Today in everything wrong with everything:

Really? We couldn't make it through one, just one Black Friday without something like this? Yeah, someone, who is still at large, shot two people, killing one at a packed mall--the local news' word, not mine--in Sacramento. Which, a packed mall? 

Above: Cop cars and crime scene tape are fast replacing fake snow
and Christmas lights as signs that the Holiday Season has begun.

This donut and fried chicken sandwich
of course being the first sign of collapse.

Look, I'm sure we're all a little sick of me hypocritically railing against consumerism while at the same time totally continuing to buy shit like a chump, but I mean, last time I checked we're still in the midst of the worst pandemic in living memory. So why are people packing a mall in the first place? Sorry, I'm not trying to victims blame here. Like, the fact that Black Friday in America is invariably marked by violence is serious evidence that our civilization has been on the brink of collapse for years now, but I still want to know why anyone was at the mall in the first place.

Maybe they wanted to pick up a 98 inch Samsung TV that's, wait, are you sitting down? Ok, well, sit down. Why are you reading this standing up anyway? Anyway, there's a 98 inch television that's fifty-thousand dollars off for Black Friday.

Pictured: some Samsung spokespeople
showing off the $100,000 Q900 television.
Not pictured: even a hint of shame or irony.

Oh, right. On a pile of money.

How the-like, Fifty-thousand? It regularly costs one hundred thousand, so in a way that's a huge discount, but in another way, anyone who's dropping fifty grand, much less one hundred, on a television is a monster. And I mean, if the manufacturer can afford to drop the price of the thing by fifty thousand dollars, how much were they making on it in the first place? They must still be turning a profit at the reduced price, so how much does this cost to make? Fifty-bucks? How even do they sleep at night?

It's a video game where you roll this ball
and it sticks to things and gets bigger and here
click on this. I assure you it's an apt analogy.

Did you see that Elon Musk added another one hundred billion--yeah, billion with a "B"--to his already indecent wealth this year, pulling him ahead of Bill Gates as the world's second richest human, just behind Jeff "poverty wages for Amazon employees" Bezos and I just--like, how? How when millions of people are out of a job and there's a global pandemic and everything is shitty, is this guy katamari damacy-ing another $100 billion? And perhaps even more pressing, how are we not grabbing torches pitchforks and knocking on his door right now? 

"Well, you see there are uh, factors that uh-
you understand that-uh hey, look over there!"

-Jeff Bezos, before making a break for it

And this is where I turn into a crazy pinko let's redistribute some wealth person. I looked it up, and the pharmaceutical companies working on developing a vaccine for COVID are doing so under contracts with the government worth around one or two billion dollars each which, I mean, I'm sure I don't understand how these things work, but it kind of seems like if Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos had just put say, a hundred billion dollars or even half of that along with their respective company's resources and infrastructure into a vaccine on day one, wouldn't this have been over ages ago?

So like, why didn't they? The free market is great and all, but these two dudes along with the other one-percenters were soaking up billions and billions of the finite amount of dollars in the universe while the rest of us were arguing over masks and if science is real, and are shooting eachother over goddamn Black Friday deals.  Hey, you don't suppose that the wealth inequity that's so thoroughly baked in to our system is part of, or is maybe the root of, all of our problems do you?

"Yeah, but the savings!"

-Us

Today in lame ducks pardoning turkeys:

Hey, you know how we're slogging through a pandemic while a lame duck President is continuing to sew discord and mistrust in American democracy while trying to sell off Alaska's remaining wildlife preserves on his way out the door? Well you can relax, because everything's normal, see:

Pictured: The President and Mrs. Typhoid Mary, seen here
taking part in one of the dumber American traditions.
Not Pictured: Goddamn masks on either one of them.

I don't know, I guess they're just
huge fans of human suffering.

Only in the alternate universe we live in now can a septuagenarian reality TV star impossibly catapulted into the most powerful office in the world commute a turkey's death sentence with a wave of the hand, and we all call it normal. Incidentally, of the thousands of the immigrant children he ordered rounded up to make the MAGA crowd happy, we still can't find about five hundred of their parents. I bring this up because the annual turkey pardon is like this quaint photo op and all, but he's still basically a monster and I think it's important to bear that in mind. 

