After the bruising battle for the top opinion blog in past years, our regulars have been planning to prepare for this year’s competition. However, I am sorry to report that as of this morning I have decided to shelve the plans for a Turley Blog Death Star. Due to these lean times of downsizing and layoffs, the Death Star is no longer financially practicable in light of the recent report by Lehigh students that the star will cost $852 quadrillion. With current revenue generation from advertisements at zero, we will have to focus on other methods of seeking a competitive edge against Volokh Conspiracy, Ann Althouse and the rest.
The students concluded that it would require 1.08 x 1015 metric tons of steel to build the Death Star (which we planned to call the Friendship Star for marketing purposes). Based on the world’s current output it would take 833,315 years to produce enough steel and $852,000,000,000,000,000. Of course, I cannot imagine a better jobs bill if Congress were to offer the blog federal assistance.
In the interim, I want to introduce our latest weekend guest editor:
Source: Lehigh Valley
Gene, It doesn’t matter whatever else you stock it with, if it doesn’t have chocolate chip cookies it’s a Dearth Star and I can’t vote for that.
SWM, darn, I misread the posting, I should have sent the check to you obviously but Blouise has revealed the obvious bankruptcy (literal and figurative) of my campaign for the position. Your vote of confidence is appreciated, tongue in cheek or not. It appeals to the silly mood I’m in tonight; it must be the meds.
My, but that is disturbing news, LK. Especially since I once told a doctor that if he told me I couldn’t have coffee, chocolate or garlic then I’d see him in Hell. However, snickerdoodles are an acceptable substitution Oatmeal Scotchies, yum. Or we could break out the heavy artillery and use old school Irish Shortbreads. Muahahahaha!
Gene: “gratuitous use of kitteh pictures isn’t a bad idea”
I’m all for it in fact (says she that visits some blawgs solely for their abundance of kitty pictures) but the question is ‘just how many crazy kat ladies do you want commenting on Turleyblawg’? Though in truth we, uh, they, they might just blend in.
While you suggestion of a chocolate chip cookie star is one I’d vote for we may have hit “peak chocolate” with consumption being greater than production. We’re going to need the death-ray function just to defend our supply of chocolate. See, this is exactly how the cost overruns get built into any government project- the milk-maids and advanced chocolate protection security armaments. What happens when the chocolate runs out? Chocolate riots, hoarding, black market chocolate, space based greenhouses to grow our own ala Silent Running, Soylent-chocolate is us?
———-
“Savor that leftover Halloween candy, because in the future, you won’t be able to afford it. Chocolate consumption is increasing faster than cocoa production, according to the Cocoa Research Association, and that means prohibitively expensive chocolate is in our future.
Since even before Choc Finger started hoarding it, cocoa prices have been on the rise, doubling in the past six years. The cacao plant can only be grown in latitudes within 10 degrees of the equator, but cacao farmers (largely in developing nations) lack incentives to re-plant their trees as they die off, according to a report in the Independent.”
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-11/future-chocolate-will-be-rare-delicacy-analysts-say
SwM,
I would vote for lotta but her check bounced.
Gene,
I love it. I just close one eye when all the porn starts.
It really is a great story. I’m ready to begin episode 6.
raff,
Thanks! One strives for both accuracy and vivid imagery as well as to be of something or the other.
Gene,
You win the prize for the title of the week. “randomly aggressive dick” is a winner! 🙂
LK,
Of course, gratuitous use of kitteh pictures isn’t a bad idea, but I’m kind of partial to the idea of a Cookie Star. Eugene might get a tank, but you can’t compete against a machine that can pull into orbit and flood your entire planet in fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Surely it’s cheaper to build than a Death Star? Unless of you factor in the cost of Milk Maid transports to supplement the cookie ray. It takes a lot of support infrastructure to keep all that milk cold and pinpoint deliver it to the “cookie zone”.
Blouise, LOL, your check is in the mail but don’t cash it ’till next Wednesday. Newt and I have a lot in common.
There is a reason that all communications are kept…. You just never know when you’ll need them….
