Step OFF the butterfly, bitch!

[lapsedmodernist]

I am sure you all heard the exciting news that got everyone's tinfoil knickers in a bunch: Terrorists may seek to down aircraft by shining powerful lasers into cockpits to blind pilots during landing approaches, U.S. officials warned in a bulletin distributed nationwide. Seriously, peoplez. I am just trying to visualize for a second how, exactly, this would transpire and I am coming up with a lot of baseline premises here. You'd have to have a super-laser, a Cool-Luke-steady hand, that creepy little girl from Small Wonder to do calculations for you on the fly (no pun intended) to compensate for the movement of the plane, AND you gotta aim for the pilot's eye. Not to mention it just can't be done without a Pink Floyd soundtrack.

But here is the best part: BushCo is no longer plagiarizing scripts from Star Wars (oh the "penetrating drones" weaponry of Gulf War II) or Old Westerns (NB: invented in France) or "Osama: dead or alive" or Schrodinger's Osama (dead? alive? both! Our President doesn't really give it much thought) or The Matrix (which achieved its apex of a Pinteresque migration from subtext to text in Ron Suskind's Without a Doubt). No, people, check this out: that tingly feeling you get down the back of your neck is a deja vou to an Erik Estrada TV vehicle, (blessedly) lost to the collective memory.

"CHiPs" Online: Episode Guide: Season 5: Bright Flashes

515 - Bright Flashes

Original Airdate: 17-Jan-1982

Plot: Ponch enters a race and crashes when he's blinded by a laser. The next day, after Ponch's sight returns, the laser operators blind everyone at a bank and steal a money delivery. Harlan signs up Ponch and Jon for a laser light show to demonstrate their effect. Ponch and Jon are called out to Wayne Cato's house where they're given a description of the van that carried the laser. Meanwhile, the laser guys rip off a check cashing liquor store and Turner chases their van but is blinded and causes an accident. Ponch and Jon track down the van's owner (Rich) and arrest him. Wayne ID's the kid just before Scotty (the other laser guy) comes in to brief the CHP on lasers. The next day, Ponch is back racing (antique cars this time) while Bonnie visits Rich's school. At the racetrack, Rich and Scotty rob the ticket office and drive off. Jon gets on a horse to chase them while Ponch follows in the antique car. Jon periodically ducks to avoid the laser (he's quick!) and finally jumps on the laser equipped truck and stops them.

Upcoming memo from the DoD: Terrorists Plan To Travel Back In Time To Prevent The Conception Of Donald Rumsfeld; Donald Rumsfeld Travels Back In Time To Stop The Terrorists, Steps On A Butterfly. And we all know what happens when butterflies get stepped on,^* so, like, step off, bitch.

Oh, and also?


^* The wrong president gets elected!

Comments

[bajatierra.livejournal.com]

Awesome.

I'm so glad CHiPS made it into this administration.

Wow.

[jeremyrichards.livejournal.com]

That's some OG exegesis, right there.

Re: Wow.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

wait, I was just looking at this like a month after the fact, and what's OG?

Re: Wow.

[jeremyrichards.livejournal.com]

Original Gangsta.

Re: Wow.

[jeremyrichards.livejournal.com]

which, despite its flippancy, is a sincere compliment connoting innovation and formidable repute.

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

See, this is why I liked the 80's better. I mean, at least Ronald Reagan stuck to plagiarizing movies. So much for this civilization, that's all I'm saying.

[slit.livejournal.com]

OMG. *dies*

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

yeah, you know, even under Bush I metaphores used to be, like, interesting. And now the discourse has really collapsed to DC comics-universe proportions. I mean, you used to have A Thousand Points of Light and now you have Axis of Evil.

Schrodinger's Osama

[pirat-ponton.livejournal.com]

Re: Schrodinger's Osama

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

OMG!!! Thank you do that screenshot. I actually remember when that happened but as usual my brain exploded and I repressed it.

Re: Schrodinger's Osama

[pirat-ponton.livejournal.com]

(singing) "thank, thank you do...you know, I thank you...so pleeeease - thank you do!"

/beatles

;)

just kidding around - you're welcome

I'm always glad to be of service to you, because you do so much for everyone here (and I'm not being sarcastic)

Re: Schrodinger's Osama

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That is a really, really nice thing to hear.

Re: Schrodinger's Osama

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I mean "for that screenshot."

[lolaraincoat.livejournal.com]

See, here I was thinking that they were taking all their cues from Orwell. So silly. I read too damn much, that's my problem.

Also, all praises to you and your excellent cultural-history research skills!

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Orwell. Bah. Orwell was part of the "Old Europe." Who needs Orwell when we've got Erik Estrada? Which makes me think that in order to be on the same page, the Peace movement needs to take its cues not from Ghandi or the War Resisters League or whatever, but from that episode of 90210 where Brenda finds some old notebook and has a whole hallucination where she, Dylan and Kelly are all, like, in the Summer of Love and total hippies, and, like, I think the Vietnam war is going on in the background or something.

[apropos.livejournal.com]

Was the notebook soaked in DMT or something?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Haha, no. It was just a plot contrivance to have one of those "flashback" episodes that TV shows love so dearly (like the "I Only Have Eyes For You in the second season of Buffy or that weird Halloween/1950s episode on My So-Called Life...man, I watch too much TV). Also I think DMT is more likely to make you forget who you are, what the concept of "self" means and have a hallucination about the evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang to present day.

[apropos.livejournal.com]

Speaking of 'cultural' flashbacks, S and I have a lot of fun yelling at the TV for being stupid. Since we watch a lot of cop/crime shows, our favourite call-out is "sassy suspect!" whenever a suspect to, like, serial child rape is all "so what. you don't have any evidence, pig!" Which really baffles us because we can't figure out if that kind of back-talk is a) the dramatic engine of the cop show or b) something specifically "American", because Canadian cop shows (all two of them) seem not to partake of it at all, unless the suspect is a crooked narc with a crack habit. Anyhoo, another fave callout is "'60s-montage!" which is when TV directors (movie directors do this too) lazily assemble stock footage of 'hippies' (perhaps with Cream or Deep Purple playing in the background) in order to evoke 'the 60s'. I suspect you'd enjoy yelling at the TV with us.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I read A Sound of Thunder in fifth grade or so [Reagan had just been re-elected], and I remembered this line: [they] said if Deutscher became President they wanted to go live in 1492.

Prescient for 1952. Thanks for the entertaining reference. I really enjoyed this post. What's next? What the Internet really needs is security from Dragnet? Oh, wait, I think we're on that.

Anything to avoid grading

[twotoedsloth.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that Butterfly_Bitch would not be a bad lj name.

Are you still in CA?