"Um, no."

-Jimmy Cater, 

having none of it

Anyway, I know this is all about tradition and America is hungry for some sense of normalcy, but even without off-brand Putin, the Turkey Pardon is pretty stupid. I did some research-in as far as looking something up on wikipedia counts as research-and the event is called The National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation. Every year, The National Turkey Federation, evidently a thing, presents the president with a two live turkeys. They used to eat them, but now they pardon one or both, except that is for Jimmy Carter who wanted nothing to do with this nonsense.

"Sorry, I can't hear you over the
sound of I don't give a fuck."

-Soon to be former, but

not soon enough, AG, Barr

And look, I'm not a vegetarian, and both of this year's turkeys were pardoned, but I'm with Carter. This is preposterous and in incredibly poor taste in a country that still executes people. In fact, I just read this today: Attorney General William Barr just scheduled three executions. Which isn't unusual, we're basically barbarians, but what is unusual is that since 1889, outgoing attorneys general have refrained from moving forward with executions, leaving it up to the new president. But not William Barr. He's trying to squeeze a few more in before Joe Biden, who is (now anyway) anti-capital punishment, is sworn in.

Yup. Three death row inmates who might otherwise see their sentences commuted to life in prison are going to be executed early because William Barr loves lethal injection and wants to get a few more in before he cleans out his desk. But sure, let's watch the President make some funny, funny jokes about pardoning a turkey and pretend that millions of people aren't flying home to give grandma COVID this Thanksgiving.

I suppose we should just be glad that the President didn't
have anyone beaten or tear-gassed for this photo op.
I...I assume, I mean, I don't know that for sure.

Go check your closet. Like, right now.

Wow, someone just paid a hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars for a video game cartridge. And hang on, because I know what you're thinking: "How can someone drop such an exorbitant amount of money on something like a video game in the middle of a pandemic and resultant economic spiral?" Right?

"You know dah-ling, between the engine noise of this private
jet and the clinking of our champaign flutes, I can hardly hear
 the economic plight of the vast majority of Americans!"

-Rich people

I can think of no better argument for wealth
re-distribution than the sentence "A dentist
spent a million dollars on NES games."

But that's only because you didn't know that this is an extremely rare sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 and-Huh? Deja vu? No, this happened on Friday. You might be thinking of the prototype copy of Mario 3 that sold for thirty thousand back in September? Or maybe the sealed copy of the original Super Mario Bros. that went for a reckless one hundred and fourteen thousand? Or maybe the dentist who got together with some friends and spent a million dollars on forty sealed early NES games? This is another, different, wealthy person paying a preposterous amount for a thirty-year old game cartridge at auction. In fact, this is now the world record holder for the most expensive single game.

There were many factors that led to the French
revolution but most historians point to extravagant
prices paid for collectible video games.

But why? The obvious answer is that there is a level of wealth at which a person looses all sense of perspective and simply indulges in whims and frivolousness while the masses starve. It's how you get Bastille Day. But the less obvious answer is that Mario's glove is partially obscured by the game's title. No, really, the first run of SMB3 had the "Bros." in the title alighted on the left while later runs revised the cover art to put it on the right. They're called "Left Bros." cartridges and they sell for way more than the more common revision which go for between ten and forty thousand. Which, I mean, c'mon

Anyway, this particular one was sitting in someone's closet for all this time which accounts for the near perfect condition. And from this I think we can all learn a valuable lesson: don't throw anything out. Ever. Hold on to everything. All of it. Let your stuff own you. Because you never know if something will be valuable to someone, somewhere, someday. 

Another lesson we might glean however, is that collecting is absurd and anyone
who spends this kind of money on a game just because of the rare box art probably
 shouldn't be allowed to control that much of the finite wealth in the universe.

From Bananas to Bananas Foster

So remember when that seventeen-year old from Illinois grabbed his gun and drove to Wisconsin and shot three people, killing two of them? And then he said it was self-defense because he felt threatened while waving an assault rifle around at unarmed protestors? Bananas, right? Well, it gets more bananas: he just posted a two million dollar bail.

One might go so far as to say Bananas Foster.

