Wait, we're buying Shang Tsung now?

"Don't take my word for it, read the four page
summary written by some guy I appointed
based on his contempt for the investigation."

Can we just talk about video games for a moment? I ask because the obvious thing to talk about now would be politics, like how the President is taking a victory lap to celebrate how exonerated he was by the Attorney General's summary of the Mueller report which explicitly does not exonerate anyone. Like, it even says in those exact words that it doesn't exonerate the President, but here we are. Oh, and by victory lap, I mean building his racist wall, lying to idiots at campaign rallies and bragging about how he didn't participate in the Russian interference that got him elected.

And holy shit, Betsy DeVos de-funding the Special Olympics because the GOP is openly monsters now? I just...just...so let's talk about video games, which I'm also upset about, but in a cranky 'why in my day' way and not in a 'we're spiraling into fascism and there's nothing we can do about it' way.

"I mean, what have disabled children ever done for us? Amiright?"

-Betsy DeVos, Secretary of-huh? No, she didn't 

actually say that, but that's 100% the sentiment

And we all opened our copies like
a bunch of short sighted schmucks.

So like I was saying, back to comforting, apolitical video gaming. Back in my day (here we go) video games were a one-time purchase. You just bought a game, took it home, foolishly discarded the packaging and manual because ebay wasn't a thing yet, and played the game. But now it's more of a games as service model. What that means is that larger publishers are interested in making games that they add paid content to over months and even years so like some kind of addict you keep coming back for more.

"Just fucking buy the Assassin's Creed season
pass and we can all get out of this alive!"

-Ubisoft

Which sucks. Sucks how? Well, I mean, sure it's not de-funding the Special Olympics bad. I do have some perspective, and it's not like game publishers are holding a gun to all our heads, demanding that we buy downloadable content. Well, not usually. But as far as the hobby of video gaming goes, I think paid DLC sucks. Take for example Mortal Kombat 11. Yes, eleven. Can you believe they made eleven of these? It would have absolutely blown ten-year old me's mind to think there might someday be a Mortal Kombat 11. Anyway, it comes out late next month, but this last week the publisher, Warner Bros. announced that Shang Tsung would be the first DLC.

Shang Tsung, if you're unfamiliar and I sincerely hope you are, is a long-running character in the Mortal Kombat games. He's a sort of magic shape-shifting sorcerer/martial arts master who wants to conquer the Earthrealm by winning the Mortal Kombat tournament which whatever. Doesn't matter. Just know that for a game about palate swap ninjas ripping out spines, it's has some pretty deep lore. There're movies, cartoons, even novels. It's a thing.

"Finish him!" Shouted a disembodied voice.

Sub-Zero leapt into the air and then landed at precise foot-sweep distance from his defeated, yet somehow still standing opponent, Johnny Cage. The ninja began to jerk spastically, but to no avail. Cage collapsed before him. The fight was over. Sub Zero had one, but without pulling off a fatality.

"Goddamnit!" He roared "Forward forward down, high kick! They never give you enough time..."

-an excerpt from Jeff Rovin's classic novel, Motal Kombat

"Yeah, I got Shang Tsung, you a cop?
You've got to tell me, it's the law."

It's also important to know that Shang Tsung is a character that's usually just included in the games' roster but this time you've got to buy him separately. Ok, big deal, I mean, it's just a game. But, again, we could be talking about politics, so hear me out. It would be one thing if, after six months, the publisher came out with DLC that added Shang Tsung, but this game isn't out yet which means they've deliberately held back game content in order to wring it out of completionists. Is it me, or is this the games industry adopting the business model of smack dealers?

Above: Shang Tsung whose paid DLC
is now history's greatest injustice.

(source: a lack of perspective)

And look, Mortal Kombat 11 is by far neither the first nor the worst example of this, and I honestly will probably never play it anyway, but for whatever reason-probably the curmudgeonliness that comes with getting older-I find myself longing for the sepia-toned past when games were sold as complete experiences and not gateway drugs. But again, perspective. These are video games and none of this shit really matters, it's just sometimes easier to complain about nonsense than it is to dwell on garbage people doing garbage things. I mean de-funding the Special Olympics? What the actual, factual fuck is that about?

