Suddenly everybody's Christopher Gadsden...

From the city that brought
you the Garbage Plate.

I just want to be clear that being asked to follow simple and reasonable precautions to slow the spread of a super-contagious airborne pathogen that has killed tens of thousands of Americans isn't the same things as say, having your freedom taken away. I mention this because idiots. Specifically the idiots involved in Re-Open Rochester, a grassroots organization for dumbs that feel that their rights are being brutally stolen by shelter in place orders. Oh, and did I mention they're from my hometown?

Because they are. Fortunately it's only like a dozen of them, but still, it's disappointing. Anyway, they gathered outside the swankiest grocery store in the area's richest suburb to demand that everyone get back to work. Which is weird. Not only because grocery stores are already open, but because we're in the middle of a goddamn pandemic.

Seriously. It's open right now. They'll even put groceries in your
car for you. Speaking of which, get back in your car. Go home. 

Pictured: the air six feet from
Susan Barrett's mouth.

(source: for all we know)

One protester, Susan Barrett, a nurse, an actual nurse, pulled down her mask and vented her complaints along with, I presume, a cloud of microscopic globules of spit containing potentially any number of viruses, directly at local reporter Kayla Green saying (and spraying):

"We're closing down our country for something that, yes, is really, really awful, but I think right now the cure is worse than the disease."

-Susan Bar-seriously? A nurse?

Not saying they're bad parents, just
dumb parents. I don't think that's unfair.

So couple of things. First, we're not closing down our country, that's been sort of the problem all along. And second, the disease is a slow death drowning in your own mucus so no, the stay at home order is objectively not worse than the disease. Also, if you watch the footage you'll see kids. These assholes brought their kids with them and one of their dumb demands is that schools should re-open as well. Huh? Yes, as noted earlier, in the middle of a goddamn pandemic.

And look, I know that this is plunging us into what may well be another Great Depression. And I know it sucks for them to have to be at home with their own kids. I mean, their kids are truly the worst. But this sucks for everybody. And it sucks more for people currently suffering through it for weeks on end, and it sucks way more for people who die of it.

Huh, maybe they should have been smarter with their vote?
What? Oh, like these protestors aren't at least 90% Trumpies.

Pictured: Deborah Wallace, one of the
social problems she's complaining about.

"Obviously people who are at risk should take precautions? ...you keep everybody locked up forever, you face a lot of social issues and so I think we need to look at the whole picture not just this one, tiny issue of people getting sick. Not that that's insignificant, but it's small when you look at all of society. We need to look at the big picture here."

-Deborah Wallace, local protester

opining on the survival of the fittest

Look, I don't know Wallace's political leanings, but again, rich part of town, demanding that we sacrifice the elderly and infirm for the good of the economy? I'm betting that she's all about the needs of the many when it comes to re-opening retail and restaurants or whatever, but would lose her mind if anyone suggests that we re-evaluate how much of America's wealth is in the hands of the few.

They're not insignificant, but the 1% is small when
you look at all of society, right Deborah? So, let's get'em.

"Save our Livelihoods." I mean,
is it so hard to plan ahead?

I guess what I find infuriating, aside from the protest signs with all the letters scrunched at the end because they ran out of room, is the use of Revolutionary Way imagery. I mean, shelter in place isn't the same thing as a progeria-addled King thousands of miles away levying unreasonable taxes. It's what you do so you, your kids, your parents, the server you're berating because your fries are cold, and everyone else you interact with on a daily basis doesn't die horribly.

Like, waving Gadsden's "Don't Tread On Me" and thirteen star flags is nonsense. Poppycock even. Really they're just selfishly and shortsightedly endangering the lives of others, including their own kids; who again are terrible, but they don't deserve any of this. So if you see these people out and about, I suggest you boo them. Booo! And maybe tell them to save the Sons of Liberty crap for the next time someone tries to make it harder to vote.

Well why don't you dump some tea in the harbor over it?

Shut up shut up shut up!

So you know how you can't shout "fire" in a crowded theatre? Well you shouldn't and-huh? Oh, they were big rooms full of chairs all facing the same way and people would gather and watch a movie or a play or see a concert. You know, in the before time.