"To crime!"

-murder suspects

Bail! Which, why? I'm not a legal expert, but bail, as a thing, doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If a suspect is awaiting trail and is either dangerous or a flight risk or both, why is their ability to come up with bail money a factor? So let's say two people are each arrested on suspicion of murder and both have their bail set at a hundred thousand dollars. One works at, I don't know Denny's and sits in jail for months because holy shit, a hundred grand. Meanwhile the other suspect is an investment banker and awaits trial on their yacht or whatever. That's messed up, right?

It's just-wait, you don't suppose that the American criminal justice system, like virtually every aspect of our culture, is hopelessly skewed in favor of the wealthy do you?

"Uh-oh, they're on to us, better do another Prime Day..."

-Jeff Bezos, seen here getting richer

Finally, someone sticking up for
the people who have all the power.

But whatever, back to Kyle Rittenhouse, the kid who crossed state lines with a gun he shouldn't have had access to so he could high-five some cops and shoot some Antifas. He didn't have the two million dollars necessary to spring himself from the Wisconsin pokey. But you know who does? Conservatives. Where as most rational people would look at Rittenhouse as a vigilante who went to Wisconsin looking for trouble, to conservatives he's apparently a brave teen hero who heroically tried to defend property with disproportionate and deadly force. 

But back to the not super-wealthy Rittenhouse whose bail was paid by fans of police violence. According to his lawyer's tweet:

Above: Rittenhouse defense attorney, Lin Wood
 seen here looking about like you'd picture him.

"Just off the phone with Kyle. With tears in my eyes, I listened as he expressed thanks to The People for your prayers, donations and support. He prayed every day & night said God lifted him up every time he fell. Kyle is a hero. So are his supporters. Keep him in your prayers. <Praying emoji>"

-Lin Wood, with tears in his 

cold dead eyes, living up to 

the term devil's advocate

 

Yikes. That's uh...wow. A hero huh...does he, does Wood not know what this kid did? Because again, assault rifle, unarmed protestors, state lines, murder...I'm no theologian, but I'd really like to see the part of the Bible where Jesus says "Shoot ye the unarmed protestors, for they are libruls and pleaseth me not. Back thee the Blue."

I mean, clearly God didn't pick him up every time he fell...

Lindell and Trump seen here joking.
Probably about children locked in cages.

But he's his lawyer, I guess he has to lay it on thick. This however is where this goes from just another story about armed white men feeling under-appreciated and enters the Bananas Foster zone. The lion share of Rittenhouse's bail was paid off by Mike Lindell, the Trump sycophant and MyPillow.com CEO and by Ricky Schroder, the kid from Silver Spoons. You know, that 80's sitcom about how rich people have hearts of gold? I'm not sure if it's irony or not, but who'd have seen this coming?

Two people are dead and the kid that shot them is walking around free thanks to Ricky from Silver goddamn Spoons and that pillow guy from those ads you can't skip. Everything is madness and all that's left is for some Lovecraftian elder-god space horror to come out of the sea and put an end to our civilization.

In many ways, it might actually come as a relief.

Available from shady resellers everywhere!

Pictured: Adults, doing job.

Hey, guess what's sold out already? It's the-huh? Yeah, the Game & Watch thing-how did you know what I was...Usually this is the part where I explain to you-the adult who outgrew video games in their teens-what the hell I'm talking about. And I will anyway, because I kind of think you're just humoring me. Game & Watch was a series of LCD handheld games Nintendo made back in the 80's. Remember that game where you're a fire fighter and there's a trampoline and-yeah, me neither.

Despite being an old as well as a big huge nerd for this kind of thing, I've never actually played one. I did play some of those Tiger LCD games which I think are kind of the same deal and I'm pretty sure they were terrible. 

What? It was was 1988. It was this or the hoop with a stick.

Finally, a way to buy Super Mario Bros. again!

-No one anywhere ever

Maybe the Game & Watch games were good, who knows? The point is Nintendo released a new one, sort of. It's shaped like a Game & Watch, but has a color screen and plays the NES version of Super Mario Bros. It also has a version of the Game & Watch game Ball, but it's updated to include Mario. And that's cool, but I'm not sure who this is for. Like, it's not really a Game & Watch, it just looks like one and it plays a version of Super Mario Bros. that's not the Game & Watch version. So it's basically a throw back to a thing that never existed. 

