blogules

20231109

'Seoul Urban Legends' ('Seoul Villages' adapted into movies!)

In case you missed the VIP Presentation of 'SEOUL URBAN LEGENDS' ('서울 도시 전설들') in CGV Apgujeong on October 31, here's what you need to know about the first adaptation of my short stories into movies.

(Answering the question 'Some films are very close to your original stories, others build upon them. Any remarks?': 'Books are triggers. Authors and readers create their own images in their own heads. It's very stimulating to see each and every one of these very diverse and gifted creators add their own creative layers of fiction and reality'. With CHE Heesuk, YOU On, and KIM Yong-ho during the VIP presentation in CGV Apgujeong (photos Pulse9)

ABOUT 'SEOUL URBAN LEGENDS':

'Get out of your comfort zone, and dive into a fictional Seoul '
an omnibus movie featuring 4 short films by 6 Korean filmmakers:

'Sweat Dream' (directed by CHE Heesuk)
'Black Snow' (directed by YOU On)
'Guisin-dong' (directed by CHOI Jong Wook, KIM Ye Jin, WON Chang Sung)
'de Vermis Seoulis' (directed by KIM Yong-ho)

adapted from Stephane MOT's 'Seoul Villages', a collection of short stories about a fictional Seoul
produced by Pulse9, sponsored by Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA)
independent cinema with a touch of A.I.

ABOUT THE SHORT FILMS AND THEIR DIRECTORS:

'SWEAT DREAM'
(DIRECTED BY CHE HEESUK):

'Yes, this heat is inhumane, but is there even any humanity left in a world controlled by A.I.?'
From experimental film to music videos, CHE keeps exploring humanity and technology

'BLACK SNOW'
(DIRECTED BY YOU ON):

Mi-hyun finds a boy lying on the street; her city and her life itself start feeling more intense.
An expert in short format contents, 'On Oppa' is also a TikTok phenomenon with over 21M followers.

'GUISIN-DONG'
(DIRECTED BY CHOI JONG WOOK, KIM YE JIN, WON CHANG SUNG):

If Seoul's most mysterious neighborhood claims you, don't even think about escaping it'
Glamour or underground? CHOI, KIM,, and WON track all vibes across Seoul and beyond.

'DE VERMIS SEOULIS'
(DIRECTED BY KIM YONG-HO):

Life is a masquerade, worms roam Seoul, and acclaimed photographer KIM Yong-ho invites you to a surreal experience.
Iconic fashion photographer turned artist, KIM Yong-ho brings a new light to the fabric of reality.

FOUR VERY DIFFERENT CREATIVE APPROACHES:

They're all visual creators expert in their field, they're all making their first movie
Four radically different creations (around 20 mn each):

CHE Heesuk added new dimensions to the protagonist's struggles by transposing the original short story, set in early 90s Seoul, into a dystopian future.
YOU On opted for a vertical format to focus on the characters.
CHOI, KIM, and WON built a ghost story on top of the original one, with a resolutely indie / underground touch.
KIM Yong-ho created a highly artistic experimental film based on still pictures and quotes from the book

Like the book combines multiple fictions about a shapeshifting city, the film combines multiple approaches of these fictions. 'This might be the very definition of a city: a work of fiction, utterly real, but always eluding its authors'.

(Answering the question 'Your fiction is timeless, but your background also includes startups. What did you think when you learned that A.I. virtual characters would appear in the adaptations?') 'These virtual characters belong to what's known as the 'uncanny valley', and 'Uncanny Valley could be the name of one of my fictional Seoul villages. This particular technology opens new possibilities for all kind of visual creators, actors, and performers, and it's significant to see Korea's independent cinema explore it."

We'll keep you posted about the distribution of the movie and the next steps.

The happy few (well actually enough to fill twice the theater) who attended the VIP presentation of Seoul Urban Legends could watch the teasers and the filmmakers' interviews before a Q and A session. KIM Yong-ho's 'de Vermis Seoulis' was then screened twice so that everyone who came could watch. The whole team thanks those who could make it that day as well as everyone who supported this project that only started a few months ago.

'Seoul Urban Legends' in Tokyo for TIFFCOM 2023 (with YOU On, CHOI Jong Wook, CHE Heesuk)

ABOUT THE BOOK:

If you haven't read 'Seoul Villages' yet, download the free ebook:

blogules 2023
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
NEW: join blogules on Facebook!!! and Twitter (@stephanemot, @blogules)
Enjoyed my neuroses? Check my prose: Seoul Villages, dragedies.com.

