Posts Tagged ‘Comedy’
Random Fun III
Another collection of things that don’t justify a post in themselves.
First up, what is it with Senators from Arizona? In this case Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who has loud clothing choices and is wearing a ring labeled “Fuck Off”.
It’s not entirely a joke either considering that is exactly what’s she’s said (in more polite terms of course) to various Big Ideas from her own party, like a $15/hour minimum wage, votes for some Trump cabinet members, and ending the Senate filibuster on all legislation.
I know there’s stuff she supports that I don’t but I’m beginning to warm to Maverick II.
Second is one of those Big Ideas. There’s a Democrat party activist group that has decided to learn from history and try and avoid another Supreme Court pothole such as the one that happened with Justice Ginsburg hanging on grimly, only to die while a Republican was President.
The “Demand Justice” group has therefore decided to focus on the next oldest Democrat Justice – Stephen Breyer – and as you can see from the van driving around D.C. they’re very blunt about what they want.
Third is an interesting screen capture of some chatroom involving folk from the Middle East discussing the best ways to escape from where they are to head for Germany. You can see the recommended routes marked out, but what amused me was the nations the group thought should be avoided on the trip North, although I’m a little surprised that they think Greece is one path, since none other than the EU Commission President called it “our European shield”.
Fourth is a juicy item for all those folk who can’t argue a point and use links to “Fact Check” sites, like that of Politico’s “Truth-O-Meter”.
On its website, PolitiFact splits its Biden verdicts into “Facts Checks Of Biden” and “Fact Checks About Biden.” Our review of the first 100 days shows 13 fact checks “of Biden,” and 106 fact checks “about Biden.” That’s an eight-to-one disparity.
In other words, they’re much more sensitive about someone “lying” about Biden than they are about Biden lying.
That’s hardly a surprise. As people’s trust in journalism has declined over the last twenty years, the same journalists started to form “Fact Check” groups where they could write the same stuff and exhibit the same bias that had caused the loss of trust in the first place.
It’s a scam that should have ended long ago, especially when you dig into their “Fact Checks” and find that most are simply arguing a different opinion, not a fact. The reason it has not ended is that Lefty politicians, activists and supporters love the sort of cheap, one-URL-link, argumentum ad verecundiam, gaslighting they get from the likes of Politico.
Following on from the post about New Zealand’s woeful productivity the other day I was reminded of this classic Dilbert question.
Of course there is the situation known as No Money – and irony too.
The North Face: an outstanding company
I don’t think I own any North Face gear, or ever have, though I do think their line of outdoor clothing is stylish.
Apparently the company likes stylish things across the board, especially those which let its customers know that it cares about more than just profits, but the Earth itself:
Innovex is based in Houston and has nearly 100 workers in the Permian Basin.
Each year, the company gets a Christmas gift for its employees. This year, it was supposed to be a North Face jacket with an Innovex logo, a company Innovex has ordered gear from in the past.
The company providing the jackets said The North Face doesn’t want to support the oil and gas industry in the same way they’d reject the porn industry or tobacco industry.
“They told us we did not meet their brand standards,” Innovex CEO Anderson said. “We were separately informed that what that really meant is was that we were an oil and gas company.”
…
[North Face said that it] “thoroughly investigates product requests to ensure they align closely with our goals and commitments surrounding sustainability and environmental protection.”
Take that you disgusting, Global Warming, despoilers of Gaia! Begone from our customer’s ranks! No more will our skiers have to be ashamed at wearing the same clothes as some deplorable oil driller. Virtue and purity hath returned to our world.
Unfortunately for North Face their management turned out to be pretty ignorant about their own products and it didn’t take long for somebody in the fossil fuel industry to strike back – but in an unexpected way:
The Colorado Oil and Gas Association has bestowed its first-ever “Extraordinary Customer Award” on The North Face, saying it appreciates the company for its abundant use of oil and gas.
“To have such a large percent of what they make, probably three-quarters of the mass they ship is actually our product. So, it’s hard to top the all-in nature of The North Face as a consumer of our product,” said Chris Wright, CEO of Liberty Oilfield Services.
Fantastic stuff and now a US state government, Louisiana, has made it official with a resolution passed last week, that recognized The North Face as an “extraordinary customer” of “the Louisiana oil and gas petrochemical industries.”
The resolution highlights the “symbiotic relationship between the Louisiana oil and gas and petrochemical industry and The North Face,” commending the clothing company for “utilizing vital oil and gas resources so important to our state.”
“The North Face continues to offer a comprehensive collection of high-performance outerwear, skiwear, backpacks, duffels, and footwear made with nylon, polyester, and polyurethane, all of which come from petroleum products,” the resolution reads.
Congratulations to The North Face for these well-deserved awards.
In fact I’m so pleased about this that I think I shall go and buy a new ski jacket, and while looking at the products in the store I shall certainly offer voluble and effusive commentary in commending them on their wonderfully high use of fossil fuels.
I’m sure their sales people and customers will also be pleased with my visit.
