Today in coulrophobia...

Above: the thing people are getting
scared out of them by clowns.

Holyshitwhatthefuck!? Are you afraid of clowns? Yeah, I wasn't either but now I'm starting to think we should be, because apparently dressing up as clowns and scaring the utter bejesus out of everyone is the hip new thing to do in the south. Police in McDuffie County Georgia were called in after some kids waiting for the school bus were approached by clowns. Fucking clowns. In the morning. That tingly feeling you're getting right now? That's Coulrophobia-the fear of clowns. At least that's what everybody thinks.

This nightmare shaped like a sex-toy
is what comes up when I google
Greek clown. Thanks internet.

Let's go on a tangent, shall we? According to my exhaustive research of three entire websites, the word coulrophobia is like totally made up. Which, yes, all words are made up, but this was something some anonymous word-smith came up with back in the 80's. It's a mash-up of coulro-a Greek word meaning stilt-walker which I guess is sort of like a clown and phobia which means, you know, phobia. It probably should be Kloonophobia because klóon is 'clown' in Greek, but whatever. The Online Etymology Dictionary says "[t]he whole creation looks suspiciously like the sort of thing idle pseudo-intellectuals invent on the Internet and which every smarty-pants takes up thereafter."

It's profiling, but I'm
kind of ok with it...

And while they're not wrong, it's a bit sassy for an etymology dictionary, don't you think? But back to the scary clowns. They've been popping up for a while in Ohio, North and South Carolina, Wisconsin and California and it's freaking everyone the fuck out. It doesn't sound like the clowns have actually done anything illegal, I mean, being a clown isn't in and of itself a crime, but they are goddamn creepy. So creepy in fact that the McDuffie County police are thinking about pressing charges which I am fine with. Totally fine with.

Is that wrong? I'm a little ambivalent on this. Yeah, sure the obvious question here is what are they doing dressing up like clowns and scaring children in the first place, but that aside, is it a crime to be a clown? If they haven't broken any laws, what exactly will the McDuffie police be charging them with? And who's to say what's a creepy clown and what's just a regular clown? And why is-wait, you know what? Never mind. Look at the clown below and try and tell me you don't want to see every last one of them in prison. Clown prison.

Oh for fuck's sake, this, this, is very essence of creepy
and yes, it should absolutely be a crime to be this clown.

Like a heard of spongy parrots...

I don't know, is a 68 year-old coming down with pneumonia after campaigning for the last two or three decades really that big a deal? Because I'm kind of getting the impression that a lot of the news sites think it's a big deal. Here, check out NBC's headline:

Holy shit! Is it the zika? It's zika, isn't it?

"This election would be in the bag
if I were running...and non-ficiotnal."

-Jed Bartlett

'Why hide the pneumonia diagnosis?' 'Has Clinton been otherwise ill in recent days?' and probably the most paranoid 'Does Clinton accept the obligation to inform the public about her health?' Look, by this point Clinton's campaign should know that news outlets will seize on anything, goddamn anything they think might look like a conspiracy, particularly one that  kind of happened on the West Wing, but seriously. She's came down with pneumonia, it's been a long, arduous campaign and it's not over yet. This sort of thing happens.

Why did it take five people to write
that article? Are they Voltron?

The last of the 9 Unanswered Questions that we totally weren't asking in the first place is 'How will voters respond?' which the article helpfully answers for us. Thanks article!

"Clinton's core vulnerability is that most Americans don't find her honest or trustworthy. Will voters now feel like they've been misled about her health?"

-Alex Seitz-Wald, Monica Alba,
Andrea Mitchell, Kristen Welker
and Kasie Hunt, NBC News

So she's not an open book but honestly,
is she any more full of shit than this guy?

Ok, so I'm not saying that we, as a culture are mindless herd animals who simply sponge up whatever the media says and parrot it back but...uh...sorry, I'm getting a little lost in my own metaphor, but the point is that if  most Americans think she's dishonest it's at least in part because the media keeps framing everything she says and does as suspicious. The story isn't hey, she's got pneumonia, it's hey, she might have lied about pneumonia.

And yeah, I get that it's the news' job to investigate cover-ups and lies and that's super, but this feels a little more editorial-y than journalism-y. I don't know, maybe after that Matt Lauer thing, I'm guess just a little paranoid that public opinion might be swayed at the worst possible time by something incredibly stupid like this.

"I was going to vote for Hillary Clinton until I heard that she got pneumonia 
and didn't tell us. So I'm voting for Trump. He may be a misogynist, racist
 idiot game-show host but at least he never briefly covered-up a minor illness."

