Wonkette
We don’t have our copy of The Stand handy, as we probably left it on a school bus or something, in the 1980s, but let’s see, Army dude sick with the Superbug, escapes a desert military base in California and infects the whole Southwest before he dies, does that sound about right? Well hooray, there’s a Marine who’s real sick at the Twentynine Palms Marine base, in the California desert.
The unidentified Marine is being treated and is under quarantine, and his roommate is also under quarantine, and another 37 Marines who had some contact with the sick dude, they are under a sort of semi-quarantine, and the base commander says of the sick dude, “The initial tests are that he is suspected to have the flu.”
Swine Flu Fear: Marines Quarantined in Twentynine Palms [KNX 1070]
OH GOOD we get 2 people in my County and a WHOLE BASE in your County. Go California— birthplace of the Zombie race.
why the bashing of The Alarm w/the alttexts? I haz a sad.
Hmm, let’s see… Yup, right there in Revelations, chapter 9, verse 11: “Saint Stephen, King of the Prophets shall warn the chosen, and re-warn the chosen a second time in a longer, unedited prophesy.”
I reckon we are well and truly fucked.
Well that’s one way of getting out of Iraq duty. The chicks just get themselves knocked up; the dudes have to be a little more resourceful. Semper Fi!!
well thank god I still have all of that astronaut ice cream. it is beginning!
The jarheads are just shirkers. They’ve had it with PT and crappy food.
I’ve got to go watch that YouTube of the miniseries opener again. And I’m with space stout. Also.
The marine, yelling hysterically was quoted as saying:
“That’s it, man. Game over, man. Game over, what the fuck are we supposed to now, huh?! What are we gonna do?!”
Trash Can Man = carrot top. You heard it here first.
The End.
Cheney is teh Walkin’ Dude.
I blame Operation Chaos.
Mr. Layne, sorry to disagree but I must. The Alarm have the advantage over U2 in one very important regard: they knew when to hang it up and get day jobs (mostly). That’s why none of us has to endure the sight of aging Mike Peters with a threadbare mullet-combover caterwauling at Red Rocks in 2009.
THE MILITARY IS SPREADING IT.
Yaybuls: so we need to find the little girl who survived the aliens and follow her lead? I got dibs on saying “get away from her you bitch!”
The official name of that military installation is Marine Corps Base Twentynine Stumps.
Considering how little I like Stephen King’s writing, I will be pissed if the next year or so is pulled from the plots of one of his novels. Whatever the existential equivalent of being itchy all over is, that would be it.
“The ill Marine suffered from vomiting and other flu-like symptoms, Gen. James Conway said at a Pentagon briefing.” When I was in the service, that was called pay day.
“Our concern is the obvious exposure to other people, and the potential spread,” Conway said. “And I’m confident we have a very aggressive doctor out there that is going by the book and being a little aggressive even beyond that, in terms of making sure that Marines are not exposing themselves to other Marines.”
Clearly I should have joined the Marines for the flashing and buttsecks. Clearly there is a discipline problem. Maybe the Naked Bunny can help with that.
The Stand was written when Jimmy Carter was President- coincidence?
SayItWithWookies: The dude can fill some pages, can’t he? If only they were worth reading.
Hooray For Anything: You win!
space stout: “They mostly come out at night. Mostly.”
Someone needs to sit the pukey Marine down and explain that this is NOT how you “go Galt.”
Yaybuls: uhhh…build campfires and sing songs? I’m just guessin’….
Huh. This will put a wrench into the rightwing plan to CLOSE THE BORDER TO MEXICO FOREVER.
He probably just had a bad reaction to some waterboarding. Oh wait he was one of ours? My statement stands.
Mad Farmer Manifest:
Thank goodness DADT has kept all of the godless commie queers out of the military, or that might have made me suspicious.
U-2 is a fake Alarm band. Why the fuck the world worships the fucking pompous U-2 escapes me. I loved Big Country, too.
