Go fuck yourself.

Yes you, fucking soulless hack. And you, fucking spineless sellout fuck. Two sides of the same fucking coin. The chickenshit bully and the coward bullied. UnAmerican fucks. Both of you. Fuck off.

Update:
And you, too, nameless military-industrial complex toady fucker.

You can't kill the boogeyman

If Psycho birthed the modern Anglo-American horror movie, then Halloween is surely among its most accomplished, intelligent and enduring offspring. Oft duplicated, since exceeded in violence, grimness and gore, Halloween, unlike most of its diabolical children, retains an elemental, almost Jungian quality, the primordial image not of an archetype, but of evil itself: the dispassionate, eternal, unstoppable force in the Shape of man. Jung wrote that

archetypes are like riverbeds which dry up when the water deserts them, but which it can find again at any time. An archetype is like an old watercourse along which the water of life has flowed for centuries, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it has flowed in this channel the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return to its old bed.

Replace "water of life" with "fear" and we have a winner. The opening line of Lovecraft's celebrated essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, declares that "the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." We fear the darkness and the unseen horrors that dwell within. Vampire, the drinker of blood, of life; berserkr, literally, bear-shirt, the animal spirit of man unleashed; these and other monsters are embodied in the faceless Shape, Michael Myers. He is not a man but an elemental force as natural as those ancient flowing currents, as tooth and claw, as the blowing wind, to which humanity is powerless to stop.

The first shot of Haddonfield is a bare street devoid of life, windswept - an early warning - the leaves helpless on the breeze. When Laurie Strode arrives at home and moves to shut her bedroom window hidden by the flowing curtains, she looks down to see the Shape, the primordial, natural force of evil. In Laurie we see the weakness and frailty of humanity that thinks itself safe from danger within its artificially constructed havens. And in time, we see its courage and resolve in the face of (super)natural danger, which can never be truly vanquished. No one knows this better than Dr. Sam Loomis, the learned psychiatrist, the wise sage whose only weapon is knowledge. Like Odin, who placed one of his eyes in Mimir's well - the boundary between the underworld and the one of gods, giants and humanity; a liminal space between darkness and light - Loomis, in exchange for this knowledge, traded in a false peace of mind for the understanding of the world between the stable and the insane, the sanitarium and its denizens. He confronts Michael, understands him as evil personified, once chained, now unbound, yet cannot stop him. The last shot we see of the doctor's face reveals that this is the payment for that forbidden knowledge. He knows that evil can never be eradicated.

Sunlit, yet unsettling, a layer of creepiness floods even the most innocuous scene. John Carpenter has talked about his debt to Chinatown and its use of blue backlighting, put to expert use throughout the growing darkness. The disjointed quality of Halloween, the chaos below the calm surface, is unmistakable. Through judicious use of first person camera shots, quotidian ambient sound and one of the most instantly recognizable - and, crucially, effective - soundtracks in movie history, Carpenter has used the tricks of his trade to craft an unbreakable snapshot of the inexorable force of evil. The star of the show isn't the discovery of new ways to physically wound, the camera lingering over the bloodied and disturbed flesh and bone; it's evil itself, lurking beyond sight, the noisome air your breathe demanding that you not so much ruminate on the myriad gruesome ways you can meet your end, but simply know that the end is coming, and soon; worst of all, the stark realization that there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it. That is what keeps Halloween, after nearly thirty years, at the top of the horror movie mountain.


Hence, my decidedly mixed feelings about the Rob Zombie-helmed remake which opens today. Who would dare to rerecord Revolver or Master of Reality or Physical Graffiti or London Calling in their entirety? Or film a new version of Citizen Kane or A Clockwork Orange or North By Northwest? Yet one of the bleakest, claustrophobic and enduring horror films of all time was Carpenter's own remake of The Thing and, aside from Halloween, the best representation of his oeuvre. The flexibility of film compared to other media allows for easier reinterpretations of the original version or the source material. Hell, even The Day the Earth Stood Still is going to be remade. Bastards! Just make it a good movie, okay? But please, let us refrain from ever speaking about the 1998 remake of Psycho itself.

