A special place in hell...

I mean, what kind of shitheel steals someone's elephants? A huge one. Just...just agree with me on this and then I'll explain. Because some asshole stole some guy's elephants. Ok, not actual elephants, but art pieces for Burning Man. A pair of elephant sculptures on stilts-see? So elephants on stilts because Burning Man.

I guess their stilts were going to be added later?

"It is not easy to make an elephant disappear!"

-Direct quote from the local 

CBS station anchor, because 

local news is actual garbage

Yes, it's time for that again. I'm leaving for the internet and wifi dead zone in a couple days,  I'll be sure to bore you with the details when I get back but before I go, I thought I'd share this story I read about an artist in Oakland called Jack Champion-yes, that's his actual name-whose art piece was stolen along with his truck, his trailer and all his tools as he was getting ready to head to the Burn. And it gets worse. So not only did someone take his truck and with it his art, but they did this right in front of him.

Pictured: Jack Champion, seen here
leaping onto a moving vehicle to
recover his stolen art...from Nazis.

And he tried to stop them by hanging on to the driver's side door and was dragged two blocks for his trouble. Two blocks. At one in the morning.

"As an act of desperation, I grabbed onto it. It was probably kind of foolish, because I'm kind of damaged and beat up and can't walk right now."

-Jack-did I mention his name

is Champion? Because it is.

"Hey, c'mere...you uh, wanna
buy some elephants?"

-Some guy 

Badass name or no, no one gets dragged for two blocks and walks away without a scratch and Champion is no exception. His injuries mean that he can't even go to the Burn this year because that aforementioned shitheel wanted his struck. And look, so obviously don't steal shit. But if for whatever reason, be it desperation or some kind of compulsion you do end up turning to a life of crime, steal from, I don't know, pharmaceutical company execs or Mitch McConnell or something. Don't steal from an artist who's just trying to art. Champion assumes that the elephants were probably destroyed and disposed of by the thief, but he's hoping that maybe someone, somewhere might see something or hear something. So I guess if a dude in his late 20's rolls up in an '06 Silver Ford 250 and offers to sell you a pair of elephant sculptures on stilts, maybe call the cops?

Or better yet, if you feel that you're not in any immediate danger, trip him or something and then remind him that there's a special place in hell for people who steal from artists. Anyway, see you when I get back.

Specifically the part of hell where the creepy blue bird thing
lights your ass on fire, eats you and then poops you out
of its ovipositor into hole that leads to like, double hell.

Not sure who to root for here...

We don't go a week without a mass shooting, Greenland just had a funeral for its first glacier lost to climate change and the President is pro-white supremacy, but sure, let's boycott Sony.

It's good to know that we have our priorities straight.

Pictured: Toby McGuire in 2002's
"The Spiderman," an early talkie.

So remember back in 2015 when Sony, the company who holds the movie rights to Spider-Man, and Marvel Studios, the company who owns most of the rest of the Marvel superhero film rights signed a deal that let them borrow Spider-Man for some of the MCU movies? You don't? Yeah, I didn't either, I had to look it up. It was the reason Tom Holland was cast as yet another Spider-Man after Toby McGuire was deemed to elderly to play the role and his replacement Andrew Garfield's two Spider-Man movies kinda sucked.

Yeah, but why didn't Disney just use
the Gauntlet to wish for more resources?

But the why's aren't so important as the what's and the MCU Spider-Man movies made a shitload of money of which Marvel was getting 5% and Sony got the rest. Shitty deal right? Well, Disney who recently devoured Marvel Pictures and in so doing gained their very life energy as well as their intellectual properties, thought so too. With the original deal up for renegotiation Disney would like to go 50/50 on future Spider-Mans...Spiders-men? Anyway, Sony balked and now like someone snapped a magic rainbow wish glove, Spider-Man is out of the MCU.

"Look what we've been reduced to.
I mean, we're human beings, damnit!"

