Category: Not-politics

“Play some Skynyrd, man!”

You know those drunken idiots who would shout that at hapless bar bands at every possible opportunity? Even when the band in question clearly had no desire or ability to play any Lynyrd Skynyrd song?


“FREEEEBIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRD!!!!!!!!,” Lynyrd Skynyrd

Yeah, I was one of those guys. And, let me confirm something that you might have always suspected: we really were doing it just to be jackasses.

Although calling for Turning Japanese (our usual alternative) should have been diagnostic in that regard.

Coming soon: unmanned helicopter with sniper rifle.

Because Life Is Not Fair. And apparently that Xbox 360 is going to come in handy after all:

UAV Helicopter Brings Finesse to Airstrikes
One shot, one kill, zero pilot. That’s the goal of the Autonomous Rotorcraft Sniper System, a new unmanned helicopter that’s controlled with an adapted Xbox 360 controller.

Of course, the conversation that the webcomic Backward Compatible imagines will probably never happen, but it probably should. After all, joystick versus mouse/keyboard is an actual debate…

Crossposted to RedState.

The Vatican’s making life difficult for ‘Angels & Demons?’

Perish the thought:

Director Ron Howard has accused the Vatican of trying to hamper the filming of his new movie, Angels & Demons, starring Tom Hanks.

The movie sequel to author Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code features symbolist Robert Langdon helping to rescue four kidnapped cardinals.

But Howard said the Vatican exerted its influence “through back channels” to prevent filming near certain churches.

You’d almost think that Ron Howard was directing a movie whose central conceit not only attacks one of the key teachings of Christianity*, but does so by ripping off Holy Blood, Holy Grail pretty much wholesale.  Personally, if I was a Vatican official I’d be more offended by the second than the first: Baigent, Leigh, & Lincoln at least weren’t in the ‘mystical bloodline of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene’ business strictly for the cash.

That being said, this is probably part of an attempt to boost sales for The Lost Symbol when it comes out later this year. All just business, in other words.

Moe Lane

*The divinity of Christ, essentially.

Crossposted to RedState.

The Insidious Snuggie Conspiracy claims another victim.

Save yourself: it’s too late for me.

snuggie

…OK, actually it was a gag gift, as per a tradition of my in-laws: every year they come up with a white elephant of a gift that gets foisted off on somebody at random, this year it was the Snuggie, and this year I was the one who got stuck. Little do they fully appreciate that this means that I pick next year’s gag gift.

Moo hoo bwah hah.

Chimp attacks, huh?

That’s (part of) the word from this article (“Blogging for Dollars“) (H/T: Instapundit):

How do you make money? By driving traffic to your website. I kidded Walter Olson, who created overlawyered.com, that he should keep his eyes peeled for Britney Spears-Kevin Federline litigation. He has his own secret: chimp attacks. “So far as I can tell, every post on chimpanzee attacks over the years has drawn thousands of new visitors,” he says. Chimp-free overlawyered attracts about 9,000 visitors daily.

Chimp attacks.  Fortunately, nobody’s been attacked by a chimp today, so I can’t actually test Walter Olsen’s allegation.  Still:

After you have gotten within his personal space, Mr. Chimpanzee is not your friend.  They do not play hockey or ride skateboards in the wild.  They cannot be trusted with firearms.

I hope that the above was all redundant.

Moe Lane