This one time, when Ronny was super drunk...

So this, but with shit. Three rings
of ceaseless, cringe-worthy shit.

Look, I don't want to be one of those annoying people who rather than articulating the problem they're having with something, just raises one eyebrow and repeats the word 'really' again and again with an increasingly incredulous tone, but really? Really? Really? What am I really-ing against? The President's comment that-huh? Yeah, him again. I'm sorry, believe me, I'm as sick of hearing about him as you are but until this is over, what can we do? Not talk about the perpetual shitcirus that is American politics?

Anyway, the President tweeted the following:

Because really?

And then continued which is weird because I thought the whole reason twitter has a character limit is to keep people from rambling on.

No reason? Isn't being even tangentially associated with
the President kind of reputation-poisoning to begin with?

And Ronny stories usually end with the
hotel charging massive cleaning fees.

This after Tester authorized a document accusing former Trump nominee for Secretary of the VA Ronny Jackson of a number of, what's the phrase? Behavioral lapses? No, that's not fair, let's go with acts of drunken douchebaggary. Apparently stories about Ronny always start with him being drunk. Like, super drunk. One of these incidents involved the Secret Service being asked to intervene when Jackson was drunkenly banging on the door of a female college's room while on an overseas trip. The Secret Service says they have no evidence that this happened.

That's not exactly the same thing as a denying that it ever happened only that the Secret Service wasn't involved. It just means that they weren't called in to stop a drunken adult doctor who's also an admiral in the Navy from pounding on a coworker's door in the middle of the night. But ok, fine, this particular allegation doesn't come with any paper trail or physical evidence. Great, but it's not like it's the only one.

"Hey, c'mon, is it really fair to hold me accountable
for things I say and do while shitfaced?

-Jackson, defending himself

I swear, it's not about ragging on the
man's weight, it's about Jackson's
assumption that's we're all idiots.

The document cites what Tester called 'a pattern of behavior' that makes Jackson unfit to serve as the head of the VA. Excessive drinking, handing out Ambien like goddamn Altoids, harassing female staff, and did I mention that this is a grown-ass man who still calls himself Ronny? Or that this is a doctor who has repeatedly insisted that the spray-tan saturated carcass of an overweight septuagenarian who subsists entirely on KFC and bed burgers is somehow the fittest President we've ever had despite all evidence to the contrary?

"How dare you impugn this fine
man by pointing out all the terrible
things he's done? For shame, sir."

Anyway, Jackson withdrew his name after the allegations came out which is not something most people would do when they're being slandered, but ok, I don't care about that. What I do care about is that Donald Trump is suggesting that Senator Tester has sullied an otherwise sterling reputation and that because of this he should resign, which brings me back to the really? Really? The allegations made by Tester against Jackson are false so Tester should resign? Donald 'Most Attended Inauguration Ever' Trump is saying someone else should resign for making wild claims? I...can he not hear himself?

I mean holy shit didn't he spend over a decade telling us that Barack Obama was a Kenyan-born Muslim manchurian candidate? And everyday since election day insisting that he'd have won the popular vote if it weren't for millions of illegal and apparently invisible voters? Allegations which are not only preposterous and demonstrably false but for which he's not presented the slightest hint of a whiff of evidence. Ever. But sure, Tester should resign. Cool.

"Ooh...yes, everyone act shocked, a raging narcissist who’s
gone his entire life without once facing consequences for his
actions is incapable of self-evaluation. Let's all look surprised..."

-The President, kind of

making a valid point

Just to be clear, this OSF is NSFW AF...

Are you at work? Because if you're at work, maybe skip this one. Usually I give you the option to bail out when I'm about to get nerdy about video games or go off on some obscure point about Star Trek or something, but this time I'm giving you a heads up because we're about to talk about a personal hygiene product. Very personal.

Like, more personal than anything you're imagining right now.

"Oh...oh my, that's...uh..."