* among many others:

소설 '서울 도시 전설' 옴니버스 영화로…"깊고 놀라운 표현"(종합) [N현장] - 뉴스1 - https://www.news1.kr/amp/articles/?5216311
[[영화] 31일 사진작가 김용호의 실험영화 <데 베르미스 서울리스> 시사회 -https://m.monthly.chosun.com/client/mdaily/daily_view.asp?idx=18655&Newsnumb=20231018655
영화·AI의 접목…예술 분야 신인 감독이 AI와 만났을 때[SS현장] - https://m.sportsseoul.com/news/read/1364905

20230508

Coronation 23 - A long awaited ending more than a new beginning

Hard to find highlights in Charles III's anticlimatic coronation. That brief moment of complicity around Camilla's curtsy, maybe, or the realization that William's kiss was genuine, or that refreshing, final smile on the balcony, reminiscent of Barack Omaba's as he left the stage with Michelle at the end of his acceptance speech. Otherwise, I had the constant feeling that the new old King wanted to be somewhere else - anywhere else, as far away as possible of these ridiculous items people kept wanting him to touch or carry with his oily sausage fingers. A long awaited ending more than a new beginning.

'From here, Charles III will go downhill. Geared up for ski.' (20230506 - twitter.com/stephanemot/status/1654807976375635971)

20220724

The Prisoner's Rover v. Josh Hawley

Josh Hawley was actually caught twice by The Prisoner's Rover (giant ball) in D.C.:

1) as he cowardly ran away from the Capitol Riot, right after entering while fist pumping to the Trump Insurrection crowd

2) as he cowardly swam away from mocking crowds through the Lincoln Memorial Reflection Pool (of course still no reflection for this fool):

blogules 2022
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
NEW: join blogules on Facebook!!! and Twitter (@stephanemot, @blogules)
Enjoyed my neuroses? Check my prose: dragedies.com.

20220526

America's War on Prevention

If America keeps failing with gun violence, that's fundamentally because she's waging war on prevention, and because the forces that feed upon these failures have faced impunity for too long.

Worse: constant mass shootings are only one of the nation's most obvious self inflicted traumas. At least, there, everybody knows the rules of the game:

more people die of guns in the US than anywhere else, and not just because 332M Americans own 400M of them
implementing basic gun control laws (e.g. background checks) have always showed spectacular results, including in the States between the moment Bill Clinton signed the last batch and the moment Republicans blocked its prolongation
even if a vast majority of Americans (including within Republicans) support these laws, the NRA and the GOP keep distorting the 2nd Amendment to push even harder against any kind of oversight or accountability.
the situation keeps worsening: Republicans are likely to sweep the Middterms, and the Supreme Court they reshaped against the will of the people is likely to dismantle the few remaining safeguards. This self-proclaimed 'pro-life' crew prefers to protect guns to protecting the lives of kids or pregnant teens.

America is not just sick, she doesn't want to heal.

And that's exactly the same story with health in general. Even before the pandemic, America spent one third more per capita on healthcare than any other developed country, and yet saw her life expectancy plummet, the average health of her citizens being more worthy of a laggard.

Like with guns, there's a lot of money involved, but here, at least two families of lobbies are working in sinc to sink the boat: where everywhere else the focus is on prevention, Big Pharma and Big Food make sure that prevention is withdrawn from all policies, and that only the 'cures' they propose are considered. Because they couldn't gain more shares of stomachs, Big Food had the genius idea of supersizing our stomachs, and Big Pharma certainly can't complain because they make more money selling drugs that no one needs when they follow just a normal diet. And don't count on health associations to defend consumers: most of them are bankrolled by the same lobbies, and promote the very behaviors they're supposed to fight against.

The prevention of gun violence, obesity or heart diseases are national causes everywhere except in the US, where they would mean the end of the party for lobbies who need America to keep getting sicker instead of healing.

If these lobbies reach across the aisle, they've always worked in symbiosis with the Republican Party. But that party itself has given up all restraints, any ambition for common ground or common sense. And it's now waging war at all levels.

Solutions to major problems are no-brainers? Let's dumb everybody further down, let's ban books, let's reject facts, truth, reason, and science. We want you to feel stupid, victimized, angry, we want you to replace critical thinking with systematic, blind criticism, we want you to forget about moderation and to live on a permanent conflictual mode.

The GOP not only stopped fighting racism, it's deliberately fueling it now, crushing voting rights for minorities, promoting voices that fuel hatred (exhibit A: Tucker Carson spreading the Great Replacement fallacy). The big tent has turned into a dangerous tin foil hat under which thrive the worst of the worst (Holocaust deniers and white supremacists are more welcome than ever).

