High School Confidential

I'm having, what do you call them? Feelings? Yeah, feelings about something I read online the other day, get this, about my high school. Why should you care? Normally I'd say you shouldn't, but this is kind of a thing and I want to tell the world. Well, by the world I mean the five or six people who read my blog. If you're one of them, thanks!

Thanks people in the upper right hand corner of the screen!

I mean, how could you not want
to read about a school board meeting
in a town you've never heard of?

Here's the link. Next is usually the part where I make some comment about how you totally didn't read the article attached and then go on to explain it anyway and I'll do the second part, but maybe read this one? And then tell everyone you know? I'll get to why in a minute, but the article is about a school board meeting last week in the school district where I went to high school. At the meeting, parents accused Superintendent Micheal Pero of not doing anything about up the increasing incidents of racism at Pittsford schools.

Wait a minute...Asia's not
even a Mexican country...

The incidents include throwing the n-word around, jokes about nooses and slavery, bullying an Asian American student and telling him to go back to Mexico which-yeah, I don't know. Racists are, by definition, idiots. Oh, and there was also a Black History Month display about the contributions of black inventors that featured a bunch of white guys. This was at the elementary school, so I'm willing to believe that maybe the kids didn't quite understand what they were supposed to be doing, but like, where are the teachers on this one? The display was only taken down after a parent complained.

According to article, the parents who went to the meeting to take Pero to task can't even seem to get him to agree to call these incidents out as racism:

Nowhere in the definition of 'inclusion'
does it say you have to let kids get away
with racist shit. What else you got?

"If we called every incident out specifically by their category, I feel we're losing the message of our expectation that every single person who walks through this building deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. The word 'inclusion' means every one of our kids and families who fall into any category feels welcome and valued."

-Superintendent Pero 
on...uh...wait, what? 
Is he suggesting that-

  

"Well now who's being intolerant?"

-Michael Pero, flipping the script

-wait, what the actual-is he saying that if he calls racism out as racism he's risking making racists feel unwelcome because of their racism? Is this even real? Is this blood trickling from my ear? Look, I one hundred percent have no stake in the goings on of the school district I attended twenty years ago in a state I don't even live in anymore, but holy shit. Like, white kids calling black kids the n-word seems pretty cut and dry racism, doesn't it? I mean, how can he be in charge of educating children in 2019 without an understanding of what constitutes racism?

Anyway, according to the article the uptick in these racist dick moves seems to have-I'm sure totally coincidentally-line up with the 2016 election when a game show host lost the popular vote and still somehow became President.

And then, also coincidentally, said game show host spent the last couple years holding
rallies for himself in which he whips up nationlism and not-so-subtle white supremacy.
But again, I'm sure this is in no way related to all the emboldened white supremacists...

"Yeah, but the last President was
black, so, racism's over, right?"

-Far too many of us

At first, I definitely had a moment of 'naw...couldn't be.' I mean, that wasn't my experience at that school. It wasn't the most diverse environment in the world, but slurs and nooses? Impossible! But then I remembered that I'm not a person of color soooo...maybe my experience was, I don't know, not the same as it would have been if I were? Epiphany, right? Could that right there be the problem? Like maybe if white people kept in mind that just because we aren't personally experiencing racism doesn't mean it's been solved?

Yeah, you heard me. Dumb
idiots. Every one of them.

Ok, so startling realization that literally everyone in America who's ever been on the receiving end of racism already knew aside, should we be bothered more by the incidents described or by the attempt to keep them quiet? Like, both are horrible and disheartening, but kids are-and I say this as a former child myself-dumb idiots. The ones involved here are just parroting their dumb idiot parents. There's a chance they might someday come to their senses. But how can that happen if everyone's pretending there isn't a problem?

Like I said earlier, feelings. And again, I mention this because in addition to being a story about the district not doing anything about racism in schools, they're also not talking about it. The story itself has gone unremarked upon. I told my mom, who looked for it in the local paper and nothing. The only mention of it anywhere seems to be that one article I linked to above. It's like they're keeping it quiet to avoid bad press. Maybe I'm being very suspicious here. I don't know, but I mean, it's not like I'm talking about lizard people.

