Today in stooping:

I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say that the world is a place of insanity and chaos right now. The climate is spinning out of control, there's a pandemic and half the country is apparently cool with the President openly courting the white supremacist vote. Things are, what's the word? Fucked? So please, help me out here because I no longer know what to think about anything anymore. This is in incredibly poor taste, right?

"Are you for goddamn kidding me?"

-You, aloud, just now

There's probably a joke here about the store
and literal ghouls, but I'm not finding it.

No, I'm not for goddamn kidding you. This is real. Someone actually thought this was an acceptable advertising tactic. It's an ad from a company called costumesupercenter.com. They sell Halloween costumes and are apparently in desperate need of a better marketing team because for real. Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman's death from colon cancer was only announced on Friday, but I suppose in the plastic Halloween costume industry the suitable mourning period is seventy-two hours because this popped into my inbox today. 

100% polyester. Because If there's one thing
you want in a child's costume, it's flammability. 

You'll also notice the ad warns customers that there is "Limited Availability" when it comes to Black Panther costumes and...I mean, it's is a total bullshit statement, right? Well, obviously, it's an ad, but seriously? Of course there are a finite number of 100% polyester officially licensed, child-sized Black Panther costumes in the universe. I never would have suspected otherwise. But they're emphasizing the point so as to create the sense that if you don't act now, you've let your kid down. 

But I'm getting off track. My main issue here isn't with some shitty company manufacturing false scarcity, or even that they're trying to make parents think that they can or should buy their child's love with twenty dollars worth of highly flammable superhero costume. It's that they're leveraging Chadwick Boseman's death to do it.

"The only thing lower than our prices is the depths to which we'll stoop!"

-Costume Supercenter's slogan*

*well, it might as well be.

Allow me to preface this with puppies:

A seventeen year old right-wing militia member and huge fan of Donald Trump called Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people, killing two of them, at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin Tuesday night and the local police chief said-hang on, I should warn you, this is some pretty heavy stuff. Here, look at this pictured of some puppies first. It helps:

Look at'em, they're in a basket and everything.

"What? I'm not victim blaming, I'm just
saying it's their own fault they got shot."

-Chief Miskinis

Anyway, Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis had this to say to reporters on Wednesday:

"Everybody involved was out after the curfew. I'm not going to make a great deal of it, but the point is the curfew's in place to protect. Had persons not been out involved in violation of that, perhaps the situation that unfolded would not have happened."

-Chief Miskinis, victim blaming,
and making a great deal of it

"Look out, he's got a-oh, wait, he's white.
It's ok, stand down men, he's here to help."

-Kenosha Police, evidently

So if I'm following, Miskinis is saying that the problem here isn't that police officers saw a minor walking around with an automatic weapon at a peaceful protest and instead of doing something, or even keeping an eye on him, they handed him a bottled water and told him they appreciate his and other armed white people being there. Or, that after the shooting, the cops let Rittenhouse jog past them-rifle slung over his shoulder-as onlookers pointed and shouted: stop him, he just shot people!

You want to say something? Maybe condemn
the armed militia groups or voice support
for the victi-no? No. Yeah, I thought not...

And he's saying the problem isn't that one of his officers shot Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man in the back in front of his children in the first place. Or, to take it back even further, the problem isn't that we live in a world where police interactions with people of color frequently end in violence or murder and where peaceful protests are met with teargas and unprovoked beatings of unarmed protestors. And it's totally not that police departments and the Administration line up to protect the officers responsible.

Being a police officer requires training
and dedication and the ability to make
funny sound effects with your mouth.

The problem here, according to Miskinis, is that people were violating curfew, not that a smirking teen showing up to a peaceful protest with an automatic rifle failed to send up a red flag with his officers. Which, you know, Rittenhouse is not law enforcement just because he owns a gun and a MAGA hat (of course he does). In fact, he's seventeen, should he even own an automatic weapon? Either way, he definitely shouldn't getting high fives and bottled water from the police.

All this makes me wonder if maybe, just maybe the problem here isn't, as Miskinis suggests, the victims of Kyle Rittenhouse's delusions of militia-hood or the protests against police violence but rather him and the way he runs his department. Armed vigilantes don't make anyone, protestors or police any safer.

Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis seen here
socially distancing himself from responsibility.

Mixed I tell you, mixed!

I can't hear you. We've talked about this.
It's something of a one-sided conversation.

You know, not everything has to be a thing but still, I have mixed feelings about the news that Amazon is no longer developing a TV series based on The Culture. Since you're almost certainly shouting questions at your computer, I'll press on and address all the questions I imagine you to be asking me. The first is probably something like, whoa, there was going to be a Culture TV series? And yeah, there was. Although I think the first news I heard about it was yesterday's announcement that it was off.  