Huh, oh, yes, I did see that the Trump administration is now saying that they won't be defunding the Special Olympics, and I think that's super. But seriously what do they want, a cookie? For not taking the Special Olympics away?

Because people who threaten children don't get cookies
for reluctantly backing down from threatening children.

I stand behind my sour grapes.

Well, that's disappointing. The Muller Report I mean. I think a lot of us were hoping it would end with the former host of The Apprentice being perp-walked out of the Oval Office, but instead it's going to be weeks and months of shitty tweets from the President gloating about how guilty he's not. Which is bullshit because not getting caught isn't the same thing as not being guilty.

Sour grapes? Absolutely, but they're still, you know, grapes. 

"They couldn't prove
anything, so vote Trump!"

Attorney General William Barr released a summary of the Mueller report in which he said that the Special Counsel found no evidence that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia. They benefited from Russian efforts to screw with our elections, sure, but they apparently didn't colluded with them. So they were tools, unwitting tools, but tools and I'm not sure we needed a two year investigation to come up with that. But hey, here we are. The worst part is going to be Trump's bragging about how he won fair and square when really he won because Russia wanted us to have the worst possible President.

"What? Conflict of interest? Me?
I...uh...hey, look over there!"

-William Barr, easier today

As for obstruction of justice, same deal, it's not that he didn't obstruct justice, it's that the Special Council decided not to decide. Instead, according to Barr's summary, he laid out the arguments for and against prosecuting the President and left it to the Attorney General to decide whether or not to pursue. Barr, the AG Donald Trump appointed who in a surprise twist, looking at all the evidence and taking, I don't know, twenty minutes to think it over, decided not to prosecute. But at least Barr quotes Mueller's report by pointing out that:

"...while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it does not exonerate him."

-Robert Mueller being super-clear that

he's not exonerating the President

Hey, do you suppose in retrospect, leaving it up the
the President's appointees to decide whether or not to
prosecute was, I don't know, maybe not the best move?

"In my defense, a decent chunk of the
electorate are dumb idiots."

-Huckabee Sanders

The White House of course wasted little time lying to our collective faces:

"The Special Counsel did not find any collusion and did not find any obstruction...The findings of the Department of Justice are a total and complete exoneration of the President of the United States."

-White House Press Secretary

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, hoping

we're all incredibly stupid

Pictured: Huckabee Sanders holding
a press conference earlier today.

I mean-did you, did you see what she did there? Barr's summary specifically says that Mueller didn't make a call on the obstruction of justice charges and Huckabee Sanders doesn't either, instead saying that the DOJ's findings exonerate Trump. So anyone not listening very carefully to her words is going to start parroting that the Mueller Report exonerates the President. Which it doesn't, it says it doesn't, but that's not going to be the narrative. This is how these people work, which is why we call them garbage people.

So now what? Move to Canada? Drink? Not bad ideas, but take heart, there's still the three or four hundred other investigations being run by people Donald Trump didn't personally appoint and failing that there's an election coming up next year. If we can stick it out until then, we should be ok...unless of course it's another shit show of gerrymandered districts, fake Facebook posts, and last minute email hacks, but that wouldn't happen twice in a row, would it? Wait...would it?

"You wouldn't think so, but not much surprises me now...
Anyway, I should be going, I've got a book tour to get back to."

-The woman most of us voted for

Newsworthy? More like boozeworthy...

Sorry, that was uncalled for. I'm...I'm better than that. But for real, do you know what's not newsworthy? This. Yeah, I know, clicking on links isn't your jam, so I'll explain. Dudes finding beer isn't newsworthy.

Breaking News: They have it in stores.

Above: Nebraska earlier this week.

(source: slight exaggeration)

I mention this because in the midst of the devastating floods in Nebraska-huh? Yeah, devastating floods. Nebraska. Yeah, I missed most of this too, but the dramatically named bomb cyclone that drenched the midwest last week left the State of Nebraska mostly underwater. No really, most of the state. According to this, 76% of the state's land area and 95% of Nebraskans are affected by the flood.and it's going to cost something like $1.3 billion to rebuild.