"But by calling the lizard people out for being lizard people,
you're loosing the message of tolerance for lizard people."

-Micheal Pero, defending lizard people 

The Wrath of Calgon

He should have written a piece about
how pedantic Star Trek fans can be. 

I don't mean to pick on Johnathan Holmes, the writer of this Guardian article, but I'm totally going to pick on him. The article-and don't pretend you clicked on the link. I know you better than that. The article is entitled Bleep me up Scotty: why is sci-fi suddenly so sweary? and it takes issue with a perceived uptick in the instances of shall we say, more colorful metaphors in sci-fi TV and movies. Now sweary isn't a real word, but I'm going to let it go in favor of pointing out that never, not once in any Star Trek thing did anyone ever utter the phrase 'beam me up Scotty'. 

But more important is Holmes' contention that sci-fi has gotten swearier-great, now I'm doing it. More swear-filled? Whatever. Fuck it.

Aliens came out over thirty years ago, so what else you got?

Pictured: us when we sit
in front of Netflix all day.

His argument is that sci-fi, as a genre of television and movies contains more swears than it did in the past and I think that's nonsense. Yeah, sure, Ensign Tilly on Star Trek: Discovery said fuck. But I think this is more about how streaming services-which are generally free-er in terms of content-have eclipsed broadcast and cable as the way we consume content. Oh, and sorry for the phrase consume content. It's makes us sound like filter feeders.

"Quaaak quaaak quaaaak..."

-Meredith discussing the 

role in a 1978 interview

The point is that sure, Holmes is correct, Jordan Peele's Twilight Zone revival contains more instances of the word fuck than the 1950's version did, but I don't think it's just because it can, it's because the older show couldn't. Here, remember that episode Time Enough at Last? Sure you do. Burgess Meredith plays Henry Bemis, an avid reader who is constantly interrupted by people and can never have time to himself to read. Then, an H-bomb drops because the Cold War, and now he's the last man on Earth and can finally read in peace. Cool. But then his glasses break.

Pictured: the real vicim here.

And here's where I have to call bullshit on the writing. Instead of a grounded reaction to the reality of the horror around him, here's what he says:

"That's not fair. That's not fair at all. There was time now. There was-was all the time I needed. It's not fair! It's not fair!"

-Henry Bemis, last man on Earth

and apparent sociopath, I mean, 

everyone he's ever known is dead

The correct response to this should be "Fuck! Fuck fuck fuuuuuck!" But this was 1959 and nobody wanted to risk the wrath of Calgon. The issue isn't-huh? It was a laundry detergent or something in the 1950's. I'm suggesting that they wouldn't have advertised on The Twilight Zone if Burgess Meredith said fuck. What's that? Yeah, Calgon does sound like alien warlord or something. Huh, I think you're on to something. Call Jordan Peele.

"I Calgon, shall conquer the shit out of your puny fucking planet!"

-Next time on The Twilight Zone

Episode 14: The Wrath of Calgon

For all we know, qupla' is Klingon
for suck-it. Or suck them I guess. Oh,
 didn't you know? Klingons have two.

Where were we? Right, all the swears. Ok, let's say Johnathan Holmes is on to something and maybe in terms of volume there is more swearing on sci-fi. Which, there's more sci-fi as well, but whatever. I guess my bigger problem here is the underpinning assumption that a character saying fuck or shit in space is in itself a problem. Holmes tries to make the case that people in the future or from another planet would have future or alien swears or something and that's fair. But they'd probably also speak Klingon or Marain, so I don't so much mind that sci-fi is magically translated for viewers.

Why shouldn't we expect characters in sci-fi sound like real, relatable people? Like, when you're on a spaceship with Sam Neil and he's torn out his own eyes and opened a portal to hell, shazbot doesn't really cover it. People say fuck and shit sometimes. I mean, if you're going to play 'kids these days' with an entire genre of entertainment, why not go after the ramped-up violence and cruelty everyone loves so much now? I mean, has this guy seen Altered Carbon or Westworld? Because goddamn. 

"So many swears..."

