I knew we shouldn't have allowed Obama to use time travel

We often accuse the GOP and it's leadership of being wanton liars who are ignorant of history and who will spin a complete falsehood about anything at any time because... well... they are and they do. It's fairly straightforward. It's not so much an accusation as a "pointing out".

Which leads me to comical punchline in waiting, RNC Chairman Michael Steele. Not one to led a good media crisis about Afghanistan go to waste, he decided to cancel his book tour or speaking engagements or whatever it is he does when he's supposed to be running the RNC, to knock Obama for the McChrystal thing. But because he's Michael Steele and because he's incapable of making criticism based on actual evens, he decided to descend into a Little Nemo-like dream kingdom to criticize the fantastical history of that imaginary land.

"The McChrystal incident, to me, was very comical. And I think it's a reflection of the frustration that a lot of our military leaders have with this Administration and their prosecution of the war in Afghanistan," said Steele. "Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama's choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in."

I think we all remember that sad day back in 2001 when President Obama burst out of a time-traveling DeLorean, knocked President Bush away from his podium during a n address to a joint session of Congress, declared his right as "Future Leader" to declare war on Afghanistan, declared war on Afghanistan, and then banged a nearby gavel making it all official and legally binding. OBAMA CHOSE THIS WAR AND REPUBLICANS HAVE ALWAYS OPPOSED IT!

Or, you know, was handed it about 8 years in, was told "I know we haven't paid much attention to this other war, but it's fostered the destabilization of Pakistan and could result in a failed nuclear state and a resurgent Al Qaeda. Well.... bye, I've got a BBQ to hit up in Crawford." And yeah, I think this is a war Republicans especially wanted prosecuted, because it was the war we engaged in to get revenge on that whole 9/11 thing. The war in Iraq was the one that this country wasn't fully on board with. Maybe, that whole "actively prosecuted" statement was a crack at how the Bush Administration completely ignored Afghanistan once they figured out they could start one in Iraq.

Still, I know I'll get accused of being part of the "Blame Bush" crowd, just because I point out the things he's responsible for, but yeah, he's the one that started up the war. Obama's continuing it because he thinks there's a strategic value in a stable Afghanistan and Paksitan... oh and because your party will call him a fag if he pulls one soldier out. Criticize that line of thought if you want to, but can we not invent an alternate reality where Bruce Wayne's parents lived, Hitler was killed in WWI, and Obama invaded Afghanistan? No? I'm going to have to hear this bullshit a lot from your side, right? I thought so. Carry on.

Chart of the day

Via Information is Beautiful comes a visual representation of time travel theories and paths that have been offered forth in various TV shows and movies. From Star Trek to Planet of the Apes to Bill and Ted, they track the paths taken by some our more famous time meddlers, even tracking where they even synced up. Did you know there's a point in time where Marty McFly, the Star Trek crew and the Terminator are all walking around? You don't need to tell me that, Sean and I have already written a script about it and three sequels... but does Hollywood want to make it? No. Fine, fuck them, we'll make our millions through the independent distributors.

As always, you need to click to embiggen. It's quite preferred this time as it's probably the only way to read what's going on.

Things I need to own

A replica time map from the Terry Gilliam classic Time Bandits. Soon I'll be able to traverse time, hang with dwarves, kidnap children, interact with Sean Connery over a number of different periods, confront Evil, and get chewed out by the Supreme Being for stealing from Him.

Important news of vast scientific importance

Sean and I both know that this is the web's foremost repository for scientific achievement. Were there to be a cure for cancer or cheap and abundant jetpacks released, America would come running here for the info.

So that it why we feel it is our God given duty to inform you of the greatest scientific achievement made by man or ape; the heralding sign that the future is finally here; the proof that maybe Robert Zemeckis actually has a working time machine and used it to research his movies: MOTHERFUCKING HOVERBOARDS!


I know you're thinking to yourself "This isn't exactly what I had in mind when I masturbated to envisioned the events of Back to the Future II happening" with a little "Isn't that just a small personal hovercraft and not a true levitating skateboard?" To that I again say: shut up, MOTHERFUCKING HOVERBOARDS!