- Captain Picard, not 

heading my advice

So like I said, you may want to skip this one. Well? Still there? Of course you are. Ok, obviously you have to stick around at least until I explain what it's for. And look, I know there are some topics I tend not to blog about, not out of any kind of sense of decorum or squeamishness, it's just that this blog is about nerd stuff and politics. I have a tonal hesitation here and Studio Ready's Hot Coffee Scrub just doesn't really fit into either category, but when a friend sent me this link-and holy shit do not click on this if you are at work-I felt I had to share it with you. You can thank me later.

Ok, let me stop dancing abound this: the Hot Coffee Scrub I mentioned? It's for your asshole. It's a cleansing product you apply to your anus before your special someone (or scene partner, we'll get to that in a sec) gives you a rim job.

What? No, that's not what that-are you by
any chance no longer welcome at Pepboys?

"The way I see it, you're just
cutting out a few steps."

-Some coffee grower

Now you're probably wondering why it's called Hot Coffee Scrub and not something a little more, I don't know, descriptive or clever, like Bringing Up the Rear or Ring Polish? First of all, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize for those two suggestions. Secondly, Hot Coffee scrub is in fact the revised name. It used to be called Sweet Cheeks. No, seriously. Anyway the name they went with, Hot Coffee Scrub, is plenty descriptive since it contains actual coffee. Like, and I'm quoting the site here  'specially grown mountain coffee.'

Here, I'll let the Studio Ready marketing team elaborate:

 "The scent is a rich chocolate mocha fragrance with a soft vanilla and coffee accord complemented by sunflower seed complex and an earthy velvety note."

-The Studio Ready copy person, apparently 

under the impression that this is something 

customers are looking for in an anal wash

So this, but in the form of a
cleansing scrub. For your butt.

Ireland is a land of rolling green hills,
picturesque castles and firm, clear buttocks.

Oh, and I mentioned scene partners earlier. The company describes their brand as offering "professional-grade products designed by adult industry insiders for more enjoyable sex." So yeah, the name Studio Ready is also fairly apt, the implication being that you'll be ready to shoot a scene in a porn movie. In fact, you can order their Porn Star Travel Kit, which includes the scrub, a moisturizer (yes, of course for your junk) and the Irish Mud Mask which they promise will "clarify, clean and firm your butt cheeks."

Above: some guy doing it wrong...

The slogan for this is, and I shit you not, "Give yourself a butt facial." Again, I'm not making this up. I couldn't make this up. Assuming this isn't some elaborate hoax-and I don't believe that it is-this coffee asshole scrub and Irish butt mud are products, actual products that you can buy on the internet right now. I mean, I might make fun of you, and possibly be a little curious about how well they work, but you can buy them. Incidentally, let me know how they work out.

I don't know, I suppose have to respect Studio Ready as business people. I mean, they saw a void and they filled it. A void in the market I mean, get your mind out of the gutter. No one else was offering a coffee-scented anus scrub designed by porn stars and so they moved in.

If you're anything like me, you're wondering
why you didn't think of this first. 

It's like a theater, but for moving pictures!

Netflix, that streaming service from which we suckle hours upon hours of narrative content at the expense of conversation and sexual activity, is about to revolutionize the way we pay them money for things and probably win an Oscar.

"Just doing our part to curb excess population."

-Netflix

Wait, so you just sit next to people you
don't even know? Gross. What if they
like, breathe on you or something?

According to the L.A. Times, the online streaming service has been exploring the idea of buying large rooms with hundreds of forward-facing seats. The seats would face blank surfaces onto which moving pictures not dissimilar from those available on Netflix would be projected. Rather than logging in and selecting a film, users would physically visit these viewing centers at previously scheduled times, pay an attendant a fee for admission and then watch a predetermined movie with other customers, many of whom may be strangers.

Apparently the company even approached Landmark Theaters, the owners of a chain of largely useless rooms with seating and protection systems that would be perfect for Netflix's new venture, but the deal didn't work out. Landmark wanted money and Netflix, despite having an absurd amount of it, would rather keep it.