A blurry picture of me pointing at a book
is probably a more articulate description
than the one I've made, so here.

Your next question is almost certainly what the hell is The Culture series? Because I've met like two other people ever who've even heard of it. They're a series of sci-fi novels written by late Scottish author Iain M. Banks. I love these books, but usually find myself incapable of describing them in a way that makes them sound interesting to others, but here goes: It's a loose series of ten novels set in a single narrative universe and usually revolve around The Culture; a hyper-advanced post-scarcity, semi-anarchic utopia made up of different alien species. Sort of like Star Trek's Federation but everyone uses recreational drugs.

The President also hates Amazon, but is a
 terrible person, so I don't know how to feel.

Which brings me to my next imaginary question: how do I feel about Amazon adapting The Culture in the first place? I'm glad I pretended you asked. I work for an independent bookstore, and Amazon is, you know, a cancer on the American small businesses so I don't feel great about it. But that aside, it would be cool to see a live-action adaptation of one of my favorite sci-fi series. And besides, who doesn't love working it in to the conversation that the book was better?

What? Don't look at me like that Witcher.
You're an adaptation of a book that's also a
video game. You're a walking franchise. 

On the other other hand, an hour long prestige television adaptation of a cult classic sci-fi/fantasy novel is the exact opposite of creativity. Everything is an adaptation now. Or a sequel. Or a reboot. Or part of a cinematic universe. Not to sound like, well a curmudgeonly nerd with a blog (don't say it...), but it's ok to make a new thing sometimes. Financially risky sure, but-oh...I think I just lost an argument with myself. Why try something new when you could have a built in audience?

Well, whatever. Maybe it would have been great, maybe it would have been terrible. Who can say? But the TV show getting canceled doesn't change the books. You can still go read one despite my terrible summary. I mean, it's not like having a TV adaptation legitimizes a novel. If anything it usually diminishes it with those dumb "Now an Amazon Series" stickers they slap on them. Anyway, like I said, I have mixed feelings about this.

"What are books if not grist for the television mill?"

-people who make streaming content 

It's such a low bar of decency, and yet...

Hey, you know who's the worst? Yeah, Donald Trump, he is, after all, an Omega-level asshat and basically the worst thing to happen to America since-I don't know, name an awful thing that has happened. But I was actually going to say the people who still support him are the worst. And this time...it's personal. I mean, more personal than doing more to dismantle our democracy than anyone in history.

Omega-level? Oh, it's an X-Men thing, it means the most powerful type of
mutant. So think Magneto, but with being an asshat instead of magnet powers.

Pictured: President Trump
addressing goons.

The President had this to say about the multiple wildfires on the West Coast:

"They're starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests-there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they're like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up."

-Forest Ranger Don, to some goons at 

a campaign rally in Valley Forge, PA

Surprisingly, despite his vast experience as a reality TV host and shitty business man, Donald Trump doesn't actually know anything about forest management. You can't, as he once baselessly and unsolicitedly asserted to then California Governor Jerry Brown, rake your way to a forest-fire-free future. And besides, even if you could, does he even know how big California is? There are thirty-three million acres of forest so, like, grab a rake asshat.

Pictured: 33 million acres of California forest. Which, fun fact:
is thirty-three times the number of votes by which Donald Trump lost
the popular election. It's not relevant, I just like to point it out a lot.

I'm not sure I'd trust a guy that
can't even keep a casino in business.

The State's current rash of fires are the result of lightning strikes, a natural phenomenon, exponentially worsened by anthropocentric climate change which is, you know, the opposite of natural. It's also something the President insists isn't real but totally is. Sort of like Russian interference in the 2016 election and basic human decency. Anyway, he went on to suggest that California should be on its own about this since the state didn't listen to the former host of The Apprentice's nonsense advice about a subject he knows nothing about.

They applauded letting people's
homes burn, so yeah, goons.

Earlier I said that he'd made this personal and that's because one of the fires is in the Santa Cruz Mountains which is where, until a couple months ago, I lived for the last five years. A lot of my friends have been evacuated and some have probably lost their homes and it's a dick move for Trump to threaten Federal aide based on whether or not the State is likely to vote for him. Which it's not. Oh, and by the by, Trump declared the fires a disaster yesterday, so he was just trying to appeal to his goon-base.

What bothers me the most is that it works on these people. Like, he threatens to withhold aid and they love him for it. These aren't people who felt forgotten by Washington so they voted for a man who speaks to them, these are people who cheer the misery of their fellow Americans. Are they, and I'm genuinely asking, just terrible people? I mean look, Florida and the Gulf Coast are routinely struck by devastating hurricanes and storms. Have you ever thought that we should just let them drown because you don't agree with their politics?

