided to make a trigger that fires when you pull the trigger and then fires again when you release the trigger. The result looks something like this:
That is not a full auto AR. It is a binary trigger. It is completely legal and stamp free. I can hear you creaming your panties from here. They are pretty expensive though, coming in around $400 for just the trigger pack. It is considerably less expensive than even the cheapest full auto gun, however, and much more accessible. Franklin Armory was the first company to come out with a binary trigger (I think their unofficial slogan is ‘We love to fuck with the ATF’) but there are now a few of them on the market.
Now it’s time to talk about a slightly more controversial topic: pistol arm braces. These caused quite the stir when they were released a few years ago. They are designed so that a person who is disabled or has weak arm strength can put a brace on an AR pistol, slide his or her arm into the brace, and hold and fire the pistol more easily. If you remember my last post, I showed you a picture of one. They look a lot like a stock. They also work a lot like a stock, too, if you shoulder them. When these first came out, the ATF issued an opinion letter that stated that these were not considered stocks and would not make your pistol into a SBR no matter how you used them, as long as they were not modified. Thousands of these braces were sold, most of them probably not to disabled veterans. People declared it the death of the SBR. Videos popped up showing smiling people happily shouldering and firing AR and AK pistols while wiping their asses with the ATF logo*. The world was at peace. Then people got a little reckless. Other companies came out with their own, more stock like designs. People started modifying the braces, increasing their lengths, making them collapsible and foldable. The tipping point was when a company called Black Aces Tactical actually put one on a short barreled shotgun and got it declared as a firearm. The ATF took the unusual step of specifically articulating that people were not allowed to shoulder these guns. Why were these guns singled out? Well, they weren’t. A few weeks after that declaration, the ATF sent out a new open letter stating that, in their opinion, touching a gun equipped with an arm brace to your shoulder was redesigning a pistol into a short barreled rifle, and that anyone doing that was making an unregistered SBR. Was the ruling arbitrary, capricious, completely devoid of legal backing, and nigh impossible to enforce? Of course it was, it’s the fucking ATF! Despite this, few people wanted to risk their freedom over such a thing, and the pistol brace craze was over… until recently. Last month, in a stunning bout of clarity and common sense, the ATF reversed their reversal, and once again you can shoulder your arm brace like a boss. Being the ATF, they may change their mind again at any point, so buyer beware.
Silencer? What silencer? The last thing on this list requires a bit of explanation. Say you’re an environmentally conscious gun owner. I mean a really environmentally conscious one. You only use lead free, shade grown ammo, you only buy guns made from non old growth forests, and you ensure your targets are made from 100% recycled paper. Yet that still is not enough to soothe your aching guilt. Well, my friend, you need a solvent trap. Simply thread one of these cylindrical tubes full of tiny cups onto the end of your rifle and it automatically catches all 8 drops of the used, contaminated gun cleaner that washes out of your barrel during cleaning, ready for proper disposal at your nearest hazardous waste facility. What’s that? It looks like a silencer? Gee… I guess it does. Huh, that is one strange and completely uncanny coincidence. It can’t be a silencer, though.. I mean, you would have to own a drill press and at least 1 extra long drill bit to make it into a functional silencer, and everyone knows that kind of technology is far out of the reach of your average yokel. Okay, okay, fine, how bout this: For a more heavy duty option, you can buy one of these handy adapters that let you thread a common automotive filter right onto the end of your gun. That thing will hold enough solvent to last a lifetime, and there is simply no possible way that an oil filter could be used as an effective silencer. Nope, no way at all.
All kidding aside, don’t fuck with these. You can probably bullshit your way through even the most flagrant violation of one of the other rules listed above. It’s not like cops are going to pull out a tape measure and check your barrel length if they see you at the range. But there is no way on God’s green earth you are fooling anyone into thinking that big fucking can on the end of your gun is anything other than a silencer. You can buy these online and at most large gun shows, but ffs just say no. Assuming the republicans pull their heads out of their own asses sometime in the next 18 months (asking a lot, I know) we might even get silencers off the NFA list. Until then, you’re just going to have to wear ear plugs and deal with it like we all have. Oh yeah, and for the record, I am not a lawyer so don’t take anything I just said as legal advice.