And couldn't have existed. Not in 198-whatever when Game & Watch was big. The mini game consoles that were such a big deal a couple years ago were at least trying to replicate an experience but with some updates to make them less, you know, they way they were. This is really a whole new thing.

Thirty years later and this sight still fills me with anxiety. 

I think the only reason they still call themselves
The History Channel is that The Crackpot Throries 
and WWII Tanks Channel is too much of a mouthful.

It's like one of those out-of-place-objects. You know, like those artifacts that archeologists dig up and they seem anachronistic somehow. Like that mechanical calculator from an ancient Greek ship wreck or the Bagdad Batteries. They are objects that appear to be from a certain era, but couldn't be because the technology necessary to construct them didn't exist yet. The History Channel is something like 90% fake documentaries about unexplained artifacts. They usually chalk it up to aliens, because The History Channel is nonsense.

"Oh, hey, it's working!"

-Marketing people

Anyway where I'm going with this is why did this thing sell out? Who wants one? And why did I try to order one? Like, I don't want it. At all. But I think I was somehow taken in by the idea that I needed one because they'll be hard to find. What's wrong with me that I was willing to spend even a few minutes chasing after something I don't care about? Has a lifetime of being bombarded by advertisements worn down my resistance so that I can't tell my own wants from those that marketing people have planted?

I know I say business is gross a lot, like, all the time, but business is gross. The draw with the Game & Watch isn't just nostalgia as is usually the case with retro game stuff, and the thing that I usually fall for, but scarcity. What even is that? Is this some new pandemic hoarding mentality? Or am I just a congenital sucker?

"Who cares? Now, how many can I put you down for at a huge mark-up?"

-Resellers on Amazon

Meow meow meow meow. Meow, meow?

Today in technological claims that have to be walked back a bit immediately after making them: there's a new app that translates cat meows into English! Finally, we'll be able to have meaningful communication with a another life form. Incredible right?

Now if we could just crack what teens are saying.
What with their yeets and their yolos. AmIright, fellow olds?

What? Do you not think your
cat would eat your corpse?
Because it 100% would.

Very much so, so let's walk it back a bit. Cats don't have language, because they're, you know, cats. They do however, as you're probably aware, make noises. According to this article on People.com, Javier Sanchez, a former Alexa engineer, is developing software called MeowTalk which uses machine learning to identify the sounds and match them to nine different phrases which, according to Sanchez and his team, represent the nine different things a cat might be trying to tell you. Things like "I'm hungry" or "if you die I'll eat your corpse."

Well, maybe it's not that weird.
Human babies are pretty gross.

I've done some research of my own, and by research I mean I searched for "what cat meows mean" and am now going to present the first article from moderncat.com that came up as scientific fact. Because the internet. Anyway, did you know that adult cats don't meow to one another? Meowing is something they do as kittens and when they meow at you it's because they're treating you like their mother. So basically if you own a cat, you have a tiny adopted child who shits in a box and brings you dead things it kills. Which, I mean, that's weird, right?

Yes. Ok, so according to moderncat, cats actually make twelve different sounds including meows, hisses, purrs, chirps, chatter, yowls, screams, caterwauls, snarls and breed talk (eww), so right off the bat, I'm skeptical about Sanchez's claims. Well, I was skeptical when I read that someone had come up with a cat translator, but my skepticism has deepened.

To be clear, Javier Sanchez looked at this and said:
"If only we knew what they were thinking..."

French: "Oui!"
Translation: I don't know, clean
my litter box? Who can say?

But MeowTalk's creator claims that the app translates vocalizations, but does that include hisses and purrs? Caterwauls? Whatever the hell breed talk is? One of the things the app allows is for users to "fine-tune" the accuracy of the translation. That means that you can tweak the translation based on your cat's unique vocalizations. So if the translator is translating your cat's meow as "I'm hungry" when really it's just saying "I want to kneed your flesh with my razor-sharp claws because I just enjoy inflicting pain on the people that give me food and shelter," you can adjust the app accordingly. On the other hand, isn't that a little like buying a French/English dictionary that you have to fill out yourself? If you already knew what your cat was saying, you wouldn't need the app, right?

