Peter Gabriel has had some big hits, and we played one about a month ago, I think. I was never a fan of many of them. Okay, any of them. Again, not saying he isn’t talented, it’s just that his music isn’t for me. Not even this monster hit from 1986.
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?
Lactose the Intolerant posted this in 2013. — The Editors
[Barack is leaving the White House Christmas party early]
Barack: Merry Chriskwanzakah, dudes. I got to go sleep this one off.
Joe: You totally can’t say that, dude. It’s offensive. You totally left out the Muslims.
Barack: It’s not my fault we don’t celebrate Ramalamadingdong in December this year. Stupid lunar calendar. I’m going to bed. Later, dude.
[Stumbles into his bedroom to find the ghost of Nelson Mandela waiting impatiently for him]
Nelson (in a moaning voice): Barack Obama……
Barack: Cha! Dude, you aren’t real, dude. You’re like, a spot of undigested beef or that crapload of blue meth I just like totally did.
Nelson: I am most certainly not a bad trip, mon.
Barack: You are so totally a bad trip, MON. Nelson Mandela would only speak Jamaican in one of my hallucinations. Kind of like Obamacare would only work in one of my hallucinations, mon. That is usually how I can tell reality from hallucinations. If I can log on to healthcare.gov, then I know I’m, like, totally tripping, dude.
Nelson (points ominously at the laptop screen showing the crashed healthcare.gov website)
Barack: Duuuuuuuude…….Ok, so maybe you are real, but what is with all that ugly, cheap ass bling, dude? Chains are supposed to be gold and shiny and junk, not all that ugly cast iron junk you are all dragging around and stuff.
Nelson: Well, here’s da ting, mon. De afterlife isn’t dat much different than da mortal life. Let me give you a little tip. Just like in the real life, if you want to avoid going to jail and ending up in dese here chains, try really hard not to be black or Hispanic. Boy, day sure have a lot of chains waiting dere for you, mon.
Barack: If you say so. You sure you ain’t been toking a bit too much of the ganja yourself, dude. But, dude. While I got you here, I totally have a question for you, dude. Answer me this. Answer me this. Answer me this. I have a bet with Joe about this one. You, are, like a ghost, right, so you should know this one, right. Ok, like those ghost hunter dudes are always saying that ghosts always appear doing stuff they were, like, really passionate about in life, you know. Like, stuff they were totally into. If that is true, why don’t we ever see ghosts making love? Answer me that one, dude.
Nelson: Seriously, mon? Tink about it for a minute. Why do you tink dem ghosts is always moaning, mon. And why do day get so mad and start trowing junk around when you come along and interrupt dem in da throes? Seriously, mon? And don’t you make me tell you what ectoplasm really be. I and I. But you have totally gotten me off the tracks. I be here to save your soul, mon. Before morning, you are gonna be visited by tree ghosts. No, wait, apparently your past is sealed up tighter dan a steel drum, so the Ghost of Christmas Past is a no show. So you gonna be visited by two ghosts, mon. Listen to dem, mon. It be very good if you be hearing what they be saying to you, mon. Da first one comes when de clock strikes one (fades away).
(To be continued, maybe, if I feel like it)
China’s Yutu-2 Rover Has Now Traveled Over 345 Meters Across the Surface of the Moon
universetoday.com / December 9, 2019 / Matt Williams
Awww, it’s adorable! It looks like a baby bird. But — did they put some kind of cowboy hat on it?
On January 3rd, 2019, China’s Chang’e-4 lander became the first mission in history to make a soft-landing on the far side of the Moon. After setting down in the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole–Aitken Basin, the rover element of the mission (Yutu 2) deployed and began exploring the lunar surface. In that time, the rover has traveled a total of 345.059 meters (377 yards) through previously unexplored territory.
. . .
All of this is in preparation for eventual crewed missions to the lunar surface, which include plans for the possible creation of a Chinese lunar base in the region.
. . .
This marked the beginning of the next phase of the Chang’e-4 mission, which is to investigate the secrets of the early Universe.
You sure it’s not called Calgon-4?