-Some fans

So why should you care? You shouldn't. You absolutely shouldn't. But some people do. According to this, while this happened like today (well, yesterday now), fans are already venting their outrage on social media which, I know, it's often hard to distinguish specific rage from the background of anger and vitriol, but if it helps, they're using #boycottsony so you know what to be upset about. They're posting lists of Sony produced movies so fans can avoid seeing them and some are even threatening to trade in their PS4's for Xboxes. Like barbarians.

"It's 50/50 or we walk and look at me.
I'm not fucking around. Ho-ho!"

-Disney's lead negotiator

And look, does this suck? Sure. Tom Holland was a great Spider-Man (but not the best) and his character was one of the highlights of the over-long needlessly confusing Avengers Infinity Whatever. But is a boycott in support of Disney really worth it? They own everything. Star Wars, The Simpsons, all the rest of the Marvel characters. Everything. And I'm not leaping to the defense of Sony here, but Marvel did sell them the Spider-Man film rights in the first place and Disney knew that going in and holy shit, they're asking for a 45% increase, which is, you know, a lot, so shouldn't people be equally upset at Disney too?

Again, not taking sides here, both are giant corporations, neither or whom give a shit about Spider-Man or the narrative implications of his absence from the MCU. They're just there to leverage IPs and meet box office projections. I guess what I'm saying is it's not worth getting upset over...which isn't helpful, I know. Ok, fine, then just boycott both of them because holy shit at the end of the day these are grown-ass adults fighting over Spider-Man.

"Twenty-five percent of first dollar gross box office and a
percentage of merchandising rights to be negotiated later in
good faith or I will choke you to death right here, right now."

-Grown ass adults 

fighting over Spider-Man

Do we just live in Ready Player One now?

Oh don't give me that look, there're like
twelve people on the entire planet and two
of them have the same dumb haircut.

Finally, after thirty five years we're finally going to get some closure on the fate of a magic kingdom so legendarily populated by idiots that no one ever put together that their blonde, mop headed muscle-bound prince was also secretly the blonde, mop headed sword-wielding hero who only showed up when the aforementioned prince was unexpectedly called out of the room every time monsters or robots or whatever attacked. Yup He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is going to be a thing again for some reason.

And get this, because time is a flat circle and all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again, the director of every movie teens in the mid-90's loved but maybe don't hold up so well today, Kevin Smith, is the revival's executive producer and show runner.

I actually like Kevin Smith, but for real, maybe
don't revisit Chasing Amy. It's...uncomfortable...

I even found the Xenial website,
though I'm no closer to understanding
what it is they sell. Or do. 

Did...did I just blow your xenial mind? Huh? What's a xenial? I'm glad I pretended you asked. I mean, this shit's not going to explain itself. Xenial is not, as the name would suggest, an anti-anxiety medication nor is it a cloud-based technology partner that is going to help you grow your online brand and-oh shit, it actually is one of those. Now that we're all just making up new nonsense words, I guess we were bound to end up with homographs every now and then. Where was I?

Right xenial. It's a generation. Xenials is a new, made up word to describe people like me who were born in between 1977 and 1983 and who don't quite fit neatly into the millennial category. Yeah, it's another dumb and meaningless term used to arbitrarily classify people based on what generation someone is born into.

From the people who brought you youtube videos of
kids confronted with obsolete technology. 

On the bright side, whatever post-millenials
are called will be able to take advantage
of Manhattan's soon to be lower rents.

I say it's dumb, but I'm kind of glad a term exists. I mean, I will be goddamned if I'm going to let myself get lumped in to Gen X. The characters on Friends with their gigantic New York apartment that they somehow paid for working just one job-and wasn't Joey a failed actor? Anyway, they were Gen X. We xenials meanwhile will be swimming to our retirement jobs at Amazon fulfillment centers to pay off crushing medical and student debt long after the Gen X'ers are dead. Which brings us back to He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Doesn't it?

Doesn't matter. What does matter is that Smith showed up Power-Con which is, somehow, Comic-Con but just for She-Ra and He-Man. There he announced:

Eternia-ly? Oh Kevin you're better than
 this...wait, you are better than this, right?

