Keeping Up With Current Events (in 1986)

Lileks:

The first time I saw the first Alien movie, I was so unnerved I had to turn on the lights a month later when an ad came on TV late at night. The first time I saw “Aliens,” I thought it was the most comprehensively effective thing I’d ever seen. Perhaps you had to be there - if you’re younger than I happen to be, you’ve seen “Aliens” repeated over and over again. But at the time? This was every movie we’d waited for.

This (as usual for Lileks) is exactly right.

When "Alien" came out in 1979, I was ten years old, and only a solid month of wheedling directed at my mother got me in the door of the theater for what was my first R-rated movie (we didn't even have cable until I was about 15). Mom, who had volunteered to screen the movie first, told me as I got out of the car (and before waving to the girl at the counter that it was okay to let me in), sent one last warning: "It's going to give you bad dreams."

Boy, was she right about that. I have nightmares about Giger's monster literally to this day. But on the whole, it was worth it.

"Aliens" was released seven years later, and by that time I had a driver's license and was just tall enough to not get carded at R-rated movies. It opened with a free midnight show in the next town over, sponsored by the local radio station. Two buddies and I piled into my hand-me-down Ford LTD (handed down from my mom, of course), and rolled over to Dothan to check it out. This was obviously pre-internet, and "Aliens" was launched with very little promotional fanfare. We literally knew nothing about the movie other than it was a sequel to "Alien" (which by then we had practically memorized thanks to videotape), and that based on the title, there was probably going to be more than one of the critters.

I remember that I bought a big tub of popcorn, and set it down under my seat just as the 20th Century Fox logo rolled.

I didn't touch that corn for the entire movie. Completely forgot it was there.

To say that we were blown away by "Aliens" is kind of like suggesting that Richard Pryor sort of liked drugs. At well past 2:30 in the morning, the three of us just babbled about the movie for the entire drive home, then carried on about it for another hour or so sitting on the car in the driveway. As James notes above, it was absolutely everything we wanted in a movie at that time. Bill Paxon's Private Hudson immediately became our unofficial imaginary friend, to be quoted at every opportunity--and come to think of it, he's still there, on the occasions when we all get together.

I think my gang of cronies all went to see "Aliens" at least ten times that summer. Every single time, in the infirmary scene where the facehuggers are chasing Ripley and Newt around the room, we'd nudge each other and mutter, "You going to jump this time?"

And every time, we all did.

Try it yourself at home, with the DVD. I bet you'll still jump.

At All Costs

This entire imbroglio reminds me of an old joke: "What is the definition of 'racist'?" Answer: "Anyone who's winning an argument with a liberal."

The Left is losing the current argument--and badly. The propensity of Obama's liberal supporters in the media to automatically blame any dissent from The Savior on racism, it's no surprise that the canard is being trotted out again, and even less surprising that it's being employed by partisans as inherently dishonest as Paul Krugman.

That doesn't make it any less disappointing, though. The quick willingness to play the race card at any time is possibly the most destructive impact of Obamamania on our political and social culture. Unfortunately for everybody, this particular variety of dirty pool doesn't appear to be going anywhere.

Outrage in Tampa

In Tampa, with Democratic member of Congress Kathy Castor just a few feet away, SEIU union thugs attack protestors, forcing them out of a "town meeting":



I particularly liked the union goon with his own video camera photographing the faces of the protestors. "Nice family you got there. Shame if anything happened to them."

True to form, CBS News blames and insults the protestors.

UPDATE: Jon Henke catches the St. Petersburg Times airbrushing the SEIU's pre-planned tactics out of their story on the meeting, and replacing those details with Democratic talking points.

The Peasants Are Revolting

The Congresscritters are back in flyover country, and from the looks of all these clips, they're not exactly getting standing ovations. This pair of videos from Setauket, NY, is especially good. Democrat Tim Bishop gets taken to the cleaners by his constituents here, particularly including a veteran who lays him out of promoting VA hospitals as an ideal model for healthcare:





Bishop probably likes things much better in Washington, where he's got the press corps to shield him from actual tough questions.

See also the execrable Lloyd Doggett getting his in Austin, TX:



... and here's HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Himselfocrat Arlen Specter getting an earful in Pennsylvania. Reactions to whining from Sebelius about how hard the Congresscritters are "working" and to Specter's insistence on getting a bill past quickly are priceless:



As noted earlier today, the marks are wise to the scam, and they're not happy about it.

I Guess Beer And Pizza Is Right Out

Check out this press release from Obama Administration Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. It's regarding the recent hike in the minimum wage, and this section in particular just about proves that political spin these days simply defies parody:

For families with a full-time minimum wage earner, Solis said, the increase would mean $120 extra per month, which, among other things, would allow the working poor to replace their regular light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, "which would save the family money in the long term and be an important step toward a greener country."

You read that right. Never mind that ordering raising the wages of primarily part-time teenagers (and effectively cutting the number of entry-level jobs available during a recession) doesn't make a whole lot of economic sense--we can still send out a goofy press release about ghastly light bulbs that hardly anybody actually wants to buy!

You really can't fix stupid.

AT&T: Worst Company In The World

Early this year I decided to ditch my crappy cable company (Charter) for internet service. We cut the old BellSouth landline cord over five years ago, but AT&T is finally allowing dry-line DSL service in Atlanta (after claiming for a decade that it was technically impossible), so I figured I'd give them another shot. I called up the billing number, got what sounded like a great price on bundled service (we already had AT&T wireless thanks to the wife's iPhone), and signed up.

Boy, was that a mistake.

Since then, I would estimate that I've spent upwards of 20 hours on the phone with various Death Star minions. My billing has never once been correct; AT&T refused for months to live up to the DSL rates promised in my original sales call, and has repeatedly screwed up the discounts on the wireless side (I have a wireless service discount through my employer).

It took a certified letter to the CEO to get any action (for future reference, his direct email address is rs2982@att.com), and even now my bill is still screwed up. The executive case manager who's been handling the wireless side finally admitted that even he couldn't fix AT&T's billing system, and pushed through an advance credit to make up for the discount that I won't be receiving thanks to the Death Star's bureaucratic incompetence.

And even that credit, allegedly issued nearly a month ago, apparently hasn't gone through.

I've been hung up on, lied to, patronized, and even today flat-out insulted by phone reps, almost all of whom clearly could care less whether I'm satisfied with my service.

The most irritating thing of all is, every single AT&T employee I talk to tells me something diametrically opposed to the thing the last AT&T employee told me.

And that is why people hate AT&T. You don't want to give a discount or live up to an offer, fine. Don't offer them. You want to stick to your internal policies, that's also fine. But you don't say one thing and then do another, time and time and time and time again.

To Steve Jobs, the Leader, I beseech thee: for the love of Zod and my sanity, please ditch this awful company. I will be overjoyed to cut the Death Star loose approximately one micro-second after we're able to use our iPhones with a different provider.

(And yes, I know about unlocking iPhones and using them with T-Mobile. While I'd love to go back to them--I had fine service from T-M for years--that's not a wife-friendly option.)

What He Said

Patterico:

Looks like the cash-for-clunkers program may be near an end. I don’t qualify; I made the mistake of buying a fuel-efficient car in 2000.

Didn’t get any money for my house either. I made the mistake of getting a mortgage I could afford.
...

I’m trying to think if there’s some area of life where I can be stupid and irresponsible now, so I can get paid by Obama in the future. Because so far I’ve really screwed myself by doing things right.

Why is the Obama agenda tanking? Because the marks--those of use who are actually responsible for ourselves--have figured out that The Savior's entire plan of action is geared towards fleecing us to pay off the irresponsible.