Oh toss a break to your witcher...

That sound your hearing? That's just the soft scraping noise of me rolling my cynical eyes at the news of a Witcher spin-off series.

Sorry, a spin-off of the TV adaptation of the English-language
version of some Polish novels that were popularized by a series of
video games of which most of us only noticed the third one.

Pictured: Novelist, train conductor and
mall Santa, George R. R. Martin, seen
here not working on book six.

And I don't know, maybe it'll be great. I don't like, review things on this blog because who cares what I think? But I enjoyed the Henry Cavill series. The inevitable and probably too obvious comparison was Game of Thrones since they are both grim/dark fantasies based on novels with built in fandoms and lots graphic violence and nudity to make us adults feel like we're not watching nonsense for babies. But unlike the unrelenting self-importance of GOT, The Witcher didn't feel like it took itself so goddamn seriously all the time.

Look, if you want to drive to Colonial
Williamsburg and ask, be my guest,
but I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one.

Ok, but if The Witcher was good, then more Witcher should also be good, right? Weeelll...no. Not necessarily. For one thing, we've seen exactly one season of the show so cranking out another, separate series seems a bit premature. There's striking while the iron is hot and then there's starting on another horseshoe before you've even dunked your first horseshoe in the water-or whatever. I'm not great at blacksmithing metaphors, but I guess my point is that maybe give it a minute?

Thank God. I assume. I've never
seen it, but I hate everything.

And another thing: it's a prequel. Because of course it's a prequel. And I suppose that tracks since there's also going to be a Game of Thrones prequel. Oh, and don't expect this to be the Young Witcher Chronicles, this prequel is going to be set way before the Henry Cavill series. So it's not like Deep Space Nine where characters could cross over because again and it's not even like Young Sheldon where actors play younger versions of the characters we're familiar with. This is set twelve hundred years before The Witcher.

Above: Idiots and goons. Yes, I'm
making it about him. Everything is about
him until he's out of office and in jail.

Again, maybe The Witcher: Chronicles of the Rise of the Origins of Whatever will be great. Who knows? Maybe all we've been needing to get us through the never-ending horror that is America's decline and inevitable balkanization at the hands of idiots and goons is a second TV show about characters who existed hundreds of years before the characters we found tentatively interesting in that one season of one show we all watched because George R. R. Martin's heart warming tale of incest and ice zombies ended.

Still though, I can't help but wonder why this is a prequel and not an original thing. I mean, twelve hundred years? That's a prequel to The Witcher in the same way that the Middle Ages were a prequel to Katy Perry. They both happened in the same world but are separated by so much time, what's even the point? Oh, right, brand recognition...

What? Don't give me that look. You know it's true.

Today in Omega-level campaign trolling:

Hey remember that time a photographer caught Donald Trump's poorly spelled, large-print notes about how guilty he's not (but totally is), how much quid pro quo there wasn't (there was tons) and how hoax-y the impeachment was (but totally wasn't)?

Well, it wasn't state secrets of nuclear
codes so...bright side I suppose.

"Oooooops...hope nobody saw that..."

-Joe Biden, unconvincingly

Well in a similar, more staged and more coherent move, Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden's handwritten note was caught on camera and has fueled speculation that California Senator Kamala Harris may be his VP pick. I say staged because, c'mon, no one could possibly be so careless and dumb as to wave around clearly written notes they don't want everyone to see. Ok, well, almost no one, I mean, see above.

Qualified and stands in front of
 out-of-focus flags? Yes please!

The notes, with the heading: "Kamala Harris" followed by a bunch of lines about how great she is, also contains talking points like: "Restore... Rebuild...Unite Country." And then a bit reading "VP-Highly Qualified...Diverse Group" (his caps). So it doesn't take a lot to draw a line between Harris and running mate, nor is it much of a leap to suggest that Biden is expertly and hilariously trolling Trump's previous gaffe.

Look, was Joe Biden everybody's first choice? No. Would electing him solve America's seemingly insurmountable problems and immediately undo the last four years of openly hostile governance and erosion of American values? Of course not. Still though, wouldn't it be nice to have a couple functioning adults in office?

I'm just saying is all.

Get me, talking about a sports thing...

Above: sports players playing
a sports game. Rugby, I believe.