*Not really.
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Friday Afternoon Links
*hums Katy Perry song gaily while preparing links* Oh hello there fellow Glibertarians! I didn’t hear you come in. It’s Friday afternoon so we’ll keep things relatively light. Enjoy!
- Los Angeles tunnel diggers discover bone of ancient giant sloth. Kristen Bell hardest hit.
The twin human advances of digging giant tunnels under the erf to move people and catheterization so that drugged out homeless people can piss themselves continuously on the train without ruining their ratty sweatpants. - If you recognize this guy, track him down and fuck up his day with a cudgel. Explanation. Update: Guy was caught after I finished prepping links, you’ll have to wait until he’s out to cudgel him, sorry folks.
- Philippine politics are almost as interesting as American politics. I wonder how you say “the minute you drive it off the lot” in Tagalog. Also this week, Duterte does his best STEVE SMITH impression.
- Today is National Doughnut Day. You forgot? Monster! The Denver Post wants to remind you that people who bring their coworkers (and Friday Afternoon Links editors) doughnuts are more popular in
a thinly veiledan ad for Postmates: promo code DONUTFAIRY (no relation to our kindly Edit Faerie). - Lebanon bans ‘Wonder Woman’ in protest against Israeli actress Gal Gadot. Lebanese Rivens hardest hit.
- Pornhub released an infographic showing the most common misspellings of porn searches by state. Florida Man sure likes his wbony porm, eh? SFW link from Thrillist if you don’t want “Pornhub” in your work history (their blog is SFW, but pornhub.com…)
And while skimming #MuscleBear on Instagram looking for some skin to post up, I came across this:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BU0g0BFFrmt/
10 internet points to whoever can figure out why that hashtag was used there. And here’s something more in line with what I was looking for.
- Los Angeles tunnel diggers discover bone of ancient giant sloth. Kristen Bell hardest hit.
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It was better back then: communism and nostalgia
The casual observer would, ehm… observe that late stage communism in Romania was not exactly Utopia. A good percent of the urban population lived in cramped concrete apartment blocks that were not quite heated in winter, water – especially of the hot variety – and electricity were not guaranteed, the lines were enormous for all basic goods, and shortage was the order of the day. Of course the leaders of the proletariat did not live in such conditions. They took over the villas of the pre-communism wealthy or middle class, and built a few more. It is quite understandable. After all, it is hard work, building equality; they deserved a better living standard then the hoi-polloi. Some animals more equal than others, you see.
Excuse me, what do you have in stock? Shortage was the norm and queuing for hours was part of the social fabric. Good stuff, a friendly lefty will tell you. Got out of the house (the house was depressing anyway) socialized, met interesting people. And by interesting I mean hungry and bored. Obesity was less of a problem, the old commie diet works wonders. People had complex social rules for queuing. If you were lucky you found out in advance which store was about to get something. If you noticed a line, you sometimes joined it without actually knowing what it is for; there must be something to buy there. After standing in line you would ask the person in front what they had. In all lines you hoped that whatever was sold would not be finished before your turn. There was a standard shout of “Don’t give too much to one person so there is enough for all”. Anecdotally, in University we would shout that when going by the door of a room where a professor was grading exams.
If you wanted gas for your car, you had to stay at least overnight in line. Someone had to sleep in the car, otherwise you would lose your spot. Well this meant that least you had a car, which was not easy, so you were in your own fashion a petty bourgeois. If you happen to be caught with more than a few liters of cooking oil or a few kilos of flour, you would be shamed on public TV for the goddamn hoarder and wrecker you were. There is plenty they would say, if not for the hoarders, the greedy ones who do not care for their fellow man.
The stories are literally endless. Well not literally literally, but as close to it as possible. Also the jokes, though I feel a lot of them are repeated through European communist nations, so I won’t put any here. I was always fascinated as a kid by how the bread you could buy in stores was never fresh, always a day old. Maybe this way people ate less of it. This carried over after communism in a way. I was fairly young back then, but after bread shortage was no longer a thing, I noticed my parent always overbought bread and would usually throw away quite a bit, because there was some residual fear of running out of bread. Buy 3 just in case, we don’t want to run out of bread.