Yup, sat right next to each other, no masks or anything.
Just hundred of people...breathing all over one another. 

To be clear, it's ok to say it if the theatre
is actually on fire. Or full of gremlins.

According to my exhaustive research on wikipedia, the origin of that phrase is actually pretty messed up. It comes from a Supreme Court Case, Schenck vs. United States. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used the analogy of someone shouting fire in a theatre as an example of unprotected speech. That is, things you're just not allowed to say, ever, despite the First Amendment, because saying them poses a clear and present danger to others.

Which, actually sounds kind of reasonable, but the unprotected speech Holmes' analogy was comparing to starting a human stampeded in the middle of whatever passed for entertainment in nineteen-diggities was protesting the draft. The World War One draft. You know, the one with all the mustard gas and trenches?

It was about a hundred years before the invention of streaming so
maybe dying in one of Europe's many trenches was preferable?

Pictured: not a protest so much as a bunch
of armed thugs violating shelter in place orders.
But they're white so evidently they get a pass.

(source: double standards)

Fortunately, this was later limited to instances where the speaker is trying incite people to break the law. Which is why you can protest wars. Although not pipelines. Because Republicans. But back to my damn point: could someone please tell the goon most of us didn't vote for to shut up and stop offering ludicrous, non-sensible medical advice? Because during a Homeland Security briefing on how researchers are testing the effects of disinfectants and UV light has on COVID-19, the President started offering his nonsense opinion on a subject about which he knows nothing at all.

Is he volunteering to insert one
of these to see what happens?
Because he is welcome to try.

"So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous uh, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it? And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body. Which you can do, either through the skin or uh, in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too? Sounds interesting."

-Dr. President Trump

Undeterred by the rapid clicks of reporters' cameras trying to capture for posterity what must certainly have sounded like a man having a stroke, he went on saying:

Above: a tremendous number.

"And then I see that disinfectant knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that? By injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see it does a tremendous number on the lungs so it would be interesting to check that."

-The guy behind the wheel, making 

decisions that directly affect our 

lives-how has it come to this?

"Alas, poor York, he was just tremendous.
Everyone thought so, except the media. Mean
 people. Wouldn't let him have disinfectant."

I mean...what the actual? Somewhere under all that ridiculous hair does he think the stupid gibberish that falls out of his mouth will somehow coagulate into a cure for the pandemic? That he, a man exquisitely unqualified to run a casino much less the Government, is going to come up with a solution that's eluded doctors and scientists around the world for months. It's like his thought process is a living example of a million monkeys at a million typewriters except they're not even aiming for Hamlet, they're just hoping no one notices that he has no idea what he's even saying.

If this was just ruining the economy or starting a never-ending war we'd all just be rolling our eyes and waiting for the next President to come in and fix it (and then the Republican after them to take credit for it). But lives are at risk here. People listen to this man. Dumb ones, but people. And somewhere, right now, one of them is loading a homemade IV bag with Lysol.

Really the only question is do you want your lungs to
smell like citrus or cherry blossom and pomegranate?

Wait, is capitalism just re-sellers at this point?

Relax, the government has top men
working on it right now. Top. Men.

You know what's a serious problem? Our country's shortage of personal protective equipment and COVID-19 test kits. That is a thing that is real. What's not so serious a problem is our country's shortage of Nintendo Switches. But they have one thing in common: both are artificially scarce. Supplies because the Federal government is run by a gameshow host who is seizing them from states and piling them up somewhere, while Switches are in short supply because of bots.

Robots: they came for our jobs, our
little plastic discs and now our video
games. Enough is enough I say!

So to be clear, we're going to talk about the Switch shortage. Not because it's in any way more important than medical supplies, but because everything is terrible right now and I'd just rather talk about something less life or death. Oh, and when I say the shortage is because of bots, I'm sorry to say that's bots as in software, not actual robots running around and scooping up all the games consoles. That would probably be way more interesting, but let's make do with what we've got.

