Month: March 2025

Marine Le Penitentiary?

Post title borrowed from someone on Bluesky, cos frankly it was a vast improvement on what I’d come up with. Anyway, Marine Le Pen just got whacked by a French court along with a bunch of other National Rally members for embezzling millions of euros from the European Parliament; she’s now facing up to four years in jail (though apparently two of those years are a suspended sentence and the BBC say she may just have to wear an electronic tag for the other two) and, more importantly, been banned with immediate effect from running for public office for five years. I can’t say that this situation bothers me. I just wish her cunt of a father had lived just a little bit longer to see his daughter fail this much. I mean, he would’ve enjoyed this downfall, probably, and I don’t like that he would’ve got pleasure out of it, but it would’ve reflected badly on him too for having raised such a faildaughter…

Tower of London (1939)

For some reason this is sometimes marketed and sold as a horror film, but it’s piss all of the sort; I used to use this old toplist at ICheckMovies as a bit of a viewing project, but was always unsatisfied by some of the inclusions on it (The Virgin Spring is horror? Just because Wes Craven knocked it off for Last House on the Left? Be serious. And I’ve always had reservations about classing gialli as horror films), of which this was one… and there’s a bunch of other lists there featuring it, many sourced from books on the subject by Carlos Clarens, Scream Factory’s Universal horror collection, Time Out magazine, that sort of thing. But it’s not a horror film, despite some of the people involved; it’s a pretty straight and fairly dry historical drama about Richard III’s ascent to the throne. Vincent Price was one of the secondary cast here in one of his earliest film roles, and he would go on to play Richard in Roger Corman’s 1962 remake; I saw the latter many years ago, and remarked on my old blog about the ho-hum characters and irritating American accents. I see no real reason not to level the same criticisms against the 1939 version too; even Richard (Basil Rathbone here) isn’t particularly interesting here somehow. Boris Karloff tries his best as the latter’s torturer Mord, but he doesn’t get enough to do. And Richard’s battle for the throne is nothing compared to the duelling accents, with a grim fight between varying American flavours clashing with actual English voices. For something set in such a specific time and place, the lack of effort the Hollywood mob make is kind of galling. Mostly well-enough made (bar the fighting scenes, which were a technical nightmare for multiple reasons and wound up frankly looking a bit shit), but only Price really goes at it with the sort of teethmarks-in-scenery bravado it needed more of.

And we’re off to a flying start

Election season 2025 is going GREAT so far…

…with indie MP Andrew Gee exposing himself as a fucking idiot a la Angus Taylor (warning: that link also shows a photo of Angus Taylor most charitably described as “unflattering”). I mean, I feel the story is bullshit anyway—though not as bullshit as the story his people are now trying to spread about a “new and inexperienced” staffer with access to the socials doing it; I mean, why aren’t you entrusting tgat to someone who actually knows what they’re doing?—and I’m not sure what the apparent danger from “the Teal mob” is supposed to be; Gee’s based out at Orange but the NSW Teals that have seats are all around Sydney. I don’t see them being a serious threat to him somehow. Not as much as his own idiocy. Happy weekend, dickhead. Fantastic, great move, well done Andrew, etc.

Priorities

Who knew there was such a problem with ninjas and their weaponry in the UK? But there you go, apparently they’re as bad as the pensioners and disabled folks and other people on benefits that Keir Starmer is also targeting lately by talking about cutting billions of pounds from welfare. Some Labour government, hey…

Vote baby vote

Australia’s off to the polls on May 3. On the plus side I suppose at least this means the campaign won’t be too long, but I will have been here for literally all of it… I needed to be up this morning for a home visit from a nurse to take some blood and pee from me, doctor suggested this when I was there on Tuesday to collect new prescriptions; John probably shouldn’t encourage my laziness/increasing hermitude/agoraphobia or whatever it is like that, but at least it meant that the test was getting done instead of me dithering. But I had no idea when the nurse would be there, I was only advised that it would be between 7am and 10am. So that meant getting up at fucking hell o’clock (about 6.20am in real terms) in case the nurse was earlier rather than later—perhaps predictably, they didn’t get here until about 9.50—which meant no sleeping, cos when I know I need to be up at a particular time in the morning I almost invariably can’t sleep because of that, and it was a fasting test so I couldn’t even distract myself with breakfast. So I distracted myself with TV instead, tuned into News 24 and watched the beginning of the democratic process take place, Albo getting into the car and being driven up to the governor-general’s place to dissolve parliament, then off to Parliament House to make the big announcement. So yes, I was awake somehow for the very start of the campaign. What a rivetting story that was, hey. Trying not to think about the possibility of that cunt from Queensland actually winning. FIVE MORE WEEKS!

