I'm pretty sure he never uses the words "a" or "the" even once during that entire clip.
'We City Livonia'
Sounds like some Teutonic Knights thing.
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['I don't know why he didn't just nominate Jesus. Skip the middleman!']
For any of you who figured that you'd gotten the gist and didn't need to watch until the end: you really need to watch the whole thing.
LET'S GO, LIVONIA! And pick up your trash, will you?
Glenn Moon is full of win.
Heavenly Father Almighty God, please auto-tune this video. kthx.
He talks like a Dr. Bronner's bottle.
I watched to the end, really. The 22nd repetition of 'Jesus Christ Son of God Lord and Savior' (he kept changing the formulation slightly) and 'We City Livionia' are the only parts that stuck.
I don't know why he didn't propose people We City Livionia pay people one dollar a year to pick up trash.
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['The City at the Edge of Forever.']
The $1-a-day thing was weird. Which part of the Bib' is that from?
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This Paterno quote on newspapers is pretty good.
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I haven't decided whether he's sincerely crazy or doing Andy Kaufman-level performance art.
As long as we're talking about people on the internet and Autotune.
He seems to mention chicken at 3:19.
More like "LET US GO!" than "let's go!"
I liked his strong stand against litter.
As long as we're on the internet - that's a good transition, right? - does anyone knowledgeable about music know if the song here is originally an English-language song? I don't recognize the tune, but I don't recognize lots of tunes.
12 breaks new ground in horribleness. Did you notice in the sidenotes that he described it as "an ode" to his hero Tupac?
13:Wow, 12 is something special.
The Youtube commenters seem to be on top of this:
This is a more vile form of torture than raping a man with a cheese grater.
oh... god. I used to be against abortion. Now this gives me pause.
Ya know. Today I have sustained permanent damage.
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['If I start chanting We City Livionia please kill me.']
Without repentance and sought
reconciliation with God in name Jesus
any effort on part this legislative body to
encourage expansion of existing
spiritually criminal territory known as
sixteenth district court Livonia Michigan
which kingdom of God recognizes is
only one representative agent of our
spiritually corrupt United States of America
government judicial system
will upon your individual ceasing to exist as
living breathing human beings result in
condemnation into eternal fires of hell.
I'm pretty sure he never uses the words "a" or "the" even once during that entire clip.
Well, it's really the only way to keep it under 3 minutes...
But I think I'm with #11.
19 gets it right!
What's Glenn Moon's stand on the worldwide mad deadly communist computer god?
apo, didn't really want to write this on your FB page, but the answer is "oral"
Eh, you could have written it on my Facebook page. Everybody who knows me, knows me.
12 is amazing. In a similar vein:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--Vaz9jW054
I'm all about the Good F/ght Ministeries "They Sold Their Souls for Rock-n-Roll" series. The David Bowie one is really great, but maybe the Hall and Oates one is better.
Wait, maybe the Michael Jackson one is best. It busts out the Carmina Burana for what it thinks is extra satany goodness.
I hesitate to say this because I know it has the potential to offend my friends of faith, but aside from the weird grammar and affect, this guy's reasoning makes about as much sense as mainstream religious thought.
32: You're going to burn in hell for all eternity. I will see to it personally.
32: PICK UP YOUR TRASH, LUTHERANS!
I'm pretty sure he never uses the words "a" or "the" even once during that entire clip.
Or "of," I think.
37: Better run run run run run away!
Prepositions are of God. Articles are of Satan.
37: That must have been a satisfying headline to write.
Apo, you probably shouldnt shout "Let's go, Livonia!" at the conclusion of any adult activites.
That is, if your wife is anything like Br. Just saying.
I was wondering just how big Livonia was (and thus how significant 301 votes would be). Turns out it has 100,000 people.
16: I don't recognize the song -- not that I'm deeply knowledgable about music -- but it does sound stylistically consistent with other sappy Chinese pop music I've heard, for what little that's worth. (Is that movie any good? Hard to tell from that Youtube clip.)
