Posts filed under 'Quotes'
Another frothing-at-the-mouth bleeding-heart liberal heard from on Obama’s FISA cave and the media’s coverage of it:
Re “Obama Supporters on the Far Left Cry Foul” (news article, July 13):
I resent the implication in your article that those of us unhappy with Senator Barack Obama’s vote on wiretapping are a bunch of left-wingnuts.
Support of our Constitution is not a radical position, and it is troubling that the media, including The New York Times, have lately been characterizing such support as such.
I was an enthusiastic Obama supporter, but now after his vote to nullify the Fourth Amendment, I am understandably less so. But I am no pinko.
In fact, I consider myself somewhat of a conservative in the former sense of the world. I am opposed to welfare, government bailouts and affirmative action. I’m wary of the military-industrial complex, but I support a strong military. I like the Constitution a lot, and believe in balanced budgets, living within our means and small government, most particularly the kind that doesn’t illegally spy on its citizens.
If these beliefs are “far left,” then I’m George Orwell.
Damn hippies.
July 20th, 2008 at 07:18pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Constitution,
Media,
Obama,
Quotes
Think Progress has a golden oldie for those of you who are getting a little tired of jokes about killing Iranians:
The blog Rum, Romanism and Rebellion pulls out a 1986 Tucson Citizen article recounting a joke about rape told by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Speaking to the National League of Cities and Towns in Washington, DC, McCain allegedly said:
Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, “Where is that marvelous ape?”
You know, I’m actually not entirely sure whether that even qualifies as a joke. It’s certainly more clever than “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt,” but probably not quite as clever as “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.”
So, um, any Hillary supporters who were taken in by McCain’s outreach after Obama clinched the nomination? You, ah, might want to rethink that.
July 15th, 2008 at 07:44pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
McCain,
Quotes,
Republicans,
Sexism,
Wankers
Well. Dick Zimmer, Frank Lautenberg’s Republican Senate opponent, has hit back hard against Lautenberg’s vote against cloture on the awful FISA “compromise”:
By ZimmerforSenate - June 26, 2008 - 12:49pm
Release Date: Jun 26 2008
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Now, I know there’s a lot of opaque political jargon in this statement, but I’m going to take a stab at unpacking some of the highlights:
o Frank Lautenberg pretends to be a normal person, but is actually a serial liar.
o Frank Lautenberg wants to tell us how to behave, and define what style clothes we can wear, and what kind of tables we can eat off of.
o Frank Lautenberg is frequently a no-show for important floor votes. (Either that, or he’s an absentee parent; like I said, this political jargon can be pretty tricky.)
o Frank Lautenberg padded his resume with bogus achievements (or, alternatively, is padding his campaign funds with cash from from questionable sources).
o Frank Lautenberg hates widows, orphans, and families.
o Frank Lautenberg is so imperious and bloodthirsty that he’s like a modern-day version of an ancient Roman.
o Frank Lautenberg is a tool of shadowy Far Eastern interests who want to subjugate the US and force us to speak their language.
I look forward to seeing Lautenberg respond to these allegations, hopefully in the same kind of highly charged political language.
(h/t Blue Jersey)
June 26th, 2008 at 06:23pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Elections,
Politics,
Quotes,
Republicans
In today’s NY Daily News:
This teacher has a history of encouraging noogie behavior.
I don’t think context is really needed here…
June 20th, 2008 at 06:16pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Quotes
The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin sets the tone:
Yesterday’s long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report further solidifies the argument that the Bush administration’s most blatant appeals to fear in its campaign to sell the Iraq war were flatly unsupported.
Some of what President Bush and others said about Iraq was corroborated by what later turned out to be inaccurate intelligence. But their most compelling and gut-wrenching allegations — for instance, that Saddam Hussein was ready to supply his friends in al-Qaeda with nuclear weapons — were simply made up.
(…)
The White House response? That officials in Congress and elsewhere were saying the same things about Iraq. Or in other words, that other people bought the administration line. It takes a lot of chutzpah to defend yourself against charges that you’ve engaged in a propaganda campaign by noting that it worked.
Can’t really add anything to that…
But wait, there’s more! Remember John McCain’s crazy anti-Muslim spiritual guide, Rod Parsley?