A visit to the Shire
Why any President would want to pay a visit to a man who had one of the most failed Presidencies ever is a question in itself.
It’s not like Jimmy Carter did much in foreign or domestic policy that is remembered with respect. Whether policy or executive decisions most of what he did either did not work (energy policies for example) or was counter-productive (Iran). About the only thing I can think of that Carter got right was cranking up the development and production of new weapon systems after the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979, something that his successor got the blame/praise for.
Moreover, within the Democrat Party itself he never built any sort of group that had influence down the line, as the Clinton’s did. He was dropped like a hot stone after the disastrous 1980 election that set the scene for the age of Reagan in that decade. Carter got the blame for allowing that to happen and was not seen during the presidential run of his VP, Mondale, in 1984, or later Democrat contenders like Dukakis, Clinton and so forth.
But Biden is part of that ancient history, so perhaps it was simply the nostalgia of an old man. However, the way it was played by his spin merchants is…. weird to say the least.
WTF is that? It’s like Gandalf visiting the hobbits. It’s possibly the most insane photo of a Presidential couple that I’ve ever seen. Even if it’s a trick of the lens, why the hell would you not photoshop it a bit to make it look more normal?
Perhaps it’s symbolic: My Presidency will be like Jimmy’s – only bigger!
Speaking of symbolism you’ll notice that Biden is not wearing a mask while he visits this old, frail couple, unlike his infamous Zoom meeting with other world leaders a few weeks ago. However, when it came time to leave…
Symbolism can be important, especially when it involves a national leader, but this is just stupid, especially in the wake of recent CDC recommendations regarding wearing masks, not to mention the fact that much of the American population stopped wearing masks weeks ago, especially outside.
Finally I’ll leave it with this, which I think sums the Biden’s up pretty well.
Not a mask but a sickbag
One of the larger questions about the great NeverTrump insanity was whether these people would ever return to a normal level of rational skepticism if the walking root vegetable named Joe Biden was elected.
Judging by the following I guess the answer is twofold: “No” and “We love The Big Guy”.
The following YouTube clip stars Randy Rainbow doing one of his usual parodies where he spoofs an interview with some famous figure and then kicks off a song about it. His resemblance to Peewee Herman is not surprising.
The following clip is with Joe Biden and the song about the Chinese Sinus Rot vaccines is based on the classic, “Mr Sandman”. While I’d like to think it’s “parody” it’s pretty clear that, like the rest of the US media, he’s going to do everything he can to prop up Biden.
I mean when you have lines like…
They call you “sleepy” but you’re pretty woke.
… I’d say it’s not parody but full fellatio worship.
He’s hardly alone of course. The other day during an interview with Dan Rather (of course), “comedienne”, Samantha Bee, admitted that she’s going easy on Biden:
Rather: “In other words, you, myself, and a lot of people, more or less free-swingers against President Trump,” Rather continued. “But now that Biden is in, I don’t know, do you find yourself sometimes saying, ‘Oh boy, there’s a nasty comedy bit I can unload on Biden,’ but saying to yourself, ‘I approve of him so much I’m going to pull this punch?’”
Bee: “I can’t deny that that has happened, I think that’s probably true across the board,” Bee said. “You’re like, ‘OK, well, we could be making jokes about the infrastructure plan,’ but in general, I’m like, ‘Wow, this is great.’ Why would I purposefully undermine something that seems to be a great idea, pretty much across the board?”
Wow. How pathetic is that? Still, I can’t say I’m surprised. Saturday Night Live has pretty much collapsed on joking about the new US President, and they don’t even have the excuse they made during the Obama years, as their longtime specialist in political jokes, Jim Downey, explained in 2014:
“If I had to describe Obama as a comedy project, I would say, ‘Degree of difficulty, 10 point 10,’
It’s like being a rock climber looking up at a thousand-foot-high face of solid obsidian, polished and oiled,” Downey says. “There’s not a single thing to grab onto — certainly not a flaw or hook that you can caricature.
That statement itself is comedy gold, and could be made into a great parody skit by SNL about SNL – if they had any self-awareness or comedic talent and a sense of humour, or at least a sense of the absurd.
This is how far US comedy has fallen from the glory years of a few decades ago. I’d like to think that Lenny Bruce would shoot these useless bastards – and then make obscene jokes about them.
Still, on the song front we haven’t seen the following about Biden. Give it time though and the Lefty Worshippers may get there in the next four years.
He said that all must lend a hand
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama
He said we must be fair today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama
Technology: Good and Bad
Being a Science Fiction nerd I’ve always had a great interest in technology, the more advanced the better.
And if it’s silly as well then that’s even better (Douglas Adam’s be praised). And Gary Larson too.
Well guess what?
The frigging thing actually flies!
And then there’s shit technology, as represented by Google, Facebook and Twitter, who have apparently decided to go all in on the 2020 US election.
I can’t help thinking that the IT geniuses of Silicon Valley are so filled with hubris about their brains, skills and vast wealth that they have forgotten what can happen to companies, even in a democracy, when you so blatantly take a political side.
