Today in things I don't care about:

Let me begin by first saying that I actually don't care about Superman, like as a character. I don't have anything against him, but I wouldn't say, pick up a Superman comic or go see another Superman-related movie.

"No, I want more harpsichord! More! And a choir, singing dirges.
I want the audience to feel like they're sitting through a papal funeral."

-Batman V Superman director Zach Snyder

Is it a spoiler when the show's
logo gives away the ending?

I mention this because it's going to sound like I'm bagging on Superman-about whom I have no particular opinion-when what I mean to bag on is superhero TV shows. Specifically I want to call out the two, yes two upcoming TV shows based on Superman in which Superman will not appear. Yup. The latest prequel nobody in the world ever asked to see is Krypton, which is about Superman's grandfather, Seg-El, living on Krypton (the planet, not the noble gas) before he and it explode in an origin story's dramatic necessity. Spoiler? I guess?

Gotham joins The Walking Dead, 
Big Little Lies and Suits on the list of
of TV shows that don't feature Batman.

Anyway, this isn't the only prequel Superman series, there's also something called Metropolis being put together by the same creative team as Gotham. Remember Gotham? It's that Batman show that isn't about Batman because it takes place when Bruce Wayne is like ten. Anyway, as Gotham is to Batman, Metropolis is to Superman, that is to say Superman doesn't really figure into it. The show will be about alliteration victims Lois Lane and Lex Luthor teaming up to solve science-crime.No, really, that's the plan.

"We saw what Marvel was doing and thought:
what if we did that, only more confusing?"

-DC

Like, I guess if there were a show about Superman that was really good, I could see the justification for spin-offs centered on peripheral characters, but  there's not. Which is weird. I mean, he's like DC's mascot so why isn't there a TV Superman? Unlike Marvel's MCU, DC's 'Extended Universe' keeps TV and film separate, so it's not like it would interfere with the movie series. Also there's a TV Flash played by Grant Gustin who's a completely different Flash from movie Flash played by Ezra Miller, and TV Aquaman will be different from Jason Momoa's. There's even a TV Superman that appears on the Supergirl series but no Superman series.

Well, it is easier than
writing new things.

Look, his year alone will see Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Ant-Man and the Wasp and Deadpool, a Venom solo movie, Aquaman, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix. And that's just movies. On TV-well, streaming, there's Arrow, Flash, Black Lightning, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Preacher, Walking Dead, The Gifted, Runaways, Cloak and Dagger, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Daredevil and Legion. Did I miss any? Yes, I absolutely did. Also, that's not counting animated comic book adaptations of which there are many.

The point is, it's not like it's a risky time to pump out another comic book-based series. And I'm not asking for a Superman show, because again, I don't care about the character. I'm just baffled as to why they're scrapping the bottom of the Super-cannon with Superman's grandpa and Louis and Lex: Sci-Crime Squad while ignoring their most recognizable, over-powered yet under-interesting charac-wait, is it the tights? It's the tights, isn't it?

Yes it's the tights. No one, literally no one, can possibly be taken seriously in the outfit. 

Fact: The President hunts puppies for sport

In a move that surprised exactly no one anywhere in the world, living or dead, real or fictional, the President is bragging about his State of the Union viewership numbers being the highest ever. Which they're not. At all.

I mean, does he not think anyone's going to look this up?

The president tweeted today:

Wait, is he saying the SOTU was from
the heart, or that his plug for Fox News was?
Because it kind of sounds like it was the plug.

"Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history. @FoxNews beat every other Network for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart!"

-The President, upholding the
traditonion of the post-State
 of the Union tweet bluster

"Hey, maybe all those imaginary people
who illegally voted for me watched it..."