According to this article from Vice, jerks are using bots-that is automated tools that buy things online at speeds no human hoarder could possibly match-to buy up the supply of Switches, which were already hard to find. Not because they necessarily want to play Animal Crossing, but because they want to turn around on Amazon or eBay or whatever and sell them to people who actually want them, but for way more.

Pictured: way more. 

I realize the line between reseller and
retailer is somewhat academic, but at
least retailers generally put on pants.

Some people might argue that this is how capitalism works. That supply and demand determine the price. Others would argue that this is how parasitism works. These resellers didn't design, manufacture or distribute the thing, they just bought a bunch and resell them at a markup. Which, ok, that's how retail works, and look, I'm not defending retail as a thing but there's a difference between customers buying things through a supply chain and some rando inserting themself into that supply chain just to jack up the price.

"Need tickets? I got Oedipus Rex, Hadestown,
Antigone, I got'em all. Seventy-five dracmas."

-some ancient greek reseller

This isn't new, you might remember this same thing happened with the NES mini consoles a couple years ago, and it's not at all unique to video games. Resellerr have been puling this nonsense since the invention of tickets. But it's still among the shittier ways people make money particularly in the middle of a crisis that is sticking millions of parents at home with their children. Which I guess in many ways is the parents' fault...oh well, and I suppose I should say it's one of the shittier ways regular people make money. Billionaires on the other hand can do kind of the same thing, but way worse.

Ok mouse, I need you to guard this cheese,
but whatever you do don't...goddamnit...

Did you see this lunacy about those private equity goons who tried to buy .org? As in the domain that like every non-profit in the country uses? Yeah, last second tangent here, but some private equity firm, ironically calling itself Ethos Capital, tried to buy .org from the organization that hands out domains, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN. Which, in additional irony is itself a non-profit. So there's exactly zero chance this wouldn't have come back to bite them in the ass. Cool idea, ICANN.

The good news is California Attorney General got involved and said no UCANN'T. The bad news is that this is a thing that can happen in our broken, broken system. If they did get away with it, Ethos Capital wouldn't have to produce anything, they'd simply own the thing non-profits need to conduct business and would be free to to charge whatever. I guess what I want to know is how far are we from pitchforks and torches? Five? Six months?

"I'm sure they weren't going to gouge us. I mean, they're Ethos Capital.
And if you can't trust private equity firms, who can you trust?"

-Göran Marby, ICANN President

explaining his well thought out plan

What? Starfleet is an essential service.

Hey, let's talk about something other than the bleak, crushing reality in which we live. Something like-huh? Yeah...Star Trek. How'd you-ok fine, I get it. I only talk about like three things: Star Trek, politics and video games. Guess you got me sussed. Obviously this is going to get pretty nerdy from here on out, so now's the time to bail.

Or we could discuss Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Final Unity.
It's a Star Trek video game about space politics...or we could not do that.

Above: Burton reads beloved children's
book, Go the Fuck to Sleep, to a bunch of
college kids. With swears and everything.

Still with me? Super. So last week, LeVar Burton told Entertainment Weekly that he'll be-well, he told a reporter from Entertainment Weekly. He didn't like just talk to a copy of the magazine. Anyway, he told them that he'll be reprising his character Geordi LaForge from TNG, on Star Trek: Picard. That feeling you're feeling? That's hope for the future. Sure, we're in the grip of a global pandemic. Yes, idiots are protesting the very life saving prevention measures that are keeping it from getting even worse. And ok, the President is calling for people to carry out armed rebellions. But this news is-

-actually all of that is really pretty terrible and nothing is going to make it ok. But let's focus on something that isn't a spiral of horror and misery. Hey, Geordi's back! And, and, he let slip that we may see even more of the TNG cast return.

Pictured: The TNG cast seen here with their awful season one hairstyles.

Ow! My heartstrings! 

I mean, Picard was teetering on the brink of being a full-on TNG revival already. Season one already gave us-wait, spoilers for Picard? Have you seriously not watched it yet? I'll wait. Back? Cool. Season one had Riker and Troi and Seven of Nine from Voyager. Not to mention Brent Spiner playing Dr. Soong's heretofore unmentioned non-android son and ghost in the machine Data. And Sir Patrick Stewart went on The View and invited Whoopi Goldberg to return as Guinan, the Enterprise's bartender/hippie aunt. Which, why isn't it just a full-on TNG revival?

