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All your ZOMG epic fail are belong to us

Wow!  Looks like I picked the right day to resume blogging—just in time for the general collapse!  And although it’s only a side note, I find it striking that McCain declared victory prematurely in a most embarrassing fashion, just as he declared victory in Friday’s debate prematurely in a most embarrassing fashion.  That man must have some kind of timing problem.

And yet, even though this nasty awful bailout had to be killed, I still hate the fact that the Boehner Republicans—some of the hardest-sucking wankers in the history of wanking—did the job.  And will now proceed to blame
Bill Clinton’s penis
Al Gore’s airplane
homeowning minorities
Michael Moore
Teddy Kennedy’s car
Nancy Pelosi and Hussein al-Obama for the epic fail.  And, in many quarters, will get away with it.

So, what are you all doing for the apocalypse?

Posted by on 09/29 at 03:16 PM

  1. Et tu, Bérubé?

    I do not yet know how I have been betrayed, but since we are all a giant nuclear fireball, I shall find something.

    Posted by Pinko Punko  on  09/29  at  04:47 PM

  2. What do you wear to a panic?  I find myself, chez DeLong, too alarmed to joke re a better term for “nationalize.”

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  05:01 PM

  3. I really think we need a calm, measured response to this mess.  And that’s why I’m not supporting any nationalization plan unless it also puts key members of the financial industry in the stocks (no, not those stocks, these stocks) and offers generous rotten-fruit subsidies to ordinary Americans.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  05:08 PM

  4. Welcome back, Michael!

    Our long national nightmare is over!

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  05:24 PM

  5. I’m going to fix another drink, and look into the purchase of the shotgun.

    Thanks for the link to the stocks.  I will try to hang them up outside the NYSE when I visit NYC tomorrow.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  05:29 PM

  6. Well, Michael, as you well know, We’re All A Giant Nuclear Fireball Now. Long live the WAAGNFNP!

    Posted by Bill Benzon  on  09/29  at  05:35 PM

  7. Well, it ain’t exactly what I imagined with the GNF, but Peter’s remark about the shotgun reminds me of a conversation last night I had with someone who raised the obvious objection to all our plans to grow our own food and return to the barter system, namely, that the economic-collapse survivalists are very much like the nuclear-holocaust survivalists.  That is, nobody you want for your neighbors.

    So, sure, in both cases, WAAGNFN—We Are All Going Nowhere Fast Now.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  05:42 PM

  8. Michael,

    Since you are back for a while (yipee!), could you pretty, pretty please enable your RSS feed?  It seems to be pointing to this page:

    http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/rss_2.0/

    which is not a feed.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  06:16 PM

  9. And that’s why I’m not supporting any nationalization plan unless it also puts key members of the financial industry in the stocks (no, not those stocks, these stocks) and offers generous rotten-fruit subsidies to ordinary Americans.

    I say strip them down to their last $100 million and relegate them all to Dubai and not let them leave, forever. No, really. We could rename the place Vermillion Sands or something…

    Posted by peter ramus  on  09/29  at  06:30 PM

  10. It’s so nice to be back with all of you. Thanks for making the space, Michael. My people have been dealing with catastrophes like this for generations. You handle financial market collapses and wiped out retirement plans much like you respond to potato famines and British imperialism. Yep, I’m stinkin’ drunk and weeping sloppily. In about an hour I’ll be heading out to pick fights with sailors. And before I pass out, I’ll break into a rousing rendition of “Always Look at the Bright Side of Life.” Hell, it worked for the S&L crisis.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  07:00 PM

  11. OH MY GOD! YOU ARE BACK!

    Posted by petya  on  09/29  at  07:05 PM

  12. It’s so good to be reading you again!  My husband and I, just today, were saying how much we missed your bloggy voice.

    Posted by Lori  on  09/29  at  07:37 PM

  13. I promised I would hold my breath and pout until you came back, and it’s been a long time.  I was turning purple.  So, thanks.

    Posted by Sean Carroll  on  09/29  at  07:52 PM

  14. Nice to see you back where you belong, Michael, and breaking all the rules of acceptable internet length.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  07:57 PM

  15. Apocalypse? What apocalypse? I’d been getting all my current events info from this blog, so I don’t know anything that’s happened in the public sphere since January ‘07. Is something amiss?