Even if they know better, these guys will tell you with a straight face that the Earth is flat, that Trump won in 2020, and that arming teachers is the solution when even a squad of trained police officers are scared to face a teenager carrying assault weapons.


Pew Research on bipartisan support for gun control NB: more data on Brady Campaign's website: bradyunited.org/resources

20220228

Exclusive fake interview with Vladimir Putin

Yesterday, I met in person Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin for an exclusive fake interview with my Agence Fausse Presse. We actually chatted over the phone, since we were each seated at one end of a 75-meter-long marble table.

blogules - 'Thank you for having me for breakfast, and not on the menu'.

Vladimir Putin - 'You're welcome. And don't worry, I don't eat people. Ukrainians do. They're genocidal, war-mongering neo-nazi cannibals, kabbalist pedophiles, and they always distort the truth.'

b - 'If I may, you're the blood-thisrty war-monger pushing massive disinformation campaigns and spreading totally outrageous lies about Ukraine. And as far as neo-nazis go, you're the one helping Assad gas his own people, you're the one playing the Hitler playbook with a fallacious story about 'liberating' Ukraine, just like Adolf invaded Poland under the fake pretext that its German minorities suffered from persecution.'

VP - 'Don't push your luck, I may reconsider my vegetarian habits for breakfast... I'm not Hitler. I'm just a Russian leader defending Russian interests. We're the ones who defeated Hitler, remember?'

b - 'Stalin did play a decisive role in defeating Nazi Germany. He was also a ruthless dictator and Imperialist who spread war across the globe and was responsible for millions of Russian deaths.'

VP - 'I'm not Stalin. I'm not a communist.'

b - 'But you never swallowed the fall of the Soviet Union. Like Hitler with 1919, you're obsessed with reversing 1991.'

VP - 'Russia goes beyond regimes. The Tsars passed, the USSR passed, Russia remains.'

b - 'Putism will pass. Heck, it doesn't even exist. Do you consider yourself like one of the Great Tsars, the way Erdogan pretends to be a Great Sultan or Xi Jinping acts like the new Emperor?'

VP - 'I'm not Ivan The Terrible. My business model is more the mob.'

b - 'Exactly. You don't have a system to sustain or to survive you, you're using smokescreens of ideologies, nationalism, religion, or such obsolete symbols as the Cossacks to cement your power and your image, but basically you're just a mob boss.'

VP - 'I'm simply the G.O.A.T. I don't even have lieutenants or deputies. For the power, I have my KGB-FSB circle at home, and thugs like Ramzan Kadyrov or Alexander Lukashenko nearby. For the money, I have oligarchs: I keep them alive, away from jail, and rich, they give me a fat cut on their wealth. Now I'm much richer than Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg combined. And these losers only have paper when I have gold, properties, real assets. I don't have shareholders to answer to, and my rockets can have a significantly greater impact than their baby boy toys'

b - 'Your nukes definitely can. When you put the World on high nuclear alert, when you threaten even Sweden and Finland, are you deliberately playing the 'mad man', or have you gone full paranoid, on a Nero-tic path? Even if, one day, you win in Ukraine, aren't you already losing it? I mean where's the charming, fit, acute strategic thinker these days? We can only see a vulgar, puffed up egotist with serious anger management issues. Is it steroids? Are you sick, physically and/or mentally?'

VP - 'You, for sure, are utterly crazy. You must know that disrespectful journalists don't live old here.'

b - 'I never pretended to be a journalist.'

VP - 'Well you know how I treat comedians. Ask Volodymyr Zelensky.'

b - 'I never pretended to be a comedian. And Zelensky is not an actor anymore. Unlike you, he's a genuine patriot.'

VP - 'I'm a patriot. You may not know it yet, but Russia has been renamed Putinia. And Saint Petersburg Putingrad. And no, I'm not stopping at Georgia, Ukraine or Sweden. I must reclaim control of the States and put my thug back on the throne.'

b - 'All you're managing to do is to make the EU and NATO relevant and strong again. Trump failed to destroy NATO for you, and Biden will not let that happen.'

VP - 'Joe Biden is already out. My Republican Party is doing a great job at destroying American democracy from the inside, and my local disinformation machine has never been damaged. As for Europe, I still control it.'

b - 'Are you kidding?'