So it's kind of weird that we haven't heard much about it. I mean, I know it's one of the boxy middle states we just lazily drew in on a map a couple hundred years ago to fill in the gap between coasts, but still, you'd think a new inland sea would be worth at least a mention.

It was all over the news during the Cretaceous.

Never Forget...that time Juggernaut
knocked over the World Trade Center.

I think it's because we basically live in a comic book universe where we're so used to catastrophes that the odd one can slip past us. Like, if you say lived in the world of the X-Men or the Avengers or something-yes, I know if's called Earth-616. Pfftt...nerd. Fine, say you live in Earth-616 and every other day Galactus shows up, or Magneto destroys some famous landmark and every couple of years the fate of the planet/universe/multiverse is put on the line, after awhile people would get used to it, right? Like that, except for us disasters are drowned out by the President's angry Tweets and feigned surprise at how rich people buy their kids' way into college.

But dudes finding beer? Right, getting off track. Anyway, a couple of guys doing cleanup found a fridge washed up in a field and helped themselves to some Busch Lights.

This just in: two Nebraska men found garbage in a field,
opened it and drank what they found inside.

It takes a brave person to step forward
and admit to a fridge full of Busch Light.

Which, ok, finders keepers or whatever, but a couple of things don't sit well with me about this. First, is that when these guys found the fridge, they had no idea who it belonged too. I don't begrudge them the beer, it's just that for all they knew, that fridge had floated past the bloated corpses of its owner on its way to the muddy field in which they found it. While it turns out they did wonder about the fate of whoever's fridge it was, and someone did later come forward alive and well, they didn't know that at the time.

But I guess what really bothers me about this this story about a couple of dudes finding a mini fridge full of beer that washed up in a field, is that-at least as I write this-the story that comes up first when you search 'Nebraska Flooding.'

"But hey, look on the bright side, at least some guys found beer."

-The news

So that's what they're going with, huh?

"It's just our way of saying
'fuck you' to gamers in rural states."

-Google

In unsurprising news, that Google thing that was announced today turned out to be a streaming platform, just like everyone thought it would. And it's-huh? We talked about it last week. It's ok if you don't remember, half these posts are basically filler. Here, I'll sum up: it's a service where you stream video games to your device, instead of downloading them or buying discs. All the heavy lifting is done on the server's end so how fancy your device is doesn't matter as much as how solid your connection is.

It's the future I guess. Anyway, they're calling it Stadia. Stadia. Yeah, I don't know what it means either, but Google spent a lot of money making it up and then focus testing it, so here it is. I mean, it's not like there's some way to find out what a stadia is so why even-

Oh, right. Goddamnit...

Above: The bleeding edge
of technology...I guess.

Ok when I search it I get:

"A method of surveying in which distances are read by noting the interval on a graduated rod intercepted by two parallel crosshairs...mounted in the telescope of a surveying instrument, the rod being placed at one end of the distance to be measured and the surveying instrument at the other."

-Dictionary.com, 

clearing that up for us

So cool...say, do you suppose someone at Google is overestimating the public's familiarity with nineteenth century surveying technology?

WonderSwan meant someone at SNK
was picking random words out of
their Japanese to English dictionary.

I know this thing isn't a game console per se, but it is supposed to compete with them and you'd think they'd go with something a little more evocative. Playstation 4 is the fourth Playstation console. Switch switches between console and handheld. Xbox One is, confusingly the third Xbox, ok, bad example. But traditionally console manufacturers wanted something that spoke to their platforms' strengths. The name Sega Genesis suggested the start of a new thing. Super Nintendo meant better than Nintendo.

You're going to have to click, it's
like white on white. Because future.

Stadia kind of just means hey, why don't you Google what a Stadia is? Anyway, maybe it'll be a huge flop or maybe it'll be the next thing for video games and then Google will own that industry too. But whatever it is, I want to talk about the controller. Yeah, left turn. So the controller has the Konami code on it. For some reason. The code, sometimes called the Contra Code, or sometimes the Gradius Code, is up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start. Or select start if you're playing Contra with a friend. Which, I mean, c'mon.

Get it? Because the eighties? 