I think this is the new Aids, before they figured out about HIV, they were calling it all sorts of things. I mean just look at this story, a Marine and his ROOMMATE, oh come on they weren’t just roomates - what the hell else are you supposed to do with your time as a Marine but teach your roomate to oink like a piggy. And the other 37 they just gave blow jobs too, and man-on-man blow jobs are not gay, depending on who is giving and who is receving.
SayItWithWookies: I’ll keep an eye out on my car for you but just to be safe, I’d try and avoid clowns for awhile.
The base was in Maine actually–in the Stand.
Just put ‘em all in the Swan station and let JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof sort it out.
This will all end badly; with a confusing, literal deus-ex-machina that renders all earlier attempts at heroism pretty much superfluous.
Calm down people - you’re not going to die of the swine flu. You’re going to die of hunger - or maybe exposure if you’re homeless above the Mason Dixon line.
Flu? That dude is drunk hung over, that’s what he is.
Bruno:
Is it wrong that that made me all flushed? Can you do it again? Only this time make them Fiilipino Marines .
I love how I’m learning this from wonkette. I work on a military base in the Cali desert… Good times.
VelvetFist: The special effects should be amazing.
Chicago’s messican fest has been canceled due to the pig ills. And all I can think about are pork tamales….
Prommie: The Negativland version of “Still Haven’t Found La La La” is much better, and you could get it now if U2 hadn’t had all the copies collected and destroyed.
History is repeating itself. Sorry, not snark here, but this book, which I confess I lost interest in two years ago when I was reading it, but now will resurrect, discusses how The Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918 bascially got started at military bases in the midwest and was disseminated rapidly by movement of troops on trains as part of the American involvement in The Great War….
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Influenza-Deadliest-Plague-History/dp/0670894737
So, shut down the trains (they are ridden out here in The Evil East), shut down the planes (as if), avoid crowds (easy for agoraphobics) and keep washing your hands. Or some such…
CaliforniaMike: mosdef
Hooray For Anything: Fucking win!
That online near-me match-com girl has a black eye, and it looks like she’s had a stroke — or is she RETURNING FROM TWENTYNINE PALMS?
Hooray For Anything: I’m doomed — I work for the state.
“Exposuring themselves”? You mean we really can blame the Teabaggerz for this? Holy shit.
Bronkers: It’s that whole avoiding other people for fear they could be passing on germs thing that’s making me feel a bit better about being an unemployed, wonkette-commenting shut in these days.
Then again, maybe if we’d just lower the fucking drinking age to 18 already; he wouldn’t have been in TJ licking salt off Mescan strippers all weekend. Or maybe he would. Still.
“So here we were, with the whole human race wiped out, not by atomic weapons or bio-warfare or pollution or anything grand like that. Just the flu. I’d like to put down a huge plaque somewhere, in the Bonneville Salt Flats, maybe. Bronze Square. Three miles on a side. And in big raised letters it would say, for the benefit of any landing aliens: JUST THE FLU.” — from the short story Night Surf by Stephen King.
Man I read a lot of his books back in the 80’s.
Before 9/11, didn’t some guy also write about terrorists crashing planes into government buildings? That means stuff written in books is coming true! So maybe Sarah Palin was RIGHT you libtards when she wanted to burn those books. Shame on you all!
Yeah, end times!
Bronkers: Spoiler Alert!!! The take away points of the book end up being- massive death tolls are inevitable, quarantining people only slows down the process, and governments aren’t prepared for even the moderately bad scenario. Happy Reading!
BlueStateLibtard: The same guy, in fact; in a story about a future where all television had were long-term game shows where contestants were humiliated, injured or killed for the audience’s amusement. Hmm…
That’s it. Cue up ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ by Blue Oyster Cult and don’t skimp on the cow bell.
It could get worse:
“In this fifty year period, a massive depression, coupled with the collapse of a key resource, undermines traditional economic models. Even as the global economy recovers, a global war erupts, a horrifying accident triggered by political systems overwhelmed by increasingly rapid communications, a tragedy multiplied by the almost casual use of chemical weapons. The end of this war coincides with the emergence of a pandemic the likes of which the world has never seen, killing millions upon millions — and, combined with the war, almost eliminating an entire generation in some parts of the globe.
