Today in blunt frankness...

The Terrordrome? Take Serpentor Ave,
then turn left on Destro Street, can't miss it.

So emotions run high after a terrorist attack. That's why terrorists do what they do and we can't control that. What we can control is shoving a mic in the face of lunatics to see who can have the biggest, craziest, unconstitutional-iest, knee-jerk reaction. Take for example Donald Trump who again reiterated how this wouldn't happen if we'd just stop taking immigrants from 'terrorist' nations-which is not a thing. If there were entire countries of terrorists with flags and Fodor's guides, it would be easy, you'd know where to find them but that's not how this works.

Hey, remember that time he went after
Bill Clinton for having an affair, while
totally having an affair of his own?

And here, check out Newt Gingrich's plan to out-crazy Donald Trump:

"...and let me be as blunt and direct as I can be. Western civilization is at war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported."

-Newt Gingrich being as blunt and
frank as he, or really anyone could
possibly ever be, about anything ever

Anyway, leaving aside the ridiculous illegality of religiously-based profiling and the dubious reasoning that connects all Muslims with terrorism, isn't a 'Sharia-test' like, super flawed from the get go? First of all, Sharia is a bunch of religious laws and not the same thing as a terrorist agenda, but let's say Gingrich, despite the statistical improbability, actually managed to get someone who was an ISIS terrorist into an interrogation room and asked them if they supported ISIS, wouldn't a clever terrorist you know, lie about it?

"Ok, if you are a terrorist please fill in this bubble here with a #2 pencil
and please, be sure to fill it in completely or the Scantron might miss it."

The Harsh Light of Adulthood

So this month's book for the book club I'm in was-huh? Yes, I'm in a book club, what of it? That's what I thought. Anyway, as I was saying, the book for book club this month was Larry Niven's Ringworld, which was one of my favorite books ever until I re-read it for book club.

Yup, I just ruined Ringworld for myself, by reading Ringworld.

Also, one assumes, with shorter
lines and somewhat less puking.

Ringworld, if you've never read it, is a classic sci-fi novel about an expedition to, get this, a ring-shaped world. It's a gigantic hoop that circles a star at the same distance that the Earth orbits the sun. The interior surface is all continents and oceans and centrifugal force keeps everything from drifting off into the cold, hard vacuum of space. Think of it like a super-massive version of the Round Up from an amusement park but with millions of times the inhabitable space of the Earth.

Niven's concept has been widely influential in sci-fi. Iain M. Banks' Orbitals in his Culture novels, and the Halo in Halo borrowed Niven's idea as did Elysium, that so-so Matt Damon movie about how Jodie Foster can't pull of an English accent. Like at all.

"'ello, 'ello, Matt Damon, welcome to moy spaice staishon. Spot-o-tea?"

-Jodie Foster not being 

British in Elysium

"You know, unlike women, math

never talks back, am I right fellas?"

-Larry Niven

Anyway, influential as Ringworld is, re-reading it gave me a huge icky. Huge. Like, I should take all of his books off my shelf and hide them in a drawer so that no one will ever know. I guess the thing about reading a book in middle school and then dragging it blinking into the harsh light of adulthood, is that you tend to notice things that maybe you didn't pick up on when you're a kid. Take for example Ringworld's flat, kind of unlikable characters, the frequent and brain-achingly math heavy info-dumps or say, the jaw-dropping, unrelenting misogyny that pervades the entire novel. Like, I know this was written forty-six years ago, but holy shit Larry Niven, I mean, holy shit.

Booster spice is something like the
29th century equivalent of Enzyte.

There are two female characters in the book, both of whom have tons of sex with Louis Wu, the book's two-hundred year-old protagonist. Don't worry though because despite his age, he has the body of a twenty-year old thanks to some kind of crazy future drug called Booster Spice, and Teela, his first boning buddy, is twenty. Like actually twenty, and the direct descendant of Wu's old girlfriend. Gross. And his other sex-interest is a quasi-human space prostitute. No, I'm not kidding. Shall I go on? I shall? Great.

'Pfft...women, right? Can't live
with'em, can't freeze em...or can't I?."