You started the unprovoked attack.. You know it and then turn around and play victim….. Tweaking the cages again I see….. I will not be the victim of your aggression…… Thank you for your kindness in the past….. Apparently it had a cost I was unwilling to submit to….. Then again, denial runs on both sides of the doorway…. And you have to show up on time and understand…… Both foreign concepts…..
You never know what bottom one needs to hit before they get the message…. Some never do…..
I just looked up a picture of Eugene Volokh and I wouldn’t give him any ideas for any upcoming competition. He’s a nice looking guy and if he was given one of those military buzz cuts and put into fatigues, in a tank or behind one of those BFG’s it would be impressive, he could probably pull it off. Again, do not give him any ideas, if he takes that tack it could be very effective. Then the Turleyblawg would be left with shameless pandering by posting more pictures of kitties. There are paths no blawg should be forced to travel. ’nuff said.
Blouise, Confused router or user?
lotta, I vote for you to be the next guest blogger.
Oh Jeez Professor, now you’ve done it! You know various Administration wonks read your blawg and now that a respected, mainstream personality has raised the prospect (no matter that it’s in jest) you just know that the death-star concept will find its way into a meeting. And then another. And then another.
The previous Star Wars program is virtually dead and (in contravention of Michael M’s correct analysis and proposal) I’m sure the Administration is looking for a nearly perpetual project with which to endlessly funnel money to the MIC. But now, now man, they won’t even have to change the name, just amend it. When DARPA draws up the plans I just hope they have the respect to amend it with your name. 🙂
BTW, I like your idea for the new guest blawger, obviously the introduction of a this particular painted berserker would expand the reader base, even though the new readers would be um… of a kind. If you really want to spice up the blawg you could establish a dedicated thread and prevail upon Triumph The Insult Dog to co-host it with Mr. Maul. It would be fabulous! 🙂
NSFW NSFW NSFW
BCRSP,
I really should have warned Blouise that the people of Westros like to get naked when not plotting against each other to steal the Iron Throne. They sometimes get naked while they are plotting too. Oh, and sometimes, the naked and plotting are the same thing. A randy lot they are. You can really tell there really is no sense of guilt attached to sex in their indigenous religions.
That’s nice to know…… It has been apparent…. The Sisterhood still exists…. I do have The email that even says that you’ll stick together and I’d be the one coming out as the loser…… Want. Me to post it for you?
…..I still think Huntsman would have been the best choice for the GOP….. Oh yeah….. I wouldn’t back down on that position…… That’s where it kinda exploded on this site……. But you see you’re confused…… There ya go……thanks for clearing this up……
“Gene isn’t exactly nurturing in his style … ” (Blouise)
“Gene’s not “nurturing”? Really?” (Mike A)
Not exactly. (Guess who)
(Blouise is busy watching the first season of Game of Thrones and totally enthralled with all the soft porn.)
Who farted?
Several pots calling the kettle “black,” so to speak. Perhaps the Dark Side of the Farce has once again hijacked a thread otherwise conducive to a discussion of irony and/or Orwellian market rollout strategies, the kind Frank Rich illuminates and eviscerates so well in The Greatest Story Ever Sold; the decline and fall of truth from 9/11 to Katrina. For example:
“Once in office, [George W.] Bush turned the presidency into an ongoing festival of audiovisual cognitive dissonance [emphasis added]. … While photo ops were nothing new in the modern American presidency, there had been a time when they were at least occasionally used to dramatize a president’s policies rather than almost exclusively to disguise them.”
When I first read Professor Turley’s “marketing strategy” comment, I took it as an ironic put-down, although I couldn’t quite shake the supposition that one could also interpret it as a sincere tribute to how easily the “ongoing festival of [corporate] cognitive dissonance” has sold political and economic suicide to Americans by calling it something like “an extended vacation from life’s boring routine.” As The Onion accurately put it when the Supreme Court’s selected Republican candidate succeeded President Bill Clinton:
“At last! America’s long nightmare of peace and prosperity is over!”
I can appreciate Professor Turley trying to make an off-hand joke about the marketing of mythology (see Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces) as a public-relations substitute for informed debate and honest competition, but the subject of citizens as gullible consumers should frighten far more than amuse, because the survival of the Republic now depends upon a deeper and more sustained criticism of “audiovisual cognitive dissonance” than even the estimable Frank Rich has given it.