The Onion on President Obama and comics

Obama Disappointed Cabinet Failed To Understand His Reference To 'Savage Sword Of Conan' #24

January 27, 2009

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama expressed frustration Wednesday after members of his cabinet failed to recognize his allusion to the 24th issue of the comic series Savage Sword Of Conan during their first major meeting together.

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The 44th president settles into the Oval Office.

Obama, whose upcoming challenges include organizing a massive effort to rebuild the nation's infrastructure, was reportedly unprepared for the confused silence he received upon suggesting that his cabinet "team up with Taurus of Nemedia" to secure the necessary funding from Congress.

"If my inner circle of advisers can't even communicate about the most basic issues, how are we going to tackle the massive problems our nation faces?" Obama said during a press conference. "When I tell my cabinet that getting bipartisan support is exactly like the time Conan got Taurus to help him steal Yara's jewel, they need to understand what I mean."

After receiving no reaction from the assembled reporters, Obama added, "Because a giant spider is protecting this chamber full of precious jewels, just like Congress is protecting its…. God, how are you people not seeing this?"

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The commander in chief's "doubles."

Obama, an avid collector of Conan The Barbarian and Spider-Man comic books since he was a child, was referencing the 1977 story "The Tower Of The Elephant," written by Roy Thomas. According to administration sources, no one in Obama's cabinet was familiar with the magazine-sized comic, though Labor Secretary Hilda Solis claimed to have once seen Conan the Destroyer.

Aides also confirmed that Obama has refused to lend his copy of issue #24 to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, fearing the former Republican congressman will carelessly bend or rip the pages. The commander in chief is reportedly intent on keeping the comics in pristine condition for their eventual inclusion in his presidential library.

"How am I supposed to effectively lead this nation when [attorney general nominee Eric] Holder has to stop the meeting and ask what the story of Taurus using the black lotus powder to kill the five guard lions has to do with increasing broadband Internet connections nationwide?" Obama said while vigorously rubbing his temples.

Added the president, "For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?"

Administration officials said the incident has caused the president to question whether his staff has ever understood any of his Conan references. One such instance he is reportedly reexamining occurred after his loss in the New Hampshire primary, when Obama rallied his staff by reminding them, "There is always a way, if the desire be coupled with courage."

Although campaign workers smiled and nodded at the time, Obama has begun to seriously doubt that any of them connected the inspiring quotation to the story line in which a Kothian rogue informs Conan that it is impossible to climb to the top of the Elephant Tower because the sides are more slippery than glass

While Obama has not scheduled another meeting with his cabinet this week—a respite the president hopes they will use to brush up on the 235-issue Savage Sword series—he is expected to meet with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on Friday to discuss Afghanistan. A holdover from the Bush administration, Gates told reporters he may have gotten off on the wrong foot with the new president, citing an occasion when Obama asked him what he knew about 1984's Secret Wars, a 12-issue limited Marvel release. Gates then handed a visibly confused Obama 1,400 classified pages on covert CIA operations in El Salvador.

Later, the defense secretary attempted to find common ground with Obama by making casual references to the comic book Spawn. But the 44th president reportedly brushed him off with an abrupt laugh, saying, "no one in [his] administration likes Spawn."

Minutes from the first cabinet meeting indicate it lasted just under 35 minutes, coming to a standstill during a discussion of minimizing public waste. When Energy Secretary Steven Chu failed to understand the president's instructions to "be like the barbarian wielding his steel to cleave flesh from bone," Vice President Joe Biden attempted to clarify the president's thoughts.

"I think what the president is trying to say here is that this is just like the time when Barney had to put Fish on restricted duty because of his health exam results," said Biden, a longtime fan of the late-'70s police sitcom Barney Miller. "It's pretty straightforward when you look at it like that."

When asked by the press corps if this week's hiccup has caused him to rethink any of his appointments, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton interrupted the president to assert that she and her colleagues have already begun educating themselves about comic books, and will soon be "an invincible team of Supermen and Wonder Women working to save America."

"Wonder Woman? That's not even Marvel," Obama responded before storming out of the press room. "Who are you people?"

link here

Andrew saves Christmas

Friday was a very busy day at work. My morning started with bad news, I was still sick with this stupid sinus infection (Has anyone seen my energy? I seem to have lost it), and we have the pre-Christmas-break rush of people expecting their glasses for the holidays. I was still a bit feverish, very weary, and rather focused on the night's Christmas party at Liz and Dave's (which would be preceded by a nap).