-Louis Wu

There are two alien characters in the story, both of whom are males from species whose females are non-sentient. At one point our hero makes a funny, funny joke about how he'd like to go off into space to be by himself, but he'd bring a woman in stasis so he could thaw her out whenever he's in the mood. And later, Louis ends up selling Teela (yes, selling her) to a Ringworld native who's some kind of cross between Don Quixote and Conan the Barbarian. Which she's totally cool with.

You didn't think I'd be able to work
Bea Arthur into this one, did you?

And sure, I get that sometimes we have to put aside an author's personal views in order to enjoy their work. Take Orson Scott Card for example. Everybody loves Ender's Game and all but he can go fuck himself. Like, for serious. The difference here is that Niven's gross is right there in his work which is a shame because the Ringworld itself is such a rad place. Niven's attitude is just weird and inexcusably backwards. Sure, he was writing in the 1970's, but did he never watch Maude?

Look, I know I'm judging his worldview decades after the fact and that a lot's changed since the age of fondue and shag carpets, but it wasn't that long ago and predicting the future is sort of his job. You'd think that with all the math he put into working out the physics of the Ringworld, he'd have been able to better calculate the trajectory of our culture.

Pictured: Larry Niven, apparently caught off guard by the suggestion that women
might one day be permitted to do things like drive and be Prime Minister of the UK.

Finally, a reason to leave the house!

Look, I'm a grown-up man-child who not only still plays video games, but who also leaps to the defense of video gaming as a hobby anytime someone blames them our violent culture and the rapid decline of human civilization. Which happens a lot actually.

Holy shit, video games are to blame? Well that was easy.
Our national epidemic of violence: solved. Thanks Ed Schultz!

Above: Fan-favorite Pikachu and the
cruel master who imprisons him and
forces him to fight for money and fame. 

That said, I have a problem with suggesting that Pokémon Go has a positive impact on people's mental health. Here, check this out, it's a story about how Tumbler and Twitter users are expressing their gratitude to Nintendo for giving them a reason to get out of bed. I should probably explain that Pokémon Go is free mobile phone app that uses GPS and augmented reality to lead you to adorable monsters floating around the in the real world meaning that for once you have to leave your protective pillow fort and face the world in order to capture all the Pokémon.

Yes, that's $99.99 of money.
Because people are kind of ridiculous
and Nintendo know this about us.

You hold the camera up and the game inserts a Pokémon onto the screen and you 'capture' it. You then get candy and stardust which function both as in-game currency you can use to raise your Pokémon's stats and to remind you that you're too old for Pokémon. Oh and the answer is yes, Nintendo will gladly take your real money in exchange for pretend money that you can use to buy pretend items that will improve your pretend Pokémon and give you a pretend feeling of accomplishment.

Fun Fact: it also makes your
friends hate you. Haaaate you.

I don't have anything against the idea of using video games as a therapeutic tool. I really don't, in fact knowing where to find the rocket launcher in every stage of Halo 1's multiplayer got me through some rough times in my early 20's. But the problem is that this game came out like Wednesday and we're already hailing it as a great new way to combat depression. It may well be, I'm not a clinical psychiatrist, but then Tweets are not the same thing as a scientific study about the health benefits of simulating monster cockfights either.

Look, I'm not saying it isn't great we're getting out of the house more, I'm just suggesting that we give it a few weeks before recommending a game that encourages people to stare at their screens while walking perilously close to traffic as an alternative therapy.

"Pokémon? Sure, if the people on Twitter
say it works, who am I to question it?"

-Some Doctor

Star Trek Into Gayness!

You might be able to make out Cho as
Sulu amidst all the explosions and lens flare.

Hey, get this: Sulu from Star Trek is gay. Huh? Whatta ya mean 'duh'? You think I'm talking about gay icon and original Sulu actor George Takei, don't you? You didn't even click on the link even though I spent seconds, literally seconds putting it up there, did you? Because if you did, you'd know I was talking about John Cho's version of Sulu in the re-boot movies who's apparently gay. Huh, who knew? Well, nobody except maybe screenwriter Simon Pegg who just wrote it into the new movie.

What? Wesley got kidnapped, stabbed
 by pig soldiers and sentenced to death
by nudists and that was just season one.

In an interview with Australia's Herald Sun, Cho mentioned that Star Trek Beyond will matter-of-factly establish that Sulu has a husband and daughter.

"I liked the approach, which was not to make a big thing out of it, which is where I hope we are going as a species, to not politicize one's personal orientations."