    Posted by Orange  on  09/29  at  08:06 PM

  16. I’m afraid so, Orange—according to Sean here, the Hubble repair mission has been delayed. 

    There is no hope for us now.

    And just let me remind you that this blog (OK, and Sean’s) was Hubble blogging way before Hubble blogging was cool.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  08:14 PM

  17. Is this the real Michael Berube?  I’m worried that this is a McCain-supporting hacker, or perhaps a computer simulation of Berube that turns on in times of global financial collapse.

    While you were gone the media added a day to Thomas Frank Week when it tried to have a national debate on What’s The Matter With Kansas without trained cultural professionals on hand - it was a disaster.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  08:22 PM

  18. What are we doing for the apocalypse? Well, for one thing, wondering if perhaps your return is one of its signs. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for horsemen.

    Posted by Zeno  on  09/29  at  09:04 PM

  19. Is there some way to spread that image around a little bit?  It’s a thing of beauty, it is.  Wait a second --- I’ll be right back.

    Posted by SEK  on  09/29  at  09:34 PM

  20. Consider the matter rectified.

    Posted by SEK  on  09/29  at  09:38 PM

  21. you teh God !

    sock it to ‘em !!

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  10:18 PM

  22. RSS is back ! Thanks!

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  10:23 PM

  23. Yeah, that image really should go around the Internets a few times.  But then I should tell everybody where I found it—so I’ll put a little h/t in the sidebar.  There, done.

    While you were gone the media added a day to Thomas Frank Week when it tried to have a national debate on What’s The Matter With Kansas without trained cultural professionals on hand - it was a disaster.

    Goddamn, I warned them about that.  All right, then, I’ll just have to take another shot at it in chapter 4 of The Left at War.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  10:31 PM

  24. You’re not my hero anymore, hockey boy.

    Posted by SEK  on  09/29  at  10:38 PM

  25. Oh, well.  Easy come, easy go.

    Posted by Michael  on  09/29  at  10:47 PM

  26. Another technical note; your RSS feed is now populated with entries, but they are all lacking their HTML tags, so they all end up as one big unintelligible paragraph.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  11:02 PM

  27. I know I’ve you’ve made some very poor interesting decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you (although that’s the ugliest star-child I’ve ever seen).

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  11:12 PM

  28. Oh, sure, Bérubé musters sympathy for the American mortgage-holding bourgeoisie, but he STILL refuses to answer my charge from 1998 that he advocates the mass drowning of Srebenican kittens!

    Or something. Figured I’d get there first.

    Welcome back.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  09/29  at  11:24 PM

  29. Hey, Chris.  We’ll always have those kittens!  Except the ones I drowned, of course.

    Sorry about the hiccups; powering up the command module after all this time is a delicate business.  We’re trying to get the exact sequence from Mission Control, and you-know-who in comment 27 keeps disrupting communications.

    Posted by Michael  on  09/29  at  11:28 PM

  30. Michael, although you took thorough precautions against my reading your comment, I could see your fingers move on the keyboard.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  11:37 PM

  31. All right, then, I’ll fix the RSS feed by going through the emergency airlock.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  11:40 PM

  32. And will now proceed to blame

    John McCain in his condo with a cell phone.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  11:41 PM

  33. A surrealist blog like this should acknowledge McC’s ability to accuse Democrats of betrayal over supporting the bailout because they supported it.

    captcha: “feed,” as in your head

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  12:00 AM

  34. As well as McCain’s ability to claim that Obama has been “out of touch” on the bailout—a few hours after McCain took credit for the bailout.

    That’s why I came back, you know.  I was missing way too much fun.

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  12:05 AM

  35. But consider the possibility, Michael, that reality is broken.  E.g. this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RywhPtebuM&eurl=http://talkingpointsmemo.com/
    is beyond WTF.  Not to mention it almost makes you sympathize with the squirming McC.  Maybe it’s true cell phones toast our brains.  Will the RSS feed microwave kittens?  Gotta find out.

    captcha: “serious.” The captcha generator is mocking me again.