VP - 'Never with business. Germany? Dope pushers hooked to my fossil fuel. And that Olaf Scholz is such a joke... Like Macron, he just came for his national credentials. Macron is not dumb, he doesn't get confrontational. He knows I didn't want him to win in 2017, he knows how easily I got rid of Juppe and Barnier in the primaries (yeah, this year, I had to make dead people and even a dog vote, but still no sweat), he knows how I can destroy him by putting gullible masses on the street. Yellow Jackets, antivaxxers.... piece of cake. But Macron also knows how to flatter egos. Look how he impressed Trump with the Invalides and that military show. Look how he had me tour Versailles and our new Russian Spiritual and Cultural Center in Paris - by the way the mayor was so easy to corrupt on that one. Did you see how the golden dome of my church outshines the Eiffel Tower along the Seine river? How could you frogs let that happen?'

b - 'I see. Let's not even talk about the UK...'

VP - 'I sent them back to the Jurassic with Brexit, and Boris Johnson is clearly more a Fred Flintstone than a T-rex. We own London, corrupted it to the core, and they won't have the guts to pull the plug. I'm not worried about sanctions anyway. We've got them all already sorted out with Jinping, Narendra, and Ali (that's Khamenei).'

b - 'If you always have your usual partners overseas, you're losing support at home. Old Russians in rural areas may buy your propaganda, but the urban youth knows that you won't be here forever, and more and more people start questioning your mental state...'

VP - 'Bah. I'll probably have to create yet another hostage crisis. You know, like at the Moscow Theater or at that Breslan school. Nothing like it to boost the ratings. Otherwise, I can still lose a few more millions Russians; our demographics are not so good anyways. Yes, they can't be all put to rest with a gallon of vodka, like I did with Boris Yeltsin, but I already got rid of hundreds of thousands during the pandemic. Only 'good citizens' got good vaccines. Why do you think we push antivaxxers, beyond undermining Western democracies? We need to compensate our lousy vaxxes, so if they're 60-70% efficient only, turning 30-40% of your populations into antivaxxers brings you and your economies down to our level.'

b - 'And as for more surgical strikes, who's the next Alexei Navalny on your hit list beyond Zelensky, Vitali Klitschko, and friends?'

VP - 'Adam Kinzinger. Couldn't find any kompromat on him. I had kilometers of reels for Lindsey Graham, and Mitch McConnell only required wads of cash, but this guy is a disgrace for my new and improved GOP.'

b - 'So what do you have about Trump?'

VP - 'A lot of kompromat, but I don't even need that to manipulate this pathetic loser. Not even all the money we gave him to keep him afloat, or his ties to the Mafia. You know, this crybaby truly dreams of becoming a mob boss too. How cute.'

b - 'I also have questions about human rights and the environment.'

VP - 'I don't have time to answer. Anyway you know where I stand: I don't care about human rights, and I'm a strong believer in climate change.'

b - '?!?'

VP - 'I'm investing in facilities to harvest the methane liberated by the melting permafrost, and accelerating climate change to anschluss all arctic routes. Since all the icecap has already melted, we had to plant our flags on the ocean floor.

b - 'But then, where will you organize the Winter Olympics in 2036?'

VP - 'In Alaska. Ivanka has already agreed to sell it to us during her fourth mandate. Now you must go.'

b - 'Okay. I guess thank you for being as honest as an expert propagandist dictator can be.'

VP - 'You're welcome. And obviously you liked the breakfast. Did you know my granddad cooked for Lenin and Stalin? I saw you ate all the cookies, but could you taste the Novichok?'

20210710

Exclusive fake interview with Obstructionist in Chief Mitch McConnell

It took only a dozen money transfers to his offshore accounts for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to accept an exclusive fake interview with our Agence Fausse Presse.

blogules: "Senator, thank you for having us."

Mitch McConnell: "You're welcome, interesting to see that Fox News or Sinclair Broadcasting are not the only pseudo medias out there."

b: "How do you want History to remember you? As Donald Trump's Paul von Hindenburg? As the man who stole the Supreme Court? As D.C.'s most morally corrupt and hypocrite politician?"

MMC: "Nice try, but flattery doesn't work on me: Elaine and I prefer bribery in cash. That said, I guess the last compliment fits best my ultimate ambition."

b: "You have a serious competitor in Donald Trump."

MMC: "He definitely would be if he were a politician. But the former and present President is a salesman. And he sells only one product: himself."

b: "The former and present President?"

MMC: "You know my motto in politics: I want it all, and I want it both ways. We all know that Joe Biden won by a landslide, but that's not what Donald Trump and his base want to hear."

b: "But his Big Lie fueled the bloody January 6th attack of the Capitol."