Hey, and I'm just spitballing here, maybe they could put their films on some
kind of storage medium and then let customers rent them for a predetermined
amount of time. Maybe they could even sell snacks and soda? Oh, and I even
know where they can pick up a few thousand dilapidated retail locations.

If it weren't for the Academy, she'd
be a real estate agent right now.

Innovative, right? I mean it takes real vision to look at a thing that exists, identify it as successful and then copy it, just ask Simon Kinburg. But why open movie theaters? After all, Netflix has made a shit-ton of money driving theaters out of business by offering the same thing they do but without all that inconvenient getting up and leaving the house. Why then would they want to turn around and become part of the industry they've spent so long driving into the ground? Easy: the validation that comes from tiny award statues.

Arbitrary rules like this robbed Netflix
of a best picture award. Well, that and
their movies not being very good.

Recently the company been creating it's own TV shows and movies, which they call content as a way of reminding the artists that work for them that they are creating but grist for the machine. This content, since it's available online and not in traditional movie theaters is ineligible for awards like Cannes and the Oscars. For all the awards committees know, this whole internet streaming thing could be another go-nowhere fad like talkies or color. Why should streaming-first films be considered on the same level as award-eligible flims like Dunkirk or The Shape of Water or The Boss Baby?

To be clear, I will take the beer,
but still, desperate, you know?

But seriously, I'm not business-y but is this the time to hop onboard the movie theatre thing? Aren't they kind of on their way out? Look, I have absolutely nothing to back that up, but it's just the impression I get from great lengths theater chains are going to to get you to come in rather than just stream things at home. Imax, 3-D, and those D-Box seats that move and vibrate in some vane attempt to immerse audiences in what is, by definition, a passive art form. Not to mention the plush recliners in which you sit while ushers bring you food and alcohol during the film. It's all feels kind of desperate.

"Yeah, but we're not a movie studio, we're
a digital content creator so it's cool"

-Netflix picking their hill

Desperate and vertical integration-y. Which I suspect isn't a word, but I'm not an economist. I did however take social studies in public school and have access to wikipedia, so I have a half-remembered understanding that movie studios used to own movie theaters until the Supreme Court came in and broke up the Hollywood studio system for being anticompetitive. I know this is the 21st century and now we rely on giant companies to self-regulate in the best interest of the public (he said with a straight face), but there is still a law against this, right? Like this exact thing?

And look, it does kind of suck that the people who make movies for Netflix and other streaming services are overlooked by awards and film festivals because of the way their movies are distributed. The industry just hasn't caught up with the technology. But wouldn't it be cheaper and easier and a whole lot less monopolistic to just lobby the Academy or whomever to change damn the rules?

Lobby, bribe, why split hairs?

Armageddon? Ugh...notageddon...

Hey, guess what today is? If you said Shakespeare's birthday you'd be correct. If you said it was also the day secret codes hidden within the Bible predict that a here-to-fore unobserved rogue planet populated by alien space angels will collide with the Earth and herald Judgement Day, you'd be a nutter. Specifically this nutter:

Pictured: David Meade, noted nutter.

Above: That time last September
when the Earth was annihilated.

(source: I don't know, gin?)

David Meade-which incidentally isn't his real name so don't bother looking into his credentials which are totally legitimate you guys-is a self-published author and self-described investigative journalist. He made a name for himself, but again, not his real name, back in 2017 by predicting that a planet called Nibiru (really?) would collide with and destroy the planet Earth on September 23rd of that year. When the 23rd came and went and Nibiru didn't, he revised his 'math' and said that October 2017 was the end of days.

Well, not the end exactly, he's super clear on this point, but rather the beginning of a seven year tribulation followed by a thousand years of peace. That's nice, right? No. It turns out that the tribulation is kicked off by a nuclear war and followed by the Rapture where certain chosen people are beamed into heaven to ride out the apocalypse in comfort. Among those select few? President Trump and Vice President Pence. No really, it's in Meade's prediction.