“After the pandemic ebbs, a brief, heady economic boom leads many to believe the worst has ended. Unfortunately, what follows is a global depression even more massive than the previous one, causing hyperinflation in some of the most advanced nations, and leading directly to the seizure of power by totalitarian, genocidal regimes.
“What follows is perhaps predictable: an even greater world-wide war, nearly wiping out a major culture and culminating in a shocking nuclear attack.” Source
Goddam the 20th century was hell!
slappypaddy: That’s the first thing I thought: What’s with the black eye?
Cape Clod: Creepy. I was JUST listening to that. Well, Hanson’s up next, so things are looking better!
Carrot Stick: I have to confess, and I come from a long background of “medicine by association” that the snooze factor got to me. I think your takeaway is pretty much on the money, just from a logical conclusion standpoint. A Malthusian winnowing of the global masses. That solidified lung outcome for those who perished was quite an image, though, as were the nefarious schemings of the politicos to encourage attendance at the War Bonds parades. I found that quite chilling.
Hooray For Anything: You’re making lemonade outta lemons, my friend… been where you are and done what you’re doing. Sooo, now it’s healthy, to boot.
Yaybuls: Damn, I love that movie.
“I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
space stout: I remember that shitty fake “U2″ band The Alarm - I even saw them live when they were big, and guess what? They SUCKED!
shortsshortsshorts: No, that would be Mexico and Spain, according to the WORLDWIDE SWINE-FLU ZOMBIE PLAGUE maps… so we, they still-human survivors face a fate even worse than death - SPANISH-SPEAKING ZOMBIES!!!!!!!
qaf: But then it gets even worse again! “After the last shocking nuclear attack, the U.S. Stock market rebounds only to crash 1 million points after a newly discovered hybrid species of lizard/shark/ape attacks the island nation of Japan, sending Asian currencies into a tailspin, with resulting re-militarization of Japan, and Asian arms race. The U.S. wheat crop is devastated by rampant Chinese-engineered nano-virus, resulting in widespread U.S. food shortages, armed revolt, and ultimate quarantine of former southern and north-western territories, whose population is subsequently devastated by mutant pathogens that devastate local economies, but also induce in victims the long-awaited development of opposable thumbs and basic cognitive activity…”
BlueStateLibtard: IT’S IN REVELATIONS, SHEEPLE!!11!!1!!!
Bearbloke: “Los cerebros… Queremos los cerebros… ¡Danos los cerebros!”
Twenty-nine Palms = Joshua Tree = U2 ?
Do I win something?
BlueStateLibtard: That must’ve been in the 1950s. I hadn’t been born yet (not that that’s an excuse).
bitchincamaro: Doesn’t Mary Bono live near there? At last U2’s cunning plan is becoming clear…
shortsshortsshorts: Shorts, I’m surprised at you, that should be THE CIA IS USING THE MILITARY TO SPREAD IT.
Or, perhaps DICK CHENEY IS HAVING THE CIA USE THE MILITARY TO SPREAD IT.
V572625694: The death of Harold Lauder was great. The stuff around it sure could use an editor, though.
Bronkers: Twentynine Palms is just a few hours down I15 from Las Vegas- odds are one of those jarheads was up there last weekend unless there’s something better to do in Daggett or Barstow.
I love to feel the rain in the summertime. I love to feel the rain on my face.
Does this mean I don’t have to finish my finals? I’m just wondering, because I don’t think it will make a difference to me if I have a degree if I’m going to be living in a Stephen King novel for the rest of my life…
Semper Fidelis?
Aegrescit medendo…
bitchincamaro: Very good, BC.
Goddammit you people got me drunk playing Barry drinking games and I missed this whole thread about my FAVORITE author, the Dickens of Our Time. Make fun of me. I don’t care. I even read all of those shitty tower books, or whatever they were. Well, I read most of them.