44: It seems Chinese to me too, but I remember the credits giving English titles to some of the music (which could just be a translation, or background music and not that song). I tried looking it up after I watched it but didn't find anything.
I really liked the movie, but as I remember the reviews were mixed, leaning positive. It's entirely from a first-person camera point of view, so that's something to get used to, but I don't remember it being constantly jumpy like some movies like that.
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I really hate shopping for laptops. So many specs, so few explained in a way that means something for my probably usage.
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I don't think the melody/music to that song are taken from an American song.
Looking at some of the videos that turned up on a search for those characters suggests that Chinese singers stand in open fields often.
39: You're right; he omits it an awful lot, though.
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Wow. U.Va. (still) sucks at football. And yet, demonstrably less so compared to the first two games.
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Does anyone remember a very old (Fifties?) S.F. short story about highway commuting becoming deliberately lethal akin to "Death Race"? I don't think I'm thinking of the inspiration for the movies, Ib Melchior's "The Racer", but I could easily be wrong about that.
There was some song in it resembling "A thousand miles per hour, a thousand miles per hour, the angels cry and the devils cry at a thousand miles per hour..."
Bob?
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re: 52
For some reason that reminds me of something from Spinrad's Star-Spangled Future, but I'm probably wrong.
I just called my mom to wish her a happy new year and she told me that she didn't go to services today for the first time in her life. I said hey, me too. It was heartwarming.
It was heartwarming.
That is heartwarming! My heart is warmed.
Pretty much nobody showed up on time for my Spanish group today. I half-joked that it was due to the holiday, and the one other attendee who arrived before me looked quite startled. (I'd guesstimate 5-8% of the group is culturally/observantly Jewish enough to have been absent for such a reason.)
Does anyone remember a very old (Fifties?) S.F. short story about highway commuting becoming deliberately lethal ...
I think I remember it, but it took me a full week to figure out a pet door, so I can't help you
It was heartwarming.
Aw. Yes. And maybe you and your mom were eating the same honey at the same time (she sent it to you, right?).
Yes, she did, and we may well have been. She had some friends over for dinner last night.
5: Pick up your trash. (Not for those who dislike blinky lights.)
Also, I know, I know, It's been up nearly a whole day, but I'm still sad that I didn't get to make the "God name Jesus Christ forbid prepositions articles"/Dr. Bronner's joke.
Also also, in re: 11, I'm pretty sure he's serious. If it's performance art his devotion is admirable. Something about the way he ramps up the crazy and builds to the final outburst is exactly right in the so-wrong way.
57: Don't worry about the pet door. It's okay as long as you have "handsome" working for you.
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I'm sure everyone wants to be up to date on my laptop search. I can't believe how much of a difference there is between 14" and 15" laptops. Now I don't know what to do. I'm considering this but those customer ratings don't look good. This is basically the same thing with a slower processor, but much less expensive.
Meanwhile, I found it amusing to see an HP on display showing a blue error screen. Way to sell you models, Best Buy.
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I'm sure everyone wants to be up to date on my laptop search.
Oddly enough, I do.
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Dialogue between Emerson and Paul Rosenberg over at Open Left on 50s liberalism.
"The strong party, anti-popular model promoted by Hofstadter, Schlesinger, Bell, Galbaith and other Cold War liberals during the fifties has really wreaked havoc on Democratic progressivism. " ...JE
There is a lot more. Emerson and Rosenberg have apparently hit it off.
My feeling has always been that Rick Pearlstein, who is becoming an authority on the 60s-70s for a certain liberal crowd, is playing much the same role for a new generation that Hofstadter and Schlesinger played in the 50s.
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I am also considering this, but I haven't been able to see it in person. Bad past experience and lack of a reliable mailing address means I'm only buying what I can see.
64: I was just talking to a guy who has a Toshiba laptop, and he was saying that he's been having a lot of problems with it. Apparently overheating is a frequent issue, and from what he was saying it sounded like this might be a general problem with Toshibas.
Or at least with certain Toshiba models. The problem seems to have to do with the chassis design.