With about an hour to go before closing the office, one of my coworkers poked her head into the lab and said, "Santa needs his glasses fixed."

So I went out to the optical floor, and there was Santa Claus sitting at the dispensing station, his glasses a mess: one eyewire screw gone, bent all out of shape, held together with a twisted paper clip, and nasty old green nose pads.

"Santa!" I exclaimed, "You've been naughty to your glasses."

Santa chuckled and mumbled apologetically.

"Okay," I said, "you need a screw here, and I'm going to replace these old nose pads. I'm making a list of how many ways I'm going to have to fix your glasses."

"It's hard up at the North Pole," he called to me as I went back to the lab. His southern accent was a bit surprising, but I suppose Santa, like Jesus and Johnny Depp, has the ability to be all things to all people.

I straightened the jolly old elf's glasses out as much as I dared; they were pretty bent up, and bending metal back too far can snap it. A new screw held his lens in snugly, and new nose pads made the whole package look newer. I chose silicone nose pads, which grip a little better during abrupt altitude changes with the wind in your beard. After cleaning them off, I brought the glasses back out to him.

"Well, you're pretty hard on your glasses, Santa," I gently scolded. "You better watch out or you're going to have no glasses on Christmas Eve, and if that happens you better not cry to me because I won't have a lot of sympathy."

"I'll be more careful," Santa promised me. "Before I leave, I need to make an appointment for my two-year check-up."

"The ladies at the front desk will help you, Santa," I promised. "Merry Christmas!"

"Merry Christmas!" he called as I returned to the lab.

I'm a Christmas hero. Neil Patrick Harris will be the voice of my claymation character on the TV special, which will be preceded by the big drums-and-horns "SPECIAL" word spinning in a circle.

Santa comes all the way down from the North Pole to get his eyes checked by Dr. Robinson and Dr. Parker in Midlothian. How cool is that?

And as an added bonus: how freaking totally sweet are the presents I'm going to get this year?!

Now Barney Frank will heal us all

Congratulations, Representative Frank, on your promotion from god of mischief to all-loving Messiah and financial healer of us all. That halo is positively Byzantine.

These CNN photos make me giggle. Tee hee.

Barney Frank, god of mischief

Representative Frank looks like he has sprouted the horns of Loki, Norse god of mischief.

I have nothing else of substance to say.

If Lovecraft wrote ad copy

This is one of the most enjoyable things I have ever read. It's on mcsweeneys.net, but I found it linked to at reason.com.

Here are a couple excerpts from "Selections from HP Lovecraft's brief tenure as a Whitman's Sampler copywriter:"

White Chocolate Truffle

What black arts could have stripped this chocolate of its natural hue? The horror of the unearthly, corpselike pallor of this truffle's complexion is only offset by its fiendish deliciousness.

Dark Chocolate Fudge

Dark! All-encompassing, eternal darkness! Human eyes cannot penetrate the stygian blackness of this unholy confection!

Peanut Butter Cup

In 1856, a fisherman from a tiny hamlet on the New England coast made a terrible pact with serpentine beasts from beneath the sea, that he might create the most delicious sweet seen upon the Earth since the days of the great Elder Race. Thus was forged the satanic pact between peanut butter and chocolate that resulted in the mutant offspring you see before you!

Toffee Nugget

Few men dare ask the question "What is toffee, exactly?" All those who have investigated this substance are now either dead or insane.

In brief...

A bunch of small things, none of which require a full blog entry.

G minus G.

I'm pretty sure Garfield Minus Garfield isn't very funny to me any more. There are too many moments that I recognize from my own life. Poor bipolar Jon. Maybe I'll get to a point when I can laugh my fool ass off at it again, but for now it's too close to a somewhat painful home.

Arena Football.

As I type this, the Philadelphia Soul (my team now that my old team went out of business) is leading the San Jose Saber Cats 44-27 in Arena Bowl XXII. If you're a sports fan and you've never been to an Arena League game, I highly recommend it. It's high-speed, high-scoring, high-skill, rock and roll football. I was in the house when the Albany Firebirds won the Arena Bowl in 2000, and it was one of the best sports experiences of my life. As a bonus, the Arena Bowl is in New Orleans this year.

Now it's 46-27. The Soul have "PHL" in big letters on the fronts of their jerseys.

The Dark Knight.