"I'm Eternia-ly [sic] grateful to Mattel TV and Netflix for entrusting me not only with the secrets of Grayskull, but also their entire Universe...we pick up right where the classic era left off to tell an epic tale of what may be the final battle between He-Man and Skeletor...this is the Masters of the Universe story you always wanted to see as a kid!"

-Kevin Smith, expertly intoning

the marketing copy he was handed

I was going to make a joke about Tom
Cruise being too old to be a fighter pilot,
but holy shit, does he sleep in a coffin
full of his native soil or something?

So to be clear, this isn't a reboot or a reimagining like the new-ish She-Ra cartoon, but a straight up continuation of the blatant toy commercial we all remember so fondly and hazily. And I think that's super, but I can't help but wonder if everything really needs to be a re-tread of something else. Like, The X-Files came back, Top Gun 2 is for some reason a movie that exists even Captain Picard is getting a new show. Veronica Mars, Twin Peaks, Terminator 6 which is also somehow Terminator 3b. It's like movies and television are just eating themselves.

The little girl represents film and TV
producers and the flakes are, let's say,
Riverdale and season 3 of The Crown

Which, whatever, I don't want to be one of those people who bemoan that creativity is dead, I mean, Hamlet was a remake, so who am I to kvetch? But there is like a lot of stuff to watch. There are literally not enough hours in the average human lifespan to soak it all in. And sure, no one should, but like too many kelp flakes floating on the surface of the fish bowl, we're just going to keep eating until our stomachs burst. Our media stomachs? I guess. Look, it's not the best analogy.

I guess what I'm getting at is why in the midst of such a glut of-uhh...and I'm sorry, but I hate this word, content-why anyone feels the need to squeeze in another revival? Is it that there's such an emphasis on profitability that it's way safer to go with something that has a built in fan base and rely on nostalgia rather than risk money and resources on new, creative-huh? Why...why are the people in suits laughing at-was it something I...said...

"Congratulations! And it only took, what, your entire life to catch on?"

-Content creators

Ich bin ein Greenlander

See this is what happens when we elect a lunatic to high off-sorry, this is what happens when a two hundred year old voting system designed to make underpopulated states feel appreciated overrides the popular will of the people and installs a blundering sociopath with delusions of tacky, narcissistic grandeur into what will soon no longer be the most powerful office in the world.

Yeah, don't worry, I'm not going to rail against our broken electoral system
this time, instead we're going to talk about Greenland. A country whose
name used to be ironic, but then you know, climate change.

The Danish krone is widely regarded
as Europe's most delicious currency. 

What is what happens? Oh, this. The current President, probably in one of his many incoherent ramblings, has been tossing about the idea of buying Greenland from Denmark. No, really. Or maybe not really. Who can say? We crossed the line between alarmingly erratic and self-parody back in 2017. Anyway, the self-governing, but financially dependent island relies on Denmark for defense as well as it's annual budget of 6.2 billion Danish krone (about half a billion U.S.).

And according to the Wall Street Journal this supposedly all started when the former host of The Apprentice heard that perhaps Denmark was tired of floating the protectorate and maybe wanted to sell. Trump, being a real estate mogul then ran it up the flag poll to see who takes a knee.

Oh, so Denmark probably feels about Greenland the way
those of us in the blue states feel about the red states.

Above: That time Trump sold the
rest of the country to the Russians.

The WSJ, who themselves are referring to unnamed and possibly fictional White House officials, said that the idea appealed to Trump not just because of the island's natural resources and strategic value but also as some kind of legacy of his presidency. You know, like Jefferson with the Louisiana Purchase or when Andrew Johnson bought Alaska from the Russians. I'd have thought he'd have been satisfied with his legacy of unprecedented vitriol and a resurgence of white nationalism, but hey, here we are.

Casinos are business where people with
an addiction throw money at rigged
games. How do you fuck that up?