Anyway, watching the trailer of the new version, the visuals are solid enough. The style certainly appears to be there within the couple of minutes allotted to the viewer. Whether the soul is as well, whether it pays homage to the thrills of the original where the mere hint of evil is enough to shake the bones or whether Mr. Zombie takes the easy way out, succumbing to the gratuitous and weak splatter of so many half-baked scares of the modern horror film, inflicted on an endless parade of one-dimensional characters, certainly remains to be seen. I fear that it'll be the latter, hence the bar of expectation being set about grave, er ground, level. Muahahahaha, etc, etc. Hope I'm wrong.

Is our military officials learning?

Iraq IS going swimmingly, Pentagon says.
My bank account DOES have millions of dollars, Randal says.
See how easy that is? You try it!

At the White House, officials argued that the GAO report, which was required by legislation President Bush signed last spring, was unrealistic because it assigned "pass or fail" grades to each benchmark, rather than assessing whether the Iraqis have made progress toward reaching the benchmark goals.

Hey, you fail the No Chicanery Left Behind standardized tests, you suffer the consequences.

Get the lead out

Given how sick he had been, he would've died soon enough, but it's hard not to wonder if, alotted a few more months on this all-but-insignificant ball of molten rock floating lonely in the vast cosmic deep, he couldn't have churned out one more immortal masterwork like the following.

Opposition would be costly

Good thing we're keeping our mouth shut.

President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.

The Democrats have been so resolute in fighting the madness of this administration tooth and nail! Why the sudden change of heart?

The request is being prepared now in the belief that Congress will be unlikely to balk so soon after hearing the two officials argue that there are promising developments in Iraq but that they need more time to solidify the progress that they have made, a congressional aide said.

Ah, now it's as clear and sparkling as the finest European crystal. After years and years of administration mouthpieces saying nothing like this whatsoever, speaking only the truth of the daily horrors our troops and the poor Iraqi citizens face from the well-organized monolith that is Al-Qaeda, the extreme shock to the system of finally turning a corner has effectively paralyzed the Democrats. Well played, Fate!

But what's with Bush failing to obfuscate in that special Texan way of his?

In a speech yesterday to the convention of the American Legion in Reno, Nev., Bush gave an optimistic assessment of recent events in the war, now in its fifth year. "There are unmistakable signs that our strategy is achieving the objectives we set out," he said.

There sure are.

Einstein's Warped Tour

"These neutron stars want to kill your children's space-time, David!"

Yawning is so tiring

"Chatter chatter chatter impeachment?"
"Chatter chatter chatter unnecessary."
"Chatter chatter chatter why?"
"Chatter chatter chatter resigned."

Wake me when he serves jailtime.

Brown derby

Once again it behooves me to temper the enthusiasm generated by quality quarterbacking - much of it against Denver's first team defense, no less! - by pointing out that the run defense, as last year, and the year before, and the year befzozzzzz.....oh, sorry. Where was I? Yes, the run defense remains as ineffectual as Democratic oversight of the crooks who run this country. And I completely understand that it's the preseason, but the fragile Cleveland sports psyche could've handled much better getting gashed by Travis Henry and Mike Bell instead of fullback Cecil Sapp and undrafted mystery man Selvin Young.

In any case, Frye showed enough to keep the starting job, mostly because that's where Crennel has had him the entire offseason and training camp - the Coin Flip Game notwithstanding, which he only won through the timely intervention of the Super Magical Jesus Baby. Praise Him! Quinn will likely be assigned the important task of guarding the clipboard and may see action sooner rather than later.

On a final note, it was a pleasant surprise to see Jamal Lewis looking so spry after a few injury-plagued campaigns. I'm certainly glad we only gave him a one-year deal, but for once, maybe we'll get our money's worth. Andre Rison, I'm looking at you.

Deathbed confession

Pete remains Perfect. My bad.








