Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
Burnt out, over the hill autistic IT nerd and longtime SSC lurker
User ID: 3219
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Yeah, AFAICT people feel strongly about White Noise one way or the other. Me, I'm adoring it for the constant bloviating and overall absurdity, just as I did the movie. Probably doesn't hurt being old enough to actually remember the Eighties, either.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
White Noise by Don DeLillo. Been wanting to read it ever since I saw the movie a while back, and it's pretty much what I hoped it would be as a book. Thus far (the airborne toxic event has just concluded for the curious), I'm impressed at how well the movie hews to the overall book, especially in tone.
Exactly. It's like the, "hey wiretap, can you give me a recipe for pancakes?" meme or, more spicily, Eric Cartman walking around bitching about the surveillance state whilst taking all of his calls on speakerphone.
The professor I had most often (3 classes) in college was an older Indian guy who taught physics. One of my favorite memories of him was when he was covering a unit on optics, and he had projected on the board an illustrative image, which he off-handedly mentioned was the cover art to his favorite album.
Yes, it was exactly what everyone is thinking.
We teen white kids had a great moment of fun about it. "Holy shit, did you guys know Indians could be Boomers, too?"
Lol, boo-this-man.gif
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
South Park made fun of this with the consent forms
About that... Dave Chappelle would like a word.
Yeah, I can see that. Thinking about the humor angle specifically, there's definitely a strong thread of what I tend to think of as sophomoric humor in the style of Kevin Smith--sexual, crass, body-based humor, and this is consistent throughout all of the books. But there's also a strong thread of absurdist humor in the original John Dies at the End that, for me at least, works much better than the more juvenile humor does by itself. I found John's band, Three Armed Sally, with its three bass players and memorable introductory theater, to be hilarious in general and the lyrics to the song Camel Holocaust to be so ridiculous that they're utterly hysterical genius, for example, and that's just one part of the book. The closest thing that I can point to in the sequels is detective Lance Falconer from This Book is Full of Spiders, who is a great touch, but can't carry the book by himself.
Superior humor aside, in the more general sense, I think that the original John Dies at the End also benefited from its origin as a long-running serial fiction on Cracked.com and the long overall gestation period that it had. Not only is the humor better, but the jagged edges between scenes, characters, and overall narrative are sharper and drive the overall plot forward. The world it builds is fun, convoluted, and ripe for further exploration. The ending nails its aesthetic and completely sticks its landing. The sequels, by contrast, lack the additional subplots, polish, and humor of the original. Both end with at least a touch of glurge and lack the punch of the original. Worse, the world that the original built lies mostly untapped in the sequel and is, by the time of What the Hell Did I Just Read, completely vestigial. It felt to me like the literary equivalent of watching another episode of Scooby Doo instead of the rollicking, crank fueled bender through a modern Lovecraftian-inspired horrific universe that is the original. The sharp edges and social commentary of the original are largely missing and replaced instead by typical soy-based "humor" and, in the case of What the Hell Did I Just Read, a Very Special Episode feel as well.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
The Noob Returns (Noobtown Book 9) by Ryan Rimmel. Haven't quite finished it yet but fuck, it's fun to return to this world after a decent stretch between books.
What the Hell Did I Just Read ended up disappointing me, mostly because Pargin ultimately only played around with the differing perspectives of the characters, leading to a pointless, dare I say ruined, climax and no real resolution. I was hoping with the way it was going that it'd be an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade sort of situation but instead, it felt more like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. And I can't help but notice that the original John Dies at the End has, overall, been funnier than the subsequent books combined.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
I mean, Mark Felt did turn out to be Deep Throat. And wasn't E. Howard Hunt one of those involved in spying on Goldwater for LBJ?
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
I mean, Firefly fans are legendary for their influence, from the full page Thank You ad to managing to help get the Big Damn Movie the green light, they've delivered. I'm sure they'll signal boost this as much as possible, but I personally had no idea that there was still even a torch to be carried for a second season to get this far!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Nathan Fillion announced on Instagram that a second Firefly season is in development.