Well, you probably don't need the app in any case. Look, I'm not a pet owner so what do I know? But I've certainly been around cats and I'm just not sure that their motivations are all that opaque. It's eat, sleep, shred your arms. Mystery: solved.

Pretty sure if this app were available in the Nile Delta circa
3200 B.C. Bast worshippers would have felt seriously let down.

Billion and billions of-wait, billions with a "B"?

"What, are you going to count?
Just...just take our word for it."

-NASA

Wow! NASA just announced that there are between three hundred million and three billion habitable planets in the galaxy! That's amazing! That's Earth-shattering! That's a little hard to verify. Look, I'm as thrilled as anyone at the prospect of millions and billions of strange new worlds out there just waiting for us to seek them out and boldly trash them like we did this one, but are there? That many I mean. I don't work for NASA-I mean obviously, because I'm sitting here writing this blog, but that doesn't sound quite right. 

It's a happy medium even out most advanced
microwave technology rarely achieves. 

And look, my math SAT scores barely qualify me to do a sudoku puzzle, but millions with an "M" to billions with a "B?" I just...really? That many? Are they sure about that? Sure enough to make a claim like this? Because that seems like an awfully big number for the usually cautious space agency. To get to this estimate, they're assuming that at least seven percent of stars similar to our sun likely have rocky, Earth-sized-ish planets within the habitable zone. That is, not so close to their parent stars they're on fire, but not so far that they're frozen.

I'm sorry, you're not about to suggest
that maybe Total Recall wasn't 100% 
scientifically accurate, are you?

And that assumption is based on the number of eco-planets observed by the Kepler Space telescope which observed X number of stars, and of those Y number of them have planets in the microwaveable meal zone. Therefore there are Z number of habitable planets in the galaxy. Cool. But is a planet habitable because it's rocky and a certain distance from the star? Is there water? Oxygen? Wifi? How can they tell? Mars is in the Solar system's habitable zone, but Ronny Cox's character in Total Recall exploded when he went outside of the dome so...  

I'm not trying to liquid methane rain on anyone's space parade, but it seems like a long walk from "There are potentially planets that might exist that are the correct distance from their suns so that someone standing on the surface wouldn't die immediately..." and "There are definitely billions of habitable planets, so spin up those FTL's!"

A long walk to habitable, and an even longer jog to inhabited by
scantily clad, new-age polys that want to help you explore this Earth emotion
called love but will murder you if you step on the wrong flower bed. 

Or a lot. A lot of hedging.

And again, these are experts publishing a study in The Astronomical Journal, and they did say that this is an estimate and not a definitive number, but there's something about just saying it. Like, this is science and we expect a certain, reticence? Especially when they make a claim with such mind-blowing implications as a galaxy full of M-class planers. I love the optimism. I do. And Sagan knows we need a little right now, but I feel like they should have hedged a little, you know?

Anyway, I guess the point is somewhat moot since it'll be quite some time before anyone figures out a way to generate the impossible energies necessary for an interstellar voyage. I mean, we can't even get the pandemic under control and all that requires is for everyone to wear a goddamn mask. 

Pictured: not rocket science.

Credit where credit's undue!

Pfizer: We're the lesser of two evils.
By a narrow margin. In this one instance.

-Pfizer's new slogan

Well done Pfff...well done Pfffiff...sorry, I'm not sure I can actually type it out. But what I'm trying to do here is offer the most reserved and qualified applause possible to Pfizer. Why? Good question. I mean, the pharmaceutical industry as a thing is up there with the gun NRA and QAnon on the list of things that are ruining everything. Like, it's because of companies like Pfizer that we're customers instead of patients and have to sit through ads on YouTube for drugs with ridiculous names designed to treat diseases we don't know if we actually have, but should ask our doctors for about. 

But today they shut down Mike Pence when he tried to take credit for a COVID-19 vaccine, so...good for them? The Vice President de-elect tweeted:

Pictured: the tweet that prompted Pfizer to tell Pence to pfuck off.

