Early Morning Open Thread
This year’s best First-of-April news article was scienterrific:
A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.
The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment’s vending machines. He also claimed responsibility for the infamous baguette sabotage in November last year.
Mr Cole was seized by Swiss police after CERN security guards spotted him rooting around in bins. He explained that he was looking for fuel for his ‘time machine power unit’, a device that resembled a kitchen blender.
Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin. “Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I’m here to stop it ever happening.” ...
It’s the Mountain Dew (state drink of WV) that convinces me Eloi must be a descendent of our honorable bloghost… that, and the deadpan affect.
April 2, 2010 3:22 am
Posted in: Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Open Thread
47 Comments
47 Responses
Yutsano - April 2, 2010 | 3:26 am · Link
Proof that yes, even science geeks can be funny.
morzer - April 2, 2010 | 3:28 am · Link
Ah, the wells of human creativity. Still, I hope they put morlochs on the facility door, just to keep things safe.
Comrade Baron Elmo - April 2, 2010 | 3:31 am · Link
Alabama too. At my high school, the soft drink machine in the boy’s locker room had five slots given over to Mountain Dew, one to Pepsi. A favorite prank was to use the tip of one of the pull-off tabs (remember those?) to jam down the Pepsi button, thereby ensuring that the next guy who put money into the machine was cheated of his Dew. Tempers flared, hilarity ensued.
Decades later, a long-time resident of California, I still drink at least one can of the radioactive-green nectar every day… and have consumed enough of it in one lifetime to (as Lewis Black so charmingly put it), piss the stuff for a year.
Calliope Jane - April 2, 2010 | 3:35 am · Link
Is “It is a communist chocolate hellhole” going to be added to the rotating . . . tagline (? sig? masthead? thingamabob?)
MattR - April 2, 2010 | 3:36 am · Link
Oh, to live in a communist chocolate hellhole. Sounds nice.
asiangrrlMN - April 2, 2010 | 3:37 am · Link
Nice! Melikey! Heh. Communist chocolate hellhole. Yum yum yum.
morzer - April 2, 2010 | 3:39 am · Link
You mean they don’t actually make it that way?
Yutsano - April 2, 2010 | 3:40 am · Link
Oh and late entry to the gag list: I subscribe to a far-left e-mail news forward service. One of the banner subject lines was “ISRAEL BOMBS NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN” then you opened it and it was a woman covered by a mushroom cloud and “April Fool!”
asiangrrlMN - April 2, 2010 | 3:41 am · Link
I gotta say, every time I see a new tagline in the revolving header, it makes my day. I just saw, “Where tasty lettuce and mustard isn’t elitist” or something like that.
@Yutsano: Huh. That doesn’t sound so funny to me.
MattR - April 2, 2010 | 3:44 am · Link
@asiangrrlMN: I got the “wetsuits and a dildo” one on the post that turned into “getting John laid” in the comments.
asiangrrlMN - April 2, 2010 | 3:46 am · Link
@MattR: That’s perfect! And, it’s funny, too.
JSD - April 2, 2010 | 4:08 am · Link
@ Morzer,
I’m surprised the reference made it into the 2nd comment. That was fast. No one reads Wells anymore, so I didn’t expect anyone to put that in…
morzer - April 2, 2010 | 4:36 am · Link
@JSD:
It’s a story that made a deep impression on my childhood years. It’s a shame that people don’t read Wells, and I think it’s partly because you don’t seem to find good volumes of selections from him any more, and the same seems to be true of O Henry. I wish teachers would use Wells in English classes, because he really had a knack of saying a lot in terse, effective language, and his images stick with you for life. That said, I feel rather guilty about my dreadful pun on morlochs. s I wonder if we could get a thread on The Best HG Wells Story. I’d love to see what stories of his people know.
Yutsano - April 2, 2010 | 4:40 am · Link
@asiangrrlMN: It wasn’t really funny ha-ha as much as a made-you-look kind of thing. It was mildly amusing, could just be that way to me.
@morzer: This is either funy or sad, but I understood the reference even though if you had held a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to tell you for the life of me where it was from. I appreciate the clarification however.
I go find pillow now. Night y’all.
morzer - April 2, 2010 | 4:46 am · Link
@Yutsano:
The Time Machine – HG Wells.
http://librivox.org/the-time-machine-by-hg-wells/
I just realized that I misspelled morlocks as morlochs. Drat and double drat.
Martin - April 2, 2010 | 4:47 am · Link
I think you have it wrong. Clearly it’s John that goes even more hippie as to change his name to Eloi in the future. I’m guessing that Tunch gets so big he forms a black hole allowing John/Eloi to travel back in time.
Pip's Squeak - April 2, 2010 | 5:08 am · Link
The morlocks are to be delivered by the man Thursday.
Moses2317 - April 2, 2010 | 6:16 am · Link
This article in the Kaplan Daily is a real laugher.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....ments.html
Here is my comment on it:
This quote pretty much sums up the absurdity of the teabagger movement:
“Nance, of the Gibson County Patriots, said, ‘I don’t see the agricultural subsidy thing as an issue at all,’ adding: “If it were an issue, then we would never elect a farmer to Congress at all. Because basically, most farmers get agriculture subsidies. If they didn’t, they’d be broke, and we’d be buying our food from China.’”
Just like the fact that a big teabagger rallying cry was “keep the government out of my Medicare,” that many of the teabagger leaders are on government assistance, or that the teabaggers are organized by Freedom Works – a corporate backed political organization that is more than happy to support more taxpayer spending on wars and corporate subsidies, these teabaggers are nothing more than uninformed hypocrites.
They rail against the common sense, middle-of-the-road efforts by President Obama to save our economy and improve our broken health care system. Yet, where were they when President Bush was driving our economy into a ditch and running up our deficits with unneeded wars, handouts to the rich, and a prescription drug plan that did not pay for itself?