Sorry that your precious repulsor lift technology wasn't invented and miniaturized into skateboard form quick enough for you your majesty. Looks like you'll just have to make due with a goddamn personal conveyance that glide on air. And might I add that unlike BTTF2 hoverboards, these hoverboards look like they might be able to go on water. They don't need POWAH! Plus do you think you could ever pull off a serious businessman look on a PitBull hoverboard or a pink Mattel hoverboard like you can on the Hammacher Schlemmer hoverboard? No, you'd look like an ass. A ridiculous ass.

So get over yourself, hoverboards are here. And for the price of $17,000 -- cheap if you ask me -- you can own an honest to God part of the goddamn future.

Broken News: Area man not sure if it was the drugs, but is pretty certain he invented teleportation, time travel

FLAGSTAFF—Not long after Phish’s three-day Festival 8 in Indio, California, reports are emerging that in addition to epic, improvisational music jams, the event was also host to one of the greatest scientific discoveries in human history.

“Dude, I’m not sure if it’s the drugs I was taking or what. But I’m pretty sure I figured out how to time travel and teleport,” announced a haggard and disheveled Dave Burman, a freelance parking lot grilled cheese salesman from Denver, to the assembled press shortly after waking up in a cactus patch just outside of Flagstaff, Arizona.

“All I know is that, last I knew I was at the show, noodling and bumping into people while I danced, then WHAM, blackness! When I woke up I was draped across a saguaro, it was two weeks later, and I had teleported close to 400 miles. Ladies and gentlemen, I think this is the scientific breakthrough we have been waiting for.”

The announcement that solid matter teleportation and time travel had been achieved sent shock-waves throughout the scientific community, but Burman was cautious to note that he’s not sure if he can repeat the process that enabled these breakthroughs.

“Sure I’ll be able to consume the massive quantities of peyote, hash brownies, blotter acid, and ether that prepared my body to shunt through what I’m assuming was a Einstein-Rosen bridge or perhaps a wormhole,” Burman observed.

“But, scientifically, I feel the festival setting was critical. Plus with Phish’s noted improvisational tendencies, how can one ever hope to have them repeat the exact guitar solo 10 minutes into The Divided Sky that provided the correct audio matrix to allow my mind to interface with cosmic forces and shoot myself two weeks into the future?”

While scientists are applauding Burman’s breakthrough, they know that this last phase of creating a testable, repeatable process is one that has perplexed and confused many of the PhD’s and weekend scientists who have ventured into the teleportation and time travel fields.

I’m reminded of the case of Mike Yawkey, a third-year communications major at Boston University,” warned Dr. Paul Vesey of the National Academy of Science.

“Five years ago he was telling us he had perfected short distance teleporting from his neighborhood bar back to his apartment. But he was unable to find a way to counteract the negative side effects of the process, which either involved unexplained damage to his car and Mr. Yawkey waking up pantsless in the urine-soaked foyer of his home. Eventually, he had to stop trying.”

Dr. Vesey sighed, “Hell, we even sent some scientists to replicate his process of drinking the cheapest vodkas available while hitting on coeds from around the area, but our experts weren’t able to travel any further than the alley next to the bar. The urine problems also presented themselves in this case. A repeatable, testable hypothesis is key here and we don't seem to have uncovered one.”

Those who have studied the matter also note that despite Burman’s initial success, meddling with time travel can have devastating consequences.

“We all remember what happened to Enrico Fermi,” intoned Dr. Ronald Mallett, time travel expert and University of Connecticut professor.

“Buoyed by an experiment where he claimed to have not only blacked out and time traveled two days in the future, but also resulted in the teleportation into the bed of a woman he swore was a ‘9-9.5 at least’, he devoted himself to studying time travel. In recreating the experiment he soon was caught in a time loop where every day he was forced to repeat the experiment, downing shot after shot of whisky like they were nothing. Eventually the strain of this time loop took its toll when his liver failed, probably as a result of the dimensional shifting.”

Then Mallet leaned in and whispered, “Some say he might have even changed his own timeline. For some reason people seem to think he was an alcoholic, whereas they used to think of him as a respected scientist. Man, time travel can be a dangerous thing. I’m just glad to hear the kid is staying away from alcohol-based time travel and teleportation, a scientific road that has claimed too many of us....”

But despite these warnings, Burman has said he’ll soldier on to further unlock the mysteries of the universe, provided the upcoming winter tour schedule gives him enough time.

“I vow to endeavor to unlock these mysteries, so that everyone can use these gifts I have discovered. It is my duty, as a scientist” he finished, before stumbling out of the cactus patch in search of breakfast or a cheap taco stand.