Even if you were never into games (thanks for hanging in there!), you've probably seen it referenced somewhere. It has the power to grant thirty lives in Contra, add all the power-ups in Gradius and weirdly to blow up your ship in Gradius III. But perhaps its most frequently summoned ability is its way of adding a sheen of hipster credibility to anyone trying to sell shit to people in a certain generational range. That is the last five minutes, tail end of Gen X up to the Millennials with nostalgia for games they were probably too young to enjoy first hand. I don't think Think Geek, Hottopic or the boys section at Target would still be in business today if it didn't have the code to slap on its merchandise.

Its inclusion on Google's attempt to consume the video game industry and bring it too into its Shadowrun-esque vision of a desolate, ultra-capitalist, Megacorp-dominated future feels a little, I don't know, insulting? Or at least it would if I weren't of the Contra generation who lack the ability to care hard enough to be insulted.

"Cool. Whatever. Fine."

-Characters from the 1999 film Go,

unofficial spokespeople for that

generation I'm talking about

The key phrase here is 'made up.'

You know what's probably not worth getting upset about? Or really even thinking too hard about? Whether or not a fictional wizard is gay.

Besides, all wizards are kinda gay, right?

Yeah, but what if Voldemort's mother
did have an abortion. Think about it.

I mention this because it's become an issue ever since J.K. Rowling offhandedly mentioned that Dumbledore, the Gandalf of the Harry Potter novels, is actually gay. Some people were angry, mostly because there are some people who just love being angry, but also because after years of denouncing the books as devil worship until they went hoarse with rage, they had to start all over again with a whole new thing. But then there were the other people who were initially pleased because hurray, representation, but then reality sets in and we remember that there was never any mention of Dumbledore's sexuality in the stories at any point so really is she just making things up now? I mean other than stories about wizards...

Anyway, thanks to the movie version of an in-universe guide book about magical animals-because holy shit, Rowling knows how to not leave a dime on the table-the issue of Dumbledore's sex life is getting another look. These films cover the period of Dumbledore's life in which he, according to Rowling, had a relationship with a male wizard. The scandal!

Does it help if I mention that Dumbledore is
played by Jude Law and not the late Richard Harris?

If we're being honest, I'm less interested
in it too now that I know Gindelwald
is played by Johnny 'Cue Cards' Depp.

In the extra features of the Blu-ray release of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald-which, impossibly, is the title of a movie, Rowling gives an interview in which she says;

"Their relationship (Dumbledore and Grindelwald's) was incredibly intense. It was passionate, and it was a love relationship...I'm less interested in the sexual side-though I believe there is a sexual dimension to this relationship."

-J.K. Rowling, not interested 

in wizards doin' it

"Because again, they're magic
wizards. Whom I made up..."

-Rowling

Yup, she knows just how to poke the fans. So people are again loosing their shit on twitter which is awesome because this very fit was apparently also pitched last year when the movie initially came out. But at the risk of being kind of a dick, because I didn't see either of these movies and don't really give a shit, I'd like to solve this problem once and for all: J.K. Rowling, whatever you may think of her, wrote the original novels and is writing the five part (!) series based on the Fantastic Beasts guide book thing so Dumbledore is exactly as gay as she says he is. So maybe stop arguing with her about it?

Problem solved. But let's go back to the part where Rowling said she wasn't interested in the sexual side of Dumbledore's and Grindelwald's relationship. Cool. But she does seem to think her fans would be interested in a five part film saga about an imaginary magical Fodor's Guide. I don't know, is it me or is she missing a huge potential market here?

A series of romantic comedies set in the 20's? Starring wizards?
Gay wizards? How is this not a thing right now?

Glibby McQuipster's Notable Quotables

Pictured: McQuipster, seen here
thinking up clever turns of phrase.

Somebody once said:

"If you're not paying for it, you're not a customer, you're the product."

-Somebody

Who said that? I don't know. In fact, nobody seems to be able to agree about who it was and it doesn't really matter. The important thing to keep in mind is that it-huh? Why do you care who said it? I mean, it's just a-you're not going to let it go are you? Ok fine, let's say it was noted 19th century wit Glibby McQuipster whose bon-mots are legendary. Satisfied?