-Johnathan Holmes, on these
grim times in which we live

Steve King of Kings

Look, I'm not particularly religious and don't consider myself especially versed in Christian philosophy, but I'm pretty sure that Iowa Congressman and noted white supremacy fan Steve King should probably stop comparing himself to Jesus.

Wait, there was only the one guy called Jesus in the Bible, right?
I mean, there isn't a chance he's thinking of some other
Jesus, like maybe one who ranted about immigrants?

It's getting harder and harder to give
 people like King the benefit of the doubt.
Like, they can't all have brain damage.

I say this because the Congressman recently likened the criticism he's faced for being such an...what's the word? Unabashed white supremacist? No, unrepentant. He's likened the criticism he's faced for being an unrepentant white supremacist to that time Roman soldiers tortured and then crucified Jesus. Because, same, same, right? Here's what he said in his own words, which-can he even hear himself or do you suppose there's some kind of brain trauma at work here? Anyway, here's the galling nonsense what fell out of his idiot hole the other day:

Pictured: Jesus being led to the-
wait, no, sorry, that's Steve King.

"And when I had to step down to the floor of the House of Representatives and look up at those 400-and-some-accusers-you know, we've just passed through Easter and Christ's Passion-and I have a better insight into what He went through for us, partly because of that experience."

-Representative Steve King of Iowa 

on how being stripped of his committee 

assignments makes him basically Jesus

Those "400-and-some-accusers" took issue with comments King made in a January interview when he asked: "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization-how did that language become offensive?"

At a guess I'd say it happened around the time Europeans
started exterminating and enslaving people who weren't them?

But for real, make better choices, Iowa.

Look, I don't want to tell the super-religious, Trump-loving evangelicals of the Hawkeye state how to cast their votes-well, ok, if I'm being honest I do, but it's not like they're not going to listen to me. But what I'm getting at is shouldn't Steve King comparing himself to Jesus hurt him? Politically I mean? I mean, look what happened to the Beatles. Obviously the Republican party has made peace with being the party of Nazis and that's...well that's a whole 'nother thing, but I thought they drew the line at religious stuff?

Like, Steve King just suggested that being called out as a racist for pining for the good ol'days when a man could put on a white hood and go burn a few churches down, is basically the same thing as the Crucifixion; the defining religious moment for two billion Christians. Shouldn't the people of Iowa be, I don't know, running him out on a rail or something? Isn't that still a thing in the midwest?

Sorry, that probably sounded elitist and anti-midwesterner,
but I mean, they do keep electing this guy. Like nine times.

Probably a smart move...

So up until last week there was a neighborhood in Cherry Hill, Colorado called Swastika Acres. In 2019. Swastika Acres. Can you believe it? I should probably explain, or you could just click on that link and skip the rest of this. Either way, I mean, you do you.

Pictured: Swastika Acres...huh, I guess I was picturing something
out of Man in the High Castle, but it turns out it's just a street.
Is it weird that I'm a little disappointed? It's weird, isn't it?

Add cultural appropriation to the list
of reasons it's ok to punch these guys.

Still with me? Super. It turns out the neighborhood was named for the Denver Land Swastika Company which got its name before Nazi's where a thing. Huh? I don't know, I guess they sold swastikas or something, the point is the swastika was just a shape or design back in the 19-diggities of whenever, before the Nazis used it. It used to be and still is a religious symbol in some cultures, but for a huge part of the planet's population it's forever inextricably associated with white supremacists.

In Japan, where it has a different, less Nazi-ish connotation, it sometimes crops up in pop culture. Usually these things get altered before making it west, but sometimes not. The level three dungeon in the first Zelda game for example looked like a big 'ol reverse swastika. It's really a Buddhist symbol called a manji, but it wasn't super-well known in America in the late eighties and so:

"Wait, what the hell? Wha-what's...this game tape about again?"

-concerned parents, circa 1986

Why change the charter when all
you need is some white out and-
Huh? Yeah, I hear it...

Anyway, while the neighborhood in Colorado wasn't called Swastika Acres by anyone, it was still the official name on real estate documents so residents wanted it gone. The problem was that until a couple days ago changing the name required all of the homeowners to sign off on it. Which, you'd think they'd be a clause somewhere reading 'unless your neighborhood is called something super racist,' but there wasn't and here we are. Yup, one of the swastikians (I guess?) wanted to keep the name.