Well that's not good. I can't seem to find reviews of Toshiba laptops available up here. The models are slightly different than in the US - CNET seems to love some Best Buy-sold model in the US, but it doesn't exist up here as far as I can tell.
Despite the size difference, I'm probably leaning towards the Fujitsu. I've been using their laptops for 7 years and have been mostly happy with them. On the other hand, the first one I had broke after 4 years (clearly a design flaw with the power cord connection to the motherboard) and this one has the fan issues (but has been going fine otherwise for 3 years). But fewer stores seem to sell Fujitsus.
That Emerson post is indeed good. I'm still reading the comments.
Hey, Emerson is being trolled by that lamb/ert guy. I sort of read his blog on and off during the 2008 primaries until about the point where he went crazy over how Obama had subtly flipped off Clinton or something. I think Krugman once linked to some of his stuff a few months earlier.
Don't mind me, I'm just going to be talking to myself over here.
Which is to say I'm reading those comments, too, but more slowly as I'm half distracted by another thing.
I skimmed a few of those comments, but I don't see the appeal.
You can watch this instead, teo. It's very helpful.
I'm most way down the page, just skimming now. The post is better.
Not so incidentally, given the tangent on Chinese pop music above, I was flipping through the radio stations while driving today and came across a Chinese language station. I only heard a couple songs before it suddenly switched to a mixture of static and some faint audio from and English language station as I headed back downtown. I don't think I've ever heard a Chinese radio station in North America (as opposed to tv station). I've heard Spanish and French and that's it.
82: I'd say that's pretty incidental. Coincidental, even.
Coïncidental even!
(One has been being exceedingly nosflowian elsewhere, arguing about the spelling of Wha/angui based on a particularly nice distinction between Maori and English words in English, so.)
It occurred to me that his congregation probably has 301 members.
78: I'm sure it's pure coincidence that everyone in that video is white except for the guy who threatens to kill the kid's dog.
"You see, Junior, child molesters who might lure you in with friendliness and smooth talk are white, while those who resort to crude, violent methods are brown."
How about some equal opportunity in depicting monsters who rape children!?!
52: Yeah, the story is told from the point of view of a family in a car with the father being better armed, despite driving a sedate sedan, than the driver he's fighting with? And while I don't actually remember it being Spinrad (it seems a little earlier than Spinrad to me) the tone was right. Author or title, though, I couldn't help you with.
A little googling suggests "Why Johnny can't speed", by Alan Dean Foster, 1971. I can't find anything that quotes enough of the story to recognize or not, but the setting is at least close. Still, it seems a little late -- I wouldn't be surprised if we were all thinking of an earlier story that the ADF story was derivative of.
The eleven kidnap traps to avoid are: helping, bribing, being famous, politely referred to as litter, emergency, affection, TRASH, hero, Livonia, dollar per day, God named Jesus Christ. Got it. I am going to ace the test.
On further reflection and googling, I think the story I was thinking of was "Along the Scenic Route", Harlan Ellison, 1969. (Synopsis on this page if you scroll down.) I'm still surprised by the date, and that I didn't remember the author given who it was, but the synopsis seems to be exactly what I remember. And my sense of fitness is satisfied by finding out that Alan Dean Foster never did have an original idea.
86: I know it's not politically correct, but that was exactly my experience as a child.
52. Are you thinking of "Along the Scenic Route," aka "Dogfight on 101" by Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova from 1969? Punk is driving a red Mercury, family guy's driving a "Piranha," punk cuts him off, ("'My masculinity's threatened,' he murmured," that's word-for-word from the story!), so now it's on!, bang bang shoot shoot, lotsa s.f. weapons-pr0n, they get up to 300 mph before family guy throws his crash helmet out the window which causes the punk's car to flip-crash-and-burn. Which elevates family guy to number one in the highway-dueling rankings, and a half-dozen challengers are already coming after him to kill him and win his first-place status.
There's another story by Brian Aldiss where the street punks weld big fishhooks to their hot rods, and the narrator grabs the female romantic interest out of their path fast enough to save her from being mauled but not fast enough to save her skirt.