-Disappointed Voter

He knows The Purge was just a movie, right?

As we speak, grade school history book
publishers are cutting the War of 1812 to
cover that time Hillary Clinton didn't
get in trouble for the email thing. 

Alright, just so we're clear, nobody is allowed to shoot anybody. At all. Ever. So could we all just stop saying that? What the hell am I talking about? This. Oh, right, I forgot, you never click on the links. At a campaign rally yesterday, Donald Trump said:

"The only thing she's done well, and she'll go down in history for it, is getting out of trouble with the emails. That's the single greatest achievement of Hillary Clinton...."

-Noted legal scholar and gameshow host
Donald Trump on how life's not fa-ir...

Wait, hold on. Is he saying that not being prosecuted by the FBI is an achievement? Because I don't know about you, but I've never been prosecuted by the FBI either so what, do I get like a prize or something? 

Has this ever happened to you? No? Than congrats,
your remarkable achievement in the field of not being
the subject of a federal investigation will go down in history.

Right smack in the heart, it
doesn't count if you just wing'em.

Yeah. But whatever, the real bonkers bit is where he went on to suggest that Hillary Clinton can get away with murdering, literally murdering, Trump's supporters. Oh yes, check it out:

...because she is being so protected, she could walk into this arena right now and shoot somebody with twenty thousand people watching. Right smack in the middle of the heart, and she wouldn't be prosecuted, okay. That's what's happening, that is what's happened to our country."

-Donald Tru-wait,
I'm sorry, for real? 

"Let's see...murder is...huh, illegal. What
do you know? So much for that theory."

-Some Lawyers

So why the hell is murder like the go-to for him? What is it with conservatives and guns? Like that time he kind of asked 'second amendment people' to 'do something' about Hillary Clinton. And didn't he once suggest that he himself could shoot random passers by in New York and not even loose votes? I'm not like a lawyer or anything, but I'm pretty sure that if either Clinton or Trump went on a murderous rampage, it would not only be surprising, but also a prosecutable offense.

Ok, let me see if I'm tracking this: Clinton being ahead in the polls is evidence of a vast conspiracy by some shadowy cabal who is not only behind rigging the election against Trump but is also prepared to give Clinton carte blanc to commit murder. Wow, holy shit, is this not a red flag to anybody in the GOP?

"On the advice of the vast, anti-Trump liberal conspiracy designed to make America terrible, I'm
dismissing the murder charges against Secretary Clinton. She's free to go and murder some more."

It's never not going to be not too soon...

I...uh...wow. Like, the mattress ad right? Huh? The 9/11 mattress ad? Did you not? Here, click on this...or don't, it's pretty um...I don't even know. Here, to help take your mind off of it, enjoy this picture of a baby deer nuzzling a kitten:

Above: something that will in no way remind you of 9/11.
Shit, did I just remind you of 9/11 by saying that?

What exactly made them think 9/11 was
ripe for parody? Was cancer busy?

Did you click? Because if you didn't I can sum up: A mattress store in San Antonio called Miracle Mattress put out an ad for a September 11th mattress sale, because terrorist attacks, mattresses, the just go together. Anyway, the salesperson in the ad invites us to remember 9/11 by saving big on mattresses while standing in front of two twin towers of mattresses which her coworkers then crash into causing them to collapse. And then she tells us to never forget.

A similar disorder afflicts everyone
 involved in the Human Centipede movies.

(source: science)

So presumably there were at least four people in the room when they filmed this. The three people on camera and one to film. That's four people who at any moment should have stopped and went: "Sweet Jesus, whatthefuck are we doing?" And yet not one of them did. How is that possible? Were they drunk? Was this a statistically unlikely grouping of four people suffering from a rare congenital lack of the part of the brain responsible for good taste?

Anyway, the owner of the store, Mike Bonanno, posted an apology yesterday because holy shit, how could he not? I mean, his staff actually managed to disgust the entire internet. And anyone even passingly familiar with the internet knows that's not easy to do.

People reacting to the horrible shit on the internet is its
own genre of video. That's how hard it is to disgust us now.

I'm not a theologian or anything, but
I'm not sure selling mattresses at deep,
deep discounts qualifies as a miracle.

Cherise Bonanno who appears in the ad, issued her own somewhat less since apology. I say that because her mea culpa starts off with sounding like an ad for the store:

"We are not hate, we are love. We are somebody that stands out. We're Miracle Mattress, we make miracles happen...It was a stupid idea that we sent out. And we apologize for our stupidity and we really hope you can forgive us for what we've done."