Shortly after Sen. John McCain publicly rejected the endorsements of John Hagee and Rod Parsley, Parsley released his own statement rescinding his endorsement and then sort of disappeared from sight. Sometime since then, Parsley apparently decided that he had a bit more to get off his chest and so he released a video on his Center for Moral Clarity website in which he reiterated many of the points he made in his initial statement but added some attacks on what he claimed were the “politically vicious and misguided” hit-squads who exposed his radical views, claiming that his views on Islam are “very much in the mainstream” and insisting that he made a “clear distinction between Muslim terrorists and the vast majority of peaceful Muslims.”
Of course, Parsley is on record having told his congregation and massive TV audience that “America was founded in part with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed” and “Islam is an anti-Christ religion that intends through violence to conquer the world,” as well as writing that so-called “Muslim extremists” are really “mainstream believers who are drawing from the well at the very heart of Islam.”
What a dillweed.
And then there’s the Log Cabin Republicans:
Log Cabin has had a long relationship with Sen. McCain, going back to our national office’s opening in the mid-90s. He has had an open door to us at Log Cabin and has a record of inclusion.
We understand the general election starts today and Log Cabin will do its part to educate gay and lesbian voters about Sen. McCain in the weeks ahead. Contrary to what many Democrats are saying, Sen. McCain is not George W. Bush. Most gays and lesbians understand that fact. Sen. McCain isn’t going to use gay people as a wedge issue. He won the GOP nomination with no help (and with outright hostility) from many so-called “social conservatives.” This is a significant achievement for all gay and lesbian Americans.
…McCain didn’t just vote (twice) against the marriage amendment. He put himself on the line, bucked his own party leadership and President Bush, and took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to speak against the proposal. In 2004, he gave one of the most impassioned speeches from the Senate floor on the issue. That isn’t insignificant.
Is his record perfect? No. But it’s inclusive and shows positive signs. We will hear more about his priorities and record in the months ahead. Stay tuned…
If this sounds hard to believe, that’s because it is:
Uh, he didn’t look like he was putting anything on the line when he did this:
I believe that the institution of marriage should be reserved for the union of one man and one woman, said Sen. McCain. The Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment would allow the people of Arizona to decide on the definition of marriage in our state. I wholeheartedly support the Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment and I hope that the voters in Arizona choose to support it as well.
– John McCain in 2005.
* Or when he made this commercial for the failed 2006 Arizona Marriage Amendment, which would have effectively banned same-sex couples from legal recognition of any kind?
* What about this?:
Advisers to Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid say he will not try to “soften” the Republican party’s platform on abortion and same-sex marriage to appeal to more voters.
Sounds like the Log Cabin is more like a houseboat, floating down Denial River. Good luck with that education program, guys.
June 6th, 2008 at 07:10pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Iraq,
Politics,
Quotes,
Religion,
Republicans,
Teh Gay,
Wankers
Just some things that made me smile today.
Hans von Spakovsky:
Dear President Bush:
It is with great regret that I write to request that you withdraw my nomination to be a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission. My nomination has been pending for almost two and one half years in the Senate without any resolution. This process has been extremely hard on my family, and quite frankly, we do not have the financial resources to continue to wait until this matter is resolved. I also agree with my former colleague Robert Lenhard, who recently withdrew his nomination, that it was past time that the FEC was reconstituted - the agency that is tasked with policing our campaign finance system needs to be operational during a presidential election year. Ths opposition to my nomination (however unfair) is preventing that from happening.
He actually makes a very commendable point at the end there (aside from the “however unfair” part), so it appears that he does feel some rudimentary sense of civic responsibility then again, his vision of what the FEC should be doing during a presidential election year is very different from ours.
In case you’ve forgotten why he’s a total bastard who should never have been allowed within 3000 miles of the FEC, check out the roundup at the end of this TPMMuck post.
John Conyers:
We’re closing in on Rove. Someone’s got to kick his ass.
Tom Davis, by way of Peggy Noonan:
The party, Mr. Davis told me, is “an airplane flying right into a mountain.” Analyses of its predicament reflect an “investment in the Bush presidency,” but ‘the public has just moved so far past that.” “Our leaders go up to the second floor of the White House and they get a case of White House-itis.” Mr. Bush has left the party at a disadvantage in terms of communications: “He can’t articulate. The only asset we have now is the big microphone, and he swallowed it.”
Jay Leno:
Huge political fireworks today after President Bush went to Israel and he talked about American politicians who might want to talk with Hamas or other leaders. Politicians who would sit down and appease terrorists. He said he would not do it. He would not put up with it. He would never talk to terrorists. And then he flew to Saudi Arabia to spend a couple of days with the Saudi royal family.
