Harry Chapin had some songs that everyone knows. And a lot that many people don’t know.
What’s been on your mind? Got something you’d like to share? A topic to discuss? It’s Thursday Night Open Thread.
Who wants to start?
Harry Chapin had some songs that everyone knows. And a lot that many people don’t know.
What’s been on your mind? Got something you’d like to share? A topic to discuss? It’s Thursday Night Open Thread.
Who wants to start?
Now becoming a thing: “forest bathing” – it’s not actual bathing, but rather “slowing down to connect with nature.”
Slow down? Meh. Not my fault nature can’t keep up with me. I’ll just hug a cheetah as it runs by or something.
[TOM CRUISE 2020 – RUN TOM RUN (Presidential Campaign Announcement)] (Viewer #1,777,796)
I honestly have no idea how to tell which parts of this are fake.
[High Praise! to Eric Peters Autos via American Digest]
Reader Question: One More Bullet?
[Think you have a link that’s IMAO-worthy? Send it to harvolson@gmail.com. If I use your link, you will receive High Praise! (assuming you remember to put your name in the email)]
You know the press has gone off the deep end when they accuse President Trump of having an emotional support Velociraptor. Who is also racist.
I’m experimenting with putting ads on the bottom of Newsish Fakery posts so as to capture more revenue from drive-by readers who get referred to a specific post from another site. If they also offer something of worth to you, my beloved regulars, so much the better.
If you would, please let me know what kind of pitches you’re getting from these ads…

“No! No! No! Please make Anderson Cooper shut up!”
Samuel Norton, warden of the maximum security Georgia State Prison said the fruits of the program were “truly unbelievable”.
“I’ve been in the prison business for decades, keeping order over hundreds of the most desperate criminals society has put away. I’ve seen lots of dumb ideas come and go: hugs, shoes with spike insoles, ice cream, pink underwear, classical music… none of it ever had any lasting effect. So I was skeptical when Governor Kemp suggested non-stop CNN. How was that supposed to work? People stuck at airports have to watch that muck for hours on end every day. It doesn’t seem to have any effect beyond mild nausea.”
However, Governor Kemp was relying on research by expert criminologist Jason Gideon who understands criminals better, perhaps, than any other individual in the nation.
“These may be criminals,” said Gideon, “but they are Americans, and no American can stand to have a moron try to boss him around. It’s just the most maddening thing in the world, and he’ll do anything to avoid it. I thought, ‘well, no one’s bossier or more moronic than the talking heads of CNN. We should give this a shot and see what happens.’ I think the results speak for themselves.”
While Georgia Department of Corrections records indicate that the 3-year average recidivism rate for all prisoners hovers near 30%, convicted felons who were subjected to a non-stop barrage of CNN reporting had an average recidivism rate of 0.0%, with not one single releasee being convicted of another crime. Although the rates are not directly comparable due to the difference in time periods being studied, the results have been described by prison authorities as “very encouraging.”
One former inmate, Ellis Boyd Redding, talked about his experience with CNN.
“At first, you know, it’s actually interesting. In prison, any distraction is a good thing. But then it gets repetitive. You start to notice patterns. And after a while, you know exactly what they’re going to say before they even say it: ‘impeach Trump,’ ‘make the rich pay their fair share,’ ‘ban assault weapons,’ ‘Biden’s nowhere near as gropey and senile as his critics claim,’ you know, the same old stuff. Gets to the point where you’ll do anything – ANYTHING – to make it stop. I kept my nose clean, got paroled, and even though I was tempted by crime on occasion, I went straight and got a job as a procurement specialist for a deep sea fishing charter boat service. There’s no TV on that boat, and there never will be. I’m free, and I’m staying that way.”
Warden Norton himself has become a believer in the program over time, adding “normally I can tell, when a prisoner is released, whether I’ll be seeing him back behind bars. There’s just a look in his eyes, ya know? But when they’re trying to escape the torment of CNN, all I see is mortal terror, and I know they’re out for good.”
—–
< Baltimore Mayor: “You Can Have Our Rats When You Pry Them From Our Cold, Dead Hands!”
—–
Works like this: I feed you Moon Nukers a straight line, and you hit me with a punch line in the comments.
Facebook is planning to replace “likes” with…
Dave Chappelle is hilarious.
