Here's an interesting little think piece by Ace on Stallone's reasoning for not having Rambo take on Bin Laden in the latest Rambo movie. It would be, Stallone tells us, "insulting" to the real-world heroes who are out there hunting UBL down.

Yup. And yet Ace is skeptical about whether Stallone could have used that subject matter even if he'd wanted to.

I know that one of the issues Jason Apuzzo of Libertas (and The Liberty Film Festival) has had with Hollywood is its reluctance to use Islamist terrorists as real villains in feature movies. And I personally would like to see it done—but it has to be done with some delicacy. Not, as Ace puts it, made into a "comic book" based on a real (and contemporary) struggle.

The fact that Bruce Willis hasn't been able to get a movie made based on Michael Yon's writing about Deuce Four is tremendously frustrating to me, because that is a real story—there would be no question of whether it was respectful to do it. It would be an homage. But the problem may have to do with Willis looking to traditional fundraising sources. Had Mel Gibson waited around for that sort of money, Passion of the Christ might never have been made.

The film industry has issues, and its willingness to throw huge amounts of money down the drain on anti-war propaganda that people don't want to see—and forego a fortune from making movies that people might want to—is pretty illustrative of its political neuroses. But. So what? There is a market out there, and we all know it. All that's necessary is to get the talent and the financing into the same room at the same time, and to come up with creative distribution channels.

The bottom line? We need more independent filmmakers. Truly independent filmmakers, who are willing to secure alternate financing for their work, have it shown at center-right/libertarian film festivals, and rely on DVD sales to create the necessary buzz. In the final analysis, movie theaters will let films be shown that are going to bring money in. We need a parallel structure to the existing Hollywood machine.

And we need it now. This is, as a famous lady once put it, "no time to go wobbly."

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. . . to Rosina and her family.

It looks like the trip will be over soon. Tomorrow, maybe.

Chalk one more up for cancer, in its battle on the human race. One more life over way too soon. I get so angry about it—and yet there are important people in my life who wouldn't be here at all if medical science weren't getting better at recognizing and treating these things.

I used to envy this beautiful woman more than I can say, and that shocks me now. It's so easy to get caught up in the petty concerns of day-to-day life. We lose track of what's important so quickly.

"Well, that's envy. There's some of that in the best of us, m'Dear. And don't you think that's a bit too bad?" (Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey. Will someone spot me on the exact wording? No time for fact-checking.)

Yes. Yes, I do. But I'm glad I know Rosina. Glad I invited her to my wedding. Glad that I could see her sunny smile, and experience her wicked sense of humor. (When the wives of comedy writers talk . . . )

And I am more pissed than usual at Mr. Cancer, whom I've never forgiven for the loss of Dave Arnold, the last true gentleman left on the planet—and sorely missed.

Via Write Enough.

UPDATE: I've fixed the "Edmund" thing. I'm not sure where that came from; I've certainly seen Harvey enough times to know better, as my cohabitant has pointed out. On the other hand, I do know how to spell "margarine." Nonetheless, I keep buying "margerine" week after week, without correcting the list on the refrigerator, nor complaining out loud. I rather thought I'd bought myself some slack in that department. Maybe not . . .

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"By the way, please don't be jealous. After all, you already got your song. And the one I'm recording now is for a hooker."

"Fair enough."

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"So," he asked me. "Do you drink these days?"

"Like a fish."

"So then you aren't still a gun-nut racist, are you?"

I knew what he meant by that. "Yes," I replied. "Yes, I am."

Silly old rabbit. As Joel Surnow puts it, "if you want to drink, smoke and eat meat these days, you have to hang out with Republicans."

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for more posts about kinky sex, more hot cars, and more hot women.

I shall try. Here's a hot girl, who probably ranks as the second most important woman in my life (well, third—I'm pretty self-centered):

And here's a picture from Siggraph this past summer, which led me to believe I shouldn't drink too much at those conventions if I want to find my car at night:

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She was so young. So silly. And her face became the face of a national mess that never should have happened, because the most powerful man in the world wanted to deny Paula Jones her day in court.

The London Times has a roundup of the major players in the scandal(s) that led to the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton.

Ace chimes in:

This is the ten-year anniversary, to me, of the superheating and supercharging of American politics. People became radicalized. I know I did. Until the Impeachment Wars I didn't mind Clinton so much—I didn't particularly like him by that point, mind you, and I preferred the Republican Congress' policies in the main—but I didn't hate him.

But what followed was a year of being lied to, absurdly lied to, by both Clinton and his myriad defenders. Meanwhile those telling the truth about the affair were torn down and slandered by the Clinton Machine and its willing accomplices in the media.

. . . . . . . . . .

Toxic times, and we're all still living with the aftereffects. All because Clinton couldn't—perhaps on the demand of his wife—simply pay Paula Jones a $25,000 nuisance go-away settlement and apologize vaguely for any harm he "may" have caused.

No, he had to "win," and winning meant lying, and lying meant perjury, and perjury meant putting the country through a year of screaming and distraction.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:05 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Actually, I'm with Moe on this one.

Also, I'd like to point out that my sister is half-Syrian, and has a scary-sounding Middle Eastern middle name. So by all means, go ahead and make that an issue. I'll just be here, um, field-stripping my Glock and humming.

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of one penis clashing?

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After my mother picked me up at the airport, I petted Mandy one more time, and got into my car. My precious. Then I drove home from Westchester, avoiding subways and strangers and confusingly labeled streets.

