Did you notice that the final fight between Mal and The Operative is essentially the epic Ninja vs. Pirate conflict, only in the future? I guess Murel and The Fly were right after all, but only because the pirate had that nerve cluster moved.

I submitted a caption for this Pointless Waste of Time Craption Contest picture, under the name Born Toulouse-Lautrec (if you're wondering where I got that, it's the name of an awesome New Bomb Turks song). Anyway, I post a caption every so often, but the reason I am posting about it here is because I feel I've really been screwed over on this one, and I want you folks to vote and set things right (I don't think any registration is required to rate or submit captions). There are some complete turds among the top-ranking quotes, while my gem is getting pushed into the negative numbers. You'd think people who read PWoT would have better taste in comedy, but apparently not (instances where my captions have done well they have not been among my favorites). That is all (there are a lot of paranthases in this post).

Guaranteed to cause deja vu.

...like they did in Dallas at the dawn of the eighties when they confronted the Klan. This time it's that slime mold colony known to the world as the Fred Phelps Cult - the Westboro Church of Satan-Fellating Imbeciles - and a motorcycle militia is showing up to keep them in line while the sub-scum attempt to protest funerals of those who gave their lives for this country.

See details here.

I'd like to see these guys protecting the military hospitals as well from Code Stink, who aren't really nearly as vile as the Phelps Philth, but I doubt that they have the numbers or the rapid response time to do it.

Maybe we all need to buy some motorcycles. Oh, and pool cues. See "Gimme Shelter" for details.

(also transcribed from memory)

Me: Our family is white trash.
Li'l Brudder: We are not white trash.
Me: How are we not white trash?
Li'l Brudder: Well, maybe you and dad are, but I'm not. I'm more of an elitist.
Me: White trash can be elitist. Hence, white supremicists.

I saw this at Right Hand of God

During his WonderCon panel, Frank Miller discussed his next graphic novel. Once again, Miller returns to the world of the Batman, this time with Holy Terror, Batman!. Though the title plays with Robin's classic catchphrase, the book deals with a serious subject. Gotham has been attacked by Al Qaeda and Batman sets out to defend the city he loves. The book, which Miller has inked through 120 pages, is expected to run roughly 200 pages total.

Miller proudly announced the title of his next Batman book, which he will write, draw and ink. Holy Terror, Batman! is no joke. And Miller doesn't hold back on the true purpose of the book, calling it "a piece of propoganda," where 'Batman kicks al Qaeda's ass."

If that didn't sound awesome to you, then you obviously hate America.

The reason for this work, Miller said, was "an explosion from my gut reaction of what's happening now." He can't stand entertainers who lack the moxie of their '40s counterparts who stood up to Hitler. Holy Terror is "a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we're up against.

"It's been a long time since heroes were used in comics as pure propaganda. As Miller reminded, "Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That's one of the things they're there for."

"These are our folk heroes," Miller said. "It just seems silly to chase around the Riddler when you've got Al Qaeda out there."

I hope George Clooney stars in the movie adaption!

Fucked up.

(transcribed from memory, so there are definitely some inaccuracies)

Grandma: You know, they said on TV that Nostrado-- Nostradus-- Nostrado predicted--
Dad: --Nostradamus--
Grandma: --he predicted that we would have a president like Bush, a president who wasn't very educated.
Dad: No he didn't.
Grandma: Well, you know, Bush he didn't go to college, I don't think.
Me: No, just Yale and Harvard. You know, dumb stuff.
Grandma: Oh, did he?
Dad: Also, he got better grades than Kerry.
Grandma: Well, they say on the news that he's not very smart. I guess he's kind of likable though, huh?
Dad: Yeah, he's such a sweetie pie.
Me: He's a teddy bear. You know who is the most likable though? Dick Cheney.
Grandma: What?
Me: Uh, nothing.
Grandma: He seems like kind of a nut, though. What's he doing going out hunting and killing people?
Me: (laughing) What??
Grandma: Well, you know, he makes all that money, what does he need to be hunting for?
Me: Oh my Gawd!