-the person we voted for

Ok, so 46.5 million people tuned in or streamed his masterful intoning of gibberish he read off a teleprompter. But, and I'll grant you I'm no mathematician, that's fewer viewers than Obama's first SOTU which had 48 million viewers. But I guess he's not counting Obama because he was a gay Muslim who was born in Kenya. Still though, George W. Bush's 2002 SOTU had 51.7 million viewers and again, check my math but that number is both higher than 46.5 million and precedes Trump's speech by a number of years-well within the scope of history.

Pictured: Some of the adorable
puppies the President routinely murders.

(source: don't worry about it)

So this claim is, what's the technical term? Bullshit? Yes, bullshit, or bollocks as British people are fond of saying. But what I don't get is, are we just supposed to be cool with that? With the President in his role as President just straight up lying about objective, verifiable data? Because if that's the case, then I'd just like to go ahead and say that the President routinely rounds up puppies from local D.C. animal shelters and then releases them on White House grounds so that he can hunt them for sport with friends and supporters.

Is it true? Of course not. Well, probably not. The point is that I'm a little over getting outraged about the President tweeting demonstrably false claims, instead I think we should all just start countering with equally ludicrous claims. I mean, when a guy who spouts as much bullshit as he does, he has exactly zero ground to stand on when it comes to denying his long history of puppy killing, right?

"As everybody knows, I love puppy hunting. Big fan. Probably the 
best puppy hunter in the world. Olympic-level. I could go professional."

-President Trump*

*actual quote. No, for real.

Today in challenging Nikki Haley's worldview...

Pictured: the woman most
of us voted for.

So just to be clear, I don't care about award shows. I think it's great that the film and music industries set aside a few nights each year to pat themselves on the back and hand out little trophies and all, but I just don't feel the need to watch. But I kind of wish I'd watched this year's Grammys because of this skit in which a bunch of celebrities auditioned to read the audio version of Fire and Fury. Cher was in it, Snoop Dogg and get this: Hillary Clinton.

Obviously the best part was when Donald Trump took to twitter to...to...huh, he hasn't gone on twitter yet? Wow...he must be pissed. Give'm a day.

Maybe his staff wrestled him to the ground and took his phone?

'I mean, why should artists be
allowed to challenge my worldview?'

-Haley, evidently 

unfamiliar with art

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley however wasted no time in embarrassing herself before the world tweeting indignantly:

"I have always loved the Grammys, but to have artists read the Fire and Fury book killed it. Don't ruin great music with trash. Some of us love music without the politics thrown in."

-Nikki Haley on how this

 ruined the Grammys for her.
Way to go, music industry...

Yeah, that seems about
right. Good call Elton.

Gauntlet thrown. I guess it's cool that Nikki Haley loves music all, but I feel like music probably doesn't love her. I mean, music is political. Rap, punk, rock maybe even country-I wouldn't know-are all full of politics. I think Nikki Haley's problem is that she doesn't like when music disagrees with her politics which is going to be always. Nobody's rocking out to songs about how awesome it is build a border wall or pull out of a climate agreement. Here, check out this article from the campaign. It's about all the artists who would like Trump to please stop using their music. Mike Mills from R.E.M. called him an 'orange clown,' Pavarotti's estate called Trump's worldview 'incompatible' with the late opera singer's and Elton John asked 'Why not ask Ted fucking Nugent?'

It's good to know that the worst of
the 1980's bro culture is alive
and well in Donald Trump Jr.

Of course, in characteristically dickish behavior, the President's son Donald Trump Jr. was more than willing to hop on twitter and start running his tweeter saying:

"Getting to read a #fakenews book except at the Grammys seems like a great consolation prize for losing the presidency."

-Donald Trump Jr.

son of President Trump

and noted dick

And even more preposterously this, I mean, this:

Not pictured: a sense of irony. Like, he means that.

"Say, I've got one."