Like, at last count there is something like, what? Seven new Star Trek shows either on or in the works? There's Discovery, Picard, maybe a Section 31 show with Michelle Yeoh and a Captain Pike show and two that's right, two animated series. Which is a lot, but I don't think anyone would mind if CBS just brought back The Next Generation.

The fact that that list doesn't already include an
Adventures of Captain Geordi LaForge is inexcusable. 

Incidentally, that number of times is zero.

Yeah, new characters and new storylines are great and all, but I don't know. Maybe this is just the weeks of isolation talking, but I just want more TNG. And yeah, I know there's like a hundred and seventy-eight episodes, and they're all streaming, but it's been twenty-five years and there're only so many times you can watch the one where Dr. Crusher has sex with a candle ghost. Or the one where the crew rescues a colony of Irish stereotypes. Or that one where swingers want to execute Wesley for stepping on their flower bed.

Well? Are you squeeing with joy right
now or are you a heartless monster?

It may seem weird that I'm pointing out the worst Next Gen episodes as part of my argument that CBS should be making more, but what we need now is well-worn familiarity, not quality. I mean, if we're being honest with ourselves, nostalgia is really what brought us in for Star Trek: Picard. Look, I think it was good in it's own right, but I'm a fan to begin with. And c'mon, tell me you didn't squee with joy every time our favorite seventy-nine-year-old shakespearian actor said "engage."

Look, everything is terrible right now and we're all trapped indoors with nothing but repeats. We need more TNG, and reuniting the cast for Star Trek: Picard is basically half way there. Why not go all in and get the band back together? Huh? Oh, right...the global pandemic.

Pictured: that time a virus got loose on the ship and Troi
turned into a fish. Huh. Wait, you don't suppose that I just
remember this show being better than it actually was?

Like Akhenaten, but with dumber hair.

I mean, I know we're all sick of this guy, and nothing he does should surprise us at this point, but is he even for real with this? What guy and what this? Why, the President and this: the President is holding up everyone's checks so he can put his name on them. An unprecedented move in the extremely precedented history of stimulus checks.

The long and storied history of stimulus checks..which, wait, you
don't suppose there's something wrong with our economy that
we keep needing these frequent stimulus bailouts, do you?

Massive government bureaucracies
are famous for their ability to adapt
to last minute changes, right? 

Ok, but is it true? Well, according to the IRS, no. They say this won't hold them up, but two anonymous treasury officials say yes, of course it will. So who to believe? Obviously I'm inclined to believe the story because I can't stand his stupid face, but let's try to be objective here. Could these anonymous officials be making this up? Sure, but a change in procedure has to cause some kind of delay. There's no way going back and adding Trump Fun Bucks to the memo line-they said no to the signature line-isn't going to interrupt the flow.

You don't suppose Treasury Secretary
Mnuchin's just dragging his feet on the
Tubman 20 for political reasons, do you?

Hey, remember how the Treasury Department was supposed to introduce the new $20 bill last year? You know, the one with Harriet Tubman? And yet here we are, ATM's still spitting out Andrew "Trail of Tears" Jackson. In fact, according to the Treasury, the new twenty is delayed until at least 2028. But this eleventh hour totally unnecessary change to the planned disbursement of desperately needed funds is going to have no impact on the schedule? Really? None? Because I find that a little...liar-y? Is that a word? Because I find it liar-y.

So I guess the question is by how much will people's checks delayed by this. And with millions of people out of work, I feel like the acceptable amount of time to make them wait for the Treasury department to stroke Donald Trump's ego is exactly zero minutes.

Stop the presses everybody, the President is feeling under appreciated.

Just kidding. I know he was born
without the part of the brain responsible
for irony. And shame. And empathy.

