Meanwhile, Back in America

All of them teabagged someone or got teabagged by someone (Spidey and Conan.)

“Ain’t we got fun?”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20100112/us-odd-carnival-cougars/

@ManchuCandidate: Here’s a question. When the Cougs fuck a young guy to death, do they just throw the corpse overboard or keep it on ice like tuna on a 5-day sportfishing trip?

@Dodgerblue:
I think they leave him to the sharks.

@Dodgerblue: The in-laws just got back from a cruise on a ginormous ship (my idea of hell, not to mention an environmental nightmare) and someone died during the cruise. Body was kept in the on-board morgue. That’s crazy shit.

@SanFranLefty: I have a buddy who goes on long sportfishing trips out of San Pedro. All guys. They fish, eat, drink beer, watch porn, and sleep — that’s about it. The catch is kept on ice in the hold. He used to come into the office with tuna steaks as big as your head to give away.

@SanFranLefty: I’m with you on the cruise=hell equation. No desire to go on one whatsoever. It might be slighty less painful than being in Disney World, but at least you can leave Disney. And can you imagine a Disney cruise?? The horror.

@ManchuCandidate:

The singles group says the ban is unfounded. They point to their first cruise on Carnival’s Elation in December that drew about 300 women and the men they call “cubs.”

Cubs… really? Eeeeehhhh… now I feel all icky!

@Serolf Divad: I think rptrcub would beg to differ.

@flippin eck: I’ll bet your sister would like that. I should suggest it to her! And Aunt Flippin’ can come along…

@flippin eck: You don’t have to imagine – Disney bought the Premier Cruise line like ten years ago after years of offering cruise and theme park packages that combined a 3/4-day Caribbean cruise with a 3/4-day Disneyworld experience for a number of years. The Premier Line was definitely middlebrow but relatively well-managed, floating boats from the Atlantic that in middle age seemed better suited for the quiet life in the Caribbean. For full-bore hell-at-sea, you need to take a Carnival Cruiseline boat. Likely it will be relatively new and designed completely around the concept of stuffing as many paying bodies on a raft as possible.

@ManchuCandidate: This is at odds with the genesis of the company which focused pretty much on getting young people to go on cheap cruises and pestork at sea. If they were true to their roots they’d have all kinds of pestorking-themed cruises.

@FlyingChainSaw: Friends of mine have gone on gay and lesbian-themed cruise ships (not at the same time) and reported having a good time.

@FlyingChainSaw: Oh, I realize Disney cruises actually exist. But much like anal pears and concentration camps, it’s a reality I can’t bring myself to consider, let alone comprehend.

@homofascist: My sister would adore it. She would find a special Disney Cruise Precious Moments figurine to commemorate the trip.

@homofascist and flippin eck: A Disney cruise would truly be the fourth or fifth circle of hell. “It’s a small world, after all….” Oy. About the only thing I could think of that would be more hellacious is a Teabagger cruise.

W/r/t Team Conan: Gotta love that he’s going balls-out on the network.

I was placed on conduct probation as an undergrad at UF for singing The Love Boat theme, screaming it, actually, in my dorm hallway one night. There was a trial and everything. It ended with me yelling “I’m out of order? You’re out of order” and being removed from the room.

I had to explain this incident when I applied to be admitted to the bar.

The Love Boat, maybe thats why I have always wanted to go on a cruise, even though I know for an absolute fact it would be perfect hell to me to be locked up on a ship with 1,000 drunken yahoos for a week.

@Dodgerblue: There’s usually a deck reserved, respectively, for necrophiliacs and for bestiality cultists. If there’s an overflow of bodies, the necrophiliac deck has -80 coolers to keep the newly dead, as well as the regular stock the organizer provides, ready for the kinkier passengers.

@Prommie: Another example illustrating why living on campus is always a bad idea.

You wish it was that interesting. In your most cataleptic moments of stunned thoughtlessness you can never imagine the day to day tedium of cruise life.

@SanFranLefty: There is something far, far worse.

@FlyingChainSaw: Isn’t one of the benefits of crewing one of those trips shtupping the passengers?

@SanFranLefty: Or this.

Stinque@Amazon is hawking a signed 8.5 x 10 color photo of Harry Reid right now.

Har-de-Har-Har.