Jon Stewart (while showing footage of Dubya biking, fishing, and dancing):
You know what? Pictures matter. Image is everything. And when you ask military families to sacrifice so much — through stop-loss, or multiple tours without proper stateside rest, or refusing to fund a proper GI Bill, the least you can do is not force them to see you dicking around like you don’t have a care in the world.
Awesome.
(h/t All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin)
May 16th, 2008 at 08:23pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Corruption/Cronyism,
Democrats,
Elections,
Iraq,
Politics,
Quotes,
Republicans,
Rove,
Terrorism,
Wankers,
War
From The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin, by way of dakine:
When [Bush was] asked yesterday whether he saw any end in sight in Iraq, he responded: “So long as I’m the president, my measure of success is victory — and success.”
Wow. The real Dubya and the Will Ferrell Dubya have finally become one. Awesome.
Then again, maybe he’s stupid like a fox. After all, when your measure of success is… success, you can put the goalposts wherever you damn well please.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:48pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Iraq,
Quotes,
War
Graphic demonstration of #7.
Some handy Iraq analogies from Lee Camp:
Recently I was arguing with one of my dumber friends about the Iraq war. He loves Bush and thinks bigger bombs is the answer in Iraq. I wasn’t gaining any ground in the argument until I used a simple analogy. I said, “Your solution is like shattering an expensive vase and then saying, ‘We need to keep smashing it until it’s fixed.’”
I stumped him. He was silent. So here’s a brief list of other analogies you can use on your dumb friends. And the truth is, I’ve seen similar ones work on some of the smartest political pundits.
1) The country of Iraq has essentially been demolished. The right-wingers keep saying the answer is continued large-scale military action. That’s like if someone got into a car accident, went into a coma, and the doctors believed the patient could be healed by more car accidents. So they just keep putting him into cars and sending him off cliffs.
2) I’ve heard people say that being against Bush or Petraeus or the war in Iraq is equivalent to being against the troops. That’s like if I knew someone who repeatedly sent brave puppies out into traffic. I called that person an asshole for abusing the puppies and abusing their power. Then you accused me of being anti-puppy.
3) The administration talks about the success of the surge because violence has decreased, but we’re in fact paying the militias not to kill each other or our soldiers. It’s like if you were treading water, two sharks approach and begin biting you, you give each one a small piece of fish to distract them. While they take a moment to eat the fish, you sit there treading water and yelling, “Problem solved!”
4) At the Petraeus hearings, he refused to give any sort of definition for “victory” in Iraq. That’s like running a foot race, you’ve gone 30 miles, you’re exhausted, and when you ask your coach driving along next to you how much farther, he just keeps saying “You’ll know it when you get there.” He keeps saying that until you collapse and die.
5) We claim to be “fighting the terrorists” in Iraq, but in fact our presence is helping to create more terrorists. The disaster in Iraq serves as a great training and recruiting tool for an entire generation of terrorists. It’s like trying to kill a gremlin by dousing him in water.
6) KBR, Halliburton, Blackwater and other companies have huge pull in our government (such as the vice presidency). So essentially they decide when the war is over. They also happen to be making millions upon millions of dollars from the war. So asking them to decide when the war is over, is like asking an ugly guy cast in a threesome porn movie to decide when the scene is over. Chances are the scene would go on for months, if not years. The entire crew would be standing around asking, “It’s not over yet? When will we know when it’s time to end it?” And the ugly guy would respond, “Um, it’s a bad idea to set timetables. Just trust me on this.”
7) Lastly, President Bush is like a colorblind child with a Rubik’s Cube.
I’m quite fond of analogies in general, and these in particular.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:17pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Iraq,
Quotes,
War
Bill Moyers:
…[W]hat is important for the journalist is not how close you are to power, but how close you are to reality.
So true, and so forgotten.
(h/t Jordan Barab)
April 10th, 2008 at 07:17pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Media,
Politics,
Quotes
From the NYT Magazine profile of Chris Matthews, by way of my good friend Spear & Magic:
Sometimes during commercial breaks, Matthews will boast to Olbermann of having restrained himself during the prior segment. “And I reward him with a grape,” Olbermann says.
Keith Olbermann rocks.