The wind blew through the hills, almost blowing the car out of its lane at a certain point, but I used to take a VW bug up and down the Grapevine, so I can handle that.

Elvis Costello in the CD player; Gatorade in the drink cup. Just me, inside a lovable chunk of glass and steel, accelerating through the curving freeways and winding roads in East L.A. on a dark Wednesday night.

I may never leave Los Angeles again.

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We learn from our mistakes.

Also, we have better legs. No—it's true.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:41 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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However, it's with people I see on, like, a weekly basis. A suit would be a bit much.

Also, it's in California—where it's easy to overdo it.

Any thoughts?

And let's not it mixed up with this thread.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:22 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Oh, yeah.

An elected official charged with falsely claiming he earned the military's highest honor has filed a motion to dismiss the federal case against him on free speech grounds.
The motion argues that the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, under which water board member Xavier Alvarez was charged, is incompatible with the First Amendment because it restricts free speech by criminalizing false claims of military honors.

Via Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom.

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. . . from Brian May:

Oh, rock of ages, do not crumble, love is breathing still;

Oh, lady moon, shine down—a little people magic, if you will.

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So. What are the most common male heterosexual fantasies?

How would you rank these on the pedestrian-to-kinky scale?

a) touching a female breast;
b) touching and otherwise interacting with female genitalia;
c) being in one bed with two women at the same time;
d) fishnet stockings;
e) knee-high boots;
f) watching a woman pleasure herself;
g) sucking from the nipple of a lactating woman;
h) being tied up or otherwise dominated by a woman;
i) watching a woman pee;
j) fucking a girl in the ass;
k) a great manicure on pretty feet—to be examined up close, or possibly with your tongue;
l) the idea of being with a woman because she is very overweight;
m) being with a woman because she has had children, or because she is in her forties and fifties;
n) being with a women because she is past retirement age;
o) stimulation of the male prostate gland.

UPDATE: I've had a request that participants in this very scientifical survey actually use the names of the acts, rather than the letters I've assigned. This will (1) allow discussion of such matters as penetration of the male anus by a woman (using whatever works)—which I forgot to list [now added: see o]—and (2) participation in the discussion by non-engineers.

UPDATE 2: Martin sends the following feedback regarding what's "normal" versus "kinky":

Just one of countless false dichotomies we face every day. Indeed, one could ask a few thousand randomly chosen people to rank acts on a some arbitrary numerical scale, and somehow average the responses.

But the bigger question is wondering what possible use could come from that data.

Which brings us to Martin's third rule of measurement: Do not gather data until after you have decided how you are going to use it.

I can see why that would work for a mathematician—after all, those guys tend to travel light. I'm not sure it would be the correct attitude for a scientist, though, since it would pretty much knock out all basic research in one fell swoop.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:36 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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asks,

No, you really can't. Is there a word that describes something which is both disgusting and hilarious at the same time?

Um. Jihadi?

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And . . . it's early in the day.

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Iowahawk, Treacher and a few others have started a new blog.

No politics. As I understand it, they are sticking with breasts, boobs, and mammary glands. Oh, and—hot cars, cool guns, bitchin' tatts, premium whiskey, cigars. You know: the "rogue gentleman" niche. I should resent it, being a big fan of cigars, guns, tatts and cars myself—but it's not like the guys ever complain when I crash their parties.

They're calling the site bolus, which I kind of like: my recollection from high school physiology class is that the word refers both to a bite of food and a single [presumably theeoretical] unit of shit in the lower intestines.

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I think one has to trust one's first instincts in these situations.

Goldstein should stick with The Sophist Slayer.

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whose Republican relatives&mostly in Wyoming—do not appear to be representative:

Will the Republican establishment repudiate the content published in [the Ron Paul] newsletters? How about the other Republican candidates? Shades of Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott. David Gergen, the only critic named in this story, is hardly representative of the party. We all know a large minority and probably even a majority of Republicans happen to share these very same views. I know this from personal experience. Most of my family back in Wyoming are Republicans and they refer to African- Americans as "porch monkeys" and yes, they employ the dreaded N-word liberally (juxtaposition intended).

I remember seeing some of my family members in blackface as part of the cast in minstrel shows held in the Cody school auditorium in the late 60s, and I know they continued to hold them well into the 70s. To this day Cody folk brag about how few black people there are in the state.

Furthermore its accepted political science that the Democratic party "lost" the white vote in the South when the Kennedy & Johnson administrations passed the landmark civil rights laws of the 60s. White Southerners have voted Republican almost without exception ever since. Ronald Reagan based his campaigns in large part on thinly veiled racism and every Republican has many Republicans have copied the tactic ever since.

Therefore: How are the views in question so out of step with the Republican Party? Joy, I have no reason to believe you personally agree with them as I have no reason to believe Paul is a racist—maybe a lousy editor—but I do believe the Republican party is generally a racist party. It is also generally homophobic and sexist, with very strong theocratic tendencies.

Some people make the comparison that the Dems are the "mommy" party and the Republicans are the "daddy" party. If that's the case I submit this particular daddy is abusive, and the electorate needs to have him arrested and thrown in the hoosegow.

Yeah. I had a few responses to that. What are yours?

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It might be time to work on your signage.

And your subway maps.

BTW, whose idea was it to use numbers for both the streets and the avenues? Sounds like something my mom would come up with—like, as a mnemonic device. (You'll recall that my mother is a math teacher.)

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