I have an idea for a new themed pizza chain

Bernie Madoff is back in the news again as another civil lawsuit was filed against him, trying to get back all that money he stole. That's going to be a problem. If they want that money, they'll have to invent time travel, go back to 1975, outwit two streetwise toughs, infiltrate "a culture of sexual deviance", and then dig that money out of Bernie's nose.

Fallen financier Bernard Madoff has plunged from his Manhattan penthouse to the lower bunk of a cell he shares with a drug offender at a federal prison, where he eats pizza cooked by a child molester and hangs around with a mob boss and a convicted spy, according to legal papers filed Tuesday.
...
According to the allegations – their source isn't specified – Madoff deployed an employee and to get drugs from 1975 to 2003, fueling an office so cocaine-laden insiders dubbed it "the North Pole." Office parties featured topless waitresses, employee affairs were common and Madoff kept a list of his favorite pretty masseuses in his personal phone book, the lawsuit said, claiming investors' money helped pay for it all.

I refuse to accept the possibility that coke and hookers were used to excess at any time on Wall Street. Still, I wonder if "the North Pole" was only a reference to cocaine part of the drug fueled orgies. God I hope not.

Still I'd like to know the context of the whole "eats pizza cooked by a child molester" thing. Is that a reference to how far he's fallen, a "Look at what he's been reduced to" type thing? Or is it more of a "Haw haw" type thing? Because if it's the former, I reject the notion that child molester pizza is a bad thing. I mean if you want to lure children you have to get them with things they like, namely pizza. The man can probably whip up a good pie, not to mention chicken fingers and grilled cheeses. That's a benefit Madoff is getting.

In any event that entire story is full of win. Stealing billions to fuel drug and sex parties, hanging out with mobsters and Israeli agents, fight club, a kid diddler making pizzas piled high with pepperoni, and I'm sure he's being invited to all kinds of prison sex parties as well. His life is still better than all the people he bankrupted.

Broken In Brief: Area man tricked by time travel aspect of romantic drama

CHICAGO—“Oh God! This is just a fuckin’ existential metaphor for love, loss, and time in failed relationships,” said an exasperated Tommy Flanagan, nearly an hour into a screening of the piece-of-shit movie The Time Traveler’s Wife, which he attended with his lying girlfriend of five months. “This son of a bitch isn’t going to travel back to kill Hitler, see baby Jesus, or forward to witness any horrible events that he must stop. This is just a fuckin' chick flick!”

Flanagan, a claims adjuster from Lakeview who busts his fucking ass for his hard earned money, had agreed to see the goddamn Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams film, a fuckin’ love story which explores determinism and free will through the bullshit use of time travel, on the grounds that he thought it would be a "fuckin’ badass science fiction flick like Back to the Future" or "motherfuckin’ Timecop."

As the poor bastard slowly became wise to the totally gay bullshit romantic horror unfolding on the screen in front of him, as well as all the money he had just thrown away on this goddamn film, he totally felt like he had been kicked in the balls several times. He then reportedly placed his thin hopes on the remote possibility that this shitshow would turn into a thriller where the the gay-ass husband would have to hunt down people who murder his whining wife… through time.

When this didn’t happen, Flanagan was overheard to say to his girlfriend that “she fuckin’ owed him, like big time” and that they were going to be seeing Gerard Butler’s Gamer, a fucking badass movie about future war video games that use real people as characters, “at least 3 or 4 fuckin’ times.”

As a disappointed male audience filed out solemnly next to their spouses and girlfriends, muttering bitterly about the lack of any flying Deloreans, several supporting murmurs of “I heard that” as well as thumbs up of solidarity were thrown Mr. Flanagan’s way. They were of little comfort to the distraught man.

Torture has enabled time travel

Here I thought time travel would involve wormholes, advanced physics, Superman reversing the rotation of the Earth, a wish granting genie, smoke monsters/electromagnetism/mysterious islands, a DeLorean, or ring lasers. Turns out all you need is to dunk an Arab guy in water a hundred times and not only do you get information to stop a terrorist attack, but then you magically travel back in time a year so that you'll be able to use it to thwart an attack you already thwarted.

I was wrong about this torture thing, Karl. You are a have given humanity a great tool. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go kill the infant Hitler. Someone fill up my bathtub and find me a citizen of Saudi Arabia.