@blogenfreude:
Where’s the submarine The Red October when you need one?

“Match bearings and SHOOT!”

@ManchuCandidate: “Das Boot” and “Run Silent Run Deep” — my two fav submarine movies.

@blogenfreude:

Can you imagine Claudia Anderson stretched out on the sun deck in a two piece? The Horror!

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Ever since I did a bit of research on the Nexus One it’s tried to sell me little else.

TJ: My great State, in addition to passing the medical marijuana law from hell (its ugly with the strictures and having to register with the police and wear a scarlet letter and stuff), has passed a law which mandates that cel phone companies provide the police with subscriber “location information” whenever the cops feel like, without a warrant.

Huh. Aint that a something? Here is the offensive language:

w. “Location information” means global positioning system data, enhanced 9-1-1 data, cellular site information, and any other information that would assist a law enforcement agency in tracking the physical location of a cellular telephone or wireless mobile device.

(cf: P.L.1999, c.151, s.2)

2. Section 23 of P.L.1993, c.29 (C.2A:156A-29) is amended to read as follows:

23. Requirements for access.

a. A law enforcement agency, but no other governmental entity, may require the disclosure by a provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service of the contents of an electronic communication without notice to the subscriber or the customer if the law enforcement agency obtains a warrant.

b. Except as provided in subsection c. of this section, a provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service may disclose a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber or customer of the service to any person other than a governmental entity. This subsection shall not apply to the contents covered by subsection a. of this section.

c. A provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service or a communication common carrier shall disclose a record , the location information for a subscriber’s or customer’s mobile or wireless communications device, or other information pertaining to a subscriber or customer of the service, other than contents covered by subsections a. and f. of this section, to a law enforcement agency under the following circumstances:

(1) the law enforcement agency has obtained a warrant;

(2) the law enforcement agency has obtained the consent of the subscriber or customer to the disclosure; [or]

(3) the law enforcement agency has obtained a court order for such disclosure under subsection e. of this section; or

(4) with respect to only the location information for a subscriber’s or customer’s mobile or wireless communications device and not to a record or other subscriber or customer information, the law enforcement agency believes in good faith that an emergency involving danger of death or serious bodily injury to the subscriber or customer requires disclosure without delay of information relating to the emergency.

A law enforcement agency receiving records or information pursuant to this subsection is not required to provide notice to the customer or subscriber.

Ah, boat travel.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Hey Catt, I see that Oren Aviv got the boot. Still hunkered down?

@Dodgerblue:

Yeah. Remaining that way until the studio hires a new marketing VP. We’ve been told that once that happens, changes for our division will begin in earnest.

I took the Gordian knot solution and have an appointment with the VP of HR for Distribution next week. If I can angle this right I could work a promotion out of all this chaos. Reorg means opportunity if you play it right.

Faint heart never won fair lady.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Excellent — the lotus flower blooming through the mud etc.

@redmanlaw: I sailed on her sister ship Michail Lermontov on one of the most hilarious trips ever. It was all deeply Soviet and as yet unthawed. Beefy waitresses with Rita Tushingham eye make-up and dos. If you asked the steward for an ice bucket to chill the champers kind friends had donated, for example, they brought you a bucket – sans mop – with ice in it. Most fun time was when the OH got up in the middle of the passengers’ talent contest to shout “Get off!” at a German making anti-Semitic jokes. He did, too. Get off, I mean.

Only been on one cruise, to Jamaica and back. I loved it. You sail from Miami and a couple of days later there are flying fish. We broke the journey in Ocho Rios then rejoined a different ship for the passage back and thus were figures of mystery – of which the OH took advantage by telling the trailer-park convention at the next table we’d been in Jamaica to witness voodoo ceremonies. The entertainment staff will try to make you dance with women but a well-timed “fuck off” usually does the trick. And it really is blissful to be at sea.

Nothing in my experience beats being wrapped in blankets on one of the old Queen Mary’s observation decks being brought beef tea for elevenses.

Sad news, Team Conan: He quits.

@Mistress Cynica: And NBC screws up yet another Tonight Show transition.