Moving on. Whoever said it, it's often applied to Google's business model in which you don't pay for any of the company's products, but rather advertisers pay Google to put their algorithmically tailored ads 'Click Here' adds in front of our eyes when we're trying to do things online. Then we, like fools, buy stuff.

"Take it! Taaake iiiit!"

-Us, when presented

with ads for anything

Above: our grim future.

And that's how Google makes $100 billion dollars a year without producing anything and it's also one of the reasons we're on a trajectory towards a bloody revolution against the corporate aristocracy whose greed and excess are slowly suffocating us, but that's for another day...say, June? Anyway, they may soon have another way new way to get their advertisers' dumb products in our faces. In a tweet yesterday they demanded that we all watch some announcement next Tuesday which everyone seems to think will be about streaming games. 

Yup, Google is about to get into the gaming industry and shift some paradigms or disrupt it or you know, whatever it is corporations do.

Make San Francisco unliveable?

Assuming you have a decent connection.
Which you don't, no one does.

So what the hell even is a streaming game? Well, since you ask, it'd be either a dedicated video game console or maybe even some kind of browser-based platform (or both) over which Google would offer video games, probably as a subscription service. Which is cool, but the neat thing is that while you play these games on your console or phone or whatever, they're actually running on a server somewhere, so as the technology improves, you don't have to upgrade your device for the next big thing that comes along.

The question on everyone's mind
however, is can Google succeed
where Soulja Boy could not? 

So Google's never really been a games company and it seems like, super arrogant to simply announce that they're be jumping into the gaming industry the same way you or I might take up crochet, but they do have, as I mentioned a couple of times before, billions of dollars so who knows? They did have some luck recently getting Assassin's Creed Odyssey to run in a browser window which is genuinely impressive and suggests that if they are announcing something to compete with Xbox and Playstation it won't be some shitty Android box.

That was just an example.
Do not watch Bruce Almighty.

But I don't know, streaming video games as a concept doesn't sit well with me. Maybe I'm just old (definitely) and stuck in the days where you'd go buy a game tape from your local Babbage's, but I've just never been fully comfortable with the move away from discs and cartridges and towards digital downloads for games. Like, when you buy a game digitally, you're not really buying it so much as you're licensing it. So if the online storefront you bought it on ever disappears, that's it, you can't download it again. And streaming seems even more ephemeral. Google's whatever will probably be something like Netflix but for games and like a streaming service, things can be pulled at any time. If Netflix taught us anything it's that you'd better watch Bruce Almighty while you have the chance.

Super legit you guys...

Wai-wai-wait, is she saying that we should stop giving liars a platform? And whose killing babies now? Who am I talking about? I'm glad I pretended you asked, because in a rare appearance by the White House Press Secretary at an even rarer press conference, Sarah Huckabee Sande-huh? Oh, it's a sort of question and answer thing Press Secretaries used to hold with journalists.

Pictured: A White House Press conference seen here frolicking near a pond.

So obviously the big questions we all want answered are things like, how guilty is the President of all those crimes Micheal Cohen told Congress about and when can we expect him to resign.

Yes, she's right, we should stop
giving liars a platform...

Here's what Sarah Huckabee Sanders said instead:

"We know that he's lied at least twice in that hearing. I think it's time to stop giving him a platform, uh, let him serve his time and let's move forward with matters of the country."

-Press Secretary Huckabee
Sanders while standing
on a literal platform

I mean, did CNN's Jim Acosta honestly
think he was going to get a real answer?
Or did he know from the get go that she
was going to call the DNC baby-killers?

Do we know that though? That he lied? Anyway, then, because Trump the conversation turned to questions about whether or not Huckabee Sanders believes that he (Trump) believes that Democrats hate Jews which...holy shit, here we are. After making critical comments about America's support for Israel, Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar was accused of anti-Semitism and Democrats were accused of not coming down hard enough on her but what this isn't about was abortion which is why it's weird that Huckabee Sanders brought up abortion when asked if maybe it isn't time to tone down the rhetoric.

Pictured: Nancy Pelosi and House
Democrats just thinking about killing babies.