The answer is no, of course you haven't.
Because you're not a terrible person.

No, I don't think he can hear himself...

Did you see Michelle Obama's speech last night? I did, it was great. It was about unity, justice, and the desperate need for moral leadership. You know, the exact opposite of the last four years. You'd have to be a real shitheal to have a problem with that.

"Basically no."

-Michelle Obama last night,

on the Trump administration

Pictured: Donald Trump, seen here
trashing a woman for calling for unity.
Not pictured: irony.

Incapable of both irony and recognizing when he's stupendously outclassed, the President responded:

"They talk about me being a divider. I'm not a divider. We were bringing people together. We were bring people together like never before and then we got hit by the China virus."

-Literally the only person in

the world who would say that

Yup, bringing people together. Except people who aren't white. And women. And people who like being able to vote. I mean he famously made a political career out of stoking divisions. Hey, remember that time he leapt to the defense of the Nazis marching in Charlottesville? Because he leapt to the defense of Nazis.

Well, he kind of brings people together. 

More like ha-don't-ken...

Look, I don't want to tell the goons from the idiotically named "Trump Make America Great Again Committee" how to peddle their feckless discount fascist, but I'm not sure that appropriating 90's fighting game imagery is the way to go for a number of reasons.

Um, how dare they?

"No wear mask, COVID hoax!"

-people answering

that last question

I mean, who does this ad even speak to? Gamers? Fans of shitty photoshop? Who? And what's with the weird grid laid over the background? Is that so we get that it's supposed to be a video game? Is Biden's martial arts outfit reading as Chinese a subtle attempt to get people to associate him with China? And is anyone really that dumb? I suppose that's something only the Trump Make America Great Again Committee knows for sure. Probably with a grunt or maybe a monosyllable, because for real, Trump Make America Great Again? 

Being old isn't a bad thing. Being a terrible
person is and that's my issue with him.

Also, and not to be indelicate here, but is putting Donald Trump in some kind of athletic context a good move? Look, I'm not going to insult your intelligence and preface this with "I don't want to sound ageist but" because this is going to sound ageist and for that I am sorry. And I'm also fully aware that Joe Biden is a couple years older. But is putting their seventy-four year old cheeseburger enthusiast in a karate gi and having him sail through the air doing anything but reminding us that this man can't even shamble down a slight incline without help? The answer is no, because I'd forgotten all about that until I got this dumb ad. Oh, and speaking of, thanks for nothing targeted advertisement algorithm.

The fighter focuses their chi into a projectile
that can-you know what? Never mind. 

I'm not trying to help them improve their ad or anything, but the visual reference is clearly Street Fighter II, so why not have him fire a hadoken at his opponent? That way they could have avoided the hilarious suggestion that the visibly overweight President could possibly launch himself across the screen like some kind of-huh? Oh, a hadoken is when a fighter focuses their chi into a fiery projectile that can-you know what? Just trust me when I say that it's basically karate magic and more plausible than Trump doing a jump kick.

And not for nothing, but Joe Biden would take him in a fight. He wouldn't lower himself to street fighting, but if he were forced into it, he'd totally kick Trump's ass and there's a part of me, a small part of me that I'm not proud of that would love to see that. Preferably a tag team situation with Pence and Harris.

Pictured: Biden and Harris, seen here donning ninja masks
 for their magic karate fight with Trump and Pence. 

Today in mounting anxieties:

Yeah, but without the electoral college,
Democrats would win just because they
get more votes, and how is that fair?

How...who are they even allowed to get away with...? Huh? Who? What? I'm glad I pretended you asked, I'm talking of course about the new paralyzing anxiety we now have in our lives: the dread that even if enough of us vote Biden/Harris to overcome the bullshit that is the electoral college, that it still won't be enough to overcome the blatant election fraud that is the President's appointed Post Master General removing mail boxes and sorting machines just before an election in which most Americans will be voting by mail.

"See? This is way easier on postal workers-
also, we're taking away their overtime."

-The USPS

According to a spokesperson, the USPS:

"...does routinely move equipment around its network as necessary to match changing mail and package volumes. Package volume is up, but mail volume continues to decline. Adapting our process infrastructure to the current volumes will ensure more efficient, cost effective operations and better service for our customers."

-Some spokesperson, 

assuming we're all idiots

Cool, so when there's less mail, they "routinely" dismantle and remove the sorting machines. You know, like moving a food truck to a different corner where there's more business. It's for us, the customer, and this whole "rigging the election" thing is just a big misunderstanding.