But a bigger issue is whatthefuckhowdarehe? Slapping his name on these stimu-wait, hang on. Can we please stop calling these stimulus checks? They're really more like, I don't know, disaster relief checks, right? Because we're not using these to buy new iPhones or go out to the movies. Most of us are using the money to pay things like rent and bills that are piling up while we're all out of work. Or if not that, then to pay off the crushing debt we were already living under in what the President calls (ironically? It's hard to tell with him) "the greatest economy in the history of the world."

"Hey! Hey, we are job cre-creatators."

-Business guys, not even able 

to say it with a straight face

What were we talking about? Right. How dare he insist his name go on these checks. For one thing, part of what he built his entire campaign on was convincing people who literally don't know what socialism is that socialism is bad and will murder their children. Huh? Xenophobia. The rest was based on xenophobia. Oh, and for another thing, this is our goddamn money. Like, it's us getting small portion of our own money back. And even that had to be wrested from the billions of dollars GOP lawmakers were handing over to corporations.

I suppose the argument can be made that this crisis or at least its severity can and should be laid at his feet, but can't we just rename the virus after him or something? Why should he get to put his name on our money?

What? He loves having his name on things.

"Legal is whatever I say it is. Everyone
knows that. Read your Consternation."

Yeah, and speaking of, I hope someone is suing over this. I mean, the reason we've never put the President's name on these things in the past is because it's basically free advertising. Again, this isn't his money, but millions of checks are going out with his name on them, which sounds pretty partisan to me. I know as President his authority is total or whatever, but this can't be legal can it? Like, you can't turn federal funds into a campaign ad, right?

I guess we can only comfort ourselves with the knowledge that someday, who can say when? But someday, he'll be out of office and we can go about the business of chiseling his name off everything we can like some disgraced pharaoh. Oh, and telling his supporters "I told you so." Can't wait to do that. So many I told you so's.

A disgraced pharaoh who's bad at business.

Going Full Palpatine

What, are their totally lack of skills
and experience needed elsewhere?

Rest easy everyone, that gameshow host the electoral college put in office over the explicit will of the people has put together an hilariously unqualified, seven member task force uh...tasked with deciding when and how we can all start breathing all over each other again. Oh, and two of those members were going to be Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner but then the President caved and said no they're not and they never were even though they totally were.

Huh? What's that noise? Why that's the deafening cry from every Governor reminding the President about how not up to him that is and that you can't just task force a pandemic into being less contagious, to which the President tweeted:

It ƒayƒ if right here in
black and brown: No kingƒ. 

"For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President...Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect...It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons."

-The President, apparently unaware 

that the Constitution is a thing

and we know what it says

Above: America has one King. One.
And he's a creepy mascot. That's enough.

Which, no, it's not the decision of the President, and for many good reasons. One of which is just in case someone like him somehow gets to be President. Anyway, he leaned into it:

"When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total. The governors know that."

-The President, inexplicably

not being led away by doctors 

Ok, so...the governors know that when someone is President the authority is strictly laid out in the Constitution and-wait, does he not know what a President is? No seriously. I'm asking. Because he went full Palpatine on the White House Press Room today.

No, limited power. Very limited power.
That's the whole goddamn point.

People with an addiction problem
give you money and you keep it.
And he couldn't even get that right.

In response to this ludicrous claim of total, unchallenged authority by a guy who can't even keep a casino from going under much less lead the country in a crisis he was warned about years in advance, governors of several states have agreed to coordinate re-opening efforts with each other. You know, instead of waiting for the administration to get smarter. New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Connecticut have formed a regional council as have California, Washington and Oregon while several Midwestern states will be doing likewise as well.

Does...does he think everyone's dumb
but him? Is that what's going on?

The idea-as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo puts it, is to make sure "...that any plan to reopen society must be driven by data and experts, not opinion and politics." Which, and I don't know about you, but it sounds to me like a way better plan than shouting at reporters for asking valid questions and then showing them a video cribbed from Sean Hannity about how great a job you're doing. No, really, he did that. Oh, and yes, that video was totally paid for with tax payer money.

You know, I can't help but feel a swell of hope knowing that smart people are working together to make sure we come out of this safely. It almost makes me wonder if this could be taken a step further. Could you imagine some kind of federation of the states? A union in which Americans could work together in common cause under unified and competent leadership. What would that be like?

