Captain’s Log, Stardate 2010: We’re Doomed

So I’m browsing through The Maine GOP Party Platform/Teabagger Manifesto, (PDF here)when I come across this gem:

b. Seal the border and protect US citizens along the border and everywhere, as is the prime directive of the Federal Government.

So wait… sealing the border is the “prime directive” of the Federal Government? Says who, exactly? And what’s this “prime directive” stuff anyway? As always, Wikipedia can help:

In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive, Starfleet’s General Order #1, is the most prominent guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets. The Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference with the internal development of pre-warp civilizations, consistent with the historical real world concept of Westphalian sovereignty. It has special implications, however, for civilizations that have not yet developed the technology for interstellar spaceflight (“pre-warp”), since no primitive culture can be given or exposed to any information regarding advanced technology or the existence of extraplanetary civilizations, lest this exposure alter the natural development of the civilization. Although this was the only application stated by Captain Kirk in “The Return of the Archons”, by the 24th Century, it had been indicated to include purposeful efforts to improve or change in any way the natural course of such a society, even if that change is well-intentioned and kept completely secret.

Oh God, has it really come to this? The GOP has been overrun by theocrats, gun nuts, racists and pimply Science Fiction obsessed losers.

49 Comments

Oh come on, you’re surprised that reality-challenged SciFi losers flock to the reality-challenged tea party? I say this as a mostly reality-aware SciFi loser, of course.

Yes. Yes it has.

I want new toys from Apple.

@IanJ:

Don’t say “loser”. We are winners in an alternate reality, somewhere. Say instead “Sci-Fi Devotee”, because it sounds cool and is slightly atavistic, so we can act superior about it and pretend like people are dumb when they mention how anachronistic the term sounds. Or “Redshirt”. “Redshirt” works too.

personally I think this post is offensive to pimply Science Fiction obsessed losers everywhere.
and the blow up dolls who love them.

why I fit in here.
I just posted this pic in the newsgroups to let someone know they left it at my desk and it was instantly hacked and turned into this.

note in addition to the bottom bit the addition of “buy carbine”

And for the record, I recently watched a few episodes of the original series on DVD, and the “improvements” they made to the charming Sixties special effects are an abomination. Does the world really need a Blinking Gorn?

@Capt Howdy: There’s an Extra on DVD #1 where the restoration crew brags about how respectful they were with the original material, being careful not to “improve” things just because they could. But oh, they couldn’t resist the Blinking Gorn. And two or three other things. And so on.

To me, it’s just jarring: Sixties sets, Sixties TV acting, and suddenly a Millennial Enterprise whooshing through space. On the one hand, I’m now an Old Fart, but on the other, I like to appreciate what they did with the means available.

@nojo:
I think I am confused. I thought you were talking about TNG. are you saying that they altered the original?
if so I am surprised they are not getting death threats.

Instead of building border fences, the US should get a cloaking device to hide itself from illegal aliens.

Pathological narcissticv personality disorder Randtards and Paultards who spent their asocial, friendless youths playing video games, yes, that would be part of the teabag demographic.

Interesting grammar, too. He said, in a fragment.

@Prommie:

That has an implied subject, so it isn’t technically a fragment, I think. The second part is, though.

@Capt Howdy:

ah
after investigating I see they probably are.

@Capt Howdy: Yes, they pulled a Star Wars/E.T. on the original series. Nice of them to clean the prints, but they couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Oh, they re-recorded the theme, too. Nice of them to use the original arrangments, but it’s just not right.

@nojo:
thats just wrong. seriously. stupid stupid idea.

And now that I’m getting get-off-my-lawn cranky…

The movie I watched six or seven times in 1977 was called “Star Wars”. It was not called “A New Hope”. Thank you, and fuck off.

Which border? Quebec or New Brunswick?