From Scott Horton’s “Worst. President. Ever” story, by way of Caro Kay:
“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one [historian]. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”
“With his unprovoked and disastrous war of aggression in Iraq and his monstrous deficits, Bush has set this country on a course that will take decades to correct,” said another historian. “When future historians look back to identify the moment at which the United States began to lose its position of world leadership, they will point—rightly—to the Bush presidency. Thanks to his policies, it is now easy to see America losing out to its competitors in any number of areas: China is rapidly becoming the manufacturing powerhouse of the next century, India the high tech and services leader, and Europe the region with the best quality of life.”
Ouch. History is already starting to judge Dubya… while he’s still alive! Can it do that???
April 9th, 2008 at 09:56pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Media,
Quotes,
Wankers
The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin:
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Rice was supposedly scheduled to deliver a major speech designating missile defense as the cornerstone of Bush’s new national security strategy.
That sure worked out well, eh?
April 4th, 2008 at 11:14pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Quotes,
Republicans,
Terrorism
Nicholas Kristof on Obama’s speech on race and Jeremiah Wright:
All of this demonstrates that a national dialogue on race is painful, awkward and essential. And that dialogue needs to focus not on clips from old sermons by Mr. Wright but on far more urgent challenges - for example, that about half of black males do not graduate from high school with their class.
That’s pretty much the crux in a nutshell. The Republicans and their pet media want to talk about how Jeremiah Wright is a Crazy Angry Black Man and therefore so is Barack Obama, when the real story is what Wright and Obama are actually talking about. If you dismiss Wright and/or Obama as Crazy Angry Black Men, then you never have to worry about whether maybe, just maybe, people of color in this country have legitimate grievances and genuine disadvantages.
My personal belief is that America has succeeded in almost completely eliminating racism… on paper. Now we just have to eliminate it everywhere else.
March 20th, 2008 at 06:09pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Media,
Obama,
Politics,
Quotes,
Racism
From a Daily News story about FDNY pressuring the Red Hook station to change their nickname from “The Happy Hookers”:
FDNY brass ordered the station to change its nickname and logo two years ago amid a crackdown on monikers like the Bronx’s 90 Proof and Staten Island’s Southern Comfort.
(…)
As the Daily News reported Sunday, the FDNY has again ordered the station to paint over the name on its door. None of the firefighters there would talk yesterday, but neighbors were quick to defend them.
“All the problems in Brooklyn, and the government is worried about a logo on a door?” asked Amanda Rival, 38.
“The question should be, ‘Would I trust these men with my life?’ And the answer is an emphatic ‘yes.’ Besides, they’re happy hookers, not depressed or abused hookers or anything like that.“
Yes, I think the mental state of the hookers is a vital distinction here.
UPDATE: Um, I should probably mention that I actually wrote this before the Spitzer story broke, and set it to “time-release” tonight…
March 10th, 2008 at 08:12pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Quotes
I think it works best completely out of context:
I have been asked to give blood for sausage-making and I want to know if this is against regulations.
The context is exactly what it sounds like, actually.
(h/t OFF/beat)
March 6th, 2008 at 05:41pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Quotes
Once again, courtesy of Olivia Judson:
….[C]louds are, apparently, more nutritious than they look.
Kind of a low bar, really.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:46am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Quotes
From Dubya’s press conference reacting to Fidel Castro’s retirement:
There will be an interesting debate that will arise eventually. There will be some who say, let’s promote stability. Of course, in the meantime, political prisoners will rot in prison, and the human condition will remain pathetic in many cases….
Yes, because Dubya cares soooo much about people who are unjustly imprisoned on the island of Cuba with no recourse for release.
Is he completely devoid of self-awareness, or is he just deliberately winding us up? Hell, for all I know he could actually be blaming Fidel for Gitmo - I mean, if he can blame Saddam for al Qaeda in Iraq…
(h/t to The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin)
February 19th, 2008 at 06:34pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Constitution,
Quotes,
Torture,
Wankers
Olivia Judson ponders how best to commemorate the shared birthday of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln:
I considered observing their joint birthday with a discussion of slave making in ants, but rejected that idea in favor of another.
You see, it’s almost Valentine’s Day, so she decided to speculate on the sex life of the tyrannosaurus instead. Ah, romance.
I want to take a journey 68 million years back in time to see a Tyrannosaurus rex couple mating. What was it like? Did they trumpet and bellow and stamp their feet? Did they thrash their enormous tails? Did he bite her neck in rapture and exude a musky scent? Somehow, I imagine that when two T. rex got it on, the earth shook for miles around.
And if I could only take this journey, I could answer a question that sometimes bothers me. Did T. rex have a penis? Did he even, as lizards do, have two?