I'm not sure updating Zillow
is the same thing as denying the
 Holocaust, but her point stands.

Holy shit, but why? you ask. Well hang on, because the answer isn't even crazy:

"I don’t think you should erase history. What would it be like if people denied the Holocaust? You have to get the facts of history.”

-resident Susan Cooper

who again, lives in a place

called Swastika Acres

They're safe until genocidal
racists use this as their emblem.

Yeah, ok, I can see that. I mean, if there were to be an argument for keeping a name like Swastika Acres, that would be it. In fact, according to the Denver Post, Cooper comes from a family of Holocaust survivors so it's not like she's just some rando holdout, she knows of what she speaks. But either way, the Cherry Hills town council last week changed the name change requirement to a simple majority and just like that, Susan Copper and all the other residents of Swastika Acres live in 'Old Cherry Hills.' Which is probably for the best.

Sure, I've got no stake in this whatsoever, but this is the internet and what is the internet for if not a forum for people to express their weightless, unsolicited opinions about things that don't involve them?

A delivery system for porn?

A monument to sedentary pursuits!

I mean, when the thing
happened? I know, right?

What do you mean where have I been? I have a life you know. It's not like I sit around all day thinking about video games and Star Trek and then blogging about them. Ok, I do do that, and we seriously need to talk about the Disco season finale, but as it happens I was back in my home town for a few days. If I know you and you live there and I didn't look you up, just know that it was long story and there really wasn't time to hang out and look, it's not like you ever come out to California to visit me...oh, you would?

That's...that's great. Uh, sure. You can stay at my place...for how long did you say? I see. That long huh? C-cool...Well, I uh...What's that? Sure, I can come get you at the airport. Can't wait...see you soon.

The futon is all yours. Well, not this futon.
This futon is way nicer. I wish I had this futon.

Above: the sky.

So like I was saying, I was there and it had been four years since my last visit. Where? As I've mentioned before, I'm from Rochester, NY. It's nice. I mean, I packed up and moved out west almost ten years ago in part because I'm pretty sure the nearly perpetually overcast skies were giving me a vitamin D deficiency, but really, it's a great place to live. Again, if you can get past the seasonal affective disorder. Everywhere has its drawbacks. I live on an active fault line now.

Oh, and unlike some other geographic regions I could mention, rent is affordable there. I've even heard that some people actually own their homes. Can you believe it?

"Um, no. No we can't believe it."

-everyone in the Bay Area

Pictured: Gerald Ford's Breakout
machine. What? He tripped...

Oh, and just to make sure I felt actual pangs of regret getting on the plane, Rochester is also home to-huh? My family? Oh, right, my family. But also the Video Game Hall of Fame. It's not so much a hall as it is a museum with rooms full of old arcade machines and a collection of historically important video games. Well, historically important for video games that is, they don't have Gerald Ford's Breakout machine or anything, but they do have a giant, playable NES controller (it's not great in practice) and an excellent exhibit about Women in Gaming, so if you somehow find yourself in Rochester, do check it out.

Above: Literal garbage.

Oh, and they also had some of the smashed Atari cartridges that documentary crew dug up in New Mexico which, if you're not a video game fan is probably just a lucite case full of literal garbage, but still, I found it interesting. Weirdly, I don't think the city is actually associated with video games as a thing, but then what does Cleveland have to do with rock? Nothing, that's what. And besides, if anyone can fully appreciate an indoor activity like gaming, it would be a town that averages a hundred inches of snow per year. Yes, these truly are my people.

Anyway, to answer the question I pretended you asked, that's where I've been. I'm home now, exhausted, but once again absorbing vitamin D in a town without a single museum devoted to my favorite sedentary past time.

No, video games, but living in constant fear of the rent
increase that will force me out of the area is a close second.

Nobody elected him firefighter...

So in a catastrophic blow to France, the Catholic Church and everyone in the world, Notre Dame is on fire. Like right now. It's horrifying, and I'm not French, I'm not Catholic and I don't mind telling you that I kinda want to cry. That said:

Are you for goddamn kidding me?

"How do you say? Stay in your line?"

