{"id":5200,"date":"2010-11-18T18:30:45","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T23:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5200"},"modified":"2010-11-18T15:21:06","modified_gmt":"2010-11-18T20:21:06","slug":"thursday-various-54","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5200","title":{"rendered":"Thursday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Maybe I&#8217;ve been living under a rock, but is &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/nintendo-seeks-to-trademark-its-on-like-donkey-kon,47527\/?utm_medium=RSS&#038;utm_campaign=feeds&#038;utm_source=channel_tv\">it&#8217;s on like Donkey Kong<\/a>&#8221; actually such a popular phrase? I&#8217;m going to try to popularize the phrase &#8220;This is gonna hurt like Q*bert!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>I didn&#8217;t <i>love<\/i> what I saw of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rally_to_Restore_Sanity_and\/or_Fear\">the Rally to Restore Sanity and\/or Fear<\/a>, and it seemed a little like a well-intentioned but disjointed mess. But I&#8217;m perfectly willing to accept Jon Stewart&#8217;s argument (expressed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/26315908\/vp\/40141311#40141311\">in this long and compelling interview<\/a> with Rachel Maddow) that those intentions were entirely apolitical on their part. That they were just trying to put on a comedy show, and whatever &#8220;message&#8221; the rally had, it was not the same message that so many of his viewers, so many of the left-leaning progressives who attended the rally and are bemoaning its outcome, clearly wanted it to be. I&#8217;m perfectly willing to let Stewart pass for falling short of what <i>I<\/i> hoped the rally would be &#8212; a call to arms, groundbreaking satire, something, <i>anything<\/i> other than a singalong with Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow. I&#8217;m willing to let Stewart pass on this, the same way I&#8217;m <i>not<\/i> willing to let Obama pass for falling short on his own call to arms, because when you get right down to it, I buy Stewart&#8217;s contention that he&#8217;s just a comedian. A comedian with a political bent and sometimes important insight, but one following in pretty well-established treads and with pretty well-established boundaries. It can seem like a cop-out, and I think Stewart acknowledges that, but I think he also does a good job of explaining why it&#8217;s not, why <i>his<\/i> job isn&#8217;t drumming up progressive activism (on the left or right) but instead making people laugh.\n<p>I think you can argue that the rally wasn&#8217;t entirely successful on <i>that<\/i> front either, but I think it&#8217;s important to weigh expectations against intentions.<\/li>\n<li>On a less serious note, <a href=\"http:\/\/superpunch.blogspot.com\/2010\/11\/harry-potter-as-space-opera.html\">Harry Potter as space opera<\/a> [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfsignal.com\/\" title=\"SF Signal\">via<\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Uwe Boll: he just might make you <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/uwe-boll-helps-you-get-over-the-holocaust-with-tra,47415\/?utm_medium=RSS&#038;utm_campaign=feeds&#038;utm_source=channel_film\">root for the Nazis<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>And finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/blastr.com\/2010\/11\/architects-want-to-know-w.php\">building the perfect zombie safe house<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe I&#8217;ve been living under a rock, but is &#8220;it&#8217;s on like Donkey Kong&#8221; actually such a popular phrase? I&#8217;m going to try to popularize the phrase &#8220;This is gonna hurt like Q*bert!&#8221; I didn&#8217;t love what I saw of the Rally to Restore Sanity and\/or Fear, and it seemed a little like a well-intentioned &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=5200\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[19,35,149,64,83,14,6,9,45,17,10,24],"class_list":["post-5200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-art","tag-games","tag-humor","tag-language","tag-legal","tag-movies","tag-politics","tag-pop-culture","tag-theater","tag-tv","tag-various","tag-zombies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}