I uh...look, understand that I'm not a sports...person. I've talked about this before, but the whole sports fandom thing exists for me in this weird alternate universe for which I have no context. From the outside it just seems like people arbitrarily choose some team to root for? Support? I don't know, but whatever it is it's like you just put on a hat or a jersey and then get really excited over the outcome of a game you have nothing to do with. Not you personally, just the general you.

Pictured: A helmet bearing the team
logo which is...wow...I mean, I know
they're changing it, but still. It's 2020...

Doesn't matter, all this is to say that I have no stake in sports whatsoever. But a subject having no bearing on one's life has never stopped anyone on the internet from having and also voicing an opinion that subject, so I'm going to chime in on this Washington D.C. football team thing. I don't care about sports and I don't live in Washington, but I, like a lot of people, have been rooting for (now I'm doing it) the people fighting to change the team's name from the incredibly offensive Washington Redskins to almost any other word in the English language. And good news: they won!

The team's owners announced recently that they'll be ditching the old name and considering alternatives with the help of "fans, business partners and alumni". In the meantime, effective yesterday, they'll be removing the previous team name and logo from everything and adopting the placeholder name:

Uh...well, it does what it says on the tin I suppose.

Most countries wouldn't put up statues to
the losers in the first place, but here we are.

Bland, sure, but it's not super-racist and that's a step in the right direction. The move comes at a time when, despite the American political right's best efforts, monuments to slavers and insurrectionists are coming down, Mississippi is changing its flag, military bases and even towns are being renamed, and maybe we, as a nation, are starting to acknowledge that maybe America has and has had a problem with racism? That maybe just maybe ignoring the centuries of injustice non-white people have endured doesn't do anything to address the underlining causes of-

-uh...I don't want to diminish the progress that dropping the old team name represents, even if the temporary name is a little m'eh, but didn't George Washington own a big planation full of enslaved people? Sure, he freed them (after he died), but still, he enslaved like a hundred and twenty three people and rented-yes, rented, dozens more. Not saying this isn't progress or that we need to go rename Washington D.C., but I don't know, maybe we aught to at least acknowledge the you know, the irony here?

Pictured: George Washington and some of the people he owned and forced to work for free...

(source: my liberal guilt, but also history)

James Cameron: Master of Understatement

Say, that's a bummer. Disney announced today that due to the, you know, the pandemic, the new Star Wars movie has been-brace yourself-delayed. In other news, Disney's making a new Star Wars movie. Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are.

It's as if millions of fans suddenly shrugged indifferently
and then suddenly went back to whatever they were doing.

What? I'm not wrong.

After the not as bad as everyone says Solo and the aggressively loud mess of nonsense cobbled together from toxic fan Tweets about how Last Jedi had too many girls in it that is Rise of Skywalker, and the general sentiment on the part of everyone everywhere that maybe it's time to give Star Wars a rest, Disney was evidently planning to do the exact opposite of giving it a rest with not one, but get this three new Star Wars movies. Yes, a Star Wars trilogy if you will.

Pictured: that time Star Wars
taught us to lower our expectations
as a way to cope with disappointment.

The new trilogy was supposed to kick off in 2022 but we're now going to have to wait until 2023-an interminable three years-to be disappointed again. Sorry was that was probably not fair, but I mean, maybe it'll be great? I don't know, I'm old enough that I remember what it was like to wait the sixteen years between Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace only to-huh. You know, now that I think of it, that kind of prepared me for the way the world in general has gone to shit. So, thank you?

He also directed Aliens and the 
two good Terminator movies, 
so go watch those instead.

It's not just Star Wars, Mulan's been delayed too as have the Avatar sequels. Yes plural. The first sequel (sigh) was supposed to come out in December of '21. According to director James Cameron on Twitter:

"There is no one more disappointed by this delay than me."

-James Cameron, making 

a massive understatement

Anyway, next time you see one of America's many dumbs who are stubbornly refusing to put on a goddamn mask and take even a hint of a whiff of a modicum of responsibility for getting the pandemic under control, be sure to thank them. Because of them we'll all have to wait until 2022 to not care about Avatar 2, but more importantly we have to wait until 2023 to see if Disney's going to make up for Rise of Skywalker. 

In addition to delaying Star Wars, these idiots are literally killing us.