-President Macron

No, I'm not kidding me. The best the winner of 2016's electoral college nonsense could muster as he jabbed his pudgy hand sausages at his tweeter is a preposterous suggestion that the French people need his input about not only how to fight the fire, but also that they should probably move quickly. You know, because fire. I'm sure the people of France are, right now, breathing a sigh of relief that the former host of The Apprentice is on the case.

Above: The floor of Notre Dame

(source: an idiot)

Look, I'm not a firefighter, I'm not an expert, but then neither is he. I know, right? Despite his recent and super-helpful admonishment that CalFire needs to do more raking because one time he met the President of Finland and nevermind-I'm going to go ahead and offer a couple suggestions about why the President should shut up. First, Paris isn't located in a forest, much less one in which forest fires are common. Second, I'm not sure dropping tons of water on a populated area is the best move. Third, shut up. Shut up you ridiculous man.

Say one of these people?

I don't want to tell him how to bloviate, but the correct response to this is something like:

"I think I speak for all Americans when I say that this is a tragic loss for France and the world. Our thoughts are with the french people today."

-Any other hypothetical 

occupant of the Oval Office

Thanks robots...

I'm not an economist, but here's what I don't understand. Well, ok, there're lots of things I don't understand about economics. I went to public school. But what I'm getting at is that there's something that I think should make sense but doesn't and once again I find myself rooting against the robots. Which is not the side of history I want to be on.

Because seriously, we're not coming out on top here.

Pictured: the good old days.

Which brings us to the plague. According to my half-remembered public school understanding of economics, the plague in Europe in the 14th century helped usher in the middle class because it killed like a third of the population leaving a huge labor gap. Suddenly the leather slipper or whatever people in the renaissance wore on their feet, was on the other foot. The unwashed masses not only had a jobs, but their labor was suddenly more valuable and could command a decent wage.

Over the intervening centuries-and really the last fifty years-this dynamic has reverted back to the medieval model of a rich aristocracy lording their wealth over the rest of us serfs who have to make a choice between paying rent and eating and that's a lot of the reason everything sucks right now.

Pictured: a typical landlord.

"Well, we have billions of dollars, so
clearly something's going right."

-Rich people

Except that I'm also assured by the winner of the electoral college vote that the economy is like doing super-great right now and that employment is the lowest it's ever been in the history of everything. I'm not sure how that can possibly be true, or how racist populism helps, but here we are. Anyway, that's why Walmart is bringing in robots. Robots which will clean floors and receive merchandise and just generally supplement the store's human workforce. Huh? No, not to replace the workers, but to assist them.

Almost as fulfilling as enjoying retirement
and spending time with grandchildren.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon had this to say when the company began testing these robots last year:

"The overall trend we're seeing is that automating certain tasks gives associates more time to do work they find fulfilling and to interact with out customers..."

-Doug McMillon on how

fulfilled his employees are

"And then Doug said it was so our
employees could spend more time
doing work they find fulfilling!"

Look, I love robots as much as anyone and am eagerly looking forward to the day they rise up against their dumb, greedy, squishy human creators, but I don't think this can possibly be for the benefit of Walmart's employees. I'm not trying to be cynical here but-huh? Oh, I know I am, I'm just saying that I don't have to try any more. But what I was going to say is that I don't think it's unfair to suggest that companies as big as Walmart don't do anything that isn't about making more money and since business is hard, it's usually easier to find new and interesting ways to give workers less of it.

It also doesn't hurt that the robots
aren't programmed to unionize.

That article also suggests that part of the reason for bringing in the robots is that it's hard to staff late shifts because of the crazy low unemployment rate, but I'm not sure I buy that either. Like, if this were really about scarcity of labor, wouldn't they just offer more money for the less desirable shifts? They skipped over that step and went right to bringing in robots which are expensive to buy in the first place, but probably cheaper in the long run.

Like I said before, I'm not an economist, and I do know that the problem of wealth disparity goes deeper than Walmart using robots, but 'we're buying robot assistants to help make our employees lives more fulfilling' sounds like corporate bullshit for 'we're seeing how few employees we can possibly operate our stores with and passing the saving on to our shareholders' and I think it's ok to call it out as such.

