It occurs to me that I may be getting seriously punked on this.

But it seems so ludicrous and unhinged that it almost has to be real. No one would ever try to pawn off something this insane as parody; it wouldn't sell.

The pilot episode, Serenity, was written and directed by Joss Whedon....

The first scene opens in a war with Mal and Zoe. Zoe runs around calling Mal ‘sir’ and taking orders off him. I roll my eyes. Not a good start.

The next scene is set in the present. Mal, Jayne, and Zoe are floating about in space. They come into some danger. Mal gets all panicky.

Zoe says, “This ship's been derelict for months. Why would they –”

Mal replies, (in Chinese) “Shut up.”

So in the very second scene of the very first episode, an episode written and directed by the great feminist Joss, a white man tells a black woman to ‘shut up’ for no apparent reason. And she does shut up. And she continues to call him sir. And takes his orders, even when they are dumb orders, for the rest of the series.

"For no apparent reason," other than the fact he is her superior officer and they begin as soldiers and then later are on a ship, which is of course run by military rules, even if private.

The next scene we meet Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic. <- Lookee, lookee, feminist empowerment. In this scene Mal and Jayne are stowing away the cargo they just stole. Kaylee is chatting to them, happily. Jayne asks Mal to get Kaylee to stop being so cheerful. Mal replies, “Sometimes you just wanna duct tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month.” Yes, that is an exact quote, “Sometimes you just wanna DUCT TAPE HER MOUTH and DUMP HER IN THE HOLD FOR A MONTH.” Kaylee responds by grinning and giving Mal a kiss on the cheek and saying, “I love my Captain.”

What the fuck is this feminist man trying to say about women here? A black woman calling a white man ‘sir’. A white male captain who abuses and silences his female crew, with no consequences. The women are HAPPY to be abused. They enjoy it. What does this say about women, Joss? What does this say about you? Do you tell your wife to shut up? Do you threaten to duct tape her mouth? Lock her in the bedroom? Is this funny to you, Joss? Because it sure as fuck ain’t funny to me.

Our first introduction to Inara the ‘Companion’, Joss Whedon’s euphemism for prostituted women, is when she is being raped/fucked/used by a prostitutor. [ed.-- prostitutor?]

...

So, Joss Whedon refers to rapist/fuckers who buy women as sex, as ‘eager, inexperienced but pleasingly shaped’ who ‘make love’ to women in prostitution. Obviously, ‘love’ to men like Joss Whedon, requires female powerlessness, force and coercion.

Gotta say it:

I'll be in my bunk.

You, Madame, are a Goof.

This has got to be the stupidest fucking essay ever written in the whole of the 'Verse. And when I say that, I'm including the Reavers' poetry, which consists of childishly simple rhyme schemes combined with live-performance hammering of nails through people's heads.

She makes only one cogent point: Yes, it is true, Zoe has no personality whatsoever. She seems patterned entirely after Marcy from Peanuts, following Peppermint Patty around and calling her "Sir." It's a cute joke... for a comic strip, and in light doses.

If anyone wants to say Zoe is capable fighter and criminal and so forth, sure, she is. But personality-wise she's a one-trick pony. I've heard people cite a lot of lines from Firefly, but I can't think off the top of my head of anyone ever quoting Zoe. She's the second- or third-best at everything, but not the best at anything. Except saying Sir. There's just no sphere in which she stands out, except, I guess, in being generally, though not memorably, competent.

No plots are ever built around her because she's just basically a cipher. If it were revealed in a sequel she was actually an android, or a genetically-modified raised-from-birth Alliance soldier intentionally denuded of any strong human emotion or inner drive (or any human failing), I'd say, "Ohhh... that explains it." At least that would make her interesting in a Lt. Data-ish way.

I'm also not very happy she cold-cocked my girl Saffron, who is brutally hot, and if she wants to kill everyone on board Serenity, well tough shit. Suck it up, shake it off.

I wish she did kill everyone on board so I could finally see my dream TV show, Saffron: Intergalactic Space-Whore.

Thanks to Ian at Inoperable Terran.

Posted by: Ace at 07:55 PM | Comments (257)
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Scrappleface has the raw video -- and audio -- that the Reich Wing Media won't show you, as Hillary efficiently neutralizes the threat posed by an 8-year-old partisan commando codenamed RAINBOW UNICORN armed with a HEPEI (High-Explosive Poem of Ethnic Importance).

Via Michelle Malkin, who posts a reader's account of Chelsea Clinton answering a question as to how on earth she and her mom managed to survive on Hamburger Helper Hill.

Her answer is a credit to the troops... sort of. If it weren't complete horseshit, drafting them into the first family's fantasias of phantom firefights.

Oh... and I haven't watched these clips at Hot Air yet but I'm pretty sure they must be filled with pulse-pounding action and spine-tingling suspense.

Posted by: Ace at 04:22 PM | Comments (19)
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With all these toxic mortgages around and mortgage companies holding bad paper they leveraged to the hilt to buy, there seems to be a new scam they're running to squeeze borrowers. Today I caught Wells Fargo trying to run one on me.