52: Does anyone remember a very old (Fifties?) S.F. short story about highway commuting becoming deliberately lethal akin to "Death Race"?
87: 52: Yeah, the story is told from the point of view of a family in a car with the father being better armed, despite driving a sedate sedan, than the driver he's fighting with?
I'm not sure about Biohazard's story, but 'Along the Scenic Route' by Harlan Ellison fits the bill. (And I don't seem to have a copy of Deathbird Stories anymore to check the wording. Anyways:
Synopsis
In the not-too-distant future, freeway drivers may challenge one another to duels under certain specified rules. George, an average family guy out for a drive in his Chevy Piranha with his mousy wife Jessica, is flagrantly cut off by a young hotshot in a Mercury which incidentally has twin-mounted 7.6mm Spandaus. Enraged, fed up with being pushed around by punks on the highway, and with Jessica whimpering beside him, George impulsively challenges the kid to a duel. A Freeway Sector Control Operator warns him that the Merc is more heavily armed, but George has had some recent work done on his nuclear-powered, laser-equipped Piranha. And of course there's his good old .45 automatic under the seat. The two drivers are cleared for a duel. But once engaged in battle, George learns the kid has more experience and tricks up his sleeve than the respectable challenger had any reason to expect.
Commentmax
This one's a peach. Smooth and quick, like a lightning ride in a fast car. Along with "Neon," this is the closest thing to a real laugh in the book. "Billy," the young punk, is identified by the Sector Control Operator as "Mr. Bonney," for those who can appreciate the joke. The story dates from The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World (1969). There are several signs of authorial prescience: in a way, "Scenic Route" presages road rage by a good two decades. That a Chevy plant is said to be located in Bombay also foretells of multinational corporate flight (although car plants seem to have come to the United States, while the microchip industry that no one could have predicted is what has found a home in the former Raj).
92: Oh, so pwned.
And I don't think the fishhooks story is Brian Aldiss, I think it's Fritz Leiber. All the women in the US wear masks, and the British narrator finds this very weird?
Yeah, the fishhooks story is "Coming Attraction", and it is Leiber.
91: You must have been approached by an alarming number of pedophiles. N=?
More seriously, one's experience can't be "politically correct" -- goddamn do I hate that phrase -- or incorrect. What happened to you is simply a fact.* It's only our analysis of and conclusions from facts that might be problematic.
*Stipulating that which facts one notices or retains is also relevant, as is whether one is a broadcaster on Fox News.
98: facts aren't socially constructed? Isn't that the premise of the Lensman series?
Isn't that the premise of the Lensman series?
Cracked me up.
Cracked me up.
I can die happy. Seriously.
92: 93: Are you thinking of "Along the Scenic Route," aka "Dogfight on 101" by Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova from 1969?
Thanks. That sounds very much like it but I'll have to to see if that "song" is in it. I thought it was much earlier than 1969.
I think the 'earlier' tone I remembered from the story is that Ellison was writing from the perspective of someone who's supposed to be a 50's dad -- lawns and baseball and threatened masculinity and hating arrogant young punks. I could have sworn it was older too, but the synopsis is exactly what I remembered, down to the final twist where because he barely managed to survive the duel with the kid who turned out to be a champion duelist, now suddenly everyone in the country is gunning for him.
Isn't that the premise of the Lensman series?
Cracked me up.
Now I feel sad, because I haven't read enough geeky sci-fi to get this joke. It's the revenge of the nerds!
There may have been more to the joke than I got, but the Lensman series is very old, very dumb, and not interrogating the social construction of reality at all. If you substituted Gilligan's Island, the joke I was laughing at (which may not be precisely the one Schneider was making) would be about the same.
105: The Lensman series is hilarious. The recursions of immovable objects being hit with irresistable forces and the spirals of ever eviler creatures with ever greater talents tickled even early teenaged pimple spotted me. (I have no idea where any hyphens should go so I left them all out. It's too early and Neb can fix them if he wants to do so)
Larshnik-sympathizer.