Four years ago. It would be like four years ago.

Unburnlievable!

You heard me, poutine. 

Can you believe it? No. You can't believe it. Believe what? No Burning Man this year. It's cancelled and I-huh? Burning Man? It's a big, week-long event held in the Nevada desert every year? Tens of thousands of people in hundred degree weather doing all kinds of-huh? Ok, yes, drugs, but other things too. There's art, music, poutine. I go every year and you usually have to hear about it 'round September when I come back. Although we're actually not supposed to think of it as cancelled.

Defined by what we
bring to...so a pillory? 

According to Marian Goodell, the event's CEO:

"...I'm not here to tell you we're cancelling Burning Man. No. Burning Man is a culture. It's a movement. We are not defined by one aspect of Burning Man. We are defined by what we bring to Burning Man."

-Marian Goodell, Burning Man CEO

not cancelling Burning Man, 

but not not cancelling it either

Anyway, it's off this year for the first time since it began in 1986. So big deal, right? A bunch of weirdos can't have their big weirdo party. Who cares?

It's as if eighty thousand EDM fans suddenly cried
out in terror and were then suddenly silenced. 

Ok, third worst.

And that's fair. Ish. I mean, the deeper importance to attendees not withstanding, it is basically a big party and putting thousands and thousands of people in one place with no running water, two and a half hours from the closest hospital when we're who knows how far way from a vaccine seems like a terrible idea wrapped in folly. And let's be real, Burning Man being cancelled is hardly the worst thing happening in the world right now. For most of us. For others, it's a definitely a runner up to the worst thing happening in the world right now.

Pictured: you, bailing out
of this while you still can.

I'm referring to the two hundred staff members of the Burning Man Organization, the non-profit that puts this on every year. Here, let me explain through armchair math which, if you don't care, I'd bail out now. You will almost certainly not find this as interesting as I do. Still there? Wow. Ok. So the event is capped at eighty thousand tickets. Of those, fifty thousand were sold a couple months ago in the first round. The remaining forty thousand would have been sold this month.

Six months ago, a pandemic seemed about
as likely as a Mothra attack, but here we are.

When you buy tickets, you agree to certain things like how responsible they're not if you die at the event and how non-refundable the tickets are. Even in the event of a global pandemic. No, really, that specific eventuality was added late last year before all this happened. So legally they don't have to give anyone their money back, but they are anyway because they're good people and we're mid-economic meltdown. Ok, but the event's off, so why not give everyone their money back? Well Mr. or Ms. Smarty Pants, I had the same thought, but then I consulted the inter-net.

Pictured: NASA scientists, seen here
trying to calculate rent in San Francisco.

The problem is that ticket sales make up 90% of the Org's (who again, are a non-profit) income which in addition to buying things things like seventeen hundred porta potties and, I don't know, a forty-foot wooden man we set on fire every year for some reason, also pays those two hundred staff members' salaries. Sure, the Org no longer has to build a temporary city in the middle of nowhere, but they have a responsibility to their staff. A staff and an organization that's based in San Francisco and holy shit, the rent in San Francisco.

I'm not saying don't patronize these
businesses, I'm just saying don't pay
$500 for a furry vest. Just don't.

They're asking those who can afford to do so to donate some or all of the ticket refund back to keep the Org afloat, but how many people can do that right now, and if it'll be enough are kind of open questions. The Org says in their official announcement that this is still going to mean layoffs and salary reductions for the staff and that sucks. As it's going to suck for the tiny towns just outside the event who sell attendees things like gas, food, ice, and overpriced yoga pants with LED's sewn in from vendors on the way in.

Anyway, it's going to be weird not going this year. I've been ten times. Ten. I've even made you sit through the photos which...sorry. But whatever, not going really is no big deal. A mild disappointment compared to what this means for the Org's staff and nothing compared to everything else people are going through right now. So yeah, I'll take weird any day.

Look, I love it too, but if we're being honest with ourselves,
fire-spitting metal octopi aren't essential services...