What we need is *two* border fences, spaced about 50 miles apart. Then we get all the teabaggers to volunteer to guard the southern one and lock the northern one once they’re through. :)

@nojo:

I dont have as much of a problem with the updating of the original Star Wars movies and I do with Star Trek. (full disclosure – remember Terrence I was talking about the other day in relation to South Park? he was in charge of much of the updating)

the StarWars movies always aspired to the look they finally got in the 1990s but the charm of Star Trek was its bargain basement look.
to change that is sacrilege.

At this point, I’m honestly more concerned about Mr. Laser Beam, BruceGrubb, and the dozens of other Cheeto-stained hands that have been busy writing, rewriting, correcting, clarifying, expounding, and generally overthinking that exhaustive Wikipedia entry.

@Capt Howdy: the charm of Star Trek was its bargain basement look

Only it wasn’t bargain-basement for a Sixties scifi series — it was a creative use of limited resources. No joke: Not only were budgets relatively smaller than today, the techniques required to meet a weekly schedule were far more limited. They should be applauded for what they got away with, not embarrassed about it.

You want bargain basement, I’ll give you Lost in Space.

@nojo:

Or original BSG and their three space dogfight scenes. :)

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: UFO Fest in Mac this weekend. Come on up. Abduction counselors are standing by.

@Capt Howdy: Same deal with Star Wars: all that mechanical motion-tracking was groundbreaking (and visually stunning). Accomplishments like that should be preserved as-is, as part of film history.

And inserting new characters into old scenes? That’s just cheating.

@nojo: …all that mechanical motion-tracking was groundbreaking. Right, thanks to A Space Odyssey (aka 2001. did you know that was its real title?). Oh dear God, I think I just went geek.

I have to lie down. Or watch an Alice Faye movie. Or both.

@nojo:
oh, I meant bargain basement with all the love in the world.
for me the best thing about ST was that at the time, and even now, you can be channel surfing – although we never do that anymore – and you could instantly tell it was ST in one frame just by the colors.

@nojo:
yeah
they went a bit overboard (fully CG Mos Eisley). but cleaning up the shadow under the cruiser early in the film was a good thing.

@Benedick: aka 2001. did you know that was its real title?

One of my treasured life experiences is seeing a battered 70mm copy of 2001 on a proper wide screen in the early ’80s. Just reading the title was like watching a tennis match — you literally had to turn your head to take it all in.

@Benedick: And I still think the shuttle docking with the space station is the horniest movie-scene ever.

@nojo:

saw the original release in 70mm in a theater. on acid.

Some real howlers in the platform, if you can stomach it all the way through.

Some favorites:

Reassert the principle that “Freedom of Religion” does not mean “freedom from religion”.

Doesn’t that mean the nasty ol’ Mooslem President could make us all follow his heathen religion? ;)

Discard political correctness, make public the declaration of war (Jihad), made against the US on 23 Feb 1998, and fight the war against the United States by radical Islam to win.

Funny, why are they here drafting this shit then? Shouldn’t they have enlisted already?

Return to the principles of Austrian Economics, and redirect the economy back to one of incentives to save and invest.

I’d bet $1000 that not a ONE of the fuckers proposing this knows what “Austrian Economics” means, apart from the fact that Ron Paul says it a lot so it must be better.

Espouse and follow the principle: It is immoral to steal the property rightfully earned by one person, and give it to another who has no claim or right to its benefits.

Guess they don’t like farm subsidies or rural roads very much, ’cause that shit’s OUTTA HERE.

And the from the oldies-but-not-goodies-at-all department:

Eliminate the Department of Education and restore schools to local control as specified in the constitution.

The irony of the Jefferson quote above this in the document is apparently completely lost on the Faux News crowd.

Repeal and prohibit any participation in efforts to create a one world government.

They probably added this because even *they* were scared of the dude with the M60 machine gun and matching tinfoil hat in the corner.

@nojo: The OH has worked with Keir D a couple of times and he always calls it that. In Cinerama it was like nothing we’d ever seen in a movie before. Or since, so far as I’m concerned. All story and very little plot. Plus some hilarious supporting performances.