Like, this is a terrible idea and someone will stop him, right? I know his handlers have been pretty laissez faire up to this point (they are Republicans), but I mean, even they can see that this is insane, right? I know he's like a businessman and totally thinks he knows what he's doing when it comes to wheeling and dealing, but he's also kind of a shitty businessman with a history of the stiffing people who work for him and he's declared bankruptcy like four times. Four.

"Well, it wouldn't be the first time..."

-Andrew "Trail of Tears" Jackson

And besides, the last thing the fifty-six thousand Danish citizens on the island are going to want to do is become Americans right now. And speaking of, hasn't most of his presidency been about keeping people from becoming Americans? To suddenly turn around and-huh? What's that? Oh, right. Yeah, I suppose Danish people are probably pretty white...but there are indigenous people living in Greenland too, what's he going to do? Kick them out? Oh...oh my God...that's exactly what he'd do.

So is this for real? I don't know. I can't imagine that the King of Denmark would be so cruel as to sell his own subjects to a smirking buffoon. But Trump is apparently visiting Denmark next month and he is the kind of reckless goon to that would put in an offer without checking with the rest of us first. So I guess what I'm saying is someone needs to check his briefcase.

"I'm prepared to make you an offer for Greenland, it's a very wonderful
offer, everyone says so, so much money, you won't even believe how
much money. It's really such a deal, just a tremendous deal for you."

-Trump cracking open a briefcase

containing $200,000 and some gift 

cards for his hotel and resort chain

Yeah, but it could be gayer.

So I'm holding off on playing the new Fire Emblem game for two reasons. One, I'm kind of busy and the last one of these I played consumed an amount of my time equivalent to a masters degree. And two, there are multiple paths through the game and if I want a same sex romance option, I have to basically choose Slythrin.

Sure they'll enjoy, rich, well-rounded lives full of professional achievement
but  I'll have played like, a ton of video games, and they can't say the same.

What am I supposed to do?
Not adjust the brow depth? 

Huh? Where are you going? It's ok, I'll explain. So when I play a game that requires me to choose a character that then locks me in to a path for the duration, I agonize. There have been games where I've spent more time on the character creation menu than on playing the actual game. And as grown ass adult with like, a job, I probably only have time to play through this once. That means pouring over online strategy guides until I settle on the perfect character.

Which brings us to my dilemma. Fire Emblem games have a mechanic by which the characters, including the player character, develop relationships with one another and can even get married which boosts your characters stats when you pair them up in combat. You know, just like in real life.

And do you, Dennis, promise to love, honor and cherish Cheryl?
To give her a plus 4 to her attack and to cast heal when she's low on HP?

-A Line Nine Officiant

Finally, a game for the idiots who
came up with this nonsense.

And also just like real life, same sex marriages have only recently been introduced. In Three Houses you choose between either a male or a female version of the protagonist as well as a Hogwartsian house to align yourself with at the game's magic/war academy. Both of these factors dictate which characters the player can romance and ultimately marry, which has a direct bearing on how the game plays out. But there is one male/male relationship option, three female/female options and like three million (slight exaggeration) heterosexual relationship options.

Above: Namco reinforcing
heteronormative Pac-relationships.

I know, I know, it's just a dumb video game and it doesn't really matter if my imaginary level nine Paladin or whatever is pretend married to an equally fictitious male or female level eleven black mage, except that it kind of does. Games have had storylines since Zork, and it's been almost forty years since Ms. Pac-Man and Pacman met, fell in love and had a baby. Like, in the game. Gross. But it's only very recently that there's been any queer representation so yeah, if that's an option, I'm going to take it. It just kind of sucks that said option locks players into one specific path out of dozens.

Anyway, I'll eventually cave. I mean, it's not like I need time to work on my dissertation, and it's great that there are queer characters in the game at all, but it seems like it would have been an easy thing to just make all the support characters bi. And before anyone starts quoting statistics and Kinsey scales, I'd point out that we're talking about a game with wizards. Wizards. Representation isn't going to kill the verisimilitude.

Pictured: magic flying goddamn horses.
Not pictured: the broad spectrum of human sexuality.

Ken Cuccinelli: wordsmith.

Pictured: the President humping the flag.