The rover and lander will resume scientific operations when the next lunar day commences, just shy of the holidays. So far, the lander and rover elements have accomplished some very impressive things. In addition to growing the first plants on the Moon,
!!
And those could fetch Whole Food prices.
the rover also discovered that the impact that created the South Pole–Aitken Basin also brought material from the mantle up to the surface.
By discovering mantle rocks on the surface, the rover accomplished its primary objective while also confirming a theory about lunar impacts – i.e. that they played an important role in the geological evolution of the Moon’s surface. Both the lander and Yutu 2 rover are expected to make several more fascinating discoveries before they cease operations.
For the lander, this is scheduled to take place in January of 2020 . . .
Ironically, about the same time our ingenius House Democrats are expected to schedule a bogus impeachment vote.
There is a moral here, I just can’t put my finger on it…
How Interacting With Females Increases Aggression in Male Fruit Flies
by Lori Dajose, California Institute of Technology / Dec. 12, 2019 / phys.orgCaltech researchers have now made progress toward understanding the neurological basis of the heightened aggression that male Drosophila show toward one another after recent encounters with females.
…
When a male fly encounters a female fly, the male often will vibrate his wings in a display of courtship. It is well-established that certain neurons, called P1, are responsible for this predictable courtship behavior and are activated by female scent cues. Once the female is removed from the male’s environment, the male’s P1 neurons become inactive.
But something about a prior experience with a female causes a male fly to enter into a state of heightened aggressiveness, or arousal, that lingers for a few minutes after the female is gone. Normally, two male flies can coexist in the same area without bothering each other. But male flies who have recently encountered a female will, when encountering another male, show increased displays of aggression: they lunge forward, waving their wings to look larger.
Stupid flies. You’d never catch humans exhibiting this kind of behavior at a bar or dance club!
1976 [at a party at Eric Idle’s]:
On one end of the talent-packed sofa is Jagger. He’s smiling in a rather far-off way, but much chattier than when I last met him. He’s 33 as well — like George and Eric. We talk of old record albums. I really never listen to the LPs we’ve made, I say, and I don’t know what’s on them. Mick agrees. He apparently never can stand listening to an album after he’s been through the grind of making it.
— Michael Palin, Diaries 1969 – 1979: The Python Years
From the SAT (Sarcastic Aptitude Test):
Identify which of the following quotations are from the movie Help!, and which are from House committee investigations.
1.
“There’s more here than meets the eye.
”
“Huh ho.”
“Ho.”
“Huh ho.”
“Ho!”
“Ho ho ho ho, ho ho ho.”
“Hooo.”
“Ho.”
“Huh ho!”
2.
“Flee!”
“Who are you?”
“Run!
“Will you explain everything when the opportunity presents itself?
“Please, flee!”
“Okay.”
3.
“The fire brigade once got my head out of some railings.
”
“Did you want them to?”
“No. I used to leave it there when I wasn’t using it for school. You can see a lot of the world from railings.”
4.
“It’s me, you fool!”
“Oh! Sorry!”
“Well, stop it!”
(“Both” is correct.)
I finally saw Peanut Butter Falcon. I think I was putting it off for a bit because I knew it would hit close to home, but in the end I think it was a good reminder of where my priorities need to be.
t’s easy to fall into fear when it comes to the future of your kids, because you don’t have a lot of control there. I just try to walk with faith and remember we’re not alone here.
I’ve never been big on “owning the libs” but for some reason I’d still really like a GIF of Baby Yoda where the cup he’s drinking from says “Liberal Tears.”
Stop pretending anything interesting happened in the impeachment hearings. You’re only encouraging it.
I can’t believe that one impeachment witness threatened to murder Trump’s child or whatever.
Here’s a good review of Ethan Nicolle’s book Brave Ollie Possum: My three older kids quickly paused their new video game they were playing when I offered to read them another chapter.
You’d think by now someone would do a “Actually, Baby Yoda Is Bad” hot take article just for the hate clicks, but I think his draw is too powerful that not even the most jaded clickbaiter can bring himself to say anything bad about the little guy.
Watching an original Scorcese film and in a week or so I get to see an original Michael Bay film. Netflix is really earning its keep.
