As the successor and third generation of an autocratic, familial dynasty which has dealt with palace intrigues and survived threats from both within and without for more than half a century while other totalitarian regimes have fallen by the wayside, Kim Jong-un may give the impression of being a madman but he is a…

With almost 30,000 U.S. military and a quarter-million U.S. support personnel stationed in South Korea there's no way any of that fucker's generals would carry out his command for any kind of pre-emptive strike on North Korea, not with North Korea's 15,000 pieces of artillery, rockets, and missiles protected in…

That or shart his pants and shits the handshake outta them.

Sounds a bit like L'eau froide, but with more terrorism and consumer excess.

You're probably right about my undervaluing the harm China does to its own citizens; most if not all Chinese that I've known and met have been graduate students and professors in the U.S., so representative of a very narrow and privileged segment of Chinese society.

This is why you interrobang very sparingly.

Again, speaking as a non-expert, I would say power in the broad sense of exerting influence outside its borders, and doing so in regions that formerly looked to the U.S. for support.

Are the three disparate storylines being woven together?

Would that be such a very bad thing, though?

After eight years of Dubya the entire world was so fucking hopeful in Obama that we gave him the Nobel Peace Prize despite not having been even a year in office.

It doesn't help that his post-presidency of painting decidedly amateurish portraits has the feel of someone recovering in rehab.

FAKE NEWS!

I thought Bocce was only spoken by older, retired gents wearing space boaters and space fedoras who actually do sometimes revert to Space Italian, especially when dealing with flying, snaggle-toothed junk dealers.

Lucas has written and talked about the powerful influence of Joseph Campbell's work on myths and religions on Star Wars, even rewriting initial drafts to more closely follow the archetypal hero's journey, so maybe it's not too surprising that the core story would still resonate no matter the technical merits or geeky…

Rogue One had a blind Shaolin monk taking down stormtroopers left and right, so of course it's going to be superior to cowardly, formulaic rehash.

Just thinking about some of the prequel DVD extras and how involved Lucas was in the production, looking over and approving every individual concept design sketch and spinning his philosophy about how each different alien culture evolved to their present state.

That's a really good point about having two Death Star battles in a row.

That was probably the perfect age to see them for the first time on the big screen, as opposed to a jaded twenty-something who was regularly going to the cinematheque but made an exception for the 90's re-release of New Hope, only to find that the big screen magnified all the goofiness and amateurish acting of the…

Those two made-for-TV Ewok movies may not have had the budget, effects, casting, writing or buzz of these new Disney films, but they were all we had as kids and daggumbit, we liked 'em.

If anything those characters have an even stronger female bond than the three friends of The Bold Type if the old saw "A good friend will help you move, but a true friend will help you move a body" has any truth to it.