"I think that the real uh...shame in all of this is that Democrats are perfectly capable of coming together and agreeing on the fact that they're comfortable with ripping babies straight from the mother's womb or killing a baby after birth but they have a hard time condemning the type of comments from congresswoman Omar."

-Sarah Huckabee Sanders...on how

Democrats love killing babies

I'm familiar with it and
I'm just some guy.

Holy shit, right? So after accusing the entire Democratic party being anti-Semetic baby-murderers, she was asked about the checks Donald Trump signed and Micheal Cohen offered as evidence that the President reimbursed him for paying off Stormy Daniels. She said she was unaware of them. Like, if you watch the press conference she's apparently not aware of a lot of things. But I mean, shouldn't she be? Aware of the checks? So I guess the question is, is she lying, bad at her job or both?

"He's so not guilty of campaign
violations you guys, he even said so."

I know she hasn't press secretary'd in like a month and a half so maybe she's out of practice? Next she went on to assure us that there's totally no crime here, because the President said so:

"The President's been clear that there wasn't a campaign violation."

-Huckabee Sanders,
without a hint of irony

Cool, so the Press Secretary who moments earlier claimed to be unfamiliar with the Cohen hearing and the checks with Trump's signature on them-which we all totally saw-is now asking us to take the President at his word that there wasn't a campaign finance violation. Sounds super legit. And like, why would he lie? It's not like he's ever going to prison.

Because he's rich and white. Not because he isn't guilty. Huh? Whose that?
Oh, that's just Cindy Yang. She's a massage parlor owner whose been selling
access to the President at his private golf club to Chinese executives. Enjoy.

To be clear: I am pro-future

Look, I'm not against the future. In fact, I think I'm pretty pro-future. But I'm going to go ahead and say that these will never be a thing people drive. What thing? See? I tricked you that time. Here's the link, but since you're not really going to click on it, I'll just press on.

Behold the future of...uh...bathroom hand dryers?

The creepy, subtly Aryan, future as
envisioned in the 1950's is here!

Flying cars. Get ready because the future is here! Well, not here, because that's just a concept for a new tire and not a thing that exists. This tire, while vertically oriented, functions like, you know, a tire. But when pivoted into a horizontal position becomes a rotor for the flying cars of the future! Goodyear, the company famous for blimps and I guess tires, revealed their new invention at the Geneva Motor Show in Switzerland last week and the world will never be the same.

So...it's bullshit and
they know its bullshit? Cool.

I mean that in the strictest sense. As in the world is constantly changing, but it has nothing to do with Goodyear's preposterous flying car tire which, and this is where I want to emphasize how pro-future I am, will never be a thing that exists. And that's not just the well-earned pessimism of someone who's watching the world slowly spiral into chaos and Twitter fights between grown-ass adults. According to the designers, the tire isn't really intended as something that will even make it to market.

Did you though? Imagine it, I mean. Or
did you just watch Back to the Future II?

"With mobility companies looking to the sky for the answer to the challenges of urban transport and congestion, our work on advanced tire architectures and materials led us to imagine a wheel that could serve both as a traditional tire on the road and as a propulsion system in the sky..."

-Chris Hessel, Goodyear's

chief-wait, you mean car companies?

I mean, who says 'mobility company?'

"If you can think of a better use for
$90 million, I'd like to hear it."

-Elon Musk, evidently

And are they looking to the sky? Is that a thing? I thought mobility companies were coming up with self-driving cars and pneumatic tube trains and things like that. The closest anyone's getting to looking at the sky was when that legitimately crazy, yet somehow incredibly rich guy who named his electric car company after a eugenicist, launched a car at Mars. I appreciate the importance of innovation and trying to come up with solutions no one has ever tried before but are we really thinking flying cars all the way through?

Look, I don't want to poo-poo Hessel or Goodyear's dumb-sorry-innovative idea, but everyone kind of drives like idiots. Is introducing the Z-axis into this really the best move?

Pictured: Goodyear's grim, yet innovative future where even
minor  fender-benders send glass and broken tail lights raining
 down on unsuspecting pedestrians at terminal velocities.