Don't worry, there's plenty of ire to go around.

So yes, obviously everyone's sick of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema single handedly--ok, two handedly? Four-handedly? Or are they each using one? Metaphorically? Doesn't matter, we're all super over them. They're both of them moderate Democrats which is code for basically Republicans and they're holding up everything. 

Above: Sinema (center) and Manchin (second from the right),
seen here holding the rest of the country hostage.
Not pictured: a functional democracy.

"No, it's alright, I really did steal
those seats. And I'd do it again."

-McConnell (actual quote)

Like, everything. And that's fine. Cool. I think we can all agree that democracy sucks but it's better than the alternatives. But what I don't get is why Republicans are getting a pass here. "If we could only get these two, self-important, conservative Democrats to come over to our side, we could pass President Biden's spending plan, eliminate the filibuster, and even add some seats to the Supreme Court to balance out the ones Mitch McConnell straight up stole." Cool but--Huh? Yes he did, he absolutely did, but my point is what about the Republicans in the Senate? 

Please, this doofus didn't navigate the
halls of the Capitol without help.

Everyone's all: "Sinema and Manchin are the actual worst!" And they are, but the actual actual worst are people who let a former reality TV hijack their party and then when he tried to do a coup, like d'état, they just stood by and waited to see how it turned out. I mean, like, shouldn't they be in prison for that? Even worse are the ones in the House who saw the armed mob coming and pointed the way to Nancy Pelosi's office. Seriously, is our problem a couple of right-of-center Democrats drunk on their momentary relevance or is it the Republican Party as a whole?

Yeah, it's probably both, but yes, Senators Sinema and Manchin absolutely, one hundred percent deserve all the scorn and outrage you want to level at them for leveraging their feet dragging to appease whoever's buying their yachts and funding thier selections campaigns. But let's all bear in mind that the only reason they have that leverage is that the other half of the Senate is made of people who are cool with fascism. 

What? Joe Manchin's got a yacht and he represents one of our poorest states.
I guess he doesn't understand optics, like, as a thing to be concerned about.

Today in things that haven't happened yet:

Am I being unfair when I predict that this video game character's t-shirt is going to be a thing right-wingers will suddenly care about? Huh? What video game character's t-shirt? 

This one. Can you guess why?

Although it's not along walk from
Confederate imagery to Nazi.

Ok, not precisely that t-shirt, the one seen in the game is slightly different, but the point is that Cassidy, a character in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, wears a t-shirt with the Confederate flag on it. Or rather wore. According to Kotaku, the remaster re-release that's coming out next month apparently changes out the image and replaces it with a skull. Which, cool, except in the blurry, blink and you'll miss it shot from the trailer, the new shirt looks like some SS nonsense, so I'm not sure it's a huge improvement.

Rockstar, the developer, presumably removed the image because it's a symbol of slavery and hatred. It's the same reason all these statues are coming down in the South. And yeah, I know a lot of people argue it's about heritage or whatever, but it's a heritage of owning people and making them work for no money, so...

Also, who puts up statues to the losers in the first place?

Pictured: the most interesting Superman's
done since, I don't know, the 1980's?

But what does this have to do with delicate conservative sensibilities? Well, nothing yet. The trailer's been out out for over a week and Kotaku's article about the t-shirt was published today. But this is the kind of thing they lose their shit over right? These are the people who fell all over each other writing homophobic tweets about bi-Superman earlier this month and nobody's cared about Superman as a character in years. It's only a matter or time before Fox News or Josh Mandel weighs in.

Not because any of them care about Grand Theft Auto, or creative freedom. In fact, video games usually only show up on the right's radar when they're blaming them for school shootings. But they'll care because they're always looking to open a new front in their bullshit culture war, and they'll call this cultural erasure or something.

Above: the blocky, barely recognizable as human face of an oppressed people.
Specifically white people who feel oppressed by not getting their way all the time.

iMean, c'mon...

Look, I don't want to tell Apple how to exploit their overly loyal fanbase, but I mean, c'mon:

Pictured: basically heroin.

In case your five year old iMac is too
far obsolete for you to wipe the finger prints
off the screen such a high-tech towel.