I mean, I haven’t watched his special and don’t plan to (I think he CUSSES), but watching the horrible little cancel culture people react with “That’s not funny!” is pretty entertaining.
The Greta Thunberg thing seems like some weird troll.
“You won’t listen to climate scientists, but will you listen to… some random girl from another country?”
“Wha… what are you… Why?”
Rambo IV did not sit well on my wife, so she tasked me with finding some other dumb action series like Fast & Furious to watch. We’re trying out Olympus Has Fallen (which I guess is having a second sequel coming out). On Netflix, so bonus!
I know Morgan Freeman was in this, so I adjust assumed he was the president. Racist?
Well, Olympus Has Fallen definitely qualified as dumb action. It had action, and it was so so so so so so dumb.
So dumb.
As part of my Rambo movie bingeing, I’m now reading First Blood. The author wrote the novelizations to Rambo 2 and 3, even though that’s a much different character (partly because he’s still living after First Blood).
I wonder what it’s like to be a part of such a cultural phenomenon, as Rambo feels more like a word than a person. It actually took me out of the movie Last Blood for a moment when Rambo told the sheriff his name and he didn’t react as if it were anything other than a normal name.
I’m thinking of becoming a right-wing grifter. How does one begin at that? What are the start up costs?
I get that people like lecturing about climate change, but no one has convinced me they honestly believe the world is under grave threat via their behavior.
Can you imagine summers before A/C existed? That must have been the worst. Now summers are fine… as long as you don’t have to go outside. I work from home; I can go days without going outside.
Sometimes, though, I have to open the front door to receive things delivered to me. That’s the worst.
Know who reminds me of Hitler? People who disagree with me.
Biden might be fine as president. People seem to understand he’s kind of an idiot—no one thinks he’s a genius—and it seems like the best we can hope for with president is someone most Americans agree is kind of dumb and should be mainly ignored.
So much of sports commentary is just stupid nonsense.
“More than just more points, what Florida State needs here is to build some momentum.”
No, I’m pretty sure they just need more points.
If it weren’t stupid nonsense, what would they say, though?
“What Florida State needs to do here is get the ball and get more points and then do that again.”
Working on a sequel to Hellbender… though just in my head. My writing approach is to come up with a bare skeleton of a story structure in my head and then sit down and write and see what happens.
Hellbender is my first novel where I intended to do a sequel, purposely hinting at a number of things to expand in later books.
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
“As powerful as a gorilla with T-Rex heads for fists?”
“…”
“Okay, I underestimated your imagination, Darth.”
I don’t think there is ever a good reason to say certain 4-letter words, such as “Beto.”
The butt stomp in New Super Mario Bros. U is the bane of my existence. 95% of the time, I’m doing it accidentally and it gets me killed.
Any actual solution to mass shootings probably doesn’t involve angrily yelling at the political opponents one already hated, so I’m guessing no one will ever care enough to implement it.
Batman is the most popular superhero because he speaks to a deep truth we all feel inside: Crime can be solved by a billionaire punching poor people.
What’s True: Biden is a person who said things.
What’s False: Everything he said.
Verdict: Mixture of True/False
Watching Godzilla: King of Monsters. It has Eleven in it and the actor who I’m probably the last person to keep thinking of as “the guy from Early Edition.”
The movie answers the eternal question: Who is the king of monsters? (it’s Godzilla)
It seems like the best way to stop mass shooting would be to not give them media coverage, but that sounds almost as untenable as a gun ban.
If you hate guns and don’t agree with the idea that a good guy with a gun is a solution to a bad guy with a gun, I believe it would be entirely constitutional to disarm the government.
When people scream and screech on an issue, all that shows is they love to scream and screech and feel righteous. It’s the people who show humility who actually care about an issue.
If they’re right about climate change, we could all be dead.
If they’re wrong, they’ll never realize it and keep screeching about how we’re close to doomsday forever and ever.
So, either way, the future is not looking good.
*open on man being soaked in the rain*
MAN: “I hate this climate!”
VOICE OUT OF NOWHERE: “What if you could change the climate?”
MAN: “That would be the greatest thing ever!”
—ad for climate change
Trying to keep criminals from obtaining one of the 400 million guns in this country is just ice skating uphill.