There was secret police and the fear of nightmarish jail for any dissent. People rarely trusted neighbors, even family, due to fear of them actually being an informant. This fear was not unfounded, after communism it was found that many were in fact informers and many ratted on their brothers and cousins and parents. This created a general atmosphere of distrust among people that I think still persists.
With all of that, you may wonder, how the hell there is still nostalgia about those times? How are there people who say it was better back then? Well it is not a simple thing. These things rarely are.
One of the ones that usually accounts for some nostalgia was youth. Back then people were young and healthy and now they are old and sometimes sick. Discomfort was easier on a young body. Hell when I was a university student I would holiday in accommodations I quite turn my nose at now. We were a bunch of young people, had some food to eat and cheap booze to drink, it was all needed. Back in the communist days, there was not much food and crap vodka and wine, but a young couple lets say would need little more. The apartment was cold but they warmed each other, wink wink. Life seemed good enough.
Another reason would be that radical change is hard on some. Communist life, as it was, was what people grew up with and were used to. The change was maybe too much for some. Further more, human memory is a fickle creature. People may selectively remember the better times, and selectively compare to the worst things the get now.
Of course, among the stronger reasons it is quite simple. Envy. Basic human envy sprinkled with some resentment here and there. Many did not have it worse back than in absolute terms, but had it the same or better in relative terms to others. Everyone was poor, many poorer than you.
This especially applies to the less than competent who do not do as well in a society were some level of competence matter. Why should they have less money just because they are less productive? They will say back than everyone had a job. Yes, they did. And most didn’t do much at it. Communism lasted as long as it did because of the few people who did their best out of principal. My father was one of such. But it was disastrous because these people were a minority.
A good number of the ones who did the jobs did reasonably well after communism. The others not so much and were nostalgic, it was better back then. They had the same pay for little work as the guy who did all the work. Sometimes more because he spent the time not working mingling, making connections, joining the Party, ratting out colleagues to the secret police, that sort of thing. My father always refused to join the Communist Party which cost him quite a bit back then. I have to admit, as a kindergartner I was a Falcon of the Fatherland, but never got the chance to be a Pioneer and join the party on account of my age.
My father is an electronic engineer and worked in a factory that designed and produced industrial automation devices. Back then the workers got better pay than the engineers, more access to holiday accommodations, better apartments and extra rations. So they felt good. After communism when engineer pay rose above worker pay, they had, led by the union, a strike before the factory, screaming we do all the work, we don’t need engineers, fire all the engineers. The competent engineers left the still government owned factory by themselves in time, and it closed down. Before my father left a group of assembly workers asked him respectfully about maybe staying to keep the factory going. He reminded them of their strikes, and they realized their mistake. But it was a bit late for that. Others did not, and took small anticipated pensions and are now fairly poor, bitter and talking about how it was better back then. Even with their current poverty they probably have the same amount of goods, but now there are so many things in stores they cannot afford. Empty stores of communism did not have this effect.
Off course, a lot of people are much poorer then they would be if an actual free market reform took place instead of the government dominated crony capitalism system we have in this country. Started by Mister Iliescu, may he rot in Hell, who wanted to replace the old system with something called socialism with a human face. Which meant the right people get all the wealth and power, mostly the ones who had it before. Still, the new system did lead to development and allowed some actually get a better life. But it did take some effort.
I feel sorry in a way for a lot of Romanians, because they were educated in communism and kept that kind of thinking. Many were kept poorer by the system and the government, it was not fully their fault. It never is. Humans do adapt to circumstances. But then again, they voted for the system in great numbers- no vote rigging needed – and expected things to happen by themselves. On the other hand there were plenty of people who did not believe all the communist indoctrination and did change their thinking after ’89. And a lot of them willfully did not and became hateful instead. While in communism they took only the “to each according to his need” part, skipped the work part, and spend time trying to climb the hierarchy while being snitches. So my sorry feelings are ambivalent to say the least. Heartless libertarian such as I am.