Pictured: one of those machines the USPS just routinely shuffles
around to be more efficient. I'm sure it folds. Probably has a handle.

"Gentleman, I propose that the Presidency go
to whosoever most expertly games the system."

-Some Founding Father

Oh, incidentally, the Postal service did send out letters warning states that ballots may not make it in on time, even if mailed by state deadline. Which, ok, hang on a sec, because I'm having trouble with-just...just to sum up, this means that they're saying to us:  due to the declining volume of mail, we're scaling back operations, but be advised, but to the impending increase in mail volume, expect not only delays in mail, but the re-election of the floundering incumbent who put a campaign donor in charge of the Postal Service.

"People who vote for Joe Biden just want
to destroy America, so what's the problem?"

-Some goon

Anyway, the USPS has magnanimously agreed to stop removing anymore machines and mailboxes until after Donald Trump is re-elected by the people whose ballots get counted, but they're not saying that they'll be putting back the ones they already took and in fact, a lot of those have been scrapped. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling Congress back in to session early to hold some votes on some legislation to try and fix this, so that's something, right? Right?

Oh, and they're also going to hold hearings and have called in Trump campaign donor, and because our system is broken, Postmaster General Louis De Joy to explain himself. I'm sure he'll help us get to the bottom of this.

So the fate of American Democracy hangs on a Trump appointee
not only showing up to a Congressional hearing but also truthfully
answering questions posed by Democrats? Holy shit, it's over isn't it?

What's uh...what's the plan here?

I guess if anyone knows fraud it's the
guy who founded Trump University.

"It'll be the greatest rigged election in history. It will be the greatest fraud ever perpetrated..."

-Donald Trump, on the 2020 election

And he's right, just not in the way that I think he thinks he is. He's referring here to mail-in voting which he is baselessly insisting is prone to fraud and the last thing anyone here wants is someone in the Oval Office who didn't win the popular vote, amiright? Because that would be disastrous.

Basically. 

Anyway, he went on:

"...other than perhaps what they did to my campaign, when they spied on my campaign President Obama, Biden and everybody else. And they got caught, let's see what happens."

-Trump, having some

kind of episode?

Nothing. Nothing will happen. Wanna know why?

As is often the case, the
original film was much better.

Because legally speaking, you can't prosecute people for things they did in a dream you had. I once had a dream where I went to see a remake of the 1986 sci-fi comedy Short Circuit. In this version Ellen DeGeneres played the Ally Sheedy role and instead of being a cute robot, Johnny-5 was a quantum computer made out of rope lights and peanut butter. No, really. And I bring this up to illustrate the twin points that dreams are weird and that you shouldn't tell people about them. 

"Yeah, well, poor people,
 so not like, nice homes."

-An impossible goon

Especially when you posses the nuclear codes. It puts people on edge. And we're already all on edge. We're like in month six of the pandemic, police are beating and teargassing people for protesting how police are beating and teargassing people and this impossible goon is behind in the polls so he's holding up relief funds because they come attached to money for the post office so that people don't have to risk catching COVID just to vote him out of office. Yeah, people may loose their homes because this guy wants to steal an election.

I guess what I'm getting at here is what is the Administration's end game? Like, we're a country that has riots when our home team wins a Super Bowl and that's when we're not all one Netflix outage away from pitchforks and torches. Does he honestly think that if on Election Day we find that millions of our mail-in ballots just don't get counted that we're going to be cool with another four years of angry tweets and rambling press conferences about how Obama secretly reads his diary or whatever? Because we won't be.

Sure hope that bunker is comfortable.

Well, it's probably for the best then...

Above: a franchise. 

Remember when we talked about how there were not one but three Star Trek movies kicking around? You don't? Well, we did and there were. And a fourth one being pitched, because why not? But it doesn't matter because they're all on hold. Evidently Paramount, the studio that owns the movie rights to Star Trek, has decided to take a breath and try and not run this in to the ground like a certain other space based franchise. And again, I totally hate the term franchise, but it's the word I guess so...

Anyway, since being put on hold, some details about what these takes on the series would have been like have come out. It turns out that the Noah Hawley one was going to be about a space-pandemic that wreaks havoc throughout the galaxy and I guess Paramount decided that that would be just a little too close to home right now.

"We don't have to wear masks because we're smart."

-Some Pakleds

"Yeah mobsters who say "fuck" a lot."