But on the plus side…

So J. Divans and his wife decided to go to Greenland, presumably in the service of Mushroom Cock’s burning desire to conquer the place (despite the fact that his owner in the Kremlin apparently isn’t too keen). This would’ve been fine, I’m sure, except that no one seems to have checked to see what Greenland thought of this…

…And they didn’t think much of it, to be sure. The government never actually issued an invitation to them or anything (neither did Denmark, which still owns the place), this just seems to have been the Vances’ idea, and they are, frankly, not welcome. Usha has apparently decided to stay home (EDIT the next day: no she didn’t, after all, she’s in the photos of the event) but James David has insisted on going to check out the US military base there… Honestly, this is just dick swinging, isn’t it? More to the point, it’s J. Divans trying to keep in with the clown in the Oval Office; much as his tour of Europe a few weeks ago was him showing he could mix with Nazis just like Edolf could and did before him, this is him trying to assert himself and remind people that he exists, and let Trump know he’s available to toady for him wherever and whenever. Cunt. I’m pleased to see the good people of Greenland not putting up with his shit, and I am greatly enjoying the story being spread on Danish television that representatives of the US government were doorknocking in Nuuk to promote the Vances’ visit and asking would people be interested in a personal visit from them, and apparently everyone told them to fuck off, hence why the itinerary was slashed. I don’t know if this is in fact the case and the White House are obviously denying it, but I love it anyway…

Slightly less shocked

Well, the Atlantic just published all the messages from that little group chat Jeffrey Greenberg got invited into…

This Signal message shows that the U.S. secretary of defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him—Goldberg’s cellphone—at 11:44 a.m. This was 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched, and two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi “Target Terrorist,” was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests—or someone merely indiscreet, and with access to social media—the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.

Indeed. If we assume that all of this stuff is accurate and Mike Waltz did in fact invite Goldberg into the cast, then the question still stands as to why and what did he think was going to come of him doing so, cos I doubt somehow he was expecting this (following image ganked from Bluesky):

That’s Laura Ingraham from Fox News, by the way. Even this fucking far-right hack and Mushroom Cock cultist couldn’t believe this bullshit. And as others have said online, if Waltz is right about Goldberg hacking into the chat, that actually makes it worse, cos that’s him tacitly admitting the chat was hackable… and, frankly, that means it could’ve been hacked by one of those “hostile” forces. What an entire shitshow. I don’t have any more words for what I feel about it all, so I’ll just post a couple of other folks’ statements that I agree with:

I’m shocked, shocked (no, really)

Look, full credit to the Mushroom Cock administration: I expect continual fuck-ups from them, but I didn’t think they could be this stupid:

Senior members of Donald Trump’s cabinet have been involved in a serious security breach while discussing secret military plans for recent US attacks on the Houthi armed group in Yemen.
In an extraordinary blunder, key figures in the Trump administration – including the vice-president, JD Vance, the defence secretary Pete Hegseth, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard – used the commercial chat app Signal to convene and discuss plans – while also including a prominent journalist in the group.
Signal is not approved by the US government for sharing sensitive information.
Others in the chat included the Trump adviser Stephen Miller; Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles; and the key Trump envoy Steve Witkoff.
The breach was revealed in an article published on Monday by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic magazine, who discovered that he had been included in a Signal chat called “Houthi PC Small Group” and realising that 18 other members of the group included Trump cabinet members.
In his account, Goldberg said that he removed sensitive material from his account, including the identity of a senior CIA officer and current operational details.
The report was confirmed by Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the national security council, who told the magazine: “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”

Mind-boggling if true, which Hegseth is denying despite the evidence otherwise confirming it is. I am seriously impressed that there are depths of stupidity I didn’t even think were possible, and yet they found them.