We really need a national conversation on what rights are and how they work to combat this sort of stupidity. The right to bear arms is actually a right, but people don’t argue that the government must buy everyone an AR-15 as that isn’t how rights work.
When you argue you have right to something someone else must provide, you’re saying you have a right to take from someone else. At that point, you’re no longer arguing for freedom; you’re arguing for tyranny.
I expected all this impeachment stuff to be more interesting, but we all know how this is going to end and the lead up is just tedious with a bunch of people pretending what’s happening is momentous.
My kids are watching Elf, and it got me thinking that Jon Favreau doesn’t get enough credit. You don’t hear him mentioned among the great film makers, but he’s made a number of lasting cultural contributions such as Elf, Iron Man, and Baby Yoda.
If Pete Buttigieg isn’t homophobic, then why was he raising money to help the homeless?
I now want to impeach Trump and everyone behind the impeachment hearings.
Congratulations to the Cowboys on staying #1 in the NFC East! Why overexert yourself getting a win if you don’t need it?
They shouldn’t release The Baby Yoda Show in the morning because I can’t watch it in the morning and now I’ll be spending all work day thinking “I wonder if anything happens to Baby Yoda!”
I always tell GeForce Experience to update my drivers, forget, and then freak out for a second when my screen goes black.
Why do appeal assume a reusable bottle is better than single use plastic? Reusable means you need to clean it with soap and water which will all go into sewage. Doesn’t seem like an obviously better trade off.
I usually get the best of both worlds: When I’m out and about, I refill my reusable bottle using single use bottles.
BTW, I’m no fan of the environment. It committed genocide against the dinosaurs.
Is there a term yet for the constantly angry, constantly online left-wing white people that sunk the Beto and Harris campaigns when they tried to appeal to them? I think I’ve heard “Chapo” or something before.
So this upcoming Richard Jewell movie is a dramatization of the Trump impeachment?
Maybe The Mandalorian should also watch Mrs. Maisel’s kids; he seems much more attentive.
Saw a Truth ad on Juul that was like “Maybe it’s bad. We’re not sure.” Who is burning this money?
Of course porn is bad and it’s silly people pretend it isn’t.
But I’m a libertarian so that’s not an argument for laws or anything.
The impeachment is so boring. It really needs a breakout character like Baby Yoda. Or they should at least call Werner Herzog as a witness.
“So who is cuter: Baby Yoda or our little Baby Winchester?”
“Daddy, don’t make me choose!”
So is Trump still president? I haven’t really been following impeachment.
The episode descriptions for The Mandalorian are things like “The Manadalorian helps protect a village” and “The Manadalorian assists a rookie bounty hunter” when it should be things like “Baby Yoda drinks from a cup” and “Baby Yoda gets scared by a loud noise.”
“I mean, it’s one banana Michael. How much could it cost? $120k?”
“Robert De Niro is bitten by a radioactive leprechaun and becomes… THE IRISHMAN.”
“Wow. Since being bitten by that leprechaun, I look younger! I don’t move or sound any younger, but I look a bit younger.”
I hope she kept the gift receipt for all the gifts except the five golden rings.
The new Ghostbusters trailer looked good, but there were some women in it, so I’m wary.
Had the same problem with the new Wonder Woman trailer.
Did everyone finally give up on pretending Kwanzaa is a thing?
Little Winchester had his first ambulance ride. He has croup, and it got so bad they wanted to transfer him to a children’s hospital for observation. He’s back home now and doing well.
In the Down Syndrome forums I’m in, I see so many big health problems, but he’s done really well. Other than that first week in the NICU and this, he’s been pretty healthy.
Since ultimately all laws are enforced by people with guns, the question to ask when determining whether something should be banned is this: Am I willing to shoot someone in the face over this?
When did it become the job of whoever runs advertising to fact check all of it? When did you weirdos come out of the woodwork on that one?
Straight talk: Your problem isn’t advertising on Facebook. Your problem isn’t FOX News. Your problem is you’re horrible people with awful ideas. Until you face that, you’re never going to convince anyone other than other horrible people.