-Hillary Clinton

You know it was hard to hear over the crowd's roaring approval while Clinton read from the book, but-and correct me if I'm wrong-no one, anywhere in the world saw that skit and realized 'how awesome it is to have @realDonaldTrump in office" Like no one. If anything, every time I see Clinton in the news I find myself hoping for the briefest of moments that these last fourteen months have been some kind of terrible nightmare in which shitty electoral math handed an objectively unqualified reality show goon the most import job in America, but then I remember that this waking horror show is in fact the reality into which we've been thrust. Oh, and again, I don't put much stock in industry awards but how many Grammy's does Donald Trump have? Is it zero? I'm pretty sure it's zero. Not that it matters.

Net responsibility quotient: 0.01%

 It seems vapid morning
 chatter knows no borders.

Ugh...I mean, ugghhh. Here, watch this gross excerpt from Piers Morgan's upcoming interview with Donald Trump on Good Morning Britain. After an awkward greeting in which the President attempts to simulate warmth, Morgan asks the President if he regrets re-tweeting those anti-Muslim videos back in-huh? Oh yeah, remember back in November when the President shared anti-Muslim propaganda from Britain-First, an ultra-right wing British hate group?

"Whaaaat? Maybe you guys
are the racists. Shut up! Racists."

-Sarah Sanders, spin-wizard

You don't? Yeah, there's so much of this kind of shit coming from the White House, it's hard to keep it all straight. Anyway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders in what I think must have been an Oscar-worthy performance tried to spin it:

"I think his goal is to promote strong borders and strong national security..."

-the actual White House 

Press Secretary, no, really,

without a hint of irony

Wait, is he suggesting that the President
has the capacity for hindsight?

It was a treat. So back to the Piers Morgan thing. In a remarkable turn of passive voice, he confronted Trump on the offense caused by the tweets:

"I do just want to get one thing out of the way: given the amount of offense it caused, do you regret now those retweets. and do wish, with hindsight, that you hadn't done it."

-Morgan, asking the President about

 those Tweets that just happened

In a bold move the President has
come out against terrorism.

The President's response was characteristically not related to the question. Like, in any way.

"Well, you know, look, It was done because I am a big believer in fighting radical Islamic terror. This was a depiction of radical Islamic terror."

-The President explaining 

that he re-tweeted racist 

videos because terrorism

A big, dumb golden retriever with a
bone. A bone of non-responsibility.
Look, it's not my best analogy.

Which, no it wasn't. Morgan interrupts to point out that the videos, which purport to show terrorists doing terroristy things, were quite likely faked, but goddamn like a dog with a big, unverified bone the President pressed on:

"...but I didn't do it, I went out and I didn't go out and-I did a retweet. It was a big story where you are, but it wasn't a big story where I am."

-Trump, on how responsible

he's not for his own actions

Ok, so his rational is he didn't make the super-racist, anti-muslim propaganda, he just retweeted it in his capacity as America's representative to the world? Super. But it doesn't matter because it wasn't a big deal in America, just in Britain. And I mean, how many people even live in Britain, like, twenty? 

Above: British people, or in their native language: Bri'ish pee-pohl. 

Ok, fine, he's not wrong...but still, what
does this have to do with racist tweets?

So Trump went on to say how much he loves Britain and especially Scotland, calling them "very special people" and Scotland "a very special place," so Morgan pressed him for an apology for the retweet and here's what he got:

"If you're telling me they're horrible, racist people, I would certainly apologize if you would like me to do that."

-The President, not fucking apologizing

Holy shit. I mean, holy shit, right? If, I would, if...That's just a masterpiece of responsibility-free, passive voice non-apologizing. Look, you'd think he'd at least do Britain the courtesy of offering a transparent lie. This fake apology thing is just insulting.

"...multiply by 'if' carry the conditional clause-my god, the net
responsibility quotient is zero! In all my years of parsing bullshit
apologies, I've never seen anything like this...it's...perfect."

-Noted bullshitologist,

Sherlock B. Noshittington

We have no one to blame but ourselves...

Hey, have you ever just wanted to immerse yourself in like a giant tub of rats like the ball-crawl at Chuck E. Cheese but with rats instead of balls? But you were afraid to because rats are sort of famous for being grimy four-legged disease vectors? And also people might think you're weird?