Look, I know that nothing some idiot says in a dumb nerd blog is ever going to persuade Trump fans who have stuck with him through all the Russia stuff, the sexual assault accusations, the conspiracy theories and the open racism that it's time to jump ship but what is it going to take? These are people who pride themselves on patriotism and justify whatever batshit comes out of the White House by insisting that they just love American than the rest of us, but holy shit, this guy.

Which guy? Ken Cuccinelli, the head of Immigration Services who suggested that we should change the words to Emma Lazurus' The New Colossus, you know, the sonnet written about the Statue of Liberty? He'd like to change it to better reflect the Trumpian worldview.

You know, this worldview.

I guess "no poors" didn't scan.

Instead of crying with silent lips: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." In an NPR interview with Rachel Martin, Cuccinelli said he would rather it read: "Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and will not become a public charge..." instead. And I think this says a lot about Cuccinelli. Not just that he shouldn't write poetry, but that he's a racist, classist shitheel who shouldn't write poetry. Or vote.

"Now we don't have to sound racist when we
reject applicants. We can just check "too poor.'"

This all because of the Trump administration is instituting a new policy designed to make it even harder to emigrate to the U.S. Soon Green Card applicants will have to prove that they are unlikely to ever need public assistance. If they can't, Immigration Services can reject their application on the grounds that they'd be a drain on the tax payer. If it sounds like a needlessly cruel and hypocritical rule designed by racists to make it easier to reject immigrants based on national origin, it's because it is needlessly cruel and hypocritical.

I mean, first of all, never needing public assistance is something most of us can't promise. Second of all, is immigration really the number one crisis facing America? I'm no economist, but the national deficit isn't $800 billion because of immigrants, it's $800 billion because the game show host most of us didn't vote for is mortgaging our future to corporations.

Speaking of public assistance, how many golf trips have we paid for?

That's-a spicy bit of historical irony!

Also, while illegal immigration is all the right wants to talk about, we're like what, ten years out from murdering each other in the streets over drinking water? Can we maybe focus? Look, I'm not saying we, as a country, have a sterling record when it comes to living up to our slogan as a "nation of immigrants." In fact, the year before Lazarus wrote her poem, President Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law. But for real, it's 2019 and a guy with a name like Cuccinelli should know better.

Anyway, I guess what I'm missing here is how come the right is allowed to pass themselves off as the party of patriotism while at the same time supporting-with rabid foam ferocity-an administration that hates brown people so much that they want to take a chisel to the plaque under the Statue of Liberty?

Sure this guy's spouting a lot of misogynistic, anti-labor, white supremacist,
xenophobic nonsense, but I mean, look at that shirt. He must be like, super patriotic.

I'm sure we'll all sleep more soundly...

Finally, some corporate responsibility. Walmart, in response to last weekend's mass shooting at one of their stores in El Paso, Texas, by a white nationalist with mental issues, is going to make sure nothing like this ever happens again by going right to the root of the problem. Which again, to be clear, is violent white nationalists with access to firearms. Yup, Walmart is halting sales of and pulling in-store ads and demos for guns.

Above: people walking outdoors and enjoying life without the fear that a
white nationalist might have a bad day, drive to Walmart and go on a rampage.

Pictured: The effective range of
firearms when James Madison
wrote the Second Amendment. 

Wait, did I say guns? I meant video games. They're pulling violent video game displays (and maybe the games themselves? It's fuzzy), despite the complete absence of any evidence whatsoever of a relationship between video game violence and real life gun violence. Oh, and sure, Walmart will continue to sell guns. Pulling guns from the stores would mean repudiating the nonsense and patently false link between video games and mass shootings and maybe even calling in to question the interpretation of the Second Amendment that insists that everyone should have assault rifles.

Anyway, here's what Walmart's CEO has to say on last weeks shootings:

Pictured: Doug McMillon resolving to 

work to understand the issues that arise.

"As it becomes clearer that the shooting in El Paso was motivated by hate, we are more resolved than ever to foster an inclusive environment where all people are valued and welcomed...we will work to understand the many important issues that arise from El Paso and Southaven, as well as those that have been raised in the broader national discussion around gun violence."