Sulu's family will presumably be back home on Earth and not on the ship. I mean, because only a lunatic would endanger their own family by bringing them into space with them, right Dr. Crusher?

Turns out trekkies are into kink...

Anyway, after fifty years, thirteen movies and like 726 episodes, there's an actual gay Star Trek character. Doesn't sound right does it? But go on, access your encyclopedic knowledge of trekdom and try to come up with a single example of a gay character in all of Star Trek. Oh, and if you say Neelix, I'll slap you. Give up? Good, because alt-universe Sulu is it. Yeah, Riker once fell in love with an androgynous alien (who was played by a woman) and Dax from Deep Space 9 was a maybe bi but she ended up marrying Worf in some weird Klingon S&M wedding.

Wait, is there maybe some other
guy named George Takei?

So finally, right? Yes, but guess who's not onboard: George Takei. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Takei is delighted that there's a gay character, but called the move 'unfortunate' and feels that 'it's a twisting of [Roddenberry's) creation, to which he put in so much thought.' And last year he told Cho that he thought it would be better to '...create a character who has a history of being gay, rather than Sulu, who had been straight all this time, suddenly being revealed as being closeted.'

Which, ok, no one ever said Sulu wasn't gay and even if Takei had been playing the character as straight, the new Trek movies take place in some kind of weird alternate timeline where Vulcans are almost extinct and Khan's a white English guy, so I don't really see the problem. On the other hand George Takei is George Takei damnit and since he played Sulu first, there is probably no one more qualified to have an opinion on this than he is.

"Damn right..."

-Captain Hikaru Sulu*

Maybe all the gay crew members
are in hanging out in the ship's gym?

Look, far be it from me to disagree with George Takei and as a big huge nerd, I do totally take his point about how they could have created a new character rather than retconning an existing one. I mean, just off-handedly mentioning that Sulu has been gay this whole time and has a husband and family and everything isn't the same thing as developing a gay character with a storyline and relationships over the course of a full series. And it certainly doesn't make up for fifty years of 'how comes there're no gay people in the future?' But revealing that a long established character is gay does carry some real weight. Like, this isn't some one-off ensign Jones who ends up getting murdered by some sentient cloud monster or a horta or something. This is Mr. Sulu and that's a big damn deal.

But hey, there's a new series coming next year and while details are excruciatingly scant, show runner Bryan Fuller recently and very noncommittally didn't completely not unsay that there wouldn't not be a gay character, so who knows?

"Who doesn't not know? Certainly it is not I who don'tn't."

-Bryan Fuller, maybe playing

things a little too close to the vest

*On the other, other hand, Sulu didn't officially get a first name until Star Trek VI, so how important the character's personal details were to Gene Roddenberry and his original creation is anyone's guess...

From the City of Brotherly and Sisterly Love!

"What? I'm the perfect choice
to hand out advice about sax."

-Archbishop Chaput

In a move sure to bring in new converts to the religion that brought us the Inquisition and the concept of being born guilty, Philadelphia's Archbishop Charles Chaput has laid down some lay-law about who should and should not be getting to know each other in the biblical sense. Which is kinda weird since he's, you know, a seventy-year-old priest who's been celibate his entire adult life. Anyway, guess who, according to Archbishop Chaput, should not be getting it on? Go on, take a guess...Give up? It's gay people!

Try to act surprised. Yeah, despite electing Pope Francis The Hip, the Catholic Church is still not super keen on gay sex, gay marriage or gay in general. I suppose it's because of all that stuff Jesus said about gay people in the Bible.

"Let's see, the meek shall inherit the blah, blah, Love one another as I have yada yada.
Huh...that's funny, I can't seem to find the part where Jesus rags on the gays..."

-Anyone who's actually looked

Above: apparently not a good
enough reason to get a divorce.

(source: Church doctrine)

But for once we're going to talk about religion's beef with straight people having sex. Specifically divorced people and the new guidelines Archbishop Chaput put up on the Archdioceses website. I'm not totally clear on whether or not these are rules Chaput made up or if they're like, Catholic rules that nobody really pays attention to anymore. Whatever the case, the rules say that divorced people, even if they were divorced for totally good reasons like, infidelity or maybe their spouse dresses up like a clown and murders people, are never allowed to have sex again.