Wow! Two at twice the price!

Bad news for all those video game fans who were planning on picking up two Playstation 5's on launch day later this year: the Playstation online store is limiting you to one per customer. Oh and fair warning, we're going to be talking about video games. What? I need a break from the unrelenting horror. Anyway if you need to bail, I'll understand.

One per customer means that if you want one for your mega yacht,
you'll have to make one of your servants to buy it for you.

Why buy a physical copy of a game when
you can pay Sony the exact same price to
enter into a digital licensing agreement?

Still there? Super. According to IGN, someone has looked through Sony's online store and found text that reads: "You can only purchase one version of the PS5 Console: Disc or Digital. You have already added one PS5 console to your cart." It seems to be an error message you'll get if you try to order more than one. And that disc or digital thing refers to the two different versions. One-presumably the more expensive-has a disc drive while the other-presumably for suckers-is digital only.

"Gouging, uh, finds a way."

But why the one per customer thing? Like, who even needs two of these things? Huh? Well, sure, obviously online resellers. Some enterprising parasites are already selling these things on eBay using photoshopped pics of the box. So maybe this is supposed to discourage that? But there's nothing stopping someone from buying one off of the Sony store and then ten more from other online retailers. So why even bother?

A rush of gamers wanting multiple PS5's seems even more unlikely given the price, which is one hundred percent going to be bananas. Sure, it hasn't been announced yet, but annalists who predict these sort of things think it's probably going to be around five hundred dollars. Yes, of money.

Hey, remember that time the head of Playstation told us
we should all want to work more hours to afford a PS3?
That...that didn't go well for them.

Wait, use my imagination?
Pfft...might as well read a book...

And that's based largely on the price of the high-tech components inside, but from the footage of the games we've seen so far, the improvement over the current generation of consoles is, you know, incremental. It's not like going from the use-your-imagination because "you're the dot" graphics of the Atari-era to Nintendo's "you're the pixel-y, yet identifiable as a plumber" graphics. Essentially you'd be paying five hundred dollars for marginally more realistic lighting and shorter load times.

Nothing to sneeze at, but also not something to put paying off rent for. So I guess what I'm getting at is limiting customers to one per-in the middle of a pandemic and the related economic crisis-because they're convinced that we'll all be so enticed by the vague benefits of ray-tracing seems a little, I don't know, optimistic?

On the other hand, America's rabid-foam consumerism grips
 us more tightly than any virus ever will, so, go for it, I guess. 

All the President's goons

Pictured: Goons.

I'm not like a constitutional scholar or anything, but this is some dystopic nonsense. President Trump is evidently sending some more anonymous and legally murky Federal...uh...goons? Goon fits I think. He's sending some to Chicago. Remember them? From Portland? Those unmarked, yet heavily armed, government forces who where shoving protesters into equally unmarked rental vans so they could avoid such annoying inconveniences as due process and civil liberties.

Which is weird for a number of reasons. First, because I'm not sure that's even a thing he's allowed to do. And second, because he's ostensibly a right-winger and right-wingers spent the entire Obama administration trying to convince dumbs that power-drunk Democrats were going to take their guns away and force affordable heath insurance on everybody. Why then the GOP is suddenly cool with police state tactics is a bit of a head scratcher.

"It's only a gross overreach when Democrats do it. When I do it, it's
because I'm the winningest President in the history of the world."

-That insane person half the country pretends isn't 

having a mental breakdown right before our very eyes.

Speaking of messes...

I mean, according to the President:

"We're not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia, Detroit and Baltimore and all of these, Oakland is a mess. We're not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats."

-The former host 

of The Apprentice

"Yeah, but if we identified ourselves, we
might be held accountable for our actions."

-I dunno, some guy with a gun

I think, and this is admittedly some guess work on my part because those sentences don't actually make sense, but I think he's citing the recent unrest in these cities as justification for him unilaterally sending in Federal agents over the objection of elected officials. But is it legal? According to my exhaustive wikipedia research, there is something called the Insurrection Act which allows a President to deploy the military in the event of civil disorder, but he hasn't actually invoked it. Also, these aren't military personnel. At least, we don't think they are. 