Just like this, but again, with thousands of rats.

Sure, the plague devastated Europe, but also
 inspired metal album covers. So it's not all bad.

Well, you can finally live your truth you rat-swimming freak, because it turns out that the popular conception of rats as a plague-carrying infestation to be eradicated might be unjustified. The rodents, and the fleas that live on them, have long been pointed to as responsibly for spreading the plague. Yes, the plague that wiped out tens of millions of people throughout Asia and Europe. But according to a new study led by Katherine R. Dean from the University of Norway, that might be a filthy lie. So who is to blame and how thoroughly should we enact our revenge?

"We may be filthy, ignorant slobs,
but we still have feelings..."

-Some Peasant

Get this: humans. Yes, according to Dean's new study, the infection patterns of the plague outbreaks between 1348 and 1813 more closely match that of human-spread pandemics. Well, flea-spread, we're still talking about a blood-borne disease so they at least aren't off the hook. But humans, particularly medieval Europeans, were filthy, ignorant slobs unaware of the concept of hygiene and who wallowed in their own filthy through much of the last two millennia, were lousy with lice and fleas, so it kind of makes sense.

"Steve, the rat, died April 4th, survived
by his wife, Ellen and 1,400 young."

You know, 'we have no one to blame but ourselves' should probably humanity's motto. Anyway, Dean's study, also goes a long way to explaining why records from plague-era Europe never seem to mention massive die-offs in the rat population. Of course at a time when paper was expensive and literacy was rarer than bathing, it's reasonable that rat-obituaries were not really high on the priority list of scribes but still, all the rats dropping dead at about the same time as a third of Europe would probably led someone-even medieval idiots- to connect the two.

Cool, right? Sure, if not super-applicable. Vindicating rats probably won't save us from the unkillable super-bugs we're breeding with the tiny bottles of hand sanitizers we walk around with like talismans against evil, but on the bright side it'll give the ape-scientists something to mull over as they piece together together the specifics of out self-destruction.

"Wai-wai-wait, lemme get this straight you had nuclear weapons, appalling wealth disparity,
and runaway climate change but it was Purel that finally got you? You fucking idiots..."

-Dr. Zira, rubbing it in

Un-Duckwothy!

Ha! Cadet Bonespurs. So did you see this? Senator Tammy Duckworth from Illinois called the President Cadet Bonespurs as part of her response to the President's bullshit tweets about how Democrats hate the military because they won't give a popular-vote-losing gameshow host funding for his stupid border wall.

Hey, the President made a promise to racist
idiots and by God, he means to keep it. 

"Mrrchumm..chumm..."

-The President

Sorry, I'm being reductive. Because they won't give in to him and his border wall and his racist immigration policies. Anyway, she was responding specifically to his tweeting that:

"Democrats are holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Can't let that happen!"

-Noted stable genius and America's

healthiest adonis, Donald Trump

"Yup, that's us: illegal immigration,
high taxes and we hate the troops.
You sure got our number Donald..."

-Democrats

So first of all, you don't need to capitalize 'military' there. Secondly, really? Democrats want unchecked illegal immigration? Just open the borders, hell, why even have customs? Yeah, that's what the Democrats have wanted all along. What a shitheel. Anyway Duckworth, herself a veteran who lost both legs in Iraq was calling the President out for his insistence on behaving like a obnoxious middle-schooler instead of working towards a compromise with Democrats and ending the shutdown and after referring to him as a five-time draft dodger she went on to say:

..."and I have a message for Cadet Bone Spurs: If you cared about our military, you'd stop baiting Kim Jong Un into a war that could put 85,000 American troops, and millions of inno1cent civilians in danger."

-Senator Duckworth on how the

President can go fuck himself

"I'm sorry Mr. President, what was that about how we're holding the
military hostage? I couldn't hear you over the sound of my heroism and sacrifice."