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  12:24 AM

  36. Luis Buñuel had nothing on McCain. We are not worthy of an explanation; we can only sit back and marvel.

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  12:24 AM

  37. I replaced a tag in the RSS feed, and it should look better now. For EE users curious about the problem, it is described here:

    http://tiny.cc/9FVRB

    Let me know if your particular aggregator still shows unformatted blocks of text.....

    thanks

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  12:40 AM

  38. Putin rearing up

    Posted by peter ramus  on  09/30  at  12:56 AM

  39. I am one with Bill (#6) now!! All rise for the coming glory of WAAGNFNP. But also for the sake of madness and laughing uproariously:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwRnOHsRS48

    And we can all join in singing a verse of the Ninth, by substituting “Schadenfreude” in appropriately as we raise our goblets:

    69 Unser Schuldbuch sei vernichtet! 
    70 Ausgesoehnt die ganze Welt! 
    71 Brueder, ueber’m Sternenzelt
    72 Richtet Gott, wie wir gerichtet. 
    73 Freude sprudelt in Pokalen,
    74 In der Traube goldnem Blut
    75 Trinken Sanftmut Kannibalen,
    76 Die Verzweiflung Heldenmut--
    77 Brueder, fliegt von euren Sitzen,
    78 Wenn der volle Roemer kreist,
    79 Lasst den Schaum zum Himmel* sptruetzen: 
    80 Dieses Glas dem guten Geist.

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  01:39 AM

  40. Hey!  Glad you’ve come back to the madness. 

    What am I doing for the impending apocalypse? 

    Well, I’ve been nicking firewood from my neighbor’s log pile.  I’ve also siphoned the gas out of my other neighbor’s lawn mower that he insists on using at six in the freakin’ morning… On a Sunday… In the rain! 

    Yeah.  I live nextdoor to a Hemingway story, apparently.

    Other than that, it’s cans of baked beans, tuna and Spam.  When the collapse comes, I don’t plan on eating another vegetable until the reconstruction, and, as a last resort, I’ve got a bandanna and a broomstick so I can go all old-school hobo. 

    So, you know, don’t worry about me.

    Posted by Dan  on  09/30  at  02:58 AM

  41. You made my day. Thanks for coming back!

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  07:18 AM

  42. Other than that, it’s cans of baked beans, tuna and Spam. 

    Great!  I won’t even do the obligatory Monty Python bit in response.  All I’ll suggest is that if you can hoard some vodka, you’ll have all the major food groups you need to weather the storm.

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  08:27 AM

  43. Wouldn’t it figure that the apocalypse would happen while I’m on sabbatical trying to write a book?

    Remind me which of the four blogospheric horsemen you are.

    Posted by Dr. Free-Ride  on  09/30  at  10:21 AM

  44. Remind me which of the four blogospheric horsemen you are.

    Outlined against a blue-gray background the Four Horsemen wrote again. In Internet lore they are known as WTF?, ridicule, perspicacity and verbosity. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Fafnir, the Editors, Billmon and some French guy. They formed the crest of the digital cyclone before which the woes of a nation were dismissed with a laugh and a sneer* as thousands of the already converted peered upon the bewildering columns of text on their computer screens and iPhones.

    Posted by  on  09/30  at  11:28 AM

  45. What Senator Bérubé fails to understand is that the kittens know Iove them and that I’ll take care of them. I don’t need any on the job training.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  09/30  at  01:25 PM

  46. stupid phone. Sigh.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  09/30  at  01:27 PM

  47. And what do you have against Iove, Chris?  Or is this some kind of lolcats joke—Ur offering to Iove—I eated it?

    Or, as I have long suspected, you are objectively anti-Jupiter.

    Posted by Michael  on  09/30  at  01:54 PM

  48. IAPETUS KITTEHS. KTHX

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  09/30  at  02:03 PM

  49. Support for Palin - deja vu all over again.
    During a Senate debate on a Supreme Court nominee, someone pointed out that the nominee had a very mediocre career.  Nebraska’s senator Roman Hruska (somewhat to the right of Joe McCarthy) stated something the general affect that “Well, mediocre Americans deserve representation, too.”

    Posted by  on  10/02  at  07:47 PM

  50. Thanks, Brandon, and great to hear from you. Hope your business is thriving up in Oregon (with or without gold-ups).

    Posted by Orgu  on  10/08  at  06:28 AM

  51. Welcome back. I am happy to come here. Thanks wink

    Posted by Computer Repair Perth  on  11/08  at  05:47 AM

  52. Lots of thanks to come back. wink

    Posted by Perth Antenna  on  11/09  at  02:30 AM

  53. I establish your entry attractive so I’ve new a Track back to it on my web log. Thanks a lots smile

    Posted by Tom pole  on  11/16  at  01:44 AM

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