Perhaps the teabaggers are less concerned with “ideals” than they are with the fact that President Obama is a black Democrat?
dr. bloor - April 2, 2010 | 6:40 am · Link
We are all Eloi now.
GReynoldsCT00 - April 2, 2010 | 6:42 am · Link
wut?
that is all.
Barney - April 2, 2010 | 6:50 am · Link
wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age
It’s alright, you can trust him, he’s a doctor
http://revolutuck.wordpress.co.....-new-logo/
jurassicpork - April 2, 2010 | 6:57 am · Link
Wild Bill and the Catholic League of Extraordinary Liars, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pope.
bago - April 2, 2010 | 7:08 am · Link
Ok, who purged my YTCracker? Dome of us miss that Surge.
Earl - April 2, 2010 | 7:30 am · Link
We get Kit-Kats? w00t!
cleek - April 2, 2010 | 7:36 am · Link
yes, but only the wacky Japanese flavors. no chocolate, but plenty of vinegar and sweet potato!
gbear - April 2, 2010 | 7:41 am · Link
TBogg has a pretty good prediction of what will happen at the DC teabagger rallies on April 15. I feel so sorry for the cops and security people who have to work at this event.
arguingwithsignposts - April 2, 2010 | 7:57 am · Link
This article doesn’t ask the really pertinent question: What about his sheets? Did they match? We demand thread counts!
Panurge - April 2, 2010 | 8:25 am · Link
a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age
I see the “forward into the past” trend begun in the late ‘70s is still continuing. Ah, well. I guess I’ll just have to come up with my own FutureWear…
Chris W - April 2, 2010 | 8:33 am · Link
Later in the article:
Professor Brian Cox, a former CERN physicist and full-time rock’n’roll TV scientist, was sympathetic to Mr Cole. “Bless him, he sounds harmless enough. At least he didn’t mention bloody black holes.”
Mr Cole was taken to a secure mental health facility in Geneva but later disappeared from his cell. Police are baffled, but not that bothered.
Love it.
Linda Featheringill - April 2, 2010 | 8:45 am · Link
” . . . rather too much tweed for his age . . . ”
How does one calculate age-appropriate tweed? Is there a formula?
scav - April 2, 2010 | 9:06 am · Link
Bow Tie and rather too much tweed? And the 11th Dr Who up this weekend?
I’m trying too hard for a link. Use this this
scav - April 2, 2010 | 9:10 am · Link
@Barney: Oh Barney, you revive my faith. whew.
Ogami Itto - April 2, 2010 | 9:18 am · Link
@scav: “The Doctor” immediately came to my mind as well.
scav - April 2, 2010 | 9:21 am · Link
@Ogami Itto: and now I’m feeling downright chipper!
capt - April 2, 2010 | 9:25 am · Link
“Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age,”
Just wonderin’ has anybody seen Tucker Carlson? Could he be this buy Cole?
jrosen - April 2, 2010 | 9:52 am · Link
A toast to the memory of Sidd (for Siddharta) Finch, who could wing a fastball at 160 mph. (For you young ‘uns, that was the creation of George Plimpton for SI about 25 years ago.) He played the French Horn too.
norbizness - April 2, 2010 | 10:15 am · Link
Did he look like Jeremy Davies?
Linda Featheringill - April 2, 2010 | 10:32 am · Link
OT.
Back to the Church and pedophilia. Yes, I know we sort of resolved not to go there again.
However, a guest essay by Chris Matthews appears in todays WaPo. One of the better comments from readers is this one:
[Posted by: johng1 | April 2, 2010 10:00 AM]
I like the way that man’s mind works.
Mike Toreno - April 2, 2010 | 12:39 pm · Link
Not so hard to believe. I’ve traveled here from the past.
JScott - April 2, 2010 | 1:08 pm · Link
Anybody try the Mountain Dew Throwback? My first sip and I was hit with a temporal fugue myself.
morzer - April 2, 2010 | 1:08 pm · Link
@cleek:
C’mon, a lifestyle based on Pocky and Calpis sounds totally American. Seriously! Now, all we need are the hentai manga and the MidWest is set… Come to think of it, I can see Republicans agreeing to become the Lolicon party.
morzer - April 2, 2010 | 1:10 pm · Link
@arguingwithsignposts:
Folks, that’s obviously George Will. Look at the hatred of kitkats and the attempt to destroy science. (Plus the tweed and the bowtie and the paranoia about revealing his base).
scav - April 2, 2010 | 1:18 pm · Link
@Linda Featheringill: This comment you cite presumably followed something about the Vatican hierarchy providing cover for priests wielding weapons of Mass Destruction, no?
sorry, WaPo is personal NoGo.
goblue72 - April 2, 2010 | 1:41 pm · Link
@morzer: One of my favorite books from childhood. I remember seeing some 1970s TV movie remake of the Time Machine. Then I read the book and realized that television should just leave Wells alone, there was no improving on it.
Not sure anyone picked up on it, but Cole is the name of the time traveling character in Twelve Monkeys, played by Bruce Willis.
As for the tweed and bowtie, as others noted, sounds like Doctor Who #11.
JGabriel - April 2, 2010 | 2:14 pm · Link
Eloi Cole:
While it’s disappointing to learn that there are still wingnuts in the future, it is gratifying to know that they
lostlose. (Tense is a bitch once time travel is involved.).
JGabriel - April 2, 2010 | 2:17 pm · Link
@Mike Toreno:
Exactly. Anyone who thinks this is just an April Fool’s prank is falling for what THEY want you to believe.
.
morzer - April 2, 2010 | 3:41 pm · Link
“Will have lost”! The future perfect strikes again!