MMC: "Clearly, Trump is responsible for the insurrection, his inaction during the attack amounts to dereliction of duty, he is the most appalling President in our history, and a constant threat for our democracy, but we need the Big Lie fallacy to justify our voter suppression laws, to steal the 2022 elections, and to put him back in the White House."

b: "So you confirm what everybody who follows the actual news knows, which is: the Republican establishment deliberately follows Trump's dangerous lies just to help the party artificially cling to power, even if that means destroying American democracy."

MMC: "Of course that's the plan. We simply can't win if everybody is allowed to vote, and by 'everybody', yes we do mean black voters. If we managed to score key wins in the past simply by gerrymandering or redistricting, now we have no choice but to go Jim Crow full throttle."

b: "Well, you do have a choice: clean up your party, repudiate conspiracy theories, kick out Qanon, the KKK, and the Nazis, and win around restored Lincoln values..."

MMC: "But we can't go against these guys anymore, just like we can't go against Trump. At the beginning we entertained his conspiracy theories just to spare his ego and to keep him happy, but once we've understoods that Republican voters believe his Big Lie and everything he says, and that we can use this to steal the next elections, we just let the racists run our show - by the way did you see the splendid Nazi runes at the CPAC conference?"

"#CPAC stage shaped like an #OdalRune... That's the symbol US #Neonazis have picked to replace #Nazi #swastika and go mainstream in US politics. The whole #GOP is #RINO: #Republican party officially replaced by #Trump #cult & #fascism. Sce @dailykos" (20210227 - twitter.com/stephanemot/status/1365560322858254341)

b: "That's abominable."

MMC: "I know, but it works. Look at the Supreme Court! If Stephen Breyer is kind enough to pass away after our triumph at the Mid-term elections, we'll go 7-2."

b: "Now Merrick Garland is back to haunt you and to clean up William Barr's mess... You have absolutely no moral compass, no ethics."

MMC: "Thank you. We have a reputation to maintain as a couple: Elaine Chao and Mitch McConnell have the highest standards when it comes to moral corruption."

b: "Don't you have anything positive to motivate you in any way?"

MMC: "Ummm... no. I'm 100% focused on blocking Joe Biden like I was to block Barack Obama."

b: "And you were ready to impeach Bill Clinton for something that was a thousand times less impeachable than what Trump did."

MMC: "The Trumpites think that the Clintons are dangerous, they even believe that Hillary eats babies! I'm proud of the fact that we got Bill and her testify for hours (all for nothing of course), while Kevin McCarthy, Devin Nunes, Ted Cruz, Lauren Boebert, Josh Hawley and Co. can do and say whatever they fancy and get away without any hearing. Guess what: impeachment is not about justice. Everything is political. And with politics, I don't compromise. For instance, if Joe Biden wants to meet us halfway, it's not appropriate for us to help him achieve anything. Anyway we can't achieve anything with those Democrats. They're never ready to compromise."

b: "You've got some gall! John McCain would be so ashamed of you."

MMC: "If he were alive, he'd probably kick my fat bottom, and punch Lindsey Graham in the face. John knew me, so he couldn't have been disappointed. But Lindsey... going at Hunter Biden, selling his soul to Putin, to Russia... if I'm the undisputed king of all hypocrites, Linnie's the mother of all fallen angels."

b: "Is they...? Now the closest thing to a John McCain the GOP has in Congress could well be Adam Kinzinger, but he's not even a Senator..."

MMC: "Adam does have a big moral compass, indeed. Therefore, we'll have to get rid of him, just like we will with Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney."

b: "Wait. They're all Republicans. They are not your enemies."

MMC: "Of course they're not our enemies. But we don't care about the Democrats anymore - we've already fixed the next elections, remember? These rogue lawmakers are much more problematic because they make us look bad. They are conservative Republicans, and they always vote as conservative Republicans should, but that's not what we want now because it means that they can't vote for Trump or Qanon stuff, and we can't afford dissent on the very essence of our new platform. We can afford people like Elise Stefanik, people who, even if they have voted in favor of liberal issues before, are ready to sell their soul and kiss Trump's ring or whatever."

b: "And you're totally ok with your party being represented by a lunatic extremist like Marjorie Taylor Greene or a pedophile clown like Matt Gaetz."

MMC: "The Donald loves them, so we love them. Personally, I feel more comfortable with people who reflect our core values. For example, Ron DeSantis has corruption written all over this face, and you won't find a better nazi pit bull than Jim Jordan. The Donald loves them and I love them too."

b: "So why don't you invite KIM Jong-un to chair the GOP? The Donald loves him too, no? Wait... I know: you already proposed him, but he refused for some reason. Maybe because of the anti-Asian sentiment fueled by your boss and his friends."

