Moe Lane

It has been suggested that what you see below…

I Wanna Be Sedated, Ramones

…represents what the inside of my brain looks like, to people who have to deal with me in meatspace. I can only say that I’d personally prefer to live in this world, if they’re giving out living assignments.

Just saying.

This (via The New Ledger) is interesting, if self-evidently shortsighted. And my apologies for the pun:

In a bid to extend its brand beyond planetariums and museums and into multiplexes on every street corner, Imax is installing a new digital system in Regal and AMC theaters around the country.

Don’t be deceived: Although marketed under the same name, this is newfangled Imax, different and diminished from the traditional system. Installed in existing auditoriums, the screen is enlarged as much as possible, and the first few rows of seats are removed in order to create a field of vision more dominated by the screen, while the sound systems are souped up to deliver a more intense aural experience.

But the giant screens that were the hallmark of Imax are nowhere to be seen — the new digital screens are typically 28 to 35 feet high, about half the size of their predecessors — provoking protests from the blogosphere to the multiplex.

As it happens, the only time that I’ve seen anything in Imax was for The Dark Knight (mentioned later in the article) during last year’s Republican national convention.  We (‘we’ being the RedState blogging contingent, plus a couple of others) had heard that there was an Imax at a local zoo, and we were all, of course, rabid fans of the new Batman franchise – so we all piled into various cars and went to go see it.  It was worth the extra money that I spent, although I don’t think that I’d want to shell it out for every movie that comes down the pike.

Probably not smart of Imax to dilute the brand like this.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers.  Have you seen the new Rasmussen trust numbers yet?

This is the original:

…annnnnd (via Ace of Spades) this is the parody.

The parody’s better. Not to mention, considerably more honest.

Moe Lane

PS: I don’t know whether this site is Left-oriented or Right-oriented, but I’ll say this: whoever made it is not happy. And he or she is right to be not happy.

Crossposted to RedState.

Or maybe somebody over at A&E does, because they’ve figured out how to simulate a flash mob:

Which means that it’s worse than Allahpundit thought: he’s helping Mc Hammer get back on the air.

Moe Lane

*See the story “Flash Crowd,” found in The Flight of the Horse. That was back in 1974, might I add.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Hot Air readers.  Also: nice job scoring the interview, Ed.

Full disclosure: Mark Impomeni, who had been previously fired from AOL, is a RedState colleague.  Caleb Howe, who no longer writes for AOL, is a RedState colleague.  I have previously banned Tommy Christopher from RedState – and now follow him on Twitter and have linked to him when appropriate, because that banning was strictly business, nothing personal.  I used to buy Playboy when I was much younger, but only for the pictures of naked women.  I used to use AOL, back when you got charged for the amount of time that you spent online.

I think that covers it.

So, to review: a misogynistic writer for Playboy’s website wrote a column (screenshot here) listing the top ten conservative women who he’d like to rape*. The conservative blogosphere, not expecting this sort of story to start appearing before, say, October of 2011, reacted with a snarl; joined in by several liberal members of the blogosphere. Then one of the liberal critics (Tommy Christopher) got fired by AOL. Meanwhile, Playboy pulled the article…

Yes, a liberal blogger for AOL got fired, right after he published a swiftly-removed criticism of the Playboy piece. (more…)

Trying to ensure that Brian Moran’s bid for Virginia Governor isn’t overshadowed by his brother going to jail is as good an explanation as any for the Democrats’ unwillingness to throw a few of their own to the wolves.  Although Chris Stirewalt’s theory (H/T: Instapundit):

Americans generally have low ethical expectations for their politicians. A little double-talking or some womanizing or an oversized ego have long been considered pretty normal for elected officials. Bill Clinton wasn’t the first of his kind, just the apotheosis.

And despite the worshipful tone taken by many toward President Barack Obama, most Americans still know better than to take politicians too seriously.

But there is an invisible, shifting line that anyone in public life mustn’t cross.

What keeps politics interesting, though, is that no one ever seems to learn the lesson.

…does have the virtue of simplicity, and you can take that any way that you like.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

…the carpetbagger from New York and the brother of the anti-Semite are falling behind the guy who keeps hitting people with his car. PPP’s poll is especially good news for the Guy With The Car’s campaign, but it’ll probably still be a nail-biter for the Other side tomorrow.  Unless another six polls come out that confirm PPP’s, of course.  Or turnout exceeds the five percent estimated for tomorrow’s primary.