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Friday Morning Links
Man, its hot this morning. Thanks, Trump.
Well the NBA Finals finally kicked off last night after they took what felt like a month off after the conference championships. The Cavs looked like they knew what they were doing. Except on defense. And on offense. And on special teams. Let’s see if they make the corrections before they get around to playing game 2. Meanwhile, in 2017-2018 preseason action, the Spurs will play the Rockets tomorrow night. Oh wait, that’s not for a couple more weeks (probably). In baseball news, the Astros took a day off but get back to business tonight against the Rangers. And in college baseball, nothing happened…yet. But we’re all gonna be pulling for the Hogs and the Hoos to do some damage as the playoffs kick off this weekend. I say those two teams because we have a couple of passionate fans on here that talk about them regularly. And we’ll also be pulling for Rice! Let’s go Owls! (I have my reasons.) Full bracket here. If there’s a team you want thoughts and prayers for in addition to those listed, please let us know in the comments.
No hockey tonight, but you canucks will still be in our thoughts and prayers as we enter the weekend. Oh wait, there are no canadian teams left. That’s ok, you can keep watching the American teams win year after year and still enjoy it. Right?
OK, I’ve dithered enough. Let’s jump into…the links!
A man and his dream. With the stroke of a pen, Donald Trump Literally Kills The Planet. LOL, you can’t parody these people. Because it wouldn’t go far enough in describing their insane reaction to the President unilaterally stopping us from entering into a useless agreement that his predecessor unilaterally entered us into in the first place.
You’re goddamn right I want universal health care! Wait, you mean I have to pay for it?!?! Sorry, California. If you’d have been more judicious in harvesting and spending those unicorn turds and leprechaun tears on HSR choo-choo’s and cops making $200k and up a year, there might be some left over. Unfortunately you didn’t.
Illinois Bond Penalty Status Illinois bonds downgraded to near-junk status. Lowest ever for a state. Moody’s and S&P both finger unfunded liabilities and a backlog in bills that are already equal to 40% of the annual receipts for the reason. Both say the state will likely lose rating altogether unless they get their shit together by July 1.
Houstonians establish fitness goals for the year on instagram. (You’re welcome.)
People, some of them “important”, attempt to exchange money for a service with supposedly willing participants. We can’t have that!
Kentucky Governor hits women, children, minorities hardest. (Just kidding. That headline won’t come out until the local story hits the wire services and filters down to Salon and HuffPo.)
Is this about MILF chasers? You decide.
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Thicc Thursday
It was a beautiful ceremony.
Yet, Thicc Thursday was never dead; rather, like the Norwegian Blue, it was merely resting.
Normally, when I hear the phrase “Suicide Girls,” I think “Softcorn Porn by Ugly People”; however, when it comes to Aurora Pineda, I think “EXTRA THICC.” https://www.instagram.com/p/BSjRnL0gbAb
https://www.instagram.com/p/BUeX9EHAK8k
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Reviews You’ll Never Use: Class of 1999 II: The Substitute
Hello my macabre menagerie of malcontents, and welcome once again to the only thing on the internet better than Asian spit-roast porn, Reviews You’ll Never Use. This week, we’ll review…the sequel to the movie we took a look at last week *sad trombone sound*.
Actually it was a stroke of fortune; the reason I dusted off Class of 1999 last week was because I saw it on El Rey Network as I was channel surfing one evening, and it turns out they started playing the sequel, as well. So I taped it (yes, I’m old enough I still refer to all program capture off of a television as “taping”, even though it’s done on the dvr) and gave it a whirl. And let me say: worth it. I mean, not really, but in the sense of, it was every bit as dumb as I thought it would be, and so in that perverse sense, did not disappoint.