And you know if these idiots were successful in their dummy quest to get Facebook to factcheck political ads, they’d scream like a stuck pig the first time one of their favored morons got an ad pulled for being inaccurate.
“We’re going to have to pull Elizabeth Warren’s ad where she says she’s an ‘honest politician with great ideas.’ By any objective measure, she’s extremely dishonest and all her ideas are dumb.”
“Bernie Sanders, in your ad you say you won’t utterly destroy the economy. Is that a typo?”
Can you believe the 80s were actually more hopeful than now when we had the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over us? That was a real threat that could kill us any day; not like climate change where we’re all going to roll over and die because the world got 2 degrees hotter.
If we don’t impeach the president, he could steal the election again when Russia runs $12 in Facebook ads.
Watching The Irishman, and it got me wondering whether Jimmy Hoffa was the most high profile assassination where people completely got away with it? At least, until Jeffrey Epstein.
This Brexit stuff is going to make for a great 8th season of The Crown or whatever.
Cool. Special parking for rich people.
Winchester is having a grand old time at the hospital. Lots of wires to grab and stick in his mouth.
“Trump has nuked Minnesota. This is the most evil, malicious thing a human being has ever done.”
ten minutes later
“Yeah, I guess Obama did nuke Minnesota twice, but it didn’t seem worth reporting at the time.”
Now before I tweet anything clever, I always try to remember to ask myself, “Could this be a Babylon Bee article.”
Poor little guy. He has what’s known as “E.T. toe.” Only way to cure it is to send him back to his home planet.
But it ain’t happening! He’s ours!
Time’s Person of the Year: An orange. Eat one, and you won’t get scurvy. Yay oranges!
If I ran a fire station, I’d put up the slogan “Fight fire with fire” on it just to freak everybody out.
When has “fight fire with fire” ever been good advice? Certainly not while playing Pokémon.
I’m really worried about Trump.
No, wait, I’m thinking of spiders. I’m really worried about spiders. Why won’t Congress impeach spiders?
I like how in the hospital they mark which sockets are backed by a generator so I can rest assured that, no matter what, my Air Pods will be charged tomorrow.
That Trump executive order on Judaism seems weird, but I love the way the left are approaching it.
“What’s the absolute worst way of interpreting it? DOUBLE THAT!”
Man, they really need something worse than Nazis to compare Trump to so they can finally turn things to eleven.
My wife just asked me what was going on in a Hallmark type Christmas movie playing on the hospital TV like I’m even physically capable of paying attention to such a thing.
The sum total of all my knowledge of all the Hallmark Christmas movies I’ve been exposed to: I remember someone wearing a red sweater.
People who already believe the same as Greta Thunberg thinks she’s really influential and everyone else is baffled that anyone would think she’s influential.
“I bet if we had some foreign girl repeating all the exact same rhetoric, then you’d believe us!”
“Why… why would you bet that?”
“She’ll be sailing on a yacht.”
Journalists just want to destroy random people in peace without having Clint Eastwood make movies about them, you guys.
in as whiny a voice as possible
“Well, yeah, that all really happened, but it’s really mean to point that out right now, you guys.”
Democracy may die in darkness, but from the reaction to the Richard Jewell movie, it seems like journalism is allergic to sunlight.
Really enjoying The Irishman, but I bet it’s better to watch in the theater where the audience is really getting into it and yelling things like, “Look out, Pacino, he’s Irish!”
Remember the last time the Democrats didn’t like an election outcome? That was 2000, when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore to become the 43rd president. They bitched and moaned and complained and whined and stomped and cried and finally sued. On December 12, 2000, the Supreme Course of the United States issued a ruling putting all the nonsense to rest.
We all learned from that. I learned that Democrats are a bunch of whiny losers. Okay, I didn’t learn that. I already knew that. But others finally learned that. And Democrats learned that being whiney little bitches didn’t overturn an election. They have to do impeachment. That’ll end the same way the previous impeachment did — the sitting president ends up looking like the victim of a witch hunt.
Still, it is entertaining, in a sick, twisted way. But what else do you expect from Democrats?