MMC: "You're right. And you're wrong. He accepted. As Elaine often says, there's nothing Chinese money can't solve."

blogules 2021
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
NEW: join blogules on Facebook!!! and Twitter (@stephanemot, @blogules)
Enjoyed my neuroses? Check my prose: dragedies.com.

20210122

Deuce in Senate, Now Who's Ready To Serve For America?

So the Trump Insurrection failed, the disgraced POTUS and his white supremacist followers face trial, Anthony Fauci can at long last speak openly with the blessing of sound leaders (welcome to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris), and poetry has never been that supercool (O Say Can You See Amanda Gorman?).

But.

Coronavirus destruction has yet to peak, Qanon propagandists have yet to mutate and splinter into new murderous sleeping cells, Obstructionist in Chief Mitch McConnell remains the most noxious politician in town, and the GOP has yet to declare its independence from its worst enemies from within (don't count on Kevin McCarthy, whose new blend of mccarhyism will forever associate the House GOP's legacy to that of the ultimate traitor).

Can new budget chair Bernie Sanders balance Trump Era's kolossal deficits?

This time, GOP lawmakers won't go away with the outrageous elusive tactics they used for the 2020 impeachment. They'll have to decide how History will remember them by answering simple questions: is it okay for a President to incite an insurrection? can Donald Trump be allowed to run again for office?

I count on justice to at last catch up with Trump, his corrupt family, his enablers (Ted Cruz must go, but bigger fishes must as well), and all blends of hatemongers who preyed upon the desperate and the gullible.

20201123

Obstruction

The man in charge of the White House has yet to concede: yesterday, Vladimir Putin said that he would not recognize Joe Biden's victory until the Republican Party does.

Of course, Republicans are too coward to state the obvious, and to acknowledge the elephant in the room (not a genuine elephant, purists would argue). Why would they do it now? They've let him cross every red line over the past four years, and they even managed not to remove him when the Constitution forced them to, by following the most obscene pseudo legal reasoning ever. Because of their lack of courage, over a quarter of a million US lives were lost.

Will they move before December 14 and the electoral college vote? Before January 5 and the Georgia runoff elections? Before January 20 and Biden's inauguration? Before 2024 and Emperor Trump's Third Term?

Republicans are scared of a man who set a new record of votes for an incumbent POTUS (almost 74 millions so far). Even if he's been trounced fair and squared by a ticket that claimed 6M more votes, and an electoral college landslide. Even if they themselves fared much better than Donald Trump during these elections.

America has chosen Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to pivot from extremism and chaos to the center and order. Republican lawmakers have chosen to go down in History with a tandem of Obstructors in Chief that don't care one second about decency or their own legacy. Enough obstruction of justice, enough obstruction of democracy, enough obstruction of health, enough obstruction of truth. Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell must go.

blogules 2020
Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
NEW: join blogules on Facebook!!! and Twitter (@stephanemot, @blogules)
Enjoyed my neuroses? Check my prose: dragedies.com.

20200924

Trump: 'my plan to steal the elections' (fake interview, real threats)

blogules: 'Thank you President Trump for accepting this exclusive fake interview with our Agence Fausse Presse'.

Donald J. Trump: 'You're welcome. It's good to see Fake News that don't pretend, and openly define themselves as Weapons of Mass Disinformation'.

B: 'You are aware that I'm very critical of you and your administration...'

DJT: 'I can handle that, like I did so beautifully with Bob Woodward. Have you seen how he changed his mind about me, how he's flattering me in his book?'

B: 'How can you lie so blatantly? Even after being caught on tape? Can't you feel any shame?'

DJT: 'Listen. I'm feeling shame all the time, but I trained my brain to translate it instantly into pride. I simply cannot be wrong, I simply cannot fail. I'm basically the most perfect being the World has ever seen. To start with, I have good genes.'

B: 'At least you don't seem to have been genetically modified: your granddad Drumpf ran a brothel in Yukon, you grab women by the p...y, and you're being sued for raping an underage girl.'

DJT: 'My new fixer will take care of that.'

B: 'William Barr is supposed to be the US Attorney General, not a mobster's personal lawyer, justice is supposed to be independent from the executive, democracy relies on checks and balances...'

DJT: 'Come on. The US are not a democracy. Not under my watch. I can't let that happen. I have to win the elections. Do you know how many lifetimes in prison I'd have to serve? First thing I do when I'm reelected is to ensure I can serve at least 6 terms like my friend Alexander Lukashenko. After that, Ivanka and Barron will continue the dynasty. Arabella Rose comes next. That one, what a looker. If she weren't my granddaughter...'.