Released in some territories as “Class of 2001”, which I think goes with the theme of “Class of 1984” and “Class of 1999” a little better. But like everything else having to do with this movie, they took the stupid way out. First, let me say some lovely words about El Rey Network. I’m not being paid to do this, but this and Chiller (the horror channel; I used to have two horror channels, but the superior Fearnet was bought out and ceased operations, to my never ending regret) are my go-to channels when turning on the television. Ostensibly started by Robert Rodriguez to try and cater to the young Hispanic market, instead it is simply a reflection of Robert Rodriguez’s (and my own) taste in film. Which is to say, grindhouse, kung-fu, big dumb action, and z-grade horror. Seriously, look at the site I linked and scroll down just a bit to where it says, “El Rey Is…” and see the categories. I watch that channel like 5-6 hours per week, and that’s a lot for me as outside of live sports, I’m not a big TV guy. What the fuck any of this has to do with young Hispanics I’ll never know, because I’m 90% certain from the many that I am acquainted with and friends with both professionally and personally (I live in Texas) that most of them aren’t into this shit. Robert Rodriguez is into this shit, and apparently nobody has the stones to tell him he isn’t representative of the young Hispanic zeitgeist in this country. I was zeroed in over the Memorial Day break because they ran a three day marathon of old The Incredible Hulk episodes. Over Christmas, they had Kaiju Christmas, and just ran Godzilla movies on loop for like three or four days. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH WEED THIS CAUSES ME TO BURN THROUGH? I DIDN’T GET OUT OF THE FUCKING CHAIR EXCEPT TO STUMBLE TO THE DOOR TO GET DELIVERY FOR LIKE 48 STRAIGHT HOURS. I LOVE THIS NETWORK!!! They do have some sort of Lucha show, which I suppose is Hispanic-y, but that’s about it.
But I digress. Four years after the world-record smashing success of Class of 1999, some sharp marble decided it would be a good idea to do a sequel. Most of the top names in Hollywood were attached to direct at some point or another, but the studio was very choosy, and told Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, et al to take a fuckin’ hike. I heard Spielberg even offered to pay them to be allowed to direct this film, but was given Saving Private Ryan as a consolation prize when he couldn’t get this one. What’s that Cameron? You already did a successful killbot movie, and want in on this action? FUCK you, I’ll kill your family. There is no one smarter than studio execs, and they knew that there was only man who could bring this puppy to life. And that man was career stunt coordinator Spiro Razatos. You will undoubtedly remember him as the deft hand behind six episodes of Team Knight Rider from 1997-98 which, if taken collectively and combined with this movie, constitute 2/3rds of his lifetime directorial experience. And so was born Class of 1999 II: The Substitute.
Eyeliner, lipstick, and purple hair spray? Once again, upper middle class white America, *this is not what a gang member looks like* So now that they had their director, they needed a star. And nobody on the whole wide Earth was a bigger star in 1994 than Sasha Mitchell. He played the dumb older kid on Step By Step. The handsome leading man needed a sexy lady to play against, so in steps Caitlin Dulany, from no fuckin’ thing. She makes up for lack of pedigree by showing her tittays in a romping sex scene with none other than…Nick Cassavetes! That’s right, the much less famous son of the great John Cassavetes steps in to give Caitlin the ol’ D, and otherwise kind of play an on-again off-again douchebag. I shouldn’t make fun of him too much, though – he directed his own mother Gena Rowlands in The Notebook, so that’s legitimately kind of a big deal. Good for him. More than I’ve done with my life. I bet he got to fuck Rachel McAdams. I’d fuck Rachel McAdams. If I was a director, I’d be one of those sleazy old-timey ones you always hear about who makes the actresses “audition” their sucky-fucky skills. Hey, it’s a condition of employment, no physical coercion, and thus fully libertarian, so, you know…blow.