Who can say? The ones supposedly coming to Chicago are ICE, but aren't going there to enforce immigration, they're going to fight crime. Ironically, I suppose. Past Presidents have invoked the Insurrection Act but usually at the request of a Mayor or Governor. The notable exceptions being when the Federal Government had to force some states to accept that Black people are entitled to civil rights. This is arguably the opposite of that.

Pictured: That time Eisenhower sent Federal Troops to escort Black students to class.
Which is different from using unmarked police to round people up for protesting.

Above: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot,
who won her office by popular vote.
Which must burn Trump up inside.

Oh, and I said they're going without having been requested by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and that's true, but they're not completely uninvited. John Catanzara, the president of the Fraternal Order of Police apparently made a formal request for Trump's help via Facebook. Yes, Facebook. The F.O.P. is a union and doesn't have any, you know, legal authority to go over the Mayor's head and request intervention nor is Facebook a proper channel. But then Trump is a President who claims that the office gives him a literal license to kill. 

So here we are. For those keeping score, COVID is just the sniffles and will go away any minute now and the President can deploy goons to round up protestors if he doesn't like your city's mayor. Cool. Here's hoping we get to vote in November.

Pictured: The President shilling for Goya in direct violation of ethics laws.
Not pictured: consequences for anything he does. Ever.

To boldly oversaturate!

Unless you're making a pan...

So there's an expression that springs to mind: "strike while the iron is hot." It comes from blacksmithing, and I guess the idea is there's a window of opportunity where the thing you're blacksmithing-usually something iron-is super hot and that's the time to pound it with your hammer. Which, now you know. But nowhere in that metaphor does it suggest that you pound your iron repeatedly until it's nothing but a useless flat hunk of metal. I mention this because of this.

Which they are. Dumb, I mean.
Also selfish.

Huh? Yeah, sorry, it's about Star Trek. Yes, again. Look, we live in unrelentingly depressing times and there are only so many new and interesting ways I can call people dumb for not wearing masks. Anyway, if you clicked on the link-and you didn't-you'd have read about Producer Robert Sallin, who you might remember (that is, if you're a big huge nerd like me) as the producer of fan-favorite Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, pitching a new Star Trek movie to Paramount Pictures.

Even these fans think it's getting out of
hand, and they're naked people who
painted Starfleet uniforms on themselves. 

Star Trek, as we've discussed before, is experiencing a bit of a glut following the success of Star Trek: Discovery. There's that show there's Picard, there's the cartoon that starts next month, there's the new show they just announced with Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn, and then two or three other series that have been announced but we haven't seen yet and Short Treks which sorta counts. The point is thirty years ago it seemed insane that there were two Trek shows on at the same time. Now there're four with four more coming soonish. There's a point where even fans would agree enough is enough.

But that's just TV. Sallin's pitch means that there're at least three and possibly four different Star Trek movies in the works. There's the Quentin Tarantino film that's been described as "what if Star Trek but with gore and swearing."

Which, check and check...

A film version of 80's sitcom Growing
Pains would be unlike anything done in
Star Trek. Doesn't mean it'd be good...

And then there's another one from Noah Hawley, who was the creator of Legion and the TV version of Fargo. And his movie is apparently not related to the fourth movie in the J. J. Abrams series with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. That series is probably done with, but also, maybe it's not done with? Who can say? In any case, Robert Sallin's pitch is still another, different movie which he insists his will be: "unlike anything that has been done in Star Trek, and it will be part of the canon..." And, not for nothing, but that's exactly what both Hawley and Tarantino have said about their versions, and it's not terribly descriptive.

If it feels like we've had this conversation before, it's because we have. Every time a new Star Trek thing is announced, I'm on here pointing out that there're too many sequels, prequels and alt-universe side-quells already. I don't want to be negative about it and besides, if we're being realistic, maybe one of these will happen. If any. Still though, if you're a fan and have ever written a fan film, now's the time to slap it on a thumb drive and mail it to Paramount, because they're apparently open to anything at this point.

Like my script about the adventures of Captain Flurm Spel'Daar. He's an
 Andorian starship captain who's also a hover-tennis champion. Oh, and
it's unlike anything that has been done in Star Trek, and will be canon.

They're morbidly collectible!

You know it's bad enough that we're all so addicted to Facebook that we check it forty times a day knowing full well what doing so is going to do to our already off the chart stress levels because some uncle or former coworker is going to have posted some nonsense about COVID being a hoax. But to have to endure this as well? Endure what? This:

Well? Are you enduring it? Because I'm not.

