President Obama doesn’t like Empire people

Back in December, we gave you a heads up about how nerds made use of the White House’s petition website to ask for the construction of a Death Star. It seemed like such an outlandish idea that there’s no reason for President Obama’s administration to acknowledge it.

Wrong.

The White House has officially responded to the petition. Showing Obama’s rebel traits and fondness for the home planet of Jimmy Smits, Paul Shawcross, a science and space adviser, responded on the website that not only would the space station that’s not a moon would be too costly, but the creation of such would go against its stance on not supporting the blowing up of planets.

Also, there’s this:

a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon

Nerds decide to use the dark side of the force and internet for their liking

Prepare to be shocked. We’ve finally encountered a group of individuals that like both the original Star Wars trilogy and the prequel trilogy. How can I make such a proclamation?

Because a group of people are petitioning the United States government to create the Death Star.

For those unaware, the prequel trilogy was full of government and politics…boring, boring, boring government and politics. Hey, just like our world! And the original trilogy was full of big planet-destroying satellites that weren’t moons (and some other stuff, maybe). Through the power of the petitions.whitehouse.gov site, a group of nerds concerned constituents have asked our government to fund the creation of the laser base by the year 2016. How will they do that, when we’re going through rough economic times?

We can only assume via tariffs and sanctions placed upon vaguely racist alien races.

Imagine pairing her with bathwater and a baby

Secret passages are funny. Whether they’re activated by a random candelabra near a bookshelf, behind a floor of stairs, entered via dumb waiter or just located right in front of you on a wall, they’re full of wonder and whimsy. Except, they tend to be one-way affairs.

Take for instance a trash chute. It’s like a secret passage: it’s located in a wall, it can almost be navigated by a person and it leads one way. Now, whether that one way leads to a trash compactor, a furnace, an open dumpster full of syringes used by victims of ass-mumps or a room full of water, garbage and a one-eyed space beast, well, that’s up to the owners of the residence.

So, it would be smart to be extra careful when around a trash chute, especially if delicate and expensive devices are in hand. Right Amanda Still?

Take it from Snee: Lent Edition

If you’re of the Catholic persuasion, then you know that we are one week deep into Lent.

For everyone else: every year, shortly after Valentine’s Day, the Almighty decides that he’s tired of putting in all the work into this relationship — including that freaky four-way with his son and a ghost we asked for. After Mardis Gras, God sobers up and turns into the princess from A Knight’s Tale and asks us to prove our love by giving up something we love for 40 days.

I, for instance, gave up the slide whistle this year, which means 40 days of stern erections: a price my wife will just have to pay. In prior years, I’ve given up monologuing in the shower, checking my tissues for productive noseblowings and Chalupas because

  1. It has to be something difficult to live without. (I ate nothing but Gorditos in 1998 to keep to my non-Chalupa agreement.)
  2. It can’t be a repeat.

But, you don’t have to be Catholic to participate. In fact, Muslims have their own version, Ramadan, while Evangelical Protestants swear off of gay sex for their entire lives — which often leads to failure for extending it beyond the Lent season.

It is in this Christian spirit that I’ve prescribed some Lent suggestions to others. Who knows? Maybe it will change their lives permanently for the better. Continue reading Take it from Snee: Lent Edition

Rock beats scissors, dual lightsabers beats taser

A man from Hillsboro, Oregon has been arrested and charged with assault after allegedly attacking customers at a Toys ‘R Us store with … drum roll please … wait for it … two plastic lightsabers.

The man, armed with two lightsabers and his abnormally high mitochondrial count, started swinging the toy weapons at customers in the store last week. You can just see the transition from Jedi to Sith.

When the police were called, the 33 year-old moved out to the car park. When cops confronted him there, he began attacking them with the lightsabers, and when one officer shot a taser at him he “knocked one of the wires away”. Such skill and finesse.

It was all for naught, though. Police eventually got the better of Master Porkins, who now faces “allegations of disorderly conduct, theft, assault, resisting arrest and interfering with a police officer”.

Take it from Snee: ‘Star Trek’ won

I’ve had a lot of fun with Star Wars in this column. So much so, in fact, that I may surprise you that I am also a Star Trek fan.

The Star Trek universe is harder to write about because it is so f%@king vast. Even with the “expanded universe” of books, Star Wars roughly covers the same four characters every goddamn installment. Meanwhile, there have been four crews of the USS Enterprise alone, a whole other ship, a space station and the new alien race they meet every episode.

While both share roughly the same fans, those fans usually prefer one over another and will fight to the asthma attack over it. It is my duty to settle this contest, and I’ll just say it now: Star Trek won. I base my–what will obviously be considered–controversial decision on the following criteria: Continue reading Take it from Snee: ‘Star Trek’ won

Take it from Snee: What do you mean ‘you sandpeople?’

Complaints about racism in Star Wars are far from new, the greatest critique delivered by one Mr. Hooper X in Chasing Amy.

But what about within the universe itself? It’s easy to examine the black and white, so to speak, dynamics of Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader as the linked clip demonstrates. What’s not so obvious are the racist attitudes of the characters themselves, some of which should know better.

We begin our examination a long, long time ago in … Continue reading Take it from Snee: What do you mean ‘you sandpeople?’

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Fanboys’

Most people, I think, have some sort of unhealthy habit. Whether they admit it or not, everyone has some trait, activity or habit that they take to the extreme. Now, I doubt very much that most people can relate to the love of Star Wars that the characters in Fanboys have. But, everyone has an obsession, don’t they? Some people are clean freaks, some people love dogs, and, well, some people love a series of movies about space drama. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Fanboys’

Rise, my cake

Chancellor Palpatine Emperor Palpatine Pope Benedict XVI recently turned a whopping 83 years old. At his birthday party, he was given a large cake and had “Happy Birthday” sung to him in English. Because, you know, the Catholic Church has never had issues with small children and Benedict has never had any possible ties to the German Nazi party or movement. Never.

We can only assume that each candle (all 83 of them) had a tip that resembled a Pope hat. Because that makes us smile.

In other food related news, a hub-bub has been stirred up regarding the irony of KFC’s recent healthy focus campaign for the Susan G. Komen foundation and their release of the Double Down. And yet, there’s another hub-bub that they might want to focus on also. Oh, and SHAMELESS PLUG IS SHAMELESS

That’s no moon

We’ve always assumed our sun was the only star in our solar system, but maybe not. We could be in a binary system, with a brown dwarf hiding in the Oort cloud. And it could be bombing us with comets. Or a green laser beam. Welcome to your tax dollars at work.

The star, referred to as Nemesis, or “The Death Star,” has been theorized for a while. But now NASA’s new satellite, WISE, could be able to prove its existence for the first time. The theory was developed to explain the waves of mass extinctions on Earth, every 26 million years for the past 250 million years.

Our solar system is surrounded by a vast collection of icy bodies called the Oort Cloud. If our Sun were part of a binary system in which two gravitationally-bound stars orbit a common center of mass, this interaction could disturb the Oort Cloud on a periodic basis, sending comets whizzing towards us.

An asteroid impact is famously responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but large comet impacts may be equally deadly. A comet may have been the cause of the Tunguska event in Russia in 1908. That explosion had about a thousand times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and it flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an 830 square mile area.

So if we’re able to prove that Nemesis does exist, and its irregular orbit around our own sun is causing regular comet attacks, then the next thing will be for our greatest scientific minds to come up with a plan to neutralize it. Our only hope? A race of people that are only vaguely squid-like in name only.