It goes like this:

You notify the borrower's insurance company that the value of the house has "gone up" and the insurance value needs to be increased accordingly...thus increasing the escrow amount the borrower has to pay each month...and increasing the amount that the mortgage company gets to float. They don't give a shit that trying to squeeze a few more dollars of float costs the customer potentially thousands of dollars a year more.

In my case it worked out like this:

There's only $20K left owing on this mortgage, so in reality Wells Fargo would be more than covered by the value of the lot alone even if the joint were flattened by a hurricane and only slab left. Just the lot with dirt work and workable slab would sell for around $35-40K these days.

Even in today's depressed market this house would sell in the $250K range.

I had the joint insured for about $130K because I know that's what I could build it for from scratch acting as my own GC. Remember, replacement cost != sale price. Sale price is affected by market factors, neighborhood, etc. Replacement cost factors in only materials and labor.

So these fucking scumbags at Wells Fargo told the insurance company to pump the value up to $200K and that added close to $2000 to the insurance premium (and dramatically increases amount they'll be floating in the escrow account).

All this on a property they've only got a $20K interest left in that in no way qualifies as one of these toxic mortgages people are walking away from. They're fucking over the people who ARE paying them to grab a few extra dollars of interest float.

Check your mortgage statements carefully folks. If they did it to me, they'll be trying to do it to everyone. The insurance company was more than willing to lower the insured value of the joint back in line with a replacement cost for me when I called.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 03:28 PM | Comments (63)
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Or rather New York and Miami voters, and you know (wink, wink) who that means.

Read Sowell, too.

Some are saying that Senator Obama cannot be held responsible for what his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said. In their version of events, Barack Obama just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time -- and a bunch of mean-spirited people are trying to make something out of it.

It makes a good story, but it won't stand up under scrutiny.

Barack Obama's own account of his life shows that he consciously sought out people on the far left fringe. In college, "I chose my friends carefully," he said in his first book, "Dreams From My Father."

These friends included "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets" -- in Obama's own words -- as well as the "more politically active black students." He later visited a former member of the terrorist Weatherman underground, who endorsed him when he ran for state senator.

Obama didn't just happen to encounter Jeremiah Wright, who just happened to say some way out things. Jeremiah Wright is in the same mold as the kinds of people Barack Obama began seeking out in college -- members of the left, anti-American counter-culture.

In Shelby Steele's brilliantly insightful book about Barack Obama -- "A Bound Man" -- it is painfully clear that Obama was one of those people seeking a racial identity that he had never really experienced in growing up in a white world. He was trying to become a convert to blackness, as it were -- and, like many converts, he went overboard.

And on that: When, for the first time in recorded history the New York Times admits the presumptive Democratic candidate for president is, in fact, finally, concededly, a "liberal," well.

Liberals are called centrists or moderates.

What are your real politics if even the NYT finds it impossible to call you a "moderate" as it would strongly prefer?

Thanks to Larwyn and Brad.

Posted by: Ace at 02:40 PM | Comments (23)
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If there's maybe 350M people, that's roughly $31/head.

...At more than $11 billion, the initial cost of the 2010 census was already the most expensive ever...

The article at the link runs down the technological clusterfuck this 2010 census is shaping up to be. Think Florida voter grade incompetence. Think butterfly ballot design quality. Add to that a heady mix of federal stupidity associated with pissing away $11B and we're going to have some real entertainment here in the next couple of years.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 02:07 PM | Comments (34)
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Nuance!

The new pastor: It's a lynching!

But of course it is, darling.

Whitewash/blackout!

Posted by: Ace at 02:03 PM | Comments (35)
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more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:57 PM | Comments (107)
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I don't mind so much that they want to do a liberal "comedy" show.

I do mind, on the other hand, that when FoxNews tried its hand, the liberals acted as if there was something wrong with featuring Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Laura Ingraham.

Liberals, of course, never indulge in such political pandering, and thus CNN's new laugh clapper riot show will feature guest commentators from all over the political map, from Anna Marie Cox to Joel Stein to even Rachel Sklar.

Posted by: Ace at 12:42 PM | Comments (55)
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Where can you turn when one candidate is a cynical, corrupt, disingenuous courter of racists and racewarriors, and the other candidate spins absurd lies about her experience as First Lady which sound suspiciously like the plotlines of Broken Arrow and Under Siege 2: Dark Territory?

Well, you need someone innocent, guileless, uncorrupted by worldliness. And uncorrupted by a functional dose of human intelligence, too.

Only one man can save the Democrats.

And that man is Ralph Wiggum.

Choo-choo-choose me!

Thanks to Conservative Belle.

Posted by: Ace at 11:14 AM | Comments (23)
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Yeah, you know.

And the three unidentified Democrats are three of the latest, and thus highest impact, pols to be caught in sex scandals: Spitzer, Kilpatrick, and McGreevey.

Oh, sure, they identify Barney Franks and Mel Reynolds in their age-old eighties-era scandals.

The one Republican they don't ID is Jack Ryan. My theory? Because they don't want anyone to know a Republican scored a hot piece of ass like Jeri Ryan and made her go to sex-clubs to have public sex with him.

That's not so much as a scandal as a campaign slogan.

If this isn't deliberate, why does it keep happening?

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (27)
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