(a few minutes later)

Grandma: What's all this rioting about that they're having because they made some cartoons about Hoosaan?
Me: What?
Grandma: You know, that's the guy who was captured. Bush went to war because they thought he had -- what do you call those types of bombs that kill people?
Dad: I don't know, do they make bombs that kill people? I'm not too familiar with that type of bomb.
Grandma: You know what I'm talking about, they dropped them on Japan! Those bombs that kill people!
Me: You mean stink bombs?
Grandma: Yes, that's what it was!
Dad: Yeah, those are pretty dangerous.
Me: Yeah, especially the dutch ovens [reference to an earlier conversation between dad and I -- MA]
Grandma: Anyway, I guess they never found any, so I don't know why they just don't stop the war.


Remember, for every Steven Hawking on the planet, there is a Grandma Alchemist to balance out the average.

That if my dear, sweet mother were alive to see this blog, she would probably cry.

Anyway, what can I say? I was inspired.

Our latest Angry Stick-figure Man comes from Alchemy for Dummies regular commenter Olaf Gunderfuck. Ah, Olaf, your subtle, East European wit has once again shamed us all.

I love Pointless Waste of Time! Go read it.

But since I don't feel like making one, I had the totally lazy and half-assed idea of having AfD readers make their own AS(F)M cartoons and post a link to them in the comments to this post. If you don't have a scanner just use MS Paint. C'mon folks, I need the inspiration. Visit the AS(F)M gallery if you need inspiration your own self.

Special bonus points if your cartoon incites rioting.

Because he'll shoot you.

Lech Walesa will always, in my mind, rock hard with a Gibson Les Paul Goldtop with dual P-90s through a super-primitive, super-fine tube amp running way loud and overdriven. It's interesting that he seems to look more and more like Captain Kangaroo lately (for example, check this picture out).

America itself would rock that much harder if we had had children's show hosts of the Walesa caliber. We could have watched "Captain Kangaroo Liberates the Polish Gulag" every morning until no communist nonsense could have ever penetrated our skulls or polluted our hearts. Imagine the glory of an army of hand puppets battering down all the monuments to the abomination that was 20th century communism, and the Berlin Wall itself collapsing to an iron fist clad in a glove that looks like a velour moose.

some parachute pants
and some more parachute pants
and parachute pants

Today in politics the election was decided by a wrestle fight between dinosaurs and monster trucks. There were no survivors.

In entertainment news, if one more person talks about Johnny Depp like he is the incarnation of Christ on Earth, I will stab myself in the face with a brick.

In Global Affairs, a showdown in the Middle East between Jew-land and crazy, fuck-ass Muslim countries. Also, Mediterranean and West European "straights" reported to still be gayer than American homosexuals.

In sports news, LeBron James was mildly injured after attempting to dive into his giant vault of money, a la Scrooge McDuck.

In local news, all of the homeless people in your city smell like butt.

On Wallstreet, the Dow Jones took a down turn today when the economy was attacked by snakes.

Mine are

1. Pointless Waste of Time
2. Homestar Runner
3. Wikipedia

Post your own in the comments.

Scientists exploring a jungle in Indonesia discovered a whole bunch of never before seen animal scpecies'. Apparently a lot of the new species they have found have no natural fear of humans, either. But just you wait... Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I thought the protest-as-symptom-of-mental-illness peaked with CodeStink protesting wounded soldiers in the hospital, but once Fred Phelps' crowd may have one-upped that one into irrelevance - check this out, where reportedly his swarm of ants has been going out to soldiers' funerals armed with signs with charming slogans like "Fag soldier in hell."

Used to be here in Texas we had a free speech test called "fighting words," where if you got punched in the nose for (perhaps) saying something about someone's mother the judge was not going to dry the tears on your eyes, send the other guy to jail, and make it all better. Instead, he would dismiss the case and kick your fool ass out of his court. If this picture is real and as described, Phelps and his army of mutants are attempting to commit suicide through proxies.

One measure of the prosperity of a culture is how many useless and insane people it can sustain before they poison the host. That our culture buffers us enough from one another that the Phelpsoid crowd can exist here without someone - his people or his enemies - starting to clog all public spaces with the bodies of the dead says something amazing about our corner of the West.