Pictured: a typical Walmart employee and the soulless
automaton who will soon render her job obsolete.

Mike Tyson's feeling Left-Out!!

This may come as a surprise to you, but I'm not into sports...ok, you could at least feign surprise. Anyway, I mention this because while I think sports are a waste of time better spent playing video games or blogging about video games, I do like video games and sometimes there's some overlap.

Ok, there's not a ton of overlap between video games and sports,
and when it does happen, it's generally pretty dumb but still, it happens. 

Great Tiger, the boxer from India, had
magic powers. Because the 80's.

Huh? No, not sports video games, not really. All sports games are, objectively and universally, junk. Except Punch-Out!!. Punch-Out!! was actually pretty good. Oh, and that's not me getting excited and using two exclamation points, that's just the title of the game. Sort of. The game was originally an arcade game called Punch-Out!!, (again, nothing I can do about the punctuation), about boxing against different, kind of racist stereotypes, but most nerds of a certain age remember the NES versions. And this is where it gets complicated, so if you want to bail, I'll understand.

"Wow! Golf legend Lee Trevino!"

-No kid ever

Still there? Super. So pretty much anything I know about sports comes from video games, and the reason I know who Mike Tyson is is because of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, which was an adaptation of the arcade game with Mike Tyson thrown in. Sometimes a video game publisher will get a famous sports figure to lend their name and likeness to a game to give it, you know, famous person appeal. I guess they figured kids followed sports personalities? I didn't, but you know, I didn't particularly like going outside.

Take John Madden for example. There've been like thirty-six games in the John Madden Football series. John Madden doesn't know shit about software engineering, but he does know how to collect royalty checks and I think at this point he's better known as that guy from the Madden games than as a real sports personality.

I only knew him from the used bin at EB and as the guy
whose post-game commentary cut into Star Trek: TNG's timeslot. 

Fun Fact: Mike Tyson is 14 feet tall.

(source: NES)

Why did I even bring this up? Oh, right, so when Nintendo's licensing deal with Mike Tyson ran out, they didn't try and renew it, but instead re-released the game as just Punch-Out!! It's exactly the same game except with Tyson-who was the game's final boss, replaced by some rando called Mr. Dream. Mr. Dream had all the same moves as Tyson, was just as controller-throwingly hard to beat as Tyson but looked legally distinct from former world heavyweight champion, so Nintendo didn't have to pay him shit. But that still doesn't explain why I'm talking about a thirty-year old video game.

This does though. Nintendo, in their excruciatingly slow drip-feed of NES games on Switch are re-releasing Punch-Out!! Yes, the one sans Tyson.

With two games re-released per month, it's unlikely we'll see even a fraction of the
680 NES games make it to Switch. But hey, good thing we got goddamn Ice Climber.

Tyson also tweeted this pic of 8-bit Tyson
KO-ing Mr. Dream, demonstrating that he's
not only good at boxing, but also photoshop.

Taking this as a slight, Mike Tyson went on Twitter and asked everyone to tell Nintendo how much we all miss him and demand that they re-release the version of Punch-Out!! with him in it instead of the version with Mr. Dream:

"mr dream? everyone tell @NintendoAmerica who they think of when they hear punch out"

-Tyson, registering his disgust

on Twitter, throwing caution,

and capitalization to the wind

Appearing in the Hangover
was the least of his offenses.

Yes. When I think of Punch-Out!! I do think of Mike Tyson because again, my sports knowledge comes from video games. But it also comes from crimes that made the national news, so Punch-Out!! makes me think about how he was convicted of raping Desiree Washington in 1991. Then I remember that his lawyer tried to get the victim's sexual history admitted as evidence, and that he only served half his sentence. Then I think about him biting Evander Holyfield's ear and then that time he threatened to eat Lennox Lewis's children. 

So who can say why Nintendo is re-releasing Punch-Out!! and not Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!? Who knows why they do anything they do? But if I were to guess, I'd say it either has something to do with Nintendo not wanting to pay a licensing fee or not wanting to associate themselves with a violent sex-offender who threatens his opponent's children. Or both.

On the other hand they've had great success with a
glorified cockfighting simulator, so what do I know?