>>By comparison, the United States suffered 2 percent of those losses, for which any American whose father or grandfather served in and survived that war should be saying: Thank you, Comrade Stalin.

No, you foolish little gnome. Besides that much of the time we had been more than occupied in the Pacific, thank yous can only go to the Red Army, and the civilians all across the western sections of the USSR that the Germans were obsessed with killing whether they defended themselves are not. Thank you, Babi Yar! Your ditches saved our asses!

How grotesque to claim Stalin should be thanked for anything. You almost had me till that. Not even in jest, sir.

Stalin, who signed the non-aggression pact with Hitler, and killed his best generals, in itself crucial in much of the initial losses? Stalin, who sent the troops that survived to gulags because they'd been infected by the awful west? Stalin?

No. Please shut up. No.

That's not to say I have any esteem for the "American century" concept. But saying America is fucked up can be true at the same time it's true Stalin was a bastard and in no way earned any gratitude reflected off the Red Army he pummeled himself.

...not technological. I've never been a sports fan, but that aspect of it I always found admirable, the idea that someone was pulling something amazing off due only to their own will, as manifested in training and playing, not because he got steroids shot in his ass. Perhaps the labs should get championship trophies from now on? That would make sense.

But hey, whatever. Be as phony as Hollywood. Neither makes any difference to me.

...and that's the right wing, who claim to be patriots, and yet their constant threat, from the Clinton years onward, is that they will rip the country apart if they are not placated.

Maybe we should call their bluff and see what they would do, then. I have a feeling they would go to treason and violence, because there is nothing they consider unacceptable in their Glenn Beck cause.

The only way that has to do with this theme is that Seth Brundle thinks at first that he's given himself cancer. It's not a movie about a super-illness, though it is a Science Gone Wrong film. And those people attacking the car in CHILDREN OF MEN are just poor, not zombies.

Surely you had enough footage from films that are actually about this theme!

Ditto on Rabid. It's strange to me really that, of all the films Cronenberg has done about illnesses destroying society, you chose THE FLY, which is unrelated. Maybe you just lacked footage of RABID, as it's still not on DVD. However, that can be fixed.

http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/xxyw4_JLRoberson_cronenbergs-rabid

And Marilyn Chambers is a lot better here than you'd think. (Man, it's sad she had to go and die.)

>>That film has a cold, unhappy ending, and not just because Chambers herself would die badly a few years later.

I don't know how I missed this.

Marilyn Chambers died less than a month ago. She was 56. I thought maybe you might have been confusing her with the genuinely sad and exploited Linda Lovelace, but she too didn't die till many years later.

I'm trying to figure out who you might mean. But Marilyn Chambers lived a long, long while after both Rabid and her porn career. (which was happier than that of most)

THE STAND, that is the miniseries, is only really good until all the various characters meet up in Boulder--after that it's uneven at best, though the scenes with Nadine, Harold Lauder and Randall Flagg are good. But once all the God talk starts, much like in the book, most of the good characters become kind of insipid and flavorless. But I'm with you on the part that takes place as the world dies.

1) Do you folks even read what article you're spamming, or do you just get a link in the mail that you respond to blindly?

2) Are you conservatives really the zombies that we fear?

...LA is not turning out to be too great, I take it.

I happen to DRAW X-rated comics(among others) and while that might be so, erotic art and comics have a very long history and tradition.

The only reason it's divided off from the rest of grownup culture is because of a classification decision made by the British Museum in the 1800s to protect the working classes from sexual material. aid decision basically invented the concept of pornography.

I should also point out that the only reason "X-rated cartoons"(eh, I just use the word "smut") are particularly notable is because we have this false idea comics and cartoons have always been for kids. Not at the start, they weren't. And fortunately(artistically) or unfortunately(for the business) they aren't anymore.

Actually, it's kind of cute and, allowing for translation difficulties, witty in places. The artwork's a little too smooth and markery in that computer-drawn-looking sort of way--I'm not too big on this style in webcomics--but it's not bad. Not really my own thing, but I can see it having appeal. It's certainly not ugly or mean-spirited.

And I'll just say this as someone who does 'em--most, sadly, are.

I have to say, this is one of the best bits I've read in a while:

>>That is to say, he looked like a man who was about to be dragged backward by his pinky toes through a field of soft horseshit.

Mmff. (I don't do LOLs)