Never. Not unless they want to spend the rest of eternity writhing in everlasting torment and-Je-sus...that clown up there is seriously unnerving...go ahead and scroll down a little. Yeah, that's better. Anyway, here's what his guidelines say:

Well, he doesn't say what kind
of brother and sister...

"With divorced and civilly-remarried persons, Church teaching requires them to refrain from sexual intimacy. This applies even if they must (for the care of their children) continue to live under one roof. Undertaking to live as brother and sister is necessary for the divorced and civilly-remarried to receive reconciliation in the Sacrament of Penance..."

-Archbishop Chaput on the sexless 

wait for death that awaits divorcées

"Fine, we'll work it out, but years from now,
when we're both dead, if it turns out there's no
afterlife, I will fucking kill you all over again."

I...I mean, dude. Look, I don't want to tell this guy how to run his Archdiocese and in fact, I'm not super-clear on what an Archdiocese is, but holy shit. I get that Church doctrine isn't necessarily supposed to be convenient, but it's certainly open to interpretation because plenty of divorced Catholics go on to have really great sex. I mean, I assume. And telling people that their options are to suck it up and deal with a loveless, possibly murder clown-related, marriage because of one priest's insistence on a draconian interpretation of Church rules is just unreasonable.

Also, unwise from like, a collection plate perspective. I sorry to get all crass and cynical here, but as I mentioned before, you're not going to persuade a lot of people to join your Church if you're constantly telling them about how much they're going to hell and how much sex they'll never have again. 

"Do you, Angela take Don to be your lawfully wedded husband, for better or worse,
for richer or poorer, through sickness and in health, through rampant infidelity, and
murder-sprees while in clown makeup? And please, be absolutely sure about this..."

Jan Brady strikes again!

Hey, it's the Fourth of July, the day we Americans set aside to celebrate that day two-hundred and forty one years ago when the white, landed, male gentry of Britain's colonies decided that they should be the ones calling the shots instead of a different white, landed, male gentry that lived in England.

"Finally, the fortunes we made by owning slaves and forcing them to work for us will no
longer go to people who did noting to earn it. Huh? No, I can't hear myself talk, why do you ask?"

-Thomas Jefferson

"Oh. Canada. Lookit you, so Canadian..."

-Actual lyrics to O Canada*

What? I'm not being cynical, in the 18th century that was downright cutting edge which is why it's such a bummer that Canada is kicking our ass at progressiveness. Yes, I'm talking about Canada again and yes I know it's like America day, but whatever, check this out. Last week, Canada's House of Commons passed a bill to change the lyrics of their national anthem, O Canada, to make it more gender neutral. Despite being a song that starts with Oh...Canada, the most ambivalent opening ever, it's actually fairly man-centric.

The change is pretty subtle, going from 'O Canada, our home and native land! True patriot's love in all thy son's command...' to 'blah, blah, in all of us command.' No big deal right? Sort of like when Captain Picard said 'to boldly go where no one has gone before' instead of 'no man.' Obviously some conservative MP's are unhappy about it (the anthem, not Star Trek's opening narration. I don't know what they think of that), but then opposing change is sort of their thing. That's why we call them conservative.

"I made the change when I noticed that some of my crew are females."

-Captain Jean-Luc Picard

"No I do not know what KPH means...
Do know that I have testicles?"

So the bill still has to make it through their Senate (apparently they have one of those too), though it's expected to pass. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saw the gender-neutral national anthem and raised them gender neutral ID cards. He announced that the government would look into making 'X' an option on driver's licenses for those who are uncomfortable with 'M' or 'F' or for those who just don't see how relevant external or internal genitalia are when they're getting a speeding ticket...which probably should be everyone.

Oh, and get this, Prime Minister Dreamboat announced that the government would be exploring this while marching in the Toronto Gay Pride Parade, the first time a sitting PM has done so. See? Progressive.

How much would the American right flip out if the President
did something like this? Like, they'd loose their fucking minds. 

That blast of warm air? Freedom. Also
several forest fires that will likely be sparked
by people being careless with fireworks tonight.

Look, I'm not saying that Canada is better than us, I mean, it is something of a vast, frozen expanse whose entire population huddles along our border in order to bask in the warmth of our freedom or whatever. I'm just suggesting that maybe we need to catch up a little when it comes to living in the 21st century. We're still having ridiculous debates over who can use which bathroom and how many assault rifles we can buy before the FBI knocks on the door. Anyway, Happy Fourth of July.