"Oh, the glass is most definitely half-full, sir."

Highway robbery

Hey feds, if you're going to get all hot and bothered about this, shouldn't you have about this? If only poor Mr. Prieto was a friend of Halliburton. Because if you're not....


















"Cash rules everything around me!"
"What about me?"
"Shut the fuck up and smile for the camera."

Blackened

After another week of loquacious Republican obfuscation,
sometimes Modest Mouse just doesn't fucking cut it.

Madness from the sea

It matters not whether the stars are right,
the blasphemous minions of Cthulhu may destroy us yet!

Report offers grim view of American leaders

I know that's not what it says, but that's certainly what it says. Oh, fear not, mes amis, the America-hating moonbats don't escape unscathed either from the Just and Godly Wrath of The Mighty NIE.

But the report also implicitly criticizes proposals offered by Democrats, including several presidential candidates, who have called for a withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq by next year and for a major shift in the American approach, from manpower-intensive counterinsurgency operations to lower-profile efforts aimed at supporting Iraqi troops and carrying out quick-strike counterterrorism raids.

You bastards. You can't give it six more months, can you. It'll work this time. No, really. It will. I swear! Why are you looking at me that way?

Such a shift, the report says, would "erode security gains achieved thus far" and could return Iraq to a downward spiral of sectarian violence.

See, we have to stay the course lest we be responsible for even more death.

While the current strategy in Iraq has produced "measurable but uneven improvements" in security, it says,

One step forward, one step back. Cha, cha, cha.

the approach has done little to bridge sectarian divides in Iraq.

At least that spiral of sectarian violence has stopped rearing its multiple heads and no longer leaves a trail of refugees and bloody corpses in its wake. The surge worked.

The report also says that pulling American troops out of Iraq would most likely make things far worse.

That's right. Stay. The. Course. With just enough - horrors! - nuance to allow nitpicking, but disallow outright rejection by The Very Serious, it's almost like this report had been pre-approved by the Bush administration. It's a good thing they haven't politicized virtually every nook and crannie of the government.

And let's not even talk about this traitorous behavior, nor the fact that it doesn't exactly mesh with the NIE. I know you were fired, Pete, but this rancor is uncalled for, and after all we've done for you, too. Why can't you be more like this lackey?

However, the article ended on a strange note of unintended veracity.

Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told members of Congress last month that without political progress in Iraq, "no amount of troops in no amount of time will make much of a difference."

If you say that you are mine
I'll be here 'til the end of time
So you got to let know
Should I stay or should I go?

Whether you support the troops or hate them, the answer is quite obvious.

UnAmerican is the new black

What a bunch of whiny, piss-their-pants cowards.

If McConnell really believes that Americans are going to die as a result of debating the FISA bill, then he cannot possibly mean that "sunshine's a good thing" here.

As long as the message remains the same (didn't you hear me? DEATH!) inconsequential details like facts and intellectual consistency are meaningless.

That would entail him blessing the needless deaths of Americans at the hands of super-adaptable terrorists who now know what procedures they can undertake to avoid detection from the NSA.

But this goes far beyond simple terror tactics. What Spencer Ackerman fails to point out - presumably because, at one point, Republicans were sane and, yes, I realize that I'm stretching the meaning of that word to the breaking point - is that's precisely what they want. This isn't news. These are sick fucking people, and their public mea culpas after they get called on it are as phony as fucking unicorns. In their limited Flash Gordon serial minds, we've always been at war with Eurasia and they must keep it that way and nothing would help the cause more than Americans on this side of the Atlantic getting blown to smithereens.

"It's so hard for me to listen to you, I hate you all so much!"

"Guess we bit off more than we could chew."
"Quitters! That's why we lost 'Nam!"
"You want to lose the entire world?"

The Neocon Imperium and their associated wingnut minions aren't doing a very good job of staying on message.

The funny thing is, it doesn't mean a fucking thing. Not when you have this million-times-discredited narrative still poisoning the atmosphere, with these fuckers as the clean-up crew.