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@BreakingNews Bomb found on Yemen-Chicago UPS cargo flight during London stop – CNN

@kfinews: Airports in Philly and Newark reporting alleged suspicious packages on cargo planes. NYPD says similar situation on UPS truck.

@NYC911: Brooklyn has now a suspicious package at a UPS loading dock.

@NBCNewYork: UPDATE: Suspected explosive device found on UPS truck in Queens

All your suspicious packages are everywhere.

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You've probably seen parts of this movie. And it's good that "Silent Night, Deadly Night" got at least some partial recognition. It was inevitable of course, the forces of nature wouldn't let something like SNDN 2 fade into obscurity. And by forces of nature I'm talking about internet nerds.

Whether it be the top five quotes:

Or indeed, the infamous "Garbage day!" clip:

But I'm making the call now to go further. Those videos genuinely only starch the surface of this movie. In fact, it's probably fair to say SNDN 2 is the In the Realms of the Unreal of schlocky 80s horror movies, waiting to be discovered afresh by every generation. And leading man Eric Freeman (currently residing in Parts Unknown) is its Henry Darger. (That analogy doesn't hold up under scrutiny at all, let's just move on and say we were all glad we got it, alright?)
The original "Silent Night Deadly Night: was pretty gonzo concept to begin with. A child, Billy, witnesses his parents get murdered brutally at the hands of someone dressed like Santa Claus, gets moved to an orphanage, the sisters put all sorts of puritanical rage inside of him and he eventually grows up to murder people while dressed as Santa Claus. Hey: talent imitates, genius steals.

Sadly though, you can't stroll around in red felt shouting "Naughty!" at people before hacking them to pieces for too long before you attract some negative attention. Near the end of "Silent Night, Deadly Night," Billy focuses his attention on killing Mother Superior, the nun who was the principal cause of his rage and bloodlust (his parents' brutal murder was probably also a factor but I really hate nuns so let's place all the blame squarely on Mother Superior). Just before he can get his revenge, he gets shot. But as he is dying, the camera pans up to reveal, through a music cue that owes little to subtlety, that maybe his brother might continue his work.

This was a pretty good slasher movie. The actual message (which is sort of anti-puritanism if you squint a bit) is pretty condemnable, the action is well shot and grotesque and it caused a storm of controversy. That'll happen when you re-release a movie on Christmas Eve that features Santa interrupting a couple in flagrante delicto so he can strangle the man with fairy lights. Especially when said movie also features a topless woman impaled on a mounted elk's horns. This storm of controversy helped the movie turned a profit. So naturally a sequel had to follow.

The studio weren't willing to spend a lot of money though. In fact, initially they presented director Lee Harry and Joesph Earl with the original footage and demanded they cut a sequel out of it. Having a passing familiar with reason and logic Harry and Earl (both also members of the First Names As Last Names Club) demanded they be allowed to shoot new footage. So, on a shoestring, they managed to build out a copious amount of footage from the first "Silent Night Deadly Night" and some stuff they shot themselves on the cheap. The premise of the sequel is what'd you expect from the end of the first, the little brother grows up and decides to don the fur-lined hat and Get Real On Christmas. The execution (I know, I know) though, is what makes this move something,

The film takes place mostly in an office where Ricky, brother of Billy, is being given a psychiatric evaluation. Luckily for the film makers, Ricky remembers huge chunks of Billy's life in great detail. Even bits where he was 6 months old or not around. This lets them use 45 minutes of footage from the original movie again, now with Ricky's stentorian narration (which we'll get to in a second). I would imagine at the time this would've been soul destroying for SNDN fans, to rush to a sequel only to see half of the last movie again. Now though, in a world where not everyone has seen SNDN (I know, unthinkable), the opposite is true. What you get is a lean 45 minute cut of the original, trimmed of any filler and messing around. It's actually quite artfully cut down, the kills had to be made less gore cause of the higher body count, and I think a lot of slasher movies would benefit from the 45 minute cut.

But this streamlined version of the original is not the only thing this movie brings to the table. Not by a long shot. What the film makers decided to do was take the surprisingly grimy approach of the first SNDN and turn it on its head, making the sequel (well, the 45 minutes of new footage) more akin to an episode of Animaniacs than its predecessor. Well, an episode of Animaniacs where everyone who does pretty much anything gets brutally murdered by a bug-eyed jock shouting the word "punish!" I'm also not sure if Animaniacs featured a man getting an umbrella opened inside him. There's definitely an episode where someone shoots a car twice and it explodes though. Still I should probably rethink this whole Animaniacs comparison.