-Senator Duckworth

"C'mon, let's get oot of here!"

-a lot of us

The draft dodging and 'Bone Spurs' thing refers to Trump's four college deferments that got him out of most of the Vietnam war and then his final deferment for bone spurs. I'm sure bone spurs are very painful...or at least they cause inconvenient swelling which I'm sure is very distracting in the middle of a war. And granted, the Vietnam War was a fucked up time and admittedly a lot of us would have been on the first boat to Canada-that's how you get to Canada, right? But then a lot of us aren't throwing a tantrum over not getting what we want and shutting down the government. 

Also, Mitch McConnell from Trump's own party was the the one to object to Claire McCaskill's motion to ensure military pay and death benefits going into this whole thing, so really Republicans need to shut up about being the party that's always looking out for the troops. 

"Really Mitch? Really? You're objecting to paying the...ok..."

-Senator McCaskill, just over it

Today in things that aren't Smash Bros:

Although I kind of feel like
fans are desperate enough to drop
sixty dollars on the logo at this point.

In the interest of not constantly writing about how surprised I'm not about what a goat rodeo the world is right now, I'd like to talk about this. Didn't click? That's ok, it might not help. So the other day Nintendo announced that they were going to release an announcement trailer for a new thing. Huh? No, it's not Mother 3, but earlier today we finally got-What? No, still no Virtual Console on Switch. Anyway, like I-what? No, it's not Gameboy Classic, it's not Mario RPG 2 and Metroid Prime 4 is still just a logo.

Oh, and before we go any further, I should probably mention that this is going to get nerdy, so like if you want to bail, now is the time. Like I was saying, we live in a world where announcing your upcoming announcement is a thing business do. In fact, we should probably be grateful there wasn't a trailer for the announcement of the announcement trailer.

"Today I'm pleased to announce the announcement of
an announcement trailer for our new announcement.
Is it a new Smash Bros? Who knows? It's not though."

-Reggie Fils-Aime, just 

trolling us at this point

This is sure to increase
your child's social standing.

Anyway, the new thing is a bunch of cardboard kits you put together and then slide your Switch into. Yeah, now do you want to click on the link? So you buy these flat-packs and follow onscreen instructions to build cardboard control devices to play mini-games. There's a piano, a fishing rod, a motorcycle and robot suit. Yes, a goddamn robot suit. They're all super-intricate and I'm sure won't be eye-gougingly frustrating to assemble. Next you pop in the Joy Con (that's what we're supposed to call the controllers). They have infrared sensors that detect the cardboard moving around and translate that into onscreen action.

"It's incredibly complicated!"

-Nintendo's early, perhaps

ill-advised advertising slogan

Ok, it actually sounds kind of clever, but also batshit insane. Clever because kids have to use problem solving skills and imagination to put them together-or just get their parents to do it for them. Batshit insane because it kind of reminds me of that time they convinced Americans to buy NES's by including that robot thing. Remember that? Of course you don't, I'm old. Anyway, R.O.B. was this ridiculous robot toy that came with the early NES console and could play games with you. Or rather it could if you didn't loose any of the parts and liked games that weren't fun.

"What the shit is that supposed to be?"

-Parents, this April

So back to this thing. It's called Labo by the way. It's a name I'm sure sounded cute to someone in marketing. You know like, lab, right? Like an inventor's laboratory? It is after all, edutaining. Except it also sounds a little bit like labor. As in labor intensive, which I think might be a grim preview of what parents are in for if this thing takes off. Of course, that presupposes that kids are able to persuade them into shelling out eighty bucks or whatever for cardboard. Sure it comes with a game, but still...cardboard.

Anyway, as a video game fan I'm a little bummed that the big announcement was cardboard and not, you know, a new video game, but I do appreciate that Nintendo is being weird again.

Hey, neat, a cardboard piano...you know what else
would be nice? Smash Bros. Just putting that out there...