Anyway, the film is very loosely tied to the events of the previous one by the exposition of Department of Educational Defense agent G. D. Ash, played by some dude named named Rick Hill. I almost didn’t even check the link to his name while doing my prelim work for this article, but I’m glad I did, because hole-ee fucking shit, lookee lookee what I found. That bitch is goin’ on the list hard. That shit makes The Beastmaster look like big-budget Oscar bait. I literally have a hard-on in anticipation of the lovely, melty pure Velveeta that is that movie. Soon *strokes penis back to sleep*, soon my pet (for this one time only, “strokes penis back to sleep” is not a masturbation metaphor…or is it?). A hilarious part of the exposition and occasional flash-backs is that they only show the killbot played by the unfortunately named Patrick Kilpatrick. I get not showing Pam Grier, because she’s a “name” and the money to use her image might have been too much for this no-budget schlock-fest. But why not show any of the old English professor killbot, played by John Ryan? The only fucking thing that guy’s ever done of note was be the lead in It’s Alive, which is admittedly a pretty good thing to have done. That’s a badass movie, and I may review it at some point in the future here. You can’t go wrong with Larry Cohen directing, I’ll just leave it at that. If you check that link, ignore the “Known For” bullshit and just look at the directorial work. If you’re into this kind of stuff, at least three or four of those will jump out at you as classics.
I…I…I just can’t. It’s too easy. Feel free to caption this one yourselves in the comments. Moving on, turns out there was one killbot left in a bunker after the whole operation went south, and it broke out and has posed as a substitute teacher going up and down the west coast murdering delinquent students. He winds up in a small California town, where a teacher (Dulany) is set to testify against one of her own former students, whom she saw fatally shoot another student. There’s a lot of tension as gangs in the school are trying to intimidate the teacher into recanting her statements and not testifying. Even the school leadership wants her to back down, because they can’t handle the heat. Here’s where Nick Cassavetes shows up and in one scene seems like a complete tool telling her how to run her life, and a few scenes later will seem to be all supportive. I don’t know if it was a ham-fisted way to try and display depth to the character or what, but it’s poorly written. He’s also some kind of military enthusiast who keeps a military “museum” consisting of a trailer full of memorabilia on his paintball range, which includes an underground bunker full of surplus MREs, weapons, detonators…you know, the usual. We never find out if he’s a militia guy or anything, but I suppose it was nice to show him as being a pretty normal dude for the most part who just happens to have an extreme interest in survivalism and military paraphernalia, instead of being the wild-eyed gun nut prepper of so many other films. He goes Rambo on one of the gang members at one point, but is strongly provoked into doing so, so I don’t think that counts.
Long story short (too late!), killbot Sasha does things like take inspiration from poems, look in on Caitlin as she’s undressing, and also look in her window while she’s fucking Nick Cassavetes. This is where we get to see her tits. Also, check out her bed – if this movie wasn’t made in 1994, I’d have sworn it was 1984, because her bed frame has functional neon lighting all over it. He alternatively saves Caitlin, and seems to be ready to kill her because she’s getting too close to him. Their whole relationship is very confusingly depicted.
I love this bed! So 80s sextastic! I’d do coke and fuck in this bed like a fucking champ. I’d fuck in this bed like Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet and listen to Flock of Seagulls while I PIIHB. Put the Disco Peacock from Suspiria on the nightstand, and it’s like my dream bedroom. The day of the big JROTC paintball game arrives, and the nefarious gang-members are angling to arrange an “accident” to kill the stool pigeon teacher. Natch, Sasha shows up and kills everybody, including setting trip wires that somehow throw spiked metal ninja balls at people which Cassavetes describes as an, “old Navy Seal trick”. Uh-huh.
Eventually we find out that Sasha isn’t a killbot – he’s the demented son of Stacy Keach from the previous film, who is looking to take over his old man’s student-killing ways. He just acts like a robot because he’s apparently just fucking crazy. He wore a bullet-proof suit that looks like some Evel Knievel spandex because it’s future armor from the fantastic year of 1999. After taking several armor-piercing slugs point-blank and bleeding out, he still functions without any noticeable decline in ability, though eventually gets trapped in the bunker and blown sky high. It’s never explained how he found the damn bunker, or why he suddenly went off the reservation and started slaughtering innocent students along with the troublemakers. We end with Caitlin on the phone describing how she’s taking on a class of troublesome remedial students, because after all she’s been through, now she’s a badass I guess. A badass whose tits we got to see, as they were bouncing up and down while she was riding Nick Cassavetes like he was the horse son of a more famous horse, on her neon-bedecked bed.