Rapture buddies 4-eva!

"Uh, because uh-doy, I prayed it away."

-noted quitter Paul Ryan 

I don't know about you, but I don't remember any tribulating last November and Trump and Pence are, as yet, un-raptured. Of course the last couple of years have been kind of a crazy shitshow, so I went back in my blog to check. There was that Roy Moore thing where the GOP got behind a literal child molester running for Senate and Will Wheaton and Paul Ryan got into it over the power of prayer, but no tribulation and certainly no rogue planet smashing into the Earth.

Math is numbers, numerology is
numbers, so same-same, right?

But what do I know? Random numbers pulled from the English translation of ancient religious texts which are then arbitrarily arranged and assigned meanings based on a numerologist's pseudo scientific bullshit don't lie, do they? Evidently they do given the number of books going back years that Meade has self-published on the subject of how the world is about to end, but you have to admire his, what's the word? Like, tenacity but with overtones of delusion and an unwillingness to accept reality? Rabid nut-jobery?

God will never find us in here!

Anyway, if Meade is wrong, and he is, Happy Birthday William Shakespeare! And if Meade isn't wrong, and of course he is, but if he isn't, I sincerely apologize for my flippant tone and hope that he will look past it and grant me a spot in his rapture shelter-which I assume he's constructed in his basement. There, while we await the dawn of the Millennium of Peace, we could act out his screenplay-huh? Oh yes, in addition to being a self-published author, Meade has a screenplay.

It's called Planet Omege-Planet X and you can read the opening scene on his website. It's got everything: explosions, crackpot theories, conspiracies by the government to control the mass media and this is just the first scene. Like, five minutes into the film. Oh, and it's even in proper screenplay format, so its got that going for it. It's a shame the world is on the verge of utter destruction, because I smell franchise. I wonder if Kirk Cameron is busy...

What am I talking about? For something like this, he'd make the time.

Like a stake through the heart!

I know I just got through arguing that fans of things need to ratchet it down when it comes to creative decisions we don't like. Like, we, as nerds, would all just live longer if we didn't take every deviation from our expectations as an unforgivable and personal affront. But allow me to completely contradict myself. Because this. Yeah, I hope you kept that nerd belt buckled because I'm about to go off on my other nerddom: video games.

Pictured: Sports fans loosing their shit over their fandom. And
before you argue that it's not the same thing, remember that with
video gaming we at least have a hand in the outcome.

To be pedantic about it, Frankenstein was
 the scientist, while Frankenstien's public
domain monster is a level 8 boss fight.

Specifically Castlevania. Because you almost certainly didn't click on the link, I'll sum up. After years of exactly nothing from the good people at Konami, out of nowhere they just announced that a new Castlevania game is coming. Holy shit, right? Castlevania, for those who don't give a shit about this most glorious of sedentary hobbies, is a series of side-scrolling action games from the late 80's and early 90's in which you play a guy with a whip who sets out to murder Dracula and his horde of similar to, but legally distant from, Universal Studios monsters. It might not sound sophisticated, but keep in mind the technological limitations of the time and the fact that the internet wasn't an option.

The first few entries were pretty straight forward action games with the exception of Castlevania II which was more of grey plastic slab of frustration designed to get you to call the Nintendo Powerline. For just $1.50 per minute, some teen with a way better summer job that you ever had would walk you through the inscrutable translation errors that made the game functionally impossible to complete.

"Stuck on a totally bogus level and can't solve your game tape?
Call the tubular dudes at the Nintendo Powerline. It's radical!"

-Some kid, and yes, everyone

talked like that back then

"Blah! I've come to prey
on your gambling addition!"