B: 'You're a monster.'

DJT: 'I like to win no matter what, okay? And I've got all bases covered for the 2020 elections and for the next ones. We corrupted the census to facilitate further gerrymandering, but also to justify why so many ballots will disappear in the weeks to come. That's why I'm asking my base to vote twice: once by email, once in person.'

B: 'But that's totally illegal.'

DJT: 'I'm trying to explain to you that I can't win legally, and that I have to do do like I've always done: the ugly, mobster way. But in parallel, I'm also working on changing the law, justice, people who could prevent that. If I put a thug in charge of USPS, if I stuffed courts with moronic ayatollahs, that's part of my plan to steal the elections.'

B: 'So you confess that you plan to steal the elections'.

DJT: 'You're not paying attention: I've already said that several times. When I say 'get rid of the ballots', it means that we will block and remove all ballots that come from suspicious zip codes, the ones with Democratic demographics, or minorities. And if our countless voter suppression measures fail, I can count on the virus and on my militias.'

B: 'Is that why you are not fighting the virus, and encouraging extreme right supporters to patrol cities with their assault weapons?'

DJT: 'Of course! We want the virus and riots to bloom in Democratic states and cities, we know that the virus kills more among minorities, and that my base is not afraid to go out because they think that's a hoax. Besides, there's no way moderates and minorities will show up on election day if they see Nazis roam the streets. And these thugs showed they know how to shoot, but we're doing our best to steal the elections without having to resort to that kind of voter suppression. If you want my opinion, that brilliant young lad in Kenosha was a bit too quick to do well - only 17 years old, but already perfectly brainwashed with 'Birth of a Nation', 'The Camp of the Saints', and other great white supremacist books. These Trump Youth are the future of our nation, but until the elections at least, they must not communicate too openly about our Great Plan.'

B: 'You are so openly racist, and still you're trying to convince minorities to vote for you, even after all you've done to them...'

DJT: 'Yes. But I must confess that this time it's harder with black communities. In 2016, I told them 'what do you have to lose? try it', and four years later, how many died of covid or police brutality? Now I can't tell Latinos 'what do you have to lose?', because they fear #LatinoLivesMatter will trend in 2024. So I asked Vladimir to beef up the propaganda and disinformation campaigns among Latino communities, like 10 times what we did for Hillary. And it worked, we've already turned the tables in places like Florida and Arizona.'

B: 'Interesting to see QAnon conspiracy theories accuse Biden of precisely what you're accused of: threatening democracy, preparing a coup, being evil, protecting pedophiles.'

DJT: 'QAnon is a beautiful invention from our propagandists. Before, when I said 'many people think', or 'many people say', I couldn't provide any proof when asked for more details, so in order to support our fabricated stories and most outrageous claims, we created someone who doesn't exist, and use him as our mouthpiece. Bonus: I can use code words in public, and my base knows exactly what I'm talking about, but the general public doesn't get the full antisemitic, racist and fascist references. Works like a charm, including in Europe now. People are so gullible.'

B: 'Yeah. Some even believe that drinking bleach can cure coronavirus infections.'

DJT: 'Now THAT is science. I drink bleach all the time. They tell me that's milk, but I know better. I always know best.'

B: 'But conspiracy theories don't seem to move the black communities.'

DJT: 'Not this time. So what I did was ask my friend Kanye to be my running mate*. Even if he has become a total mental wreck and doesn't campaign, even if a fraction of his millions of followers cast a vote for him just by seeing his name on the ballots, that can be enough to flip battleground states.'

B: 'No black life matters for you. Not even your supporter Herman Cain, who died of covid because he attended your infamous Tulsa rally.'

DJT: 'I don't care, do you? I don't care if some of my supporters die because I criticized masks and social distancing measures, or because I told my staff to pack them more even when I knew the virus was lethal and airborne. I need to hold as many rallies as possible with as many people as possible, otherwise I feel insecure. I need to project artificial power, I need people to cheer at me, it's like a drug, and I'm great at it. There is no dictator who has done more in history, with the possible exception of Adolf.'

B: 'But these people believe you when you say that you're like them, that you defend their interests'.

DJT: 'I have special interest groups to defend. And first and foremost, I must defend my own interests. When I say 'Make America Great Again', I always mean 'Make Trump Great Again'. By the way, did you notice that whenever I use the words 'America' or 'Americans', I actually mean me? Because I am America. America is mine.'

B: 'You're a dangerous, delusional autocrat and psychopath.'

DJT: 'It is what it is. I always dreamed of being a mafia boss, and now I can become a lifetime dictator. No one is stopping me, and certainly not Republican lawmakers.'