Over at Liberal law professor Ann Althouse’s blog, she’s had a gutsful, I’ve discontinued Google AdSense ads:
Email received today from Google was the last straw for me – In the last 24 hours:
New violations were detected. As a result, ad serving has been restricted or disabled on pages where these violations of the AdSense Program Policies were found.
As she goes on to comment, these violations – labeled “Dangerous or derogatory content” by Google – were applied to comments in her blog either by here or by her readers quoting the following:
- NYT columnist Charles Blow
- Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic
- An article by lawprof Sanford V. Levinson,
As she puts it:
I’m tired of checking to see what’s supposedly a violation. I get so many of these and they’re often posts that are nothing but a quote from a commentator in the NYT. But to see that the review didn’t okay these pages… it’s just mind-bending. I can’t waste my energy dealing with this bullshit.
And so say all of us.
Over one hundred years ago a Republican President, Teddy Roosevelt, went after the likes of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company with so-called Trust-busting acts the broke the companies up. Those laws are still on the books – and that’s assuming the European Union does not act first, as it has repeatedly against Microsoft over the years.
First in line defending American companies who were under such attacks have been Republican politicians. How much longer is that going to last in the face of this crap? At a minimum the thing that has protected the likes of Google and company as mere carriers of information – section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – may be on the chopping block.
Finally an exercise in genetics, the surface of which has only been scratched by our technology:
That’s a mashup photo of a grandmother (left side) with her grand daughter (right side). Incredible.
Projection – in IMAX, with Dolby Surround
Hat tip to the great Bernard Black of Black Books for that quote.
There has already been some discussion on our usual Friday post about one of dear old Chris Trotter’s latest outside loops of fancy flight regarding the 1st Adern-Collins debate.
But his latest post is even funnier in having a crack at the various fears that GOP voters in the USA have of a Biden victory. Naturally in any discussion of Trump the context is Hitler. I’ve already left a comment but since he does not always post mine I thought I’ll put something up here instead.
What I’ve pointed out to Chris is that this is projection of the most obvious kind. The last four years have seen the most hysterical, insane reactions and attacks on any US President in my lifetime. Far worse than the years of BushChimpHitler. Off the charts combinations of conspiracy theories, hidden figures pulling the strings and the scorched earth destruction of all that is precious and holy to the American left.
As just one early example, here is a clip of an episode opening from the US TV series, American Horror Story. When my kids showed this to me I at first assumed that it was merely a brilliant parody.
Sadly no. The writers, director, producers and actors were absolutely serious and really thought all of this – and still do. Watch it; you’ll be laughing for the rest of the day.
I should probably drop the link to Chris.
Breaking the Satire Wall
In movies, TV and theatre there’s a technique called Breaking the Fourth Wall, whereby the characters punch through the wall of the story to talk directly to the audience.
Recent clever examples of this came from the wonderfully clever and crude superhero movie, Deadpool, and The Big Short, where it was also vital in explaining the financial instruments of the GFC. It was also used to great effect by the lead character, Francis Urquhart, in the 1990 British TV series, House of Cards.
I don’t know if there’s anything similar in satire but given that it has begun to seem as if our world is so crazy that it can’t be satirised, there seems to be a need to punch through to something beyond satire?
If there’s one source of satire that might attempt this it’s The Babylon Bee (Your Trusted Source For Christian News), that has far exceeded the previous champion in this category, The Onion, which is sadly a mere shell of itself since selling out to Hillary Clinton.
Thus the Bee produced this mocking view of how they figured CNN would cover Trump’s recent peace deals…
… only to find that the real thing was little different…
FFS. So since reality had once again beaten satire the Bee decided to simply go all the way with Struggling CNN Just Starts Stealing Headlines From The Babylon Bee:
After months of continually trying and failing to produce better fake news than The Babylon Bee, CNN has assigned a team of people to monitor The Babylon Bee’s website daily to determine how they should cover the news for that day.
New Dance Moves
Readers would have recently seen a video I put up about some idiot Antifa/BLM protestor in Portland whose feet caught on fire courtesy of yet another idiot Antifa/BLM protestor throwing a Molotov cocktail at the Portland cops – and hitting his own frontline.
In the manner of the modern world the videos of this have gone viral, and the same modern culture has produced mockery (but not yet parody). The following are two of my favourites.
But I agree with actor James Woods that the following one is better – probably because I always liked Walking On Sunshine more than Footloose.
Woke vs Racist
The last joke is very good.
Run Tom, Run
A few days ago the rap musician Kanye West announced that he is running for President in 2020.
You can read his interview here in Forbes.
It’s…. interesting:
- “Planned Parenthood’s have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work”,
- “To say that the Black vote is Democratic is a form of racism and white supremacy”.
- His White House organisational model would be based on the secret country of Wakanda in the movie Black Panther.
And speaking of movies this set other people to thinking that another guy might have a better shot at it in 2020.
adolffinkensen
Gravedodger
Nick K
pdm1946
Psycho Milt
The Veteran
Tom Hunter