You beat me to it! I’ve always thought that Banks’ Culture sounded and felt like what the Star Trek Federation wanted to be when it grew up. A show about it would be cool …

Yeah, I thought there was something creepy about it. “Beelzebub has a devil set aside for me,” indeed ...

Remember The Donald. He set up his team in 2016 -- and hasn’t stopped setting it up since.

One thing that bothers me: exactly what is “Bohemian Rhapsody” the song all about? Because to me it sounds like music to commit a mass murder by; it’s all too easy for me to imagine the Columbine kids singing this to each other before they blow each other’s brains out.

Was and will make me ill. I take a gram and only am. (Creepy, ain’t it?)

Mind you, the evil-doers in Orwell’s 1984 basically forced their program of “a boot stomping upon a human face forever” upon an unwilling populace. More apropos, and scarier too, would be Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in which the populace willingly embraces evil as long as they can trip out on their soma.

Back in 1946 the Superman radio show ran a 16-part serial in which it used actual secret information ferreted out by an enterprising patriot who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan to basically make the Klan a laughingstock, fit to be punched out by six-year-old kids in their Superman costumes.

If I remember right, Charles Stross believes that every Cold War story is a horror story.

Hey, wuzzis?

Of course this line of argument ignores the fact that DROPPING MEGATON NUKES FROM A RADIOACTIVE DEATH MISSILE FROM HELL is almost the textbook definition of :overkill” ...

Not a fair example. Nobody ever stops to think that years before this incident Indy had already DRUNK FROM THE HOLY GRAIL, so maybe his surviving a nuclear blast in that damn fridge might have been God giving him a freebie!

That and the fact that the Davy Crockett was quite short-ranged -- so short-ranged, in fact, that there was no way to ensure its shooter wouldn’t die in the blast from his own weapon ...

The Davy Crockett was another batshit crazy Cold War thought experiment that we should all be glad was never used. It was a NUCLEAR BAZOOKA, for God’s sake! A nuclear bazooka with such a short range that even if successfully used its shooter was almost guaranteed to die in the blast from his own weapon, if not from…

Yeah, the name “Flying Crowbar” fits the Thor project better than this thing. On the other hand, I think “Death From Above” fits the Thor project even better. And in any case, my point is that this damned SLAM thing is so over-the-top batshit crazy and terrifying that it’s hard to think of any nickname that best suits…

I just can’t help it. I read something like this, and my favorite earworm kicks in … da da da DA! da da DAAA! dad da da DA! da da DA da DA! (sing along with me and you’ll guess what it is … )

Oh! Thanks!

Can’t choose between Iron Man and The Dark Knight? Do them both. There’s lots to learn from them both.

You know what? You should place all the “Age of Heroes” reviews under one heading so we can all see how the superhero movie evolves from Superman: The Movie to Avengers: Infinity War and beyond. Also, maybe a post- Thanos Showdown essay on exactly what Hollywood got right AND wrong about superheroes to date, and maybe…

This just in as of 10/19/2018: The Trump Organization filed suit against the estate of a New York man who died in a fire inside his Trump Tower apartment earlier this year.

I’m always telling people on threads like this to buck up, it ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings, yadda yadda. But the more the Other Side acts up on CNN or the Beeb or any other source of “fake news” that I inexplicably put my faith in, the more I find myself wondering if the rest of us will wake up one morning to…