Obama then noted that the real fiscal problem facing the United States is the skyrocketing costs of Medicare and Medicaid, not the Recovery Act or bank bailouts, which he said are "one-time charges." "If we aren't careful, health care will consume so much of our budget that ultimately we won't be able to do anything else," he warned.
Oh, don't worry, Mr. President. I'm sure we can find enough money in the education budget to cover all of our other expenses for the time being.
As far as "not being able to do anything else," poppycock. Defense spending can only increase, you know. Haven't you learned anything from your time on Capitol Hill?
I have been reminded of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie by Patrick Nielsen-Hayden over at Making Light.
So here's some Friday Fun:
The Daily Mail is, of course, Britain's hateful-old-man newspaper. "Immigrants get offa my grass!" is a good way to summarize it.
EDIT: Oh what the heck, here's one more, a honky tonk piece out of a Jeeves & Wooster episode:
Jeeves appears to be what in the vernacular the man on the street might call "turned on" by the process of observing rather comely young ladies traveling at high speeds and attempting what for all intents and purposes might best be considered bloody murder upon each other and which is more commonly considered sport by the refined and educated.
As I'm sure many of you are aware, one of the more superficially off-putting elements of the Catholic church is to walk into one of their buildings and see it decorated with images of writhing, tortured men in loin cloths — it's like stepping into a S&M fantasy, and I'm really not into that (not that there's anything wrong with it, of course, if that's your thing…).
He then says he sees nothing wrong with this, and in fact would encourage the Church to use it:
He got that from here, which provides this description:
Raquel Welch, called by Playboy Magazine the "Most Desired Woman" of the '70s, is captured being crucified while wearing nothing but a loin-cloth on the set of the 1970 film, "Myra Breckenridge." The photo was devised for the poster of "One Million Years BC" and reflected [artist Terry] O'Neill's view that the Sixties were a decade that "crucified" the ideal of womanhood because it valued women only for their sexuality.
Let us not dwell upon the recursive nature that is showing us Raquel Welch in a hide bikini in order to get us to recognize the injustice of looking at Raquel Welch in a hide bikini.
I'm not sure how the "It" girl of the Seventies is supposed to show us anything about the Sixties, but seeing as virgin/whore has been the archetype and largely the sole judgment axis of Woman throughout much of the known world for much of recorded history I don't think the Sixties bear more approbation than average.
And really, PZ, if you can't take men being tortured to death, it's not kosher to accept women being tortured to death, even in hide bikinis.
The tag for this trailer is "This is not your father's Star Trek." It seems to involve a set piece in which Kirk, Sulu, and someone else sky dive onto a platform in order to engage in a heavily-choreographed fight scene. They'd better have an explanation for why they can't beam down, especially since in this next clip Spock can't figure out how Kirk and Scott beamed up while the Enterprise was travelling at warp speed:
So Spock, holding the idiot ball, demands to be told something he should be able to figure out, and Kirk refuses, apparently because he merely wants to get Spock's goat. Judging from the glimpses of a fight between Spock and Kirk in all the trailers, I think Kirk spends a lot of the movie trying to get Spock to show emotion: which is a damn fine way to relate to another species, there, farm boy.
And that's Kirk and McCoy. McCoy's fear of the transporter seems to have been expanded to fear of space travel in general. Or perhaps he's merely bitching, but since he went and hid in the toilet before this clip starts I'm going to say it's not all just complaining for complaint's sake.
Not to mention the shaky cam and all the bright lights washing out the image in the second clip. Great Cthulhu I wish they'd stop using shaky cam to enhance tension all the time. Why can't they trust their actors?
So far I'm seeing a generic action movie wrapped up in the Star Trek branding. There are things that make Kirk, Kirk and Spock, Spock that are more than being played by Shatner and Nimoy and these glimpses aren't showing them. I oughtn't pass judgment unless I see the whole thing -- which is out in a week -- but the prognosis is not looking good.
"Oh no, my green-eyed sister," quoth she, "do not think I wish to steal your beau away from you; for then it shall surely be the river, and the miller, and the passing minstrel for me. I wist not to become some motley busker's harp, poetic justice notwithstanding, thank you!"