"How dare you? I will do no such thing."

-Me, talking to the computer

Yeah, it's another ad the Facebook algorithm somehow felt I'd be interested in. It's from the Bradford Exchange, the same people who sell those creepy ceramic Precious Moments figurines and that idiotic Donald Trump model train set-which Facebook also thought would be perfect for me. Although it's occurring to me now that maybe this is my fault. I mean, I see one of these ads, get outraged that Facebook showed it to me and then I blog about it, necessitating frequent internet searches for "Bradford Exchange" and "Idiotic Donald Trump model train set." 

Still feel kinda like blaiming
this guy though...

I am, as so many of us are, the very architect of my own frustration. But back to the thing: what in the name of hell are they trying to sell me now? Like the aforementioned Goon Express, you're essentially buying a subscription, but this time instead of a new plastic train car every month, you get a ceramic haunted house with lights inside. Or, as the website puts it: "Illuminated handcrafted buildings and more inspired by haunted places across America." Did I mention that each of these costs sixty dollars? Of money? Because they do.

At first I assumed that this is just more of the useless garbage companies like The Bradford Exchange have been conning hoarders into filling their homes with for years, but I was wrong. It turns out that ordering a collection by subscription plan is for smart collectors. Like, it says that right on the Bradford Exchange website and why would they lie?

See? We'd be fools not to sign up?

Always room for one more!

So, what do you get with your subscription? Well, first up is the Amityville house. You know, the house where back in 1974 a twenty-three year old called Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot six members of his family in their beds? Huh...does that make it haunted or just a crime scene? Well, doesn't matter, because now you can have the scene of that gruesome mass murder on your mantel. Or curio cabinet. Or just as likely in one of the many boxes quickly turning your home into a fire trap.

The month after that? Franklin Castle in Cleveland, Ohio. It wasn't the scene of any murders, but four people have died in the place and at least one of the previous owners lost four of their children so, yeah, who wouldn't want a constant reminder of that in their home? After that? Who knows? The Clutter's house from In Cold Blood? 10050 Cielo Drive? The possibilities are endless. And unsettling.

We're an incredibly violent country, so subscribe today!

Today in versatile tubers:

"Uhhgg...ugh...ugggh?"

-Study participants

Hey, guess what? In an article for British science journal Nature, A.G. Ioannidis et al. (which I gather is scientific paper-speak for other, less important researchers), writes that through I don't know, asking people to spit in a cup or swab their cheeks or whatever, they've found a genetic link between peoples of Polynesia and South America. This link, which is called an admixture, can come from only one thing: people from one end of the Pacific doin' it with people from the other. And this doin'it goes back to the twelfth century. 

"Noyce..."

                                 -Pervy scientists

Through the magic of genetic testing, it is now possible to tell who was boning whom over eight-hundred years ago. Thus confirming what a lot of people have long believed: that people from these two regions interacted long before Europeans showed up and that scientists are kind of pervy. Up till now a key piece of evidence of interaction between these civilizations was sweet potatoes which are native to South America, but have been in Polynesia for hundreds of years, suggesting some kind of pre1492 Pacific potato exchange. 

You'd think that'd be an open and shut thing. I mean, it's not like sweet potatoes would have fashioned outriggers and made the many thousands of miles-long journey across rough seas on their own, but here we are.

Fries, casserole, evidence for pre-Columbian
 contact. The sweet potato is a versital tuber.

Above: pics. 

Historians apparently needed more than yam-based evidence. Which they had. For years. They had Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl who in the 1940's made the trip from Peru to French Polynesia in a period-appropriate boat to prove it could be done. And there are the similarities between Polynesian and South American architecture. And, Polynesians have maintained a tradition of sailing using sophisticated navigational skills for centuries. But pics or it didn't happen I guess?

Now maybe this proof of twelfth century trans-Pacific booty calls (it's a scientific term) will finally gain acceptance for the theory of pre-Columbian contact between Polynesia and South America. Because hey, you know who didn't discover America? Columbus. But we all know that and we should trade his holiday in for a day off on election day.

Pictured: noted disease vector Christopher
Columbus, seen here not wearing a mask.