Sometimes if someone is terrible in a movie you wonder if they might need a bit more training before they should have ventured on screen. With Eric Freeman, star of SNDN2, you wonder if he's actually seen a movie before or is aware in any real way of what acting is. I'm not saying he's bad. That would be missing the point. This is actually where the outsider art Darger comparison above kind of comes into play. It's not that his performance is terrible, it's that it's impossible to identify where he got the idea he should be doing the things he choose to do. He bugs his eyes out. He contorts his voice into a playground-badass growl, even for normal conversations. When trying to be threatening, he sounds like a high sarcastic person. His facial expression is always somewhere between inquisitive, scolded-child and crazy eyes killer. Sometimes he just laughs to himself: a lot. You know every movie where an alien comes to earth, wears human skin and ends up doing that hammy, staring-like-a-confused-dog, act? Well this beats them all and this dude wasn't even trying.

Eric Freeman even manages to wear sweaters aggressively, something which I still haven't fully figured out. In fact Eric gives such a compelling and illogical performance that you don't even notice he doesn't don the Santa suit till the last 10 minutes of the movie. By then you're probably under the impression it's impossible to kick the insanity up a notch. But don't worry: Eric Freeman got your back, kid.

Eric was never in another major (or minor) movie roll, his wikipedia lists some minor tv credits but he seems to have all but disappeared. This is why SNDN 2 is so important. It's the lone artifact left by a man whose approach to shlock film acting is both impossible to explain and oddly compelling.

So there you have it, a streamlined slasher and the sole performance of a man possessed. Two great reasons to watch "Silent Night Deadly Night 2." There's more here than 60 seconds of a viral video: this is a movie (well, two movies) worth watching in full.

PUNISH!

Sean Mc Tiernan is 21, his favorite rapper is E40 and he wants to assure you he does sometimes go outside. He has a blog and a twitter. So does everyone though. He also has a podcast on which he has a nervous breakdown once an episode, minimum.You should totally email him with your questions / insults/ offers of tax-free monetary gifts.

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Certainly it makes one wonder further about the constantly re-fraying relationship between Pakistan and the U.S.

Coming on the heels of Pakistan's arrest of Taliban honcho Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, this is a surprising turn of events in light of Pakistan's, let's say... conflicted ideas about how to handle leadership in the region.

And then there's this, which we expect to hear much more about.

Hajji Zaman Ghamsharik, an Afghan warlord accused of helping Osama bin Laden escape from the Americans at Tora Bora, was assassinated by a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest. The bomber killed him and 14 others as they gathered at a ceremony to distribute land to returning refugees at a village in his tribal stomping grounds near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad.

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• Panetta: "The biggest threat is not so much that we face an attack like 9/11. It is that al Qaeda is adapting its methods in ways that oftentimes make it difficult to detect."

1. "Is not so much." So it is "some much"?

2. What exactly is "like" 9/11?

3. What are these methods?

4. Oftentimes?

• And, from their report, however: "First, we have been warning since 9/11 that al-Qa'ida, al-Qa'ida-associated groups, and al- Qa'ida inspired terrorists remain committed to striking the United States and US interests. What is different is that we have names and faces to go with that warning."

1. So... it's difficult to detect? But now you have names and faces?

• And also, how does this go with the AP report? They say: "The terrorist organization is deploying operatives to the United States to carry out new attacks from inside the country, including 'clean' recruits with a negligible trail of terrorist contacts, CIA Director Leon Panetta said."

1. So... you do not have names and faces.

• Blair: "Al Qaeda maintains its intent to attack the homeland-preferably with a large-scale operation that would cause mass casualties, harm the U.S. economy or both."

1. So, yes, a large-scale operation then? Not "not so much"?

2. I like the idea of casting al Qaeda as an organization with "preferences." It's like they have a white board and some really boring meetings. "Well, we'd prefer to cripple the U.S. economy this year, but we'll also think outside the box on just seriously annoying a large group of people."

• From the report: "Targets that have been the focus of more than one al-Qa'ida plot include aviation, financial institutions in New York City, and government targets in Washington, D.C. Other targets al- Qa'ida has considered include the Metro system in Washington D.C., bridges, gas infrastructure, reservoirs, residential complexes, and public venues for large gatherings."

1. SUPERBOWL????

• Blair: "Malicious cyberactivity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication." And: something-something "cyber-Pearl Harbor."

1. ???

2. You mean like in Live Free or Die Hard???

Looks like the answer is, at least in part, to bypass the quote cherry-picking media, and learn for yourself. Here is their report. [PDF file]

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for hunger, desertification and floods across the globe, and called for "drastic solutions" to global warming, and "not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change."

"We should stop dealings with the dollar and get rid of it as soon as possible," he said. "I know that this has great consequences and grave ramifications, but it is the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America."

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