Forgive my long-windedness. But a question has been rolling around in my head for some time, amounting to me attempting to explain the political coprolalia I hear from the generally-lefty locals I live among here in Austin. They talk politics a lot, but it only superficially resembles conversation. A road or a conversation can go anywhere, but not this kind of political talk. Ideas do not exchange in a political monculture because saturation has been reached. Imagine, for a moment, a world in which everyone knows exactly the same things - what would anyone have to talk about in such a situation? Polical moncultures are like that. No need exists to communicate among people who have completely and comprehensively absorbed the identical set of talking points and conspiracy theories.

What, then, are liberals doing when they talk politics? Once upon a time I simplistically assumed people talk to exchange ideas. But if you watch enough people doing enough talking, you notice that some folks in some contexts are not engaged in an exchange at all - where all parties deliver and receive - but in one-way transactions, broadcasts, monologues. If you concentrate a room full of liberals, you do something similar to concentrating uranium; sufficient density guarantees a reaction and the political talk starts and goes on and on and on and on.

But it's not really communication. I say it's not because responses beyond abject agreement are not welcome. In a conversation about whether (say) this year's Fords or this year's Chevrolets are better will allow for contradictory claims based on the
presentation of evidence or reasoned opinion. I haven't heard a political conversation that followed those rules since the early 1990s; and it can be hard even in the blogosphere to find something that works in that structure.

It's something else, generally. Observing liberals engage in political talk has shown me activity which I can usually fit into six general categories:

1. The booby trap. Someone who turns himself into a kind of land mine of resentment may use political talk as his trigger so that the first person who says the "wrong" thing sets him off. It may be that any trigger would do.

2. Herd noise-making. Liberals vocalize, a phenomenon perhaps like the quacking of ducks or the barking of dogs. They generate sounds that have complexity and can convey simple messages, but the manifest content - what the words seem to mean - is somewhat irrelevant; the real message is "present and accounted for" or "I'm one of you."

3. A series of non-negotiable demands. These include that you will listen to the speaker regardless of how long-winded and tedious he gets; that you will pretend to believe what he says; that you will pretend that what he says matters; that you will obey his demands that you practice his ideology; and that you admire him for the superior character and moral substance he demonstrates by bleating like a foghorn about his pet cause of the day.

4. Echolocation for political bullying. Like #1, in this case liberals in their political talk in crowds do something similar to what bats do in flight: They emit noises and use the sound that returns to identify things. For the bat, echolocation serves to allow it to navigate and to avoid flying into its brethren when vast clouds of the winged vermin erupt from whatever unsavory place where they hang upside down. For the liberal, echolocation allows him to identify a binary identity for objects (meaning other speakers). He sends out the echolocation call - say, "Hummers are evil!" and listens for messages that amount to "You're absolutely right!" or "That's not so!" The contradictory message allows the liberal and all liberals present to identify a suitable target for swarming so they can shout down the deviationist.

5. Political karaoke. At karaoke bars, drunk yuppies squawk out badly-delivered versions of songs everyone has heard of and is tired of. Some people do karaoke because they see the humor and irony of it - for instance, the blond accountant who looks like Les Nessman who does the Sir Mixalot numbers. In other cases people get courage from booze, combine this with their lack of knowledge that they can't sing, think that everyone wants to hear a song because they like the song, and then go up and essentially suck for an audience. Much political activity fits this category. People who missed the sixties still want to replay key moments from it like a bad karaoke performer doing "Dead Ringer for Love" completely devoid of the self-consciousness needed to realize maybe the original wasn't so great [Redactor's note: I like Meat Loaf better than I pretend in public].

6. Crying of the needy. An infant cries because he has yet to develop speech and motor skills, but still needs to get a point across such as "I need to eat" or "I somehow find myself covered in feces." In some small subset of liberal political talk, the speaker seeks external affirmation of his worthiness, rightness, or, in the case of those with bigger egos and/or self esteem issues, of his superiority to those backwater hillbilly Bible-thumping fascists who confuse him by refusing to vote the way he wants them to despite his encouraging them by calling them "backwater hillbilly Bible-thumping fascists." But it amounts to "approve of me," "admire me," "recognize my superior perception" or some variant of it - which means, again, you can ignore the manifest content (what the words appear to say) because it's really about the speaker and not about Evil Adolph "Chimpy" Halliburton at all.

To hell with Iran having nuclear weapons, G-Dub needs to get on this right away.