*No they're not.

Happy Canada Day! Now, just take the ferret.

Hey, guess what today is? If you said Canada Day, you're correct. But you're also probably Canadian, because apparently we here in America barely acknowledge that Canada exists much less looms down on us like a crushing frozen nemesis poised to strike at any moment.

Don't laugh, it's happened before.

"Hey guys, wanna fool around?"

-Mexico, making it weird

According to Canadian journalist Jordan Michael Smith, our weird blindspot for the planet's second largest country by area isn't out of contempt or willful ignorance or anything like that. Instead, Smith thinks that we just take Canada and our relationship with them for granted. You know, like two people who are trapped in a comfortable yet loveless relationship but are both too afraid of dying alone to say anything about it. Sort of like a marriage except that we can't invite another country in to spice things up...or can we?

They're the geopolitical
equivalent of Jan Brady.

Smith suggests that between our long, undefended border, friendly trade partnership and NORAD, US-Canadian relationships are so tight that the average threat-obsessed American citizen can't be bothered to notice that there's a whole 'nother country up there. Canada therefore has been historically relegated to little more than America's dorky little sister, forever living in our shadow despite being objectively better than us at a number of things. Yes, you heard me.

Treason, right? Yes. But stay with me. Canada has one seventh our per capita rate of gun-related homicides despite its citizens being under the very real threat of the two things our second amendment was written to protect us against: bears and English monarchs.

Sure, she's all smiles now, but what are they going to do when she bursts
into their homes and starts taxing their tea and stamps? Nothing, that's what.

"Thank you for calling BlueShield, my
name is Terry and I'll be ruining your day."

Oh and health care. Canada has publicly funded health care which is objectively better than our for-profit, private health care system. Yeah, but how can you possibly know that never having experienced it yourself? you point out. You're right, I can't know that for sure. But since no Canadian has ever had to spend four and a half hours on the phone with BlueShield only to have them hang up, forcing them to wade through the phone tree again and start all over with a new customer service rep, I'm going to go ahead and say they win. Advantage: Canada. No contest.

Justin Trudeau, Canada's dreamiest
Prime Minister since Sir Robert Borden. 

And lastly, politics. I'm sure if I were fully Canadian and not just a quarter (which, yes I am, shut up), I'd be less enamored with how the maple sausage is made, but we're in month what? Fourteen of this election cycle? Meanwhile last August, Canada started their campaign season and by mid-October had a new Archduke or whatever. Eleven weeks from beginning to end and when it was over they'd elected a 44 year-old progressive who marched in the Toronto Pride Parade. We, on the other hand, are staring down the blood-chilling possibility of President Biff Tannen.

Maybe if they baked cakes
while brandishing assault rifles?

Look, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that America isn't awesome. We landed on the moon, won World War II completely unassisted (source: my public school education) and even invented reality shows about cake bosses. I mean, cake and interpersonal conflict, what could possibly be more American that that? But Canada is also pretty great and I think it's about time we stopped taking our unfailingly polite neighbors to the north for granted. Wait, whatta ya mean, 'how come?' Because it's the right thing to do, that's why.

The irony will literally kill us.

Oh, and also climate change. Yes, climate change. Sure, right now, most of Canada is covered in an unending winter full of wolves and ice zombies, but thanks to centuries of industrial pollutants (much of which is probably our fault...sorry!) that impenetrable wilderness is going to thaw and become prime real estate while our country slowly deteriorates into a waterless Mad Max-ian dystopia and the last thing we need is for them to build a wall to keep us oot (again, sorry!).

Anyway, if you see a Canadian be sure to wish them a...uh, Merry Canada Day? Happy Canada Day? Maybe say and a fine Canada Day to you sir (or madam). Oh and in case they quiz you on your Canada knowledge, here're some important fun facts: their states are called provinces, their President is a Prime Minister and they call Canadian Bacon 'ham,' and bacon, bacon. Don't let that last one trip you up, it might mean the difference between a Canadian green card and suffering thought the inevitable Water Wars.

Oh, and if a mountie offers you a ferret, just accept it and say thank you.
It's a traditional Canada Day gift and to refuse it is a grave insult.