-Cherise Bonanno, Miracle Mattress's manager

offering her since adverpologies for the commercial

The ads caused an immediate-huh? Yeah, Mike Bonanno, Cherise Bonanno, I'm thinking they're related to. So that must be uncomfortable. Anyway, despite Cherise's plea for forgiveness, there's really no way anyone is going to forget that time she made a funny, funny mattress commercial about that time like 3,000 were horribly murdered on live television, so Mike announced today that Miracle Mattress will be closing immediately which yeah, feels about right. 

Bonanno went on to say that the store would be razed and then the
earth where it stood would be salted so that nothing will grow there again.

Today in loose definitions of courage...

Galaxy huh? How's it feel to
know you'll die alone?

Oh yes, it's that time of year again. That special day when the entire news media decides to pretend that an Apple product update is the same thing as actual news and they band together to make sure the public is informed about all the wonderful new products we'll need to purchase if we'd like to continue being cool and having friends and sex. Today's most notable announcement is a new iPhone which for, uh, reasons will abandon the headphone jack. You know, because who uses those? Jerks I bet.

"Obviously I don't know what I
really sound like. I'm in marketing". 

-Phil Schiller

So if you decide to get the new iPhone which starts at, I shit you not, $650 of money, you can go ahead and throw out whatever headphones you have now, or get an adaptor, or the new wireless earbuds or-you know, this all sounds like a pain in the ass. If only someone could spin it as an act of courage:

"The reason to move on is courage. The courage to move on, do something that will benefit all of us."

-Phil Schiller, Apple's senior

VP of Marketing and Spin Wizardry

Wow. I mean, holy shit, that's downright inspirational. Could you imagine what this guy could have done had he turned his power of persuasion towards funding cancer research or the space program instead of shilling for a tech company?

Eat your heart out Kennedy. 

Above: Apple.

Because for real, do you know what's absolutely not a definition of courage? Like, not even close? Removing the universally accepted and supremely convenient headphone jack we've all come to know and love and then asking customers to cough up an additional $159 for wireless earbuds which may, or may not, kill us with rays (probably not). Like, I'm not suggesting that anyone's being forced to buy this thing, but sooner or later a lot of us are going to cave. Apple is really good at making us want their shit. They're basically our dealer, but could they leave us just a little bit of our dignity?

Look, I'm not like a marketing...person...uh, marketeer? But I'd rather be lied to than bullshitted at. Just tell us it saves space or makes it cheaper or something. We'd all know it's not true, but at least we'd get to maintain the fiction that we're not just buying it because we're suckers for slick packaging or, even worse, peer pressure.

Maybe they're confusing courage with hutzpah? Or unmitigated gall?

Grim resignation for a sound financial future!

Oh yes, it's this shit again, here, check it out:

'Wells Fargo: crushing your dreams since 1852...'

I majored in theatre and I didn't need
some bank telling me I was wasting
my time. I let the job market do that.

Yes, it's an ad for Wells Fargo Teen Financial Education Day, which I guess is some kind of campaign to explain to teens how to better plan for their financial future by getting a real job and not wasting time on the arts. The ad has obviously upset artists who are pissed at the implication that a career in the arts is a dead-end while science and engineering are the only paths worth choosing and that's bullshit. Like, I'm not saying that anybody is really going to be taking career advice from a pamphlet they read waiting in line at the bank, but seriously, it's kind of a dick thing to say.

"Goddamn right we should."

-Some banker

Especially when you consider that artists have caused exactly zero global financial catastrophes whereas the banking industry is responsible for and I'm rounding here, all of them. Look, I'm realize I'm talking about things that I don't fully understand, but the National Endowment for the Arts gets $146 million from Congress every year to support the arts in America. Million with an M. As part of the bank bailout in 2008, Wells Fargo got $25 billion. With a B. Should they really be trashing the arts as a risky investment?

If this sounds familiar, you might recall that time AT&T tweeted an ad about how their customers could pass the interminable hours spent at the theatre by simply whipping out their phones and catching up on the sports games. Classy.

"What are you, queer? Sports! Spooooorts!"

-One of AT&T's

less successful slogan

So obviously a heartfelt Twitter-based apology is in order. Here's what they came up with:

"Face it kid, you're never going to be a
violinist. Try for software engineer or CPA."

-Wells Fargo

"Wells Fargo is deeply committed to the arts, and we offer our sincere apology for the initial ads promoting out Sept. 17 Teen Financial Education Day. They were intended to celebrate all the aspirations of young people and fell short..."