Remember my mantra (and yes, I’ll say it again): all the GOP has left are sociopaths, the home-schooled, and the clinically insane.

The MSM is freaking out over some comment Obama made about XBoxes and Ipads.

What a bunch of freaking losers.

@Tommmcat Still Gets Carly Confused With Meg: I would have gone there too this morning, but I got distracted by an enovel.

But to the point: Take away Barry’s Crackberry and watch him cry.

@Benedick: Stanley dun good, no doubt about it. And yes, getting the astronauts to all squeeze into one shot is a minor comic classic.

@nojo: One of my cellmates at work made exactly that point today … the president went to great lengths to keep his “device”.

@blogenfreude: Got to pass the time somehow. Not much else goin on.

Speaking of which, why the hell has Andrew Sullivan died his beard that weird color/s? Does he not have a hairdresser could help? Do we need to stage an intervention? It’s as bad as Ronnie’s strange orange do when Nancy stopped using L’Oreal.

@Benedick: All story, and no plot. back when I wanted to write the Great American Novel, I read books about how to write. I remember Wodehouse, who said that the basic plot for a romantic comedy is, boy meets girl, girl gets boy in pickle, boy gets pickle in girl. And I think it was Asimov, who made a great distinction between a “story,” with dramatic conflict and resolution, and “here’s some stuff that happened,” which is not the same.

I think that might have been Louis Mayer, I don’t know anything anymore. That asshole comedian, he used to say “Hey, I could be wrong” at the end of his rants, he started being a major asshole when he stopped saying that.

@Benedick: Good luck with the intervention — Sully’s made beard-tinting a crusade. You’d sooner get the Atlantic to remove the hair from his graphic.

Hey, ya’ll, here’s a threadjack, I want to start a new religion, based completely and solely on this Walt Whitman quote someone sent to me a few days ago.

I have to tell you about the person who sent it, he is my cousin, a first cousin, but a bit older than me. He fought in the marines in Vietnam, in the late 60s, in the serious shit, he was fucked up from it. His friends were killed, he killed people. He was lucky to come back. he came back and became a cop, but he started studying buddhism, and went travelled to india, several times, over the years after vietnam. he retired from his job as a cop, he went to live in India, he became a buddhist monk. He now lives in Vietnam, outside of the city of Hue, he is involved in establishing an orphanage, just miles from where he fought as a young man in that terrible war.

He sent me this, a quote from Walt Whitman:

Love the earth and sun and animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labor to others…
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

I have been stricken and stunned by this, the simplicity, directness, truth, of what Whitman said. I have decided that this stanza, is my religion. There is nothing more anyone need know or do than this. It has struck me like a lightning bolt. It is stunningly true and simple and right.

@Promnight: What a beautiful story! Bravo. Whitman really wrote ‘stand up for the stupid and crazy”? Sounds a bit too sane for a religion. At least, for a religion where you stand to make a few bucks. Which is what American religions are chiefly about: Mormons, Sci-FiTology, fundie sects, etc. And if you’re not going to make a few bucks what, really, is the point?

@nojo: He’s the clever grammar-school boy elbowing his way to the front of the class. (that’s not a compliment. But since it is a put-down in the English manner it sounds as if it might be).

I am up way too early.

@Benedick:

Top ‘o the morning to ya, Benedick.

OMFG…i am not the biggest geek in the room.

the ST movies are sacrilege!!! i have not, nor will i ever watch one.
give me the young, wig and girdle wearing captain or none at all!!!
that is all.

@Promnight:
sorry prommie. i’m not standing up for the stupid and crazy.
i’m just funny that way. i will stand to mock and jeer only.

@Promnight: @Benedick: I was a little skeptical of the sourcing on that (you could practically fill a notebook with apocryphal Twain quotes alone, and Whitman seems a similarly easy target), but apparently it’s a snippet from the preface to the first edition of Leaves of Grass.

@baked:
I get it
but you should consider the new one. it was before the wig and girdle.

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