Overall, Dark Knight is magnificent. Go see it; it's an Iron Man / Spider-Man 2 / X-Men 2 level superhero movie. Heath Ledger is more amazing than you've heard he is.

No big spoilers here, but I had a couple significant beefs with the film. 1) There was no effort whatsoever to make Gotham not look like Chicago. Too many exteriors of the city features wide-open boulevards in a city that had been clearly designed in the previous film as cramped and claustrophobic--you know, like Gotham City. 2) The movie is about 20 minutes too long, in my humble opinion. In retrospect, the subplot with the Asian gangster ended up having much less of an impact on the story than it looked like it was going to, and could have been seriously compressed. Something needed to go; my attention was getting tired in the final act, and a good screenplay trim would have taken care of it.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army.

This is a love it or hate it movie. I loved it. It looks like all of the cool stuff from Pan's Labyrinth all the time. The first time I saw it I thought the story was thin; the second time I changed my mind. The story isn't thin, the visuals are so dominating that everything else is thin by comparison. Even if you hate the story and the characters, it's just beautiful to watch, and the most delightfully imaginative movie I've seen since The Fellowship of the Ring.

Getting my first manicure and pedicure

was awesome. I will do it again. I probably won't get color on my toenails again unless I go with James Bond.

I would kill James Bond

for his place in Hell's Kitchen. Kill him dead.

James Ricks

came to see Henry IV, Part 2 last night. I was surprised by how thrilled I was to see him. You go, James Ricks. You are awesome. I hope my Hamlet cast and his Richard III cast can find a way to hang together. With those two scripts, we're going to need to lighten things up after rehearsal. It's going to be a great fall for Shakespearean tragedy in Richmond.

Wall-e

I can't believe I still haven't seen it. Liz is going to kick my ass.

All-Robot Baseball Team

No, Voltron isn't actually a robot, and that's the wrong Optimus Prime, but this is a great article.

For the record, here's the proper Optimus Prime:

Garfield Minus Garfield

Lizabella and Dave hooked me up with this in the green room at the last performance of Measure for Measure this afternoon. Bella said, "I knew you'd like this, but I think I underestimated how much."

It may be the funniest thing I've ever seen on the web. Certainly my favorite post-Homestar Runner discovery.

Behold the wonder that is Garfield Minus Garfield.

KHAAAAN!

Karen and I saw this awesome license plate Sunday night. I had to share it.

Marmaduke Explained

I have added a new link in the "Cool Stuff" section to your right. The language is sometimes a bit salty, but "Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke" is one of the most consistently funny sites on the web. Highly recommended.

Check Out My Brain

First the medical stuff: I just got back from seeing Doctor Hardy at Neurological Associates. Yes, this was the first appointment I could get after my debilitating and terrifying migraine of June 24th. Well, there's nothing wrong with my brain. All my tests were normal. The doctor did use the technical term "weird" to describe the June migraine, with its vast array of accompanying symptoms, but it was within the range of a normal migraine experience. Could have been stress, lack of sleep, or other factors that made it so severe. He gave me a couple samples of Imitrex to try with my next couple migraines and we set up a three-month check. Doctor Hardy is very cool, and has some experience with the Williamsburg Shakespeare Festival. I'm hoping to see him in the house for Richard II.

A lovely benefit of this experience is that I have a CD-ROM with 32 CAT scans of my brain. So naturally my first thought was "These images need to be on my blog!"

Warning: gross cross-section images of my brain, skull, and eyeballs ahead!






This is the bottom of my brain. The vertical shafts at the top of the picture are my nostrils. Apparently I was in need of a nose-blow, as they seem to be filled with luminescent snot.






This one in particular grosses me out big time. Yes, those are my eyeballs at the top of the picture. I also seem to be growing a third eyeball in the center of my brain. It's looking at you!


This is really gross.

Now it's starting to look like a proper brain. Are those icicles or something encroaching on the sides?

Awww, my brain is happy to meet you.

This is the creepiest Rorschach test ever.

Somehow seeing the surface of my own brain is infinitely more nauseating than seeing its internal structure.

And this final one represents the actual size of my brain. It's about the size of a shelled walnut, and has rings around it, similar to the planet Saturn.

So what do you think, friends? Will you still respect me, now that you've seen my naked brain? More importantly, having seen the above images, what's your diagnosis?

What's wrong with Ange Hamm's brain?

Looney Tunes + Shakespeare = Surprisingly Interesting

It just occured to me how well Henry IV, Part 1 could be played with Bugs Bunny as Hal and Daffy Duck as Hotspur.