Ok, how were they were celebrating the aspirations of the young by suggesting that they abandon their dreams in favor of careers with a higher likelihood of financial security? That's not aspiration, that's more like resignation.

Also, since Wells Fargo is a bank and not like, a career counselor, shouldn't they lay off the life advice and concentrate more on bank things, like helping people invest their money and not plunging us all into another recession?

I sense another Twitter apology coming.

Today in hooligan justice...

I'm dust-covered, hungry and exhausted and back from Burning Man. Yes, I'm one of those grown-ass adults who strings Christmas on his bicycle and rides around a week-long celebration of LED's, flammability and house music. I'd say don't judge, but you've probably already done so and that's ok, I kind of judge myself too.

No really, I have a job and everything.

Owning a phone with a camera doesn't
make you a photographer any more than
wearing a cape makes you Batman.

Usually this is the yearly post where I bore you with photos of my week and you feign interest for a minute before clicking on some other, more interesting blog but not this time. Mostly because I took like zero photos this year. I'd like to say was a philosophical choice. Like, a statement about how we all need to put down the iPhones and enjoy life instead of trying to document ever waking goddamn moment of it. But instead I just didn't feel like taking any. I'm not really a photographer and besides there was nothing there that actual professionals didn't take way better pictures of anyway. Post cards available in the gift shop.

Above: a literal cricket, not to be confused
with the figurative cricket which this is not.

So if I'm not going to subject you to my vacation slides, why the hell am I talking about Burning Man in the first place? Because I read about this when I got home. And look, we're both tired (aren't you?) so I'll just cut to the part where I tell you about the article instead of pretending to get upset about you not clicking on the link. White Ocean, one of the theme camps, got vandalized, which, if you've ever been to Burning Man is actually kind of shocking. Not the hatred of glamping, but the vandalism. Drugs, arson and reckless disregard for personal safety yes, but vandalism? It just not cricket.

What? They work very hard at whatever
the hell it is they do. Like, four, even five
hour-days. Sometimes three days a week.

Explanations may be in order here. Some people who go to this thing organize themselves into theme camps. These camps usually have a schtick, or a thing they offer. Some serve food or drinks, some do art or hold contests. Do you like miso soup? Great, go find Miso Horny. Into having someone photograph your junk and then put them onto a lanyard you can wear around your neck? Genital Portrait Studio has you covered. And some camps, like White Ocean are exclusive super-luxurious virtual hotels for ultra-rich entrepreneurs and tech-people. Yeah, those jerks.

Police are searching every malt-shop
and drive-in in the tri-county area.

It's called glamping as in glamerous camping, and it's kind of gross. Here, we've talked about this before and yes, I totally re-used the cricket joke, leave me alone. Anyway, at an event that still kind of likes to see itself as an experiment in inclusiveness and free expression, rolling up in million-dollar RV's and building yourself a little gated community is bound to piss people off. And piss-off it did. The hooligans who-huh? No, really, the White Ocean Facebook page actually referred to the vandals as hooligans. Why? No idea. I mean, hooligans? For real?

Anyway, the hooligans cut power cords, stole shit and even flooded the place with 200 gallons of water, which, ok, nobody deserves to have their shit wrecked up. Sure, it's natural to be a little jealous of glampers and their hot water, air-conditioning, catering and, I shit-you-not, sherpas, but keep in mind this whole thing is just a party.

Again, just to compare, on the left is White Ocean and on the right: my camp.
Do I want their life? Of course I do, but we had booze and a solar shower, so we did alright.

Above: Another victim of social inequality.
This underprivileged burner can't even afford
the LSD she needs to enjoy a week-long festival.

I mean, the people who trashed White Ocean's camp were also at Burning Man which means they probably had an extra $400 in ticket money sitting around not to mention a job that's totally cool with them taking a week off so it's not like they themselves aren't just a little privileged too. Sure, of course everyone there is coming from their own unique circumstances and financial situation and I'm not sticking up for the people who've made San Francisco an unlivable gentry-hole, but nobody's exactly starving in the streets at Burning Man so fucking up the one percenter's camp isn't so much social justice as it is just just being a dick.

Look we can all agree that the super-rich are a parasitic blight on this world and soon there shall be a reckoning that will make Bastille Day look like a Church picnic, but until then, can't we all relax, put on our ridiculous steam-punk hats and furry vests and dance to terrible electronic music as equals?

So I guess we have that to look forward to...