Jim Geraghty (who originally provided a version of the above snark, by the way) has more; he thinks that the Guy With The Car can give GOP candidate Bob McDonnell a good run for his money.  He certainly doesn’t think that the Brother To The Anti-Semite is going to pull this one off (and that’s a shame, particularly if said Anti-Semite gets indicted this summer).  Guess we’ll see…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

[You can guess the subtitle that was here at first.]

The words ‘treason,’ ‘traitor,’ or ‘betrayal’ do not appear anywhere in this narration of the career of a spy for regime which is an avowed enemy of the United States of America. BDS, on the other hand? First paragraph. I’m almost convinced that this was deliberate self-parody on the WaPo’s part, except that I know other people who are equally this dead to irony.

A Slow Burn Becomes a Raging Fire
Disdain for U.S. Policies May Have Led to Alleged Spying for Cuba

He was a courtly State Department intelligence analyst from a prominent family who loved to sail and peruse the London Review of Books. Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was nothing out of the ordinary. “We were all appalled by the Bush years,” one said.

Given that the traitor Myers started his career in 1978, we can only be grateful that he did not reveal the secrets of time travel to the Castro regime.

See also the Weekly Standard, Transterrestrial Musings, and American Thinker; the latter walks through the history of the two traitors for the last thirty years, and is probably the best bet for people wanting to familiarize themselves with events.  For my own part, two observations:

• If you go by the MICE acronym – Money, Ideology, Conscience, Ego – The Myers’s treason seems rooted mostly in Ego, with the Ideology sort of accumulating on over the years, like grime on an unwashed stoop.  People do like to think that their acts are justified, particularly when they know that they’re not.
• I think that people should be taking a harder look at the wife, actually.  The traitress Gwendolyn Trebilcock Myers was a staffer for former Senator James Abourezk, who is of course a notorious anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist (‘Zionist lobby rules the US Congress’ edition).  I see no particular reason why I should pretend that folks who write for Counterpunch and who check under their bed at night for Jews are also plausible suspects for being up to their eyeballs in supporting other Hard Left cause celebres – like, say, Castro.  Why did you serve only one term again, Senator?  It certainly wasn’t because you grew tired of ‘boring speeches,’ given your hobbies since then.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I don’t really understand why Invasion of the Pod People came up on an Amazon search for ‘bork bork bork,’ but there’s a beauty of a review there:

Body Snatchers from another world invade Earth disguised as ginger root, and the women who have been body snatched become lesbians. A couple of men who apparently come in contact with the dreaded ginger root when their bodies are snatched the lesbians shoot them. Oh and the heroine who really isn’t a heroine betrays her BFF. The End.

Mr. Powers’ work since then has grown richer and more complex, but there’s a certain rough style to the above that showed promise, even then.

Swedish Pirate Party Wins a Seat in the European Union

Yes, yes, not that kind of pirate; besides, they’d call themselves the Swedish Viking Party if they were. That just means that I can safely make “Bork bork bork” jokes* without being worrying about being cleaved by a axe-wielding parliamentarian.

Moe Lane

*I can’t make Bjork jokes: she’s apparently Icelandic. Who knew?

Crossposted to RedState.

Crimson and Clover, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts

What? It’s not like her policy positions actually affect her guitar playing.

As you may remember, I had a choice between two Cthulhu indy films, and based on reader input I went with The Call of Cthulhu: The Celebrated Story by H.P. Lovecraft. It came in the mail Saturday; I got my mail today; and I have just now watched it.

I suspect that I had ended up choosing… wisely. It’s clever in its format; it works well as a silent, black-and-white short movie – better than it would as a bloated SF extravaganza. The music was well chosen, the plot is surprisingly close to the original, and while it did not scare the devil out of me it would have been hard to, seeing as I know the story so well by now. I do wonder how an impressionable nine year old would approach this movie. Or possibly a twelve year old.

The HPLHS website is here – and, spookily, they have just now decided to explain to the world what the heck is going on with their new project. Well, old project.

Something to look forward to.