Ironically the time and effort put into
the logo far outstrips anything the
administration has done to combat COVID.

Ok, cool, so Pfizer did indeed announce that their vaccine is 90% effective, and that is huge news, although not worth all caps. Nothing is worth all caps. And Pfizer was asked by the government to develop a vaccine as part of Operation Warp Speed which-yes, Warp Speed. I'm as upset by their coopting of Star Trek terminology as you are, but let's move on. Anyway, Operation Warp Speed is a Trump administration plan to develop and distribute a vaccine as quickly as possible. It has a logo and everything. Ok, check and check, why shouldn't they take credit? Oh, because they had no hand in Pfizer's vaccine beyond saying "Hey, you know what would be great? A vaccine for this pandemic we're trying very hard to ignore." 

Which, I mean, let's say you're a drug company and you like money and a global pandemic breaks out. Were you waiting for Donald Trump to ask you to cook something up? Like, the suggestion here is that one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world needed the former host of The Apprentice to suggest that they do the thing they actually exist to do. 

"Thanks President Trump. Without your brilliant suggestion that
we develop a vaccine against the worst pandemic in decades, we never
would have thought of it. In many ways, you're the real hero here."

-Pfizer R&D

Pictured: the vaccine that was
totally my idea and Pfizer stole...

When this all started, I think we all thought to ourselves, I sure hope someone comes up with a vaccine, I know I did. But that's not the same thing as coming up with a vaccine. A Pfizer spokesperson responded to the can't be former too soon Vice President, saying that they were never a part of Warp Speed, which turned out to not be entirely true. They later clarified that while there was a funding agreement in place, the company had yet to receive any money and developed the vaccine on their own dime-well, probably several million dimes.

And as loath as I am to clap for a billion dollar corporation that profits from people's misery, they did call the can't be former soon enough Vice President out on his desperate grab for something, anything resembling a worthwhile accomplishment. 

"Thanks to our criminal mishandling of the Pandemic, Pfizer
will be able to sell millions of vaccines so...you're welcome."

-Mike Pence, making the "when life gives 

you COVID, make COVID-ade" argument

Really? On the golf course? You don't say...

You know, a lot has been made today about President Trump being out on the golf course when he found out that most of the major news networks had finally called the race in Joe Biden's favor, but I mean, is that really surprising?

Fitting, yes, but not surprising. I mean, there was like a 50/50 change he'd
be either golfing or tweeting something racist when he heard the news.

So the shoes would be both a ruling
and the Justices themselves? I...I, think
I may have lost the thread here. 

Anyway, I'm cautiously thrilled. Can one be cautiously thrilled? I don't know, like I said yesterday, I'm still waiting for the other shoe. Or really the other six shoes, three of which Trump appointed himself even though by all rights at least one of those wasn't really his to-uh...uh...look, I'm going for a Supreme Court joke here about how this bankruptcy aficionado who has now lost two popular votes got to appoint a third of the Supreme Court. The shoe that drops would be some kind of last minute Court intervention that-look, this isn't working, so I'm just going to back away from this metaphor.

Suffice it to say that Amy Barrett's last minute appointment over everyone's objections feels even worse now that we know that when it happened the President was like two weeks out from losing his job. But I guess it's better than being stuck with her for the next forty years and Trump for another four. In any case, there's still a lot of work to do. Like, a lot. Like, a "we rented out house out on airbnb and someone had a party and trashed it" lot to do.

Pictured: America after four years of Trump.
Hey, that was way better than my last metaphor!

Furniture to re-cover...

There are executive orders to reverse, environmental protections to put back in place, people to let out of cages...oh, and the pandemic. Which is not only still a thing, but worse than ever. The President-elect and Vice President-elect have already started putting together a team and a response which is 100% more than the current occupant of the White House has done about COVID-19 since first learning of the disease's existence, so I guess we're already ahead of the game.

But that's for later. Today is a day to celebrate. Cautiously and within reason, because if the last few years have taught us anything is that something can and often will come out of nowhere and ruin everything at any moment.

Wait a minute, a President who won the popular
vote and isn't a narcissistic, science-denying, white
supremacist-courting fascist? I could get used to this.