The most hardcore paintball session evah. Look, I ain’t gonna sugar coat it – this one’s bad. The performances from Caitlin and Nick are passable given what they had to work with, and kudos to them for giving it the old college try, but Sasha is trying to pull a Terminator stoic thing while still making corny one-liners (“Class is dismissed” after tossing a hand-grenade into a car full of kids). Even if atrocious writing wasn’t his fault, he comes across as wooden, but not in the way I believe the director had in mind. More like Anakin from The Phantom Menace, and less like a killbot. There are no fewer than two shots of two different explosions happening behind him while he dramatically faces the camera without flinching. I mean, one is bad enough, but two? And the whole, “He wasn’t a robot the entire time!” thing doesn’t work, because 1) the robots in the first movie already made dumb puns and displayed maniacal emotions, so taking an interest in poetry and peeping don’t seem like that far of a stretch even though it’s supposed to clue us in that he isn’t what he seems, and 2) he stands there without flinching while being shot many, many times. Even in bullet-resistant armor, the force of the impacts would still throw you backwards. I mean, he takes a full magazine from an Uzi at point-blank range and doesn’t even blink or push back an inch. I don’t give a shit how much you think you’re a robot, that’s fucking stupid. Oh, and don’t forget being treated to sharp exchanges such as this:
Caitlin: Go to hell.
Sasha: You first.
Nick, standing behind Caitlin: You first.
This is merely the first of two identical scenes you get treated to, that are in no way, shape, or form cliched. That’s right, a surprise rescue from the kinda-hero just parrots back the antagonist’s words before shooting him. I hope they paid the scriptwriter in party tacos, because that’s all this drivel is worth.
Or Sasha’s mantra that without discipline, there can be no order, and without order, there is anarchy. This is used to justify his mass killing, by the way. If you aren’t willing to meet out the death penalty for truancy, you support unfettered chaos in the streets.
So ultimately I can’t recommend this movie. Hell, it still hasn’t even had a Region 1 dvd release – that should tell you something. Fucking Killdozer has a Region 1 dvd release. I mean goddamn dude, this is just sorry all around.
I have to give Class of 1999 II: The Substitute, a paltry 2 1/2 Corgi Butts out of 7. It would have been two flat, except for getting to see Caitlin’s tittay’s bouncing all over the place, which will automatically add extra credit to any film. This is the first time during the run of this column that I feel I’ve actually suffered for my art, and that means ultimately, for you, my legions of adoring readers. Never say Gojira doesn’t love ya.
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Thursday Afternoon Links
In the big news of the day, apparently, a unidigital wave is no longer considered a friendly greeting in Queens. I’m sure you can still use it in the Bronx.
Just saying hi It looks like that sonofabitch Trump is going to single-handedly destroy the entire world climate, while running the economy into the ground, and crashing the stock market. SLD: It is my belief that the regulatory gridlock caused by the Chaos Lord-in-Chief is the only thing remotely attributable to an economic driver. (**Takes look at Facebook, cancels account, sets fire to computer**)
PlayaManhattan, I hope you got those batteries installed. California hints at power problems during August eclipse.
Pratt & Whitney are giving away an F-35 engine upgrade. **Reads further** Oh, receiving $1B for a different engine development program. Lots of zero unit cost upgrades if you spend a gigabuck with anyone. You drop a billion bucks in hotel stays, Hilton will give you a free suite with a sex worker in the gender of your choice.
If white smoke means a new Pope, does black smoke mean a new anti-Pope?
This is exactly what I expect from my alma mater.
Have a little throwback Monster Magnet. (Is this song really almost 25 years old? Fuck me. No way is this album as far away from its release as the White Album was when this came out.)
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The Nation Misses The Point on Counterterrorism
It was brought up in the morning links (h/t: AmSoc), but deserves expanding upon.