@Mistress Cynica: If you read it carefully, it doesn’t actually say he’s quitting. He just said that he’s trying to work it out with NBC. The practical effect is that he’s going to leave but this letter is a matter of $$$ negotiations because NBC is trying to get out of that $45M buyout clause with that stupid “Tonight Show at 12:05” claptrap. CoCo is trying to get NBC to play fair while twisting the knife at both Zucker and Leno with a statement designed to make him look like the class act he is and they obviously aren’t.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Precisely. And yes, the whole thing, especially his praise for Late Night (“the other NBC franchise that I love”), was totally classy.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: Yes, technically not “quitting,” just not agreeing to do a Tonight Show at 12:05. Which throws it back at NBC for the next move.

So we may yet see another twist, and it could be completely off the wall. Jay at 8?

@nojo:

I think they’ll just go back and forth until the Tonight Show starts at 11:59:37. Pissing match, and all that.

@Dodgerblue: Theoretically, yes, but it a real shithouse way to organize a demographic sample. The lines that attract young, pestork-eager singles are menaces on the high seas like Carnival. Your encounter may end with the shitfaced lass blowing lunch on you or screaming that she was raped when she wakes up in the closet they call your cabin. You get fed for free, too, on these kinds of boats but you will notice a lot of people fishing off of the rope decks out back when they are at sea. Why? The food is like the catered cuisine for a wedding at an American Legion in Hell. Some contemporaries had some experience working as ship’s musicians with the lower and middle end of the cruise ship lines in the Caribbean and there were a lot more OMFG nightmare stories than OMFG-that-was-god’s-own-fuck-goddess-howling-my-name-in-the-dark-for-a-solid-week stories. Burn out was incredibly high. In fact, one of the west coast-based lines that guys talked about trying to book into actually threw guys off the boats after six months rotation and bonused them when they came back after some period away, a system to keep the talent pool fresh, high and easier to maintain. The better lines always assume a couple and the really high end lines assume a mature couple that can afford a hefty five-figure tariff for a cruise. In those venues, you’re less likely to end up combing maraschino cherry chunks out of your pubies but you’re less likely to be making the beast with two backs. I dunno, there may be high-end cruises for singles.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Is that in the brochure? Does she pull a train with the guys or something?

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: You can hire me for non-traditional channel sales.

@FlyingChainSaw: This sounds really ugly.

@Dodgerblue: Yeah, working them can be hell if it’s a nickel and dime line.

So, where were we? TMZ now reporting Leno has signed on for full-hour Tonight Show; Conan’s fate remains uncertain, but Fox (at 11 p.m.) is still in play.

@nojo: Why do I care about this when I never watch any of these guys (unless it’s a clip online)?

@blogenfreude: That may be the subject of the morning doorstop, if nothing else seduces me. In the end, it’s really about Carson.

@nojo: I can’t understand how these shows even find audiences. Late night TV? Whose watching? Shitfaced people. People with night gigs. People with spouses who refuse to fuck. Give them what they need! After the 11 o’clock news: lesbian mud wrestling until dawn.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: He said it pretty clearly when he said “The Tonight Show” is an 11:30 show, and that a 12:05 show would not be the Tonight show. His contract says he is the “Tonight Show” host, he is telling them they breached the contract.

@FlyingChainSaw: I am fascinated by your tales of Cruise industry horrors, is this, then, a part of the history of SFL?

Vis a vis late night television, Jon Stewart has taken it over, for those with detectable brainwaves, and if NBC or any other network had the least balls, they would throw enormous sums of money at him and have a real fucking hit show, but no, they fear he is a niche thing for liberals, the fools.

Fox News started as, ostensibly, news, and is sliding into a horrific, Howard Beal as a Neanderthal conservative, hate-entertainment network. The inevitable end is going to be live, fight to the death gladiatorial combat, between the conservative pigs, and drugged and helpless liberals, the Palini crowd will turn to it every night to see death and gore.

Stewart has taken the opposite trajectory, he started as intelligent and political comedy, and has turned into the only news show I will watch; anyone catch the John Yoo interview?

@blogenfreude: I care because my idiot mother is always asking me if I saw Leno and then quoting stupid shit he says after I invariably tell her I never watch his unfunny ass. Thus, it is in the interest of my sanity that Jay Leno must die.

@Promnight: I saw most of it. Yoo is a testament to the ability to fail upwards. Virtually nothing he said made sense.

@Promnight: Leftie wasn’t there for that chapter.