(…)
The reason we don’t know whether T. rex had one is that the organ is generally too soft to leave a fossil trace. (There’s an exception to this: some mammals have a bone in their penis, the os penis or baculum. This can fossilize. Humans are unusual among primates in not having one; in case you’re wondering, it’s not clear whether the bone plays a role in maintaining erections.)
(…)
Moreover, whether a male has a penis at all varies from one group to the next. Male salamanders, for instance, don’t: they deposit sperm on the ground and the female collects it. Among birds, penises are rare: ostriches, emus, ducks, geese and swans are among the few. The rest just have a cloaca - an all-purpose opening also used for urination, defecation and, in the female, laying eggs. To copulate, two birds bring their cloacae together in what’s called a cloacal kiss.
I am so turned on right now.
Anyway, her guess is that male tyrannosaurs did have penises, because their closest living relatives, crocodiles and primitive birds (ostriches, emus, rheas, cassowaries, kiwis and tinamous) did. As to what kind of penis, I guess we’ll never know, unless we get lucky and find a fossilized one, or some miraculously preserved T. rex porn.
February 13th, 2008 at 09:00pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Coolness,
Quotes,
Science
From a fascinating Wired slideshow about the surreal Kaiju Big Battel wrestling:
In the second round, Sun Buster reels from a rough blow from Team CIA Plantains, two of many bananalike creatures in the Kaiju universe.
Awesome.
They’re not kidding, either:
I like how Zombie Plantain has a little drawn-on villain mustache, and possibly goatee.
February 13th, 2008 at 08:24pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Coolness,
Quotes,
Weirdness
From an NYT story on George Romero’s latest project:
We get the zombies we deserve.
Truer words were never spoken.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:09am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Quotes
The very first line of Tom Shales’ review of last night’s SOTU:
George W. Bush finished his seventh and possibly final State of the Union speech at 10:02 p.m. last night….
Possibly final??? NOOOOOOO!!!!
January 29th, 2008 at 06:23pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Constitution,
Media,
Quotes
Literally:
A study by Zandi estimates that every dollar put into the food stamp program produces a $1.73 increase in the economy as the money is spent and spent again. By contrast, every dollar put into the business tax breaks that are in the stimulus package will increase the economy by 27 cents, according to the study.
Unfortunately, this is the wrong metric. The correct metric is, of course, how many of those stimulus dollars end up in campaign contributions to Republicans.
(By way of The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin)
January 25th, 2008 at 06:51pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Economy,
Quotes,
Republicans
Today’s two-fer is from last week’s Wild Side blog/column by Olivia Judson.
(Disclaimer: Ms. Judson was in the same dorm complex my freshman year, and I thought she was very sweet. So the selection process may not be entirely unbiased today. Take it up with my ombudsman.)
The first quote is actually from Alfred Russel Wallace, who Darwin beat to the punch on publishing a theory of evolution:
If this [scientific investigation of tropical ecosystems] is not done, future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations. They will charge us with having culpably allowed the destruction of some of those records of Creation which we had it in our power to preserve; and while professing to regard every living thing as the direct handiwork and best evidence of a Creator, yet, with a strange inconsistency, seeing many of them perish irrecoverably from the face of the earth, uncared for and unknown.
Still timely after 145 years.
The second quote is just alarming on multiple levels:
Every year, then, most blue tits die.
Egad.
January 17th, 2008 at 09:24pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Environment,
Quotes,
Science
From an eBay auction page:
We offer super large postage discounts for three or more monkeys.
I think this is only fair, really.
January 16th, 2008 at 11:39pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Quotes
New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin reminisces about his days in Green Bay (where his current and former teams will compete for a Superbowl berth this Sunday):
Coughlin was once a wide receivers coach in Green Bay, before he came to the Giants in a similar capacity. Like Manning, Coughlin is not a fountain of anecdotes when it comes to frigid environs, or anything else.
“I don’t remember,” Coughlin said. “Of course it was cold. I don’t remember any game that was more cold than others. From Thanksgiving on, you can expect any kind of weather at that point in time. I remember a day in Chicago one day that was really cold.”
I’m not sure if that’s really the full quote, or if Bondy chopped it there for effect. For all I know, Coughlin could have gone on at length about how it was so cold that they had to pour warm water on the receivers’ hands to remove the ball, or he could have just continued on in the same vein: “And then there was this other day in Denver which was almost as cold as that day in Chicago, but not quite, and this day in Buffalo that was colder than both of them, and then there was that day in Dallas that wasn’t very cold at all…”
I also liked the bit about Bret Favre possibly being part Yeti.