Anyway the series evolved over the years to incorporate RPG elements hitting a high point with Symphony of the Night before looping back into action with a bunch of not-so-great 3-D sequels that were little more than thinly veiled God of War knock-offs and-well, you don't care about this. All you need to know is that Konami has sort of given up on the series and video games in general. The last few years they've mostly just been making pachinko machines, some of them Castlevania-themed. So the announcement of a new, actual Castlevania game gave us fans a brief glimmer of hope that after letting the series go dormant for years, and only milking it for Japanese casinos, that Konami would be making a triumphant return to a fan favorite. But then we went on to read the part about how it's going to be a shitty iPhone game instead.

The app store has 11,000 mobile
games. Average price: $.49. What
are the odds there are any good ones?

I know I'm judging a game that was announced yesterday and all I have to go on at the moment is a couple screen shots but I don't think I'm over-reacting when I say that it's going to be terrible and Konami has kicked 10 year old me in the face. Ok, that might be a touch overly dramatic, but this really is kind of disappointing. From the screen shots we can see that it is a side-scroller and that's good, but it's also somehow multi player which is weird for a Castlevania game. But my biggest concern is that it's a mobile game and IOS games are and I don't think this is unfair, universally garbage.

iPhones are small, glass and easily
 thrown, so is this really a good fit?

Maybe I'm a game snob, or maybe I'm like old people who complain that movies where better when they were in black and white and didn't have any swears, but touch screen gaming is imprecise and floaty. The interface, or feel of a game is a super important part of the experience. This is particularly true with action games where poor controls can often mean the difference between challenging and fuckthisfuckinggame.

Sure, Konami might have scaled the challenge to something more compatible with the vague finger swipes that constitute touch controls, but then what makes it Castlevania-y? At some point they might as well make just another pachinko machine.

It kind of looks like Castlevania, but wait until
you're looking at it through a film of finger smudge
and frustration-related spider-web cracks.

To Boldly Obsess...

Canon, reboot, Abrams-verse...
for real, you're in for some nerd chop.

Are you as outraged by Star Trek: Discovery's flagrant violation of established Prime Universe canon as I am? No? Good, because that was a trick. I was trying to weed out the ultra fans who have been having a months long nutty over the new show and its deviations from-hang on, before I get into this, two things: First, spoiler alert for Discovery if you haven't seen it. Go watch it, it's rad. Second, this is the part where I switch on the 'buckle your nerd belt sign,' because we're in for some nerdulence.

"Klingons are bald space orcs
and always fucking have been."

-Discovery's creative team

Still with me? Super. So for those unfamiliar with Star Trek-I don't know, maybe you watch sports and go on dates. Anyway, if you've not been following, it's back with a new show which, while totally good, has been somewhat controversial among hard core trekkies for playing fast and loose with Star Trek lore while at the same time the producers are insisting that it's set in the original canon and a prequel to the original series. But the alien make-up was updated, the sets look more high-tech than what was on the 1960's show and characters can swear because streaming.

Holy shit, fans, amiright? Pfft...yeah, I'll shut up now. But for whatever reason the new old Enterprise has been a particular point of consternation. It showed up in the last minute of the last episode of Discovery's first season looking appropriately like something from the future as seen from today and not the future as seen from the age of rotary phones.

The updated Starship Enterprise, not looking like
something I glued together when I was ten.

I suppose it comes down to who you
fear more: lawyers or Star Trek fans. Yeah,
I'm not sure who I'm zinging here either.

I think the new ship looks awesome. I know it's blasphemy, but Star Trek was made at a time when TV's were comparatively shitty and color was a novelty. A six-foot model with Christmas lights just isn't going to cut it. So as a creative choice I think it was a smart move. But according to John Eaves who did some of the concept art, the classic ship's redesign was also a don't get sued decision. Because Star Trek's TV and movie rights are divided up between CBS and Paramount, Eaves said that the legal department insisted that the ship look 25% different.

If he turned in a concept sketch of a
Kia Sorento, would that be 100% different?