-Quentin Tarantino

So that makes sense, but what doesn't make sense is why Quinten Tarantino's version-yeah, it still sounds weird to talk about Quinten Tarantino's Star Trek movie. Anyway, because he's Quinten Tarantino, his movie was going to be about mobsters. No, really. It was going to be a follow-up to an episode of the original series called "A Piece of the Action" in which the Enterprise encounters an entire planet run by the mob. Like honest to God, Al Capone, nyah, see?, mobsters. Fedoras, suits, Tommy guns, all the tropes.

"Captain, this is preposterous. Even for
us, and I'm a half-alien that can read minds."

-Spock, not buying it

The premise was that a previous starship crew left behind a book about 1920's gangs and the native Sigma Iotians basically made it their bible. It apparently contained everything they needed to pattern their entire civilization after the mob which is weird because why did someone take a coffee table book full of instructions on how to build the afore mentioned fedoras and Tommy guns into space with them in the first place? Anyway, I'm a fan and all, but 1960's Star Trek could get pretty preposterous and I just don't see how space mobsters, even in-or maybe definitely in-the hands of Quentin Tarantino could be anything but a disaster.

And look, I'm not saying Star Trek hasn't had ridiculous moments. In fact, in the most recent film, Star Trek Beyond, Chris Pine defeated the Idris Elba with the power of the Sabotage by The Beastie Boys. But this would have been an ultra-violent take on one of Star Trek's dumbest episodes and given recent events, haven't we been through enough?

What I am saying is that rock monsters once made Kirk and Spock team up
with Abraham Lincoln and Vulcan Jesus to have a fist fight with Genghis Kahn
and Kahless the Unforgettable. Like, how was that not Tarantino's movie?

You could say it's gone viral.

But please don't because that's dumb and we're better than that (although I'm clearly not). But hey, you know who's a goddamn hero? Hanna Watters, a sophomore at North Paulding High School in Dallas, Georgia. You know why? Because this:

Pictured: like one, maybe two kids wearing masks. Although weirdly they probably
had to walk through metal detectors and have their bags searched. Because America.

"Whatta scoop!"

-Watters (I hope) 

She captioned her now viral (sorry) photo with:

"Day two at North Paulding High School. It is just as bad. We were stopped because it was jammed. We are close enough to the point where I got pushed multiple [sic] go to second block. This is not ok. Not to mention the 10% mask rate"

-Hanna Watters, teen reporter

(I'm not being sarcastic, I

am 100% pro-muckraker)

Well, they insist it's a punishment, but
out of school is where the virus isn't so...

Watters, and at least one other student posted photos like this online showing students at their high school packed into a hallway exercising their State of Georgia-guaranteed right (we'll get to that) to recklessly endanger their lives and those of others by not wearing masks. But weirdly, instead of immediately shutting the school down and throwing Watters a socially-distanced ceremony where they give her the keys to the city and a Zoom-parade or whatever, the school suspended gave her a five-day out-of-school suspension.

Now if every student in America could
just violate school policy we'd be good.

Technically she was violating school policy. Policies in fact. At North Paulding, and I would imagine most schools, students are prohibited from using their phones without permission from the administration and from posting picture of minors without consent. And that's a good, perfectly reasonable policy. But. But we're in the middle of a national crisis made exponentially worse by inept leadership and the insane decision to pack school kids into enclosed spaces and not insist they take even the simplest of precautions against a highly contagious disease that totally kills people.

Otott, seen here taking the "super"
out of superintendent. Burn. 

The district superintendent, Brian Otott, released a letter to parents saying:

"There is no question that the photo does not look good. I can understand if your first reaction was one of concern...Some individuals on social media are taking this photo and using it without context to criticize our school reopening efforts. Under the COVID-19 protocols we have adopted, class changes that look like this may happen, especially at a high school with more than 2,000 students."

-Superintendant Brian Otott, making 

the case that: hey, whatta ya gonna do?

Above: a graver offense then
spreading a pandemic. Evidently.

But aside from his passive voice instance that gross incompetence just sort of happens sometimes, the worst part is that he's backed up by the state's policy regarding masks:

"Wearing a mask is a personal choice and there is no practical way to enforce a mandate to wear them. What we will do is continue to strongly encourage all students and staff to wear masks."

-Brian Otott, a man inexplicably put 

in charge of the education of children

Really? There's no practice way? To be clear, there are school policies that prohibit students from using their phones for social media during school hours and from posting pictures of fellow students online. And again, these are good, sensible policies. Policies backed up by the threat of suspension. But when there's an out-of-control, highly contagious respiratory illness that spreads like wildfire in enclosed spaces like, say a crowded school, wearing a mask is a personal choice and Hanna Watters gets a five day suspension.

Hey, I'm not an educator, but what if they told students
that they have to wear masks? And then maybe suspend the
students who refuse? You know, like a policy or something?