Your money is in a better place

Good news everyone. If you had money in the stock market it got to experience the wonders of...........TIME TRAVEL. An early morning hundred point dive took your life savings into the quirky and exotic time period of ~1997~.

The Dow hadn't traded below 7,000 since Oct. 28, 1997, and last closed below that mark on May 2 of that year. The credit crisis and recession have now slashed half the average's value since it hit a record high over 14,000 in October 2007.

Investors are again fleeing stocks in response to bad news about financial companies. The government said it would give American International Group Inc. another $30 billion in loans, in addition to the $150 billion it has already given the insurer. AIG also said it lost $61.7 billion in the fourth quarter.

Meanwhile, HSBC PLC reported a 70 percent drop in 2008 profit and said it needs to raise $17.7 billion and cut 6,100 jobs.

Your money, even as we speak, is mourning the death of Deng Xiaoping, Jimmy Stewart, Princess Di, some nun, and Gianni Versace. It is enjoying the historical significance of Newt Gingrich getting disciplined for ethical misconduct, Toyota unveiling the Prius, Tim McVeigh returning to Apple, and Steve Jobs' execution. Wait, reverse the last two. It is listening to Radiohead's OK Computer and watching Titanic.

So don't fear for your money, be happy, and just imagine all the things it's seeing. Someday it will return to 2009. Possibly. OK, it probably won't even get to 10,000, let alone 15,000, for years and years....if ever. But if you just keep thinking about things in futuristic time travel ways, it'll lower the urge to kill yourself because you're bankrupt now.

Shrinkage

The US economy finally got back out of the pool yesterday and boy was the water cold. The US economy shrank last quarter by 3.8%, the largest drop since 1982. So technically it isn't the biggest drop in my lifetime, which means Bush can mark it on his "Things I Done Good" list: '3. Only the 2nd biggest GDP collapse in the lifetimes of the 30 & under set'. But for those of you saying "Only 3.8%, that's not that bad. Could be worse," well you must have a crystal ball, because it is worse.

Although the initial result was better than economists expected, the figure is likely to be revised even lower in the months ahead and some believe the economy is contracting in the current quarter at a pace of around 5 percent. The current January-March period, they said, will probably turn out to be the worse quarter for the recession.

"The downturn is intensifying. The fourth quarter is worse than it looks," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.
...
A build-up in business inventories _ which in calculating GDP adds to economic activity _ masked the fourth-quarter's true weakness. When inventories are stripped out, the economy would have contracted at a 5.1 percent pace in the fourth quarter, closer to the 5.4 percent drop that economists expected. Businesses couldn't cut production fast enough in response to waning customer demand and got stuck with excess inventories, economists explained.

So as everyone is sarcastically pointing out today: we're living in 1982. E.T., DeLorean's, Return of the Jedi next summer, and we're a full two years away from the Karate Kid. At least our hipsters, with their oversize glasses, striped tube socks, neon jackets, and other various American Apparel sundries are properly dressed for our times.

It's like the new season of Lost, we're all time traveling now. We've just visited 1982, soon we're get to visit the Depression era, then the Middle Ages. Wave to your grandparents, the Kaiser, the Visigoths, and Sir Thomas More! The Visigoths will be especially surprised to learn society's standard of living hasn't increased by 2010, that is if they take the time to stop raping and pillaging us to notice economic figures. Buck up, the worst is yet to come.

Hitlerblog

When most scholars pontificate about the causes of World War II and the rise of Hitler some lay the blame at the feet of the Versailles treaty and others at a Europe to willing to appease a dictator. Nobel literature prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio has decided to go in another direction: not enough bloggers in the 1930's.

In his Nobel lecture to the Swedish Academy, the 68-year-old Frenchman said an earlier introduction of information technology could even have prevented World War II.

"Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded - ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day," he said.

Ah yes, an army of bloggers giving Hitler the "Heh, indeed" treatment, followed by a timely LolHitler surely could have averted the world's biggest war. That said, if you have that "time travel back in time to kill Hitler" book raring to go, how about replacing killing his parents, killing him as a baby, stepping on a butterfly in the Mesozoic, or making Hitler a famous artist with disseminating a devastatingly snarky blog post from Humphrey Bogart on the 1934 Das Huffington Posten.

We all look forward to Le Clezio's next work "What if Genghis Khan had a bomber wing".