Open Overnight Thread - I Hate Mondays Edition

The Top 10 Apocalypse Movies

Here Kurt Schlichter compiles his list of the best doomsday movies in the last 50 years along with plenty of pith and snark.

I have to admit this is one of my guilty-pleasure genres - probably since I happened to catch "When Worlds Collide" late one night as an oh-so-impressionable 5 year old. And don't forget that many of the classic 1970's 'apocalypse' movies were more or less what everyone just assumed the 1990's would be like. Yep - that's how bad things were then.

But at their best, these movies show us something about ourselves and about enduring truths, challenging our intellects and asking vital questions about the nature of man. But mostly they’re just cool and fun to watch.

And sometimes they are Zardoz (1974). This is an utterly insane 70’s freakshow starring Sean Connery that can best be described as what it must be like to party with Anthony Weiner and Eric Massa in Thailand with an endless supply of bad Woodstock acid and a substantial NEA performance art grant. Gotta respect any movie that offers the straight-faced line, “The gun is good, the penis is evil.”

Now, here is my list of the Top 10. I accept that haters are gonna hate – and nit-pick about the cosmic question of “what IS an apocalypse film? – so, like it or lump it, these are mine in descending order. They aren’t all great – they are all worth a watch on some Sunday afternoon after the Democrats have yakked about their ruinous policy preferences on the Sunday morning shows and gotten you thinking about disasters

So here are his bottom 5 of the top 10 doomsday movies - you'll have to read the article to see which ones are in the top five:

10. Soylent Green (1973)
9. Escape From New York (1979)
8. The Last Man on Earth (1964)
7. 28 Days Later (2003) and 28 Weeks Later (2007)
6. Logan’s Run (1976)

The facts of life may be conservative but then so are the facts of the Apocalypse:

These are intensely conservative films. In Mad Max, Max is a force for order – even when all order collapses and he takes matters into his own hands. In The Road Warrior, Max is totally burned out until he realizes that civilization is worth defending. But not all the survivors feel that way – despite their leader Papagallo’s speech about the need to defend themselves and their future from the barbarian horde, a fair chunk of the band wants to surrender, preferring the lies of the Humungous over the reality of defending themselves. It’s always astonishing how some people are so eager to submit to tyrants.

Oh and yeah you might want to buy some more ammunition.

New Danger From The Usual Suspects: Passive Overeating

"Health experts blame passive overeating…"

Much as I hate to question the wisdom of “health experts,” let alone the even greater wisdom of Guardian contributors, I am tempted to ask how exactly passive overeating works. Is it, as the term implies, like passive smoking? Is such a thing physically possible? Mr Walker seems to believe so, as does Lancet contributor Professor Boyd Swinburn:

Swinburn’s paper comes up with a clear primary culprit: a powerful global food industry “which is producing more processed, affordable, and effectively-marketed food than ever before.”

...He said an “increased supply of cheap, palatable, energy-dense foods,” coupled with better distribution and marketing, had led to “passive overconsumption.”

Again, the mind reels at the implied physics of it. Passivity alone has yet to make that extra slice of blackberry cheesecake merge with my good self. So far as I’m aware, tasty cheesecake molecules can’t be absorbed by osmosis or accidental inhalation in sufficient concentrations to add to my mass. Maybe it’s based on some kind of quantum spooky action – someone in Derbyshire scarfs a doughnut and – somehow, miraculously - my cells metabolise it.

The Price of Weed
If you're a pothead, NorCal, western Kansas, and Dayton, OH are the places to be. And if you're a pot-entrepreneur, S. Dakota, east Texas, and Delaware are the places to go.

The Top 10 FML Stories

A couple years back I was departing from DCA (Ronald Reagan Airport). The TSA has a rule that during the ascent, you have to stay seated due to the airport location. If you standup / get up from your seat, they divert the flight and arrest you (or so claimed the pilot via the intercom).What happens?Some 10 year old next to me proceeds to get sick and throw up all over me just as we take off. I had to sit for 15 minutes w/ barf on me before the flight attendants let me get up and go clean off.

Puzzlewood: Middle Earth in England

‘Puzzlewood is an ancient woodland in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England. The area contains strange rock formations, secret caves and ancient trees, with a confusing maze of paths. Puzzlewood is said to be one of J. R. R. Tolkien’s inspirations for Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings.’

- Wikipedia

Hollywood's Creepiest Hookups
What's creepier than dating your step-daughter? How about your step-granddaughter.

Johnny Carson, 1976
Tonight's guests are Don Rickles and Frank Sinatra.

Placenta: Yum!

Eating placenta might sound like the most hippie of hippie-dippie pursuits. But if an article in New York magazine is to be believed, eating your afterbirth (or placentophagia) is trés, trés chic.

...This is good news to the ears of “professional placenta preparers.” Mostly women, these folks usually have backgrounds in working as doulas and/or an interest raw food or vegan food. Many professional placenta preparers disintegrate the placenta into pill form, but there is also talk of placental shakes and placental jerky. (Apparently the placenta needs quite a bit of spices for flavor.)

The Yahoo AoSHQ group. Bla bla bla. And don't forget about the Job Bank.

Tonight's post brought to you by the Ωmega Man:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maetenloch at gmail. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

posted by Maetenloch at 09:03 PM

| Access Comments