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November 02, 2004

Excitable Andy Cautions NRO to "Chill"

Maybe this hysterical little ninny ought to stay away from telling others to remain emotionally calm.

I called him a douchebag a year ago, and he just keeps getting worse.

More: He's not just an idiot for telling K-Lo to "chill." Here's the exchange:

K-LO: Do not, again, do not take any exit poll resports too seriously. JUST GET OUT THE VOTE. Exit polls not always reliable, ESPECIALLY early ones. AND, this isn't over until the polls close. So please get to work while there is still time.
DO NOT get depressed. DO NOT get mad. JUST GET OUT THE VOTE.

EXCITABLE ANDY: Chill, Kathryn. The American people are speaking. Even if you might not like what they have to say. At least as far as the early buzz is concerned.

So, K-Lo exhorts people to vote, and Andrew says, "Stop that, let the American people speak."

Apparently Excitable Andy only wants of the people to speak. The others, apparently, should remain at home and not vote.

If for no other reason than this-- VOTE! Vote, little one. Vote like the wind.*

* Where's it from? The "Vote" part of the quote is changed, of course.

posted by Ace at 02:50 PM

Comments

Sullivan cautioning anyone to chill is like Saddam Hussein telling someone to take it easy on torture.

What a condescending jerk.

Posted by: Bill from INDC on November 2, 2004 03:00 PM

You hate gays! YOu fag-hater!!!! this is why bush and the repugs are fascist. i am emailing andrew right now to tell you are a bigot.

Posted by: andyfan on November 2, 2004 03:03 PM

Uh-oh, ace. andyfan is telling on you!

Cordially...

Posted by: Rick on November 2, 2004 03:04 PM

Shit. I know it's entirely selfish, but I'm really hoping Bush wins just to shut this guy the fuck up.

Is that so wrong? Does it always have to be about the war?

Cheers,
Dave

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on November 2, 2004 03:09 PM

the sampling on the midday numbers was 59/41 women to men. you are dealing with a known gender gap of like 9 pts. just fyi.

Posted by: Jennifer on November 2, 2004 03:10 PM

I like your info. Where are you getting it from?

Posted by: Jennifer on November 2, 2004 03:18 PM

Sorry, Jennifer, that was me in the last post. Didn't mean to steal your name. Clearly, I've had too much coffee today.

Posted by: Scout on November 2, 2004 03:19 PM

Ace, don't go all "Andrew" on us. Bush is going to pull this out. Did you not think they were going to throw some crazy stuff at us at the last minute?

We have it under control.

Also, please tell me that andyfan is a republican plant or being sarcastic. That can't actually be someone who supports Andrew Sullivan. andyfan please come clean and tell everyone you are joking. Trolls are amusing most of the time, but not on election day. We have serious business to attend to, like saving the world.

Posted by: BlueDevils on November 2, 2004 03:26 PM

"Sew like the wind, Grandmother!" - Three Amigos

Posted by: RapidTransit on November 2, 2004 03:28 PM

Yeahp. It was to the grandmother? I thought he said it to a child.

Posted by: ace on November 2, 2004 03:30 PM

It's as if Andy is running a contest with himself to see if he can be more irritating, irrational, and transparently petty each day. And he has raised his game once again!

You know how emotional he gets (oh, how you know.) He saw some exit polling that he likes and he's doing a cheering little victory lap.

Posted by: Beatnik Joe on November 2, 2004 03:40 PM

I seem to remember a post over a INDC, wherein Bill confessed his fear of you, saying that he refers to you as "Sir."

I never got it...until now!

(remind self: never piss off Ace)

Posted by: jmflynny on November 2, 2004 03:41 PM

Smelling-salts Sullivan is a douchebag regardless. Look at this, though. Here's the quote from Kathryn eliciting chill:

"Do not, again, do not take any exit poll resports too seriously. JUST GET OUT THE VOTE. Exit polls not always reliable, ESPECIALLY early ones. AND, this isn't over until the polls close. So please get to work while there is still time. DO NOT get depressed. DO NOT get mad. JUST GET OUT THE VOTE."

Check out this quote from Sullivan two flipping hours earlier: "Those numbers I posted, as I wrote at the time, may well not hold up throughout the day. A few look way off to me, as I wrote. But few GOP bigwigs are disputing that the early exit numbers are not encouraging for Bush. Oh, and whomever you're voting for, for Pete's sake, don't be put off by exit polls. As I said earlier, they are not accounting for early voting, and some seem to have a heavy female bias. They are a blur of a blur. So stay tuned. And vote."

Wasn't he saying the same thing?

Posted by: Nicholas Kronos on November 2, 2004 03:42 PM

Isn't Andrew Sullivan telling anyone else to chill like Tim McVeigh appealing for calm?

Posted by: WarrenM on November 2, 2004 03:51 PM

I am hoping for a replay of game 6 of the 1986 World Series, when they had the champagne already in the BoSox locker room. You need 27 outs to win, or should I say 270 votes?!

Posted by: Greg Schreiber on November 2, 2004 03:53 PM

Somebody better send Andy some more K-Y. He'll need it when he goes "bike riding"

Posted by: Iblis on November 2, 2004 04:13 PM

Thats some funny stuff, Iblis!

Posted by: Bugaha on November 2, 2004 05:00 PM

Isn't Sullivan telling people to chill like Mikey Moore telling people to lay off the pork rinds?

Posted by: Joe R. the Unabrewer on November 2, 2004 05:03 PM

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In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

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Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!

Oh, I forgot to mention this quote from Pete Hegseth, reported by Roger Kimball: "We are sharing the ocean with the Iranian Navy. We're giving them the bottom half."

Batman fires The Batman
Batman is disgusted by the Joachim Phoenix version of Joker
Batman tries to fire Superman
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Forgotten 80s Mystery Click: Red Leather Suit and Sweatband Edition
And I was here to please
I'm even on knees
Makin' love to whoever I please
I gotta do it my way
Or no way at all

Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

Sec. Army recognizes ODU Army ROTC cadets for their bravery and sacrifice in private ceremony
[Hat Tip: Diogenes] [CBD]

TJM gives you a brief tour of his movie collection.

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click
One day I'm gonna write a poem in a letter
One day I'm gonna get that faculty together
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Oh, [Song Title], look out world, oh, you know I've got mine

US decimation of Iran's ICBM forces is due to Space Force's instant detection of launches -- and the launchers' hiding places -- and rapid counter-attack via missiles
AI is doing a lot of the work in analyzing images to find the exact hiding place of the launchers. Counter-strikes are now coming in four hours after a launch, whereas previously it might have taken days for humans to go over the imagery and data.

Robert Mueller, Former Special Counsel Who Probed Trump, Dies

“robert mueller just died,” trump wrote in a truth social post on march 21. “good, i’m glad he’s dead. he can no longer hurt innocent people! president donald j. trump.”

TJM has thoughts on Superheros and Iconography