WHAT.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
What the Hell Did I Just Read? (John Dies at the End: Book 3) by Jason Pargin. FWIW, I didn't like the second as much as the first but #3 is exploring concepts that are more interesting to me and I'm liking it better than #2.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
It was supposed to be a cheap fighter in the same way that the Affordable Care Act was supposed to lower the cost of healthcare in the US by bending the cost curve, which is to say that this is merely how it was sold to John Q. Public[1]. In reality, the F-35 is a large scale graft patronage program that ultimately happened to produce a thoroughly overpriced and under-performing hangar queen of a 5th generation fighter for multiple trillions of dollars more that the US otherwise would have spent on developing separate aircraft tailored to specific needs, but institutional knowledge had decayed to the point where the lessons of the past had largely been forgotten and thus needed to be repeated.
[1] Whether or not this is related to "the stupidity of the American voter" is a separate question. On the gripping hand, the F-35 passed during a comparatively information-starved period of time where it was relatively trivial for politicians to get away with saying one thing while doing another. Moreover, WRT the ACA specifically, while Americans did indeed want something to be done about the cost of their healthcare and their access to same, the ACA was unimpressive enough that there was widespread dissatisfaction with what congress was actually proposing, so much so that Massachusetts voters actually voted in a Republican to Ted Kennedy's vacant seat in order to try and tank the whole thing before the differences were worked out between the House and Senate versions of the bill, which of course Nancy Pelosi solved by having the House pass the Senate version of the bill. On the sinister hand, far too many folks ultimately go back to hugging their televisions rather than actually updating their priors.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Brilliant, it's one hell of a movie and I think I can safely say that the car chase alone is worth the price of admission!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
I have an as-yet unexplained fondness for Demolition Man.
What needs to be explained about that? It's Demolition Man!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
And I do think that actual behind-the-scenes collusion takes place pretty regularly, at least collusion-lite. Surely there are WhatsApp groups and such for progressive journalists; it must happen now and then that a member of the group posts something like "I'm thinking about reporting on topic X from angle Y. Thoughts?"
It was ever thus. Before Social Media was a Thing, there was the JournoList email group, which itself a successor to the townhouse email group. I'm sure if you were to search for certain Narratives, you'd be able to find supercuts of various co-ordinated "kill shot" messages being disseminated by various talking heads going back to the earliest days of Youtube, and quite probably before.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
It was nowhere near that simple, but to be fair, you really had to be there. Once the long-awaited OIG report dropped detailing serious Shenanigans[1], Flynn motioned to withdraw his guilty plea. Here is a supplement that details the misconduct of Covington & Burling LLP, his original lawyers in his case, and here[2] is the supplement that spells out the relevant parts of the FBI and DOJ misconduct in his case. As new evidence, such as the official closing of the Flynn investigation on 1/4/17, and an email documenting an unofficial promise not to prosecute Mike Jr.[3], continued to accumulate, Brandon Van Grack was removed from the case. By May, the DOJ was motioning to dismiss, but even as exculpatory evidence continued to be produced, the circus just kept going.
Revisiting all of this the better part of a decade later, I've had significant difficulty locating the some of the supplements and exhibits that I remember reading that provide even more context, which is frustrating to say the least. It's admittedly possible that they have all blurred together in my memory, as I followed all of that business rather closely. This is a preface to say that what I have linked here is merely what I hope is a decent sampling of the evidence underlying the smorgasbord of bullshit that was the Flynn prosecution. Alas, I have spent the bulk of my evening typing this lone reply rather than attending to my own needs and despite (allegedly) knowing better. More fool me.
[1]. As with all good political documents, the devil is in the details while the executive summary is considerably more... neutered tidy. More importantly, Flynn's new counsel had repeatedly filed motions to compel Brady material, aka exculpatory evidence, which the FBI and DOJ both denied existed.
[2]. This supplement rebutted the DOJ's downplaying of the OIG report, saying that it wasn't that bad and that it didn't pertain to Flynn, which considering that Flynn was in fact Crossfire Razor, was a lie "lacked candor" in OIG-speak.
[3]. This bit was relevant both because Van Grack denied threatening to prosecute Flynn Jr. and also because he would have been required to report an official agreement, hence the unofficial nature of the offer detailed in the email.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
I thought the news media couldn't get worse than "firey but mostly peaceful protests." But somehow they've managed to reach a new low.
Gell-Mann amnesia strikes again!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
This Book is Full of Spiders (John Dies at the End: Book 2) by Jason Pargin.
Just started re-reading John Dies at the End by Jason Pargin. I scored the sequels on sale for cheap from the Kindle Bookstore and it's been so long since I read it that I really don't remember much of it outside of my enjoyment of it.
I mean, sample size of one and all, but I actually delurked and started posting for a conversation like this one, FWTW.
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