B: 'They didn't even dare to show up or pretend to propose a platform for your Convention. The only program was Vote Trump.'

DJT: 'That was simply beautiful. Stephen Miller learned a lot from his model, Joseph Goebbels, and what he did in Nuremberg. But we added the Trump touch, the Trump logo. The White House is now The Trump White Supremacy House, the GOP Trump's party, and step by step, America is becoming Trump's Amerika. That's how it works: I corrupt and bankrupt everything I touch. Dad handed me his company? I went bankrupt, like all my ventures. Putin handed me America? I destroyed it. Mitch McConnell handed me the Republican Party? I raped it.'

B: 'Mitch McConnell will go down in History as your Paul von Hindenburg: he knew you were a danger for democracy, but he gave you the keys because he thought he could control you.'

DJT: 'Lindsey Graham is a master hypocrite, but Mitch is the most corrupt of them all. I wouldn't be there without him. And we're on a roll - so lucky! I had to call Vladimir to ask him if it was Novichok for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but he said no, and this time I genuinely believe him.'

B: 'You mentioned Stephen Miller earlier, and it's interesting to see that's he's the only one who survived your toxic White House sphere.'

DJT: 'Ah, this time you're paying attention! Four years ago, I said I would only take the best...'

B: '... and all of them either quit, were fired, or turned against you.'

DJT: 'These guys don't count. When I say the best, of course I mean the Trump family.'

B: 'So Stephen Miller is part of the family.'

DJT: 'Steve is different. He is what I believe in, deep down. People think I have no values whatsoever, but I do have convictions, particularly regarding race, and genes. But even Miller is only a part of what I believe in. I'm not religious, but I'm The Chosen One. God has picked me, and I know that for sure because I am God. A God like the World has never seen before. And as a God, I give myself a A+. Can't you see the beautiful year of 2020 we're all having? And the best is yet to come!'

blogules 2020

Since 2003, nonsensical posts about noncritical issues in nonenglish (get your blogules transfusion in French)
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Enjoyed my neuroses? Check my prose: dragedies.com.

* see "Kanye West: a fake #BlackLivesMatter candidate to rescue a real White Supremacist"

20200821

A Democratic. National. Convention. With Mender In Chief Joe Biden.

Forget the confetti, forget the spin room, Zoom-in on issues and character. The 'Unconventional Convention' delivered the goods that matter.

'We The People' DNC 2020 will soon give way to 'Me Donald' RNC 2020, an alternative reality show where America will be pitched as stronger than ever, admired and respected overseas, her POTUS a winner, a strong, courageous patriot that will protect the people from a chaos like the World has never seen before. As if America weren't on her knees, despised overseas, her POTUS a pathetic failure, a coward narcissist that corrupts and bankrupts everything he touches, and the very person who keeps bringing and nurturing 'unpresidented' chaos. A sick joke that gets every day sicker and deadlier.

But let's get back to a Democratic National Convention that was all about Democracy, all about the Nation, all about Convening.

Joe, Kamala, Michelle, Barack - one message: vote to save democracy, the constitution, the soul of a nation, and its future.

We saw all kinds of faces and faiths, we heard all kinds of voices (even from more significant Republicans than ever before), we felt all sources of positive and sustainable energy to tap into. We witnessed the cultural and political diversity that makes America truly great.

Four pillars emerged*: Michelle and Barack Obama reaffirmed the moral and constitutional foundations, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris provided the platform for changes which they may not embody best themselves, but will do everything to enable as the next presidents of the United States**. They proved that they care, and that they know how to get things done.

These four faces do not say 'we won' to Bernie or A.O.C., but 'we will win all together' to keep democracy and the debate alive. That's why Joe is the perfect president for this time. Because he knows he's not perfect, because everybody knows he's the ideal, non-ideological Mender in Chief, and because he already demonstrated that he could listen to and work with people like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or John McCain.

More urgent debates will arrive soon, even more thrilling; Meltdown Trump will need even more boxes of uppers as usual to confront the man he likes to depict as 'sleepy', and I can't wait to see Kamala face to face (no chaperones) with 'Cheerleader's Cheerleader' Mike Pence...

Beyond conventions and debates, democracy will only win if everybody votes on time. Massively. In every State. In every county and parish. In every town and township. And for that to happen, everybody must get ready now, make a plan to defeat the voter suppression campaigns led by Trump and his enablers.

* I'm not forgetting the formidable Jill Biden, both a pillar and the keystone.

** full disclosure: Kamala Harris was my favorite candidate during the primaries.