Oh, and before I forget…
GO GIANTS!!! WHOOO!!!
January 15th, 2008 at 08:13pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Quotes,
Sports
Absolutely nothing at all whatsoever to do with the New Hampshire primary (Hillary & McCain are back; Rudy’s about on par with Ron Paul; Fred Thompson trails the write-ins), but this is ridiculously funny despite being almost three years old:
…I was walking past my friendly dvd salesperson and decided to check out Revenge of the Sith. I was assured the quality was good and for 7rmb why not give it a shot.
Aside from the counters on the top of the screen and a distorted perspective it was ok- not high quality but watchable. The captions were a hilarious surprise- a direct English translation of the Chinese interpretation of what the script was saying. It varied from being somewhat close to the script to being ‘far far away’…
amazingly enough, the beginning scroll is mistranslated even though the words are right there on the screen.
(…)
Obi Wan: “Let them pass between us”
(…)
Obi Wan grows impatient with R2.
(…)
that’s Chancellor Palpatine speaking, talking about Obi Wan.
(…)
this seemed completely random until I figured out that ‘Jedi Council’ was being translated into Chinese then back to English as ‘the Presbyterian Church’.
(…)
Anakin bargains for the life of his cuckoldry. Cuckoldry?
(…)
i love this translation. Darth Vader is actually shouting, “Nooooooooooooo…”
Yes, that’s right, this is the actual origin of the expression “DO NOT WANT.” Be sure to click on the link for the whole thing - I omitted much hilarity for the sake of brevity.
I’m not sure if it makes me a lot less cool or a lot more cool that I did not know about this until Wired mentioned it…
January 8th, 2008 at 11:03pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Coolness,
Movies,
Quotes,
Weirdness
Just substitute Dr. Phil for Howard Cosell.
An actual psychiatrist comments on Dr. Phil’s attempt to perform a one-man intervention on Britney Spears:
“It’s true people sometimes need to be placed under involuntary mental health treatment because they can’t take care of themselves,” veteran psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Sugar said of the 26-year-old Spears. “But there’s a difference between being detained involuntarily for psychological treatment and being forced to endure Dr. Phil involuntarily.”
I really don’t like Britney, but there are some things that no-one deserves.
(h/t the shadowy, mysterious, and under construction Codename V.)
January 8th, 2008 at 07:54pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Monday Media Blogging,
Quotes,
Wankers
Dubya Bush, Master Of Irony, talking about resistance to No Child Left Behind:
Look, I recognize some people don’t like accountability. In other words, accountability says if you’re failing, we’re going to expose that and expect you to change. Accountability also says that when you’re succeeding you’ll get plenty of praise.
Yes, in a masterful feat of rhetorical jiu-jitsu, the president actually becomes his own strawman. Brilliant.
(h/t The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin)
January 8th, 2008 at 06:30pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Quotes,
Wankers
Photographer Lee Friedlander, quoted in an NYT story about his exhibit of photographs of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted:
We photographers don’t really make anything: we peck at the world and try to find something curious or wild or beautiful that might fit into what the medium of photography can hold.
This is about right for me. I have a hard time viewing photography as a creative endeavor in the same league as actual Art; I see it more as a scavenger hunt, trying to uncover the beauty hidden in the mundane (or not-so-mundane - but the mundane is usually what I have to work with).
And as Friedlander alludes to, oftimes scenes that are beautiful to the naked eye become dreary and boring when photographed. But, happily, the converse is also true.
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:58am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Art/Architecture,
Quotes
Alas, not on my own blog, or even on any political blog at all. No, the best comments of the year are on today’s Blue Screen (NY Daily News Giants football blog). Ralph wrote a post arguing that the Giants should rest their starters at halftime to reduce the risk of injuries heading into the playoffs, even though it would give the Patriots a free shot at capping off their undefeated season.
A commenter named Craig Lynn took offense… at length. Repeatedly. Check it out, it’s quite remarkable.
December 28th, 2007 at 05:45pm
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Quotes,
Sports
Washington Nationals general manager Jim Bowden on pitcher Jesus Colome’s abcess:
It was a pretty serious situation. I pray for his buttocks and his family.
I only just saw it today, but it’s my new favorite.
More great 2007 sports quotes here as well, plus bonus snarky commentary!
December 28th, 2007 at 11:26am
Posted by Eli
Entry Filed under:
Quotes,
Sports
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