The Whootles

Joey Fanelli have decided that the surviving members of the Who and the Beatles should combine to form a supergroup called the Whootles.

The band would consist of:

Roger Daltrey: Lead Vocals
Paul McCartney: Bass and Vocals
Ringo Starr: Drums
Pete Townshend: Guitar and Vocals

And they would play such songs as:

"Can’t Buy Me a Pinball Wizard"
"Baba O’Rigby"
"My Generation 9"
"There’s a Doctor Robert I’ve Found"
"All You Need Is Love Reign O’er Me"
"Behind Blue Jay Way"
"Magical Mystery Bus"
"Maxwell’s Silver Squeezebox"
"Long Live Rocky Raccoon"
"It’s Hard Day’s Night"
"I Can See Across the Universe"
"Join Together Now"
"Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Wife"
"One After 905"
"The Long and Winding Amazing Journey"
"Boris the Walrus"
"You Never Steal My Money"
"While My Guitar and Pen Gently Weep"
"I’m Free as a Bird"
"Pictures of Lady Madonna"
"Getting Better You Bet"
"Sally Simpson in the Sky with Diamonds"
"Only a Northern Song Is Over"
"Please Mr. Whiskey Man"

...and my personal favorite:

"Won’t Get Fool on the Hill Again"

Holy Youkilis

Someone said the word "Eucharist" recently and I heard "Youkilis." How hopeless is that?


Let's look at a picture of how awesome Kevin Youkilis is.



11 game lead over the last-place Yankees. All is well in the baseball world.

The Andrew Hamm:PMRM Blog Chooses a Candidate!

Those who followed this blog over the past year know, of course, that I'm a fairly politically engaged person. The more the campaigns begin, the more disgusted I am by the idealogical idolators on both sides. To quote Homer Simpson: "How many times do I have to tell you: Democracy doesn't work!"

Having decided that General Zod may be a bit extreme for me to back, I'm going slightly more moderate with my support for... Doctor Doom.



Far from being a Beltway insider, Doctor Doom isn't even American; he's an evil dictator from Latveria, a fictional country in central Europe. This is just the kind of fresh insight we need in Washington as America moves into a new phase of technological world influence.

I'm convinced that Victor von Doom is the man America needs, and my wholehearted support of his candidacy has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that one of his robots is in my office right now with orders to vaporise my spleen if I write anything other than wholehearted support.

Vote Doom in 2008! Doctor Doom for America!

Prince's Super Bowl©® Halftime Show

I can't possibly be the only person in America who thinks this image is just as filthy as Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.

Super Bowl©® XLI Is Here!

This is it! Your destination for useless chat about Super Bowl©® XLI, or Forty-One, whichever you prefer!

Watch the game with a laptop on your, you know, lap and stuff! I'll be at the Creasy party chiming in with whatever nonsense myself and the local partying yokels have to share. Tune in early, open the Comments window, and refresh often.

Ask Andrew: Caveman versus Astronaut

Today's question comes from Joey, who asks me many questions on a daily basis. Joey asks:

I may have asked you this before, but I would like the most in-depth answer that only a blog can present:

Who would be the victor in a fight between an astronaut and a caveman? Here are the rules:

I. There is no setting for the fight, therefore the contestants are unable to use the enviroment to their advantage.
II. Since the astronaut is obviously of higher intelligence then the caveman, the caveman is allowed to use a wooden club to make up for this mental indiffrence.
III. No outside interfierences are allowed.
IV. No kicks to the groin are permitted.
V. The theme song is Survivior's "Eye of the Tiger", and it plays in loop through out the fight.

That's easy. The astronaut wins. As soon as "Eye of the Tiger" starts playing, the caveman freaks out at hearing this magical sound from wherever it's coming. Astronaut just whacks him on the head with a telescope while he's cowering.

Thanks for this important question, Joey. I'm sure all of my readers have been quivering with anticipation waiting for the answer to this all-important question.

Where's Ange Hamm? Part 1

See if you can find Ange Hamm, so cleverly concealed in these pictures.

The Fox NFL Sunday Robot Is a Transformer.

The FOX football robot is a transformer. It turns from an incredibly stupid linebacker-shaped robot into a jumbotron. It's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. As such, it deserves its own theme song.

The Fox robot!
More than meets the Eye!
Football teams wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of
Other football teams!

Please let Optimus Prime show up and kill it.

Feel free to post your own lyrics!