-Doug McMillon, CEO and master of

the vague, noncommittal public statement

I mean at this point,
why even have a dog?

Motivated by hate? Like, I'm not proud of it, but I hate things. Black olives, dogs in strollers, Mitch McConnell's smug turtle face. The specific hate behind the El Paso shooting is the hatred of non-white people by white people who love guns. So it's a little weird that Walmart is talking about video games. I guess I get it if it's a move born out of sensitivity to the victims. Like, take the new Wolfenstein ads down for a while. Fine. But why are they still selling actual, real guns?

Oh, right, because blaming violent video games doesn't require anyone to reevaluate their worldview or accept responsibility for contributing to a culture of violence and racism, it doesn't upset the average Walmart customer or shareholder and most importantly it doesn't offend the gun lobby. Fortunately for Walmart there is no video game lobby to organize a boycott. Theirs is a move designed for maximum placation with minimum action.

I know I feel safer knowing that radicalized white nationalists
can't get their hands on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

Today in unicorns:

In a startling turn of events, a Republican, like an actual member of the GOP called the President out on the fountain of reckless nonsense that has so endeared him to racists. Ok, now settle down, he's a state legislator from Nebraska, but still, his Twitter rant against party's reaction to the El Paso shootings is a refreshing change from the usual GOP tactic of blaming video games, mental illness and Obama.

Pictured: Representative John McCollister.

Yeah, but like an alarming percentage
of them are like, super-racist so...

The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy in our country. As a lifelong Republican, it pains me to say this... I of course am not saying that all Republicans are white supremacists nor am I saying the the average Republican is even racist. We have Republican senators and representatives who look the other way and say nothing for fear that it will negatively affect their elections.

-Rep. John McCollister, shocking fellow 

Republicans with his use of proper 

capitalization and spelling 

Oh, they're not? I stand corrected.
I mean, they don't just let you
put anything on a tee shirt.

Right? He then went on to remind his party that if they're going to continue waving Abraham Lincoln around that maybe they should stop acting like goddamn Nathan Bedford Forest. Anyway, shortly after his admonishment, the GOP joined Democrats in condemning white nationalism and President Trump's constant drumbeat of race-baiting, have agreed to reinstate the assault weapons ban and have declared in no certain terms that hate speech has no place in the Republican party.

Pictured: Ryan Hamil-look, I know they're
the party of fiscal responsibility, but maybe
get a real photographer instead of whoever
does the high school yearbook photos?

And so dawns a new day of peace and cooperation in America. Just kidding. Nebraska GOP executive director Ryan Hamilton called on John McCallister to resign. No, really:

John McCollister has been telegraphing for years that he has little if nothing in common with Republican voters...by constantly advocating for higher taxes, restrictions on Americans' Second Amendment rights, and the pro-abortion lobby. His latest false statement about Republicans should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention, and we're happy he has finally shed all pretense of being a conservative.

-Ryan Hamilton asking McCollister to

leave the GOP for not being racist enough

For your safety, you must be at least
this racist to join the Nebraska GOP.

So first of all, fuck him, nobody is pro-aborition, it's pro-choice. I'm really over Republicans re-naming things they don't agree with. Next, I know I'm being super-pedantic here, but the phrase he's going for is little or nothing. Little if nothing makes Hamilton sound like an idiot which is only slightly better than sounding like a racist. Because we should probably focus more on how he's saying that McCollister's denouncement of white supremacy is not something he has in common with his constituents. Did...did Ryan Hamilton not read his own press release? He doesn't even mention McCollister's criticisms.

Like, he was calling on Republicans to do ask some serious questions about their values but instead Hamilton just launched into some talking points. I mean, from Hamilton's comments you'd think that the entire Republican platform was anti-tax, pro-gun, anti-choice and that they, as a party, are just totally comfortable with white supremacy...which...oh...oh, I see.

Oh no! They're on to us! Pfft...took you long enough...losers.

-Republicans