Grande and Mattis The Nation is more concerned with making President Trump and his administration look foolish than they are about taking terrorism or counterterrorism seriously. And I have no doubt that Ariana Grande means well, but she’s dead wrong. Inclusiveness is no strategy to fight terrorism. It is a strategy to offer people an opportunity to assimilate to an enlightened western culture. Some people will take that opportunity, as evidenced by the millions of Muslims that live peacefully among people of other religions as well as agnostics and atheists throughout the western world. But some won’t. And you can be as inclusive as you want to be, but that won’t take away their desire to impose their beliefs upon everyone else, often resorting to terrorism when people aren’t receptive.
Juan Cole writes:
ecretary of Defense Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis said in an interview on Sunday that US strategy toward ISIL has moved from attrition to annihilation. Since 2014, he said, the United States has been making it difficult for them to stay in one place, disrupting them and chasing them out of their strongholds (through airstrikes). Now, he said, the new strategy is to surround them and kill them all, to prevent the foreign fighters from returning home to foment more terrorism. He also urged a battle of humiliation against them in cyberspace, depriving them of any mantle of legitimacy. He was unapologetic about the recent Pentagon finding that a US air raid set off explosives in a Mosul apartment building, killing over 100 civilians, and seemed to pledge more reckless airstrikes.
Certainly there is a case to be made for non-interventionism. But that’s not the case Ariana Grande is calling for. (If she were, I’d be happy to cheer her on.) She calls for inclusion. Now tell me, what possible good can come from being “inclusive” toward a regime built on terror? Can we “include” into western culture their belief that women caught without an escort should be stoned to death? Can we “include” into western culture their belief that gay men and women should be tossed to their death from the highest point in town? Can we “include” into western culture the taking of sex slaves when they conquer a city? And lastly, can we “include” into western culture the celebration of slaughtering innocent people in our cities because we resist the importation of their insane lifestyle? That’s not inclusion. That’s tolerance and acceptance of barbarism. We, as a society, are better than that. And while I believe we should remain non-interventionist when it comes to global meddling, once they import that activity to out nations, we should destroy those who would perpetrate those violences with every tool that is constitutionally available to us.
The strategy of annihilation is sort of like fighting forest fires with gasoline hoses.
Actually, its not. An enemy can be annihilated. It can be rooted out and extracted like a cancer. Sure it may pop back up again at a future date, but that doesn’t mean its not worth fighting to eradicate. And its a damn sight better to have tried and failed that to succumb to evil in any form. And I have to say, the strain of any religion that accepts massacring innocent people at a concert for the spread of it, or the killing of any gay person for the spread of it, or the taking of sex slaves and stoning of women not adequately subservient for the spread of it, deserves to be wiped from the face of the earth with all haste possible.
I will give him partial credit, though. He wrote this:
George W. Bush’s war on Iraq, in other words, created the exact conditions in that country that were guaranteed to foster terrorism. Washington has never come to terms with its own responsibility for destabilizing the region.
However, he completely omits the expanded war on terror Obama waged, expanding it to nations Bush never bombed. He fomented rebellion in Libya and Syria, directly leading to the soldiers, and in all likelihood the arms, necessary for ISIS to gain a foothold. He also forgets the overwhelming bipartisan support Bush and Obama both received to wage their wars in parts of the world that posed no threat to us. I’m sure it was an oversight and not a deliberate attempt to score cheap political points. But it deserves to be mentioned.
This is real. Look, there is no surefire way to prevent terrorism. But once it reaches our shores, the individuals carrying it out deserve to be treated harshly, so long as it is within constitutional limits. And people that are guests here who return to the battlefields of the middle east should be forbidden re-entry. We are under no obligation to “include” their idiocy any longer. Neither does Britain, Germany, Sweden or any other nation that chooses to eject those whose sole purpose is conquest through barbarism.
If this runs counter to open borders libertarianism, I’ll happily accept the scorn of those friends of mine on this one issue. But open borders can exist at the same time a strong counter-terrorism operation can be waged within the confines of our Constitution. And its time we allowed the warriors to stand up and properly defend us from those who are using “inclusive” appeasement as a means to infect our society with their oppressive, pre-enlightenment form of barbarism.
**The views in this are mine alone and do not represent the views of other Glibs staff.