(I actually read those on microfilm in the NYPL main branch -- the one with the big lions -- when I was a teenager. I'd been reading SF writers I liked talking about growing up on them for ages, and never saw a second-hand copy anyplace. Finally, I read that Harry Harrison parody with the cheese-sandwich powered spacecraft, and got determined to find them someplace. They were about the goofiest things I've ever read. Also, reading a novel on microfilm is hard.)
Lensmen also has that awesome quote about what it meant to be really good at predicting the future. Brad has quoted it a couple of times.
98: N = 0. I just wanted to make an absurd "political correctness" joke.
95. Yeah, Leiber, not Aldiss. Similarly I think of The Marching Morons as by Leiber, when it's actually by Kornbluth. But I'm pretty sure Leiber wrote Sanity, the flip side of Morons, where the brainy guy isn't really as smart as he thinks he is. Yep, I looked it up, that's Leiber.
107. Cheddite! Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers was pretty good. Bill the Galactic Hero is even better. At least I think so, but then I was a big fan of Asimov and to a lesser degree a fan of Heinlein, while Doc Smith left me cold.
107: That's the exact reason I read the Lensmen books. The Harrison is Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers. I was hoping that reading the Lensmen books would make the Harrison even funnier, but it didn't.
My dad read us Star Smashers and I thought that was just about the best book title evah. Wasn't so keen on Bill but did read far too many of the Stainless Steel Rats.
Ha, I'm just reading the Lensmen series for the first time, on book 3 now. It's humorously messed-up politically. "Power sadly corrupts, leaders can never be fully trusted, what a world... so here's the Lens to fix all that!" Not as messed-up as Heinlein, though a clear forerunner.
Come to think of it, they're probably online. I should look them up again -- I've forgotten everything except the thousand-year breeding plan to create the perfect Lensman, and the insane tone of them all.
Triplanetary is on Gutenberg, but no others - I suspect they're still copyrighted.
Well, that and Vortex Blaster - both of which are in the Lensmen universe but not really the main Lensmen series.
Man, bagging on Doc? I must have read the series at just the right time, since scenes from the series are foundational to my love of SF. The man invented Space Opera! Have a little respect!
Let me remind you of the nature of the prose in question. I've been reading Triplanetary off and on since comment 114. A sample:
For that oven-girdled fortress was powered to withstand any conceivable assault; but the _Boise_'s power and momentum were now inconceivable, and every watt and every dyne was solidly behind that hellishly flaming, that voraciously tearing, that irresistibly ravening cylinder of energy incredible!
that irresistibly ravening cylinder of energy incredible!
This one has beheld Labs' cock -- and lived!
Note, to be clear, that the inconceivably powerful interstellar warship is named after a city in Idaho. Not that it makes the writing actually worse, but I think it adds something.
Triplanetary sucks, however.
Gutenberg has the first two Skylark books, which I think are more directly the inspiration for Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers. The opening scene of Skylark of Space is clearly the inspiration for the invention of cheddite.
I learn from the Google that cheddite is the actual name of a kind of explosive.
Reading some more, I see that I forgot how much it all sounds like Bela Lugosi's monologue about building a race of ant supermen from Ed Wood.
I don't think Glen Moon can be performance art -- he's in the Detroit Free Press. coupled with the voting figures they also give -- an irresistible ravening cylinder of apathy incredible has landed on Detroit -- it makes me wonder why you haven't all taken out Canadian nationality yet.
why you haven't all taken out Canadian nationality yet
They're kinda stingy with it these days.
118: My SF-loving friends and I once tried talking like Doc wrote. Trouble was, we couldn't get a whole thought out without choking on irrepressible vesuvian-like spasms of gut-rupturing gales of laughter.
(And now that I think of it, was Doc parodying bizspeak?)
I know he was an actual candidate; but his candidacy could conceivably have been a prank.
125: Bizspeak existed in the 20's, certainly, but I wouldn't call this "parody." Maybe this was some variety of fresh, modern way of talking. The most contemporary is what dates the fastest.
Not referring to 118, but rather his dialog.
"Kinda loaded the dice a trifle once or twice, didn't you? I don't think anybody but me smelled a rat, though."