Hellbender now has 22 reviews. Two of them are less than five star, but the rest know what they’re talking about.
FBI lists 403 murders by rifle out of 15,129 murders. So, assuming all of those rifles are AR-15s (which they aren’t) and a law passed against them was 100% effective (which it won’t be) and someone won’t just get another weapon (which they will), you get < 3% reduction in murder.
But again, you won’t get that because any law (even a never going to happen national confiscation law) is still going to leave millions of AR-15s out there and hundreds of millions of other guns. You’re not going to have a measurable reduction in murder at all.
So all of this is to say I have trouble taking people who focus on the AR-15 seriously. You’re not actually trying to solve a problem. All these proposed law seem like they’d just irritate gun owners who were never going to shoot anyone and have no other effect.
I feel like no one is trying to use their brains when it comes to guns—like it’s considered uncouth to come at with anything other than pure emotion.
Though I find Trump so ridiculous that I have trouble convincing myself he’s not a cartoon character, a part of me want to drop everything and join Space Force.
So Andrew Yang’s plan is to give people enough money every month to buy an AR-15?
The people who should be asking if they’re okay with violence are the ones proposing gun confiscation. Suddenly declaring millions of Americans who never hurt anyone criminals if they don’t give up their property is not a peaceful act.
And what’s the goal here? You’re going to treat millions of law-abiding Americans as criminals so that maybe—just maybe—a handful of people won’t get a certain gun and instead have to use a different gun? That’s insane.
Maybe I’m a squish, but I don’t care about businesses banning open carry. I think bans on conceal carry, though, are beyond moronic unless you’re going to enforce that with metal detectors and armed security. Otherwise, what are you trying to stop?
What would be so wrong about requiring a universal background check before anyone purchases a gun or votes?
All these background checks and other measure to stop bad people from getting guns are just playacting. There are like 400 million guns already in circulation in this country; if someone wants a gun, they’re going to get a gun.
I think the one gun control shown to be effective is harsh penalties for using a gun in a crime as that goes after desire to use a gun rather than pretending you can stop someone from getting a gun.
How much gun crime is from non-criminals lending each other guns?
“Could you loan me a gun?”
“What for?”
“There are things far away I want to put holes in.”
“Okay, but you’ll have to pass a rigorous background check.”
“That’s fine. By the way, I loved Hellbender. I gave it 5 stars on Amazon.”
“Here. Have this bag of guns.”
*opens the door to see Beto O’Rourke*
“I’m here to take your AR-15s.”
“I don’t have any.”
*Beto points to the dozen AR-15s hanging on the wall*
“What are those?”
“They are… um… AR… uh… 14s. Perfectly harmless.”
“Oh. Okay!”
*Beto skateboards away*
“Hello. I’m here to confiscate your guns. Do you have any guns?”
“No. Sorry.”
“But your truck has a bumper sticker that says ‘I Heart Guns.'”
“That’s a typo.”
“Well, can I come inside and look for guns?”
“No.”
“…”
“Okay. You win this round.”
They’re not going to be able to confiscate our plastic straws until they first confiscate our AR-15s.
And don’t fall for “plastic straw registration.” That’s the first step to plastic straw confiscation.
They’re just going to put everything in Capri Sun type packages as a back door ban on plastic straws since then you’ll never be able to successfully use them.
The left’s long term economic plan seems to be that there will eventually just be five trillionaires doing all the work who are taxed at 99.9% to fund everyone else spending their days making art no one wants.
If one of the Democrats says “We have to make huge compromises with the Republicans to get them to go along with our climate change laws!” then I might believe the world is ending.
It’s hard to believe climate change must be this dire threat when Democrats (who claim to believe in it) are never motivated to do anything other than base-pleasing pablum.
I mean, the Green New Deal was just a grab bag of everything the left ever wanted plus a pony. How does paying for people who don’t feel like working help keep the planet from dying? Obviously the authors weren’t really that concerned.
“The world is going to end! We have to take drastic measures now! And they just happen to match my laundry list of policy ideas I always wanted anyway!”
Facebook may soon start hiding “likes” as a way to help break users’ fixation with getting likes on their posts.
Good luck with trying to lower your liability. Cigarette makers thought they’d be safe when they put Surgeon General warnings on their packaging.