Which wah? Does intelectual property even work like that? Twenty-five percent different? Well, it turns out it Eaves is a better concept artist than a company spokesperson. CBS released a statement-yes, a statement. Because this is totally serious you guys. A statement clarifying that the update was a creative decision and not a legal one. But whatever the rational, Eaves also tried to allay fan-fears about whether the new look means that Star Trek has been rebooted again.

And a great sigh of relief went
up from the crowd gathered at the
Pasadena Hilton Conference Room B.

He explained that since Discovery is set ten years before the original series, there's plenty of time for an in-universe explanation as to why the Enterprise looks different a decade later:

"We had the advantage of a 10-year gap in Trek history to retro the ship a bit with elements that could be removed and replaced somewhere in the timeframe of Discovery and the Original series..."

-John Eaves, muddying the waters

Rest easy fellow nerds, rest easy. Look, I get being super into the lore of these things, and yes retcons and inconsistencies poke holes in the believability of a fictional world, but ultimately this is a TV show about aliens and space and shit. And sometimes having an aneurism over the details just isn't worth it. Besides, wouldn't it would stretch what passes for credulity to suggest that Starfleet would recall the Enterprise to undergo some kind of de-fit to make it look like this:

Which is to say, a crappy model. There, I said it.

Ménage état!

Hey, remember Tim Draper? He's that venture capitalist from a few years ago who wanted to split California up into six new states. He spent like five million dollars, but ultimately came up short of the signatures needed to put it on the 2016 ballot and that's why I don't currently live in the great State of Silicon Valley.

Five million? How can a guy who makes his living by having so
much money that he can turn it into more money be so bad with money?

Ted Nugget's going to need
an entirely new wardrobe.

Anyway, now he's back and has a totally better idea: what if California was three new states? He's already got enough signatures to get it on this year's ballot and will be submitting it next week. So who knows? Actually, everyone knows and no, this shit will never fly. But why is he so keen on doing it in the first place? He's a venture capitalist, so a reasonable guess was that he's got stock in flag manufacturers and his plan would get him a piece of that sweet, sweet flag pie when we all have to upgrade to fifty-two stars.

Incidentally, 'To big to govern' would
make a kick-ass state motto...

But he's rich so another good bet is that he's bored. Last time he tried to redraw the state map with his Six Californias proposal, he said it was because California was too big to govern-which, I'm not sure what that even means-but that aside, he was never quite clear on why six small states would be easier to run than one big one. His plan did however carve out California's poorest region, make it a separate state and then said 'you guys are on your own.' This new proposal, preposterously called CAL-3, kind of does the same thing.

While CAL-3 seems a little less interested in creating a pre-revolution France level of wealth disparity between the new states, it still kind concentrates a lot of wealthy counties in two states and a lot of poorer ones in one state.

Again, do people like Draper really not see the problem with
shit like this until they're getting strapped into the head chopper?

"Yes, our tax dollars...which
we pay, in full...totally."

-Some rich guy

Under Draper's plan the Bay Area, would, along with the northern counties become North California, with the nation's second highest per capita income. L.A. and a chunk of the coast would become just California and have the nation's twelth highest while South California would be the largest of the three new states, but come in at number thirty on the per capita ranking. California as it is now has the ninth highest per capita income. So like before I'm not sure if this is so much about ease of governance as it is about making sure rich people's tax dollars don't go to help poorer people.

Of course first Draper has to get enough Californians to vote yes on it, which, he might. Ballot initiatives are, by and large a terrible idea whereby we ask a not necessarily informed public for a show of hands. But it would still have to get through Congress. And since three new, potentially blue states might be a hard sell, we're probably safe from Draper's map drawing for now. At least until he comes back with a new one.

"Ok, how about this, three states, a commonwealth, two special administrative
regions and a principality. I call it 3CALCoSARPrin, and basically all the rich people
will live in rigid airships floating majestically, and tax-free over Marin County."

-Tim Draper, in desperate need of a new hobby