Yeah, that's a microfiber polishing cloth for your screens and yes, it does indeed cost twenty dollars of money. And if you order now, you'll only have to wait ten to twelve weeks because it's already sold out. So I guess try not to sneeze around your lap top in the meantime? Twenty dollars...anyway, of course this is ridiculous but, whatever, this is just Apple being Apple. If you look at the bottom right of the screen grab above you'll see that they bothered with multiple angle shots of a featureless (well, there's an Apple logo), grey square. There's even a compatibility list. 

Our new displays are made from a high
tech meringue, so try not to get them wet, touch
them, or look at them, as they will dissolve.

Even more...what's the word? I'd say galling if this wasn't exactly the kind of nonsense Apple's been pulling for decades, but let's just go with annoying. Even more annoying is that they claim that you have to use this specific cloth if you bought one of the new devices with a nano texture glass screen. It's a glare reducing option only available on the more expensive models and even then is like a five hundred dollar upgrade. Which, I mean, I'd live with a little glare if it meant not having a screen so delicate I needed a twenty dollar wipe just to clean it. 

And on that subject, could Apple really not just include one of these with their six thousand dollar computers? There's obviously a market for this (tech-obsessed chumps with tons of disposable income), or else it wouldn't exist. And I'd be a damned liar if I said I wasn't writing this on an Apple laptop right now, but is there a point at which enough is enough? Huh? Yeah, I didn't think so...

"Our latest innovation features the fewest ports ever on an Apple product !"

-Apple 

Today in folksy protestations of innocence:

So I don't live in Nebraska and therefore have no stake in this particular scandal, but I do want you to enjoy this video with me. It's Republican Jeff Fortenberry leveraging his wife, Celeste Fortenberry, their pickup, their dog, and even a cornfield to show us just how gosh darn guilty he's not.

Now there's an elected official who knows how to Nebraska.

But we have so many domestic billionaires,
why didn't he take bribes from one of them?

Guilty of what? I'm glad I pretended you asked. Guilty of lying to the federal government about campaign contributions that came from a foreign billionaire. And what better way to get out ahead of the story than to record a grainy video of yourself in your 1963 Ford F-100 pickup truck explaining how-huh? Yeah, he actually bothered to tell us specifically what kind of truck they were driving, just in case that had some bearing on whether or not you believe him when he said he had no idea who's money was being illegally funneled into his campaign. 

"Hi, this is Jeff Fortenberry, and I'm out for a drive in my 1963 Ford F-100 pick-up truck with our dog Pippin and my wife Celeste. We do this every now and then."

-Fortenberry, on-wait, they record damage 

control videos every now and then?

For those keeping score, yes, he introduced his pick-up first, then his dog,
and then the woman he's married to. Because these are his priorities. 

"Accepted illegal campaign contributions
sounds so...crime-y. Let's say the foreign guy
illegally moved money into your campaign."

-Fortenberry's lawyer

Anyway, Fortenberry wanted us to know first. How thoughtful! He goes on to explain that five years ago, a billionaire called Gilbert Chagoury "illegally moved money" into his campaign and gosh darn-it, he didn't know anything about it. Chagoury did this through American proxies who've since been caught and prosecuted--thank heavens! But then later, federal investigators questioned Fortenberry. Can you believe it? Why would they possibly suspect him just because he suddenly found thirty thousand dollars of money stuffing his coffers?

"About two and a half years ago, I had a knock on my door on a weekend. I had been out dealing with the effects of the bomb cyclone that had hit us which was so devastatingly harsh to our community. They were FBI agents from California."

-Fortenberry, about that time 

he had to work on a weekend

"California? This must be part of that gay agenda we heard
about on Fox News. I'll bet Nancy Pelosi is behind it!"

-What Fortenberry thinks Nebraskans will say

Above: Representative Fortenberry
looking shocked, stunned, and betrayed.

Anyway, the congressman answered their questions and was then chagrined to learn that they were accusing him, him of lying to them.

"We're shocked. We're stunned. I feel so personally betrayed. We thought we were trying to help."

-Jeff Fortenberry on how

betrayed and stunned he felt

I say that because in the same video he 
thought exploiting the bomb cyclone of 2019
would make him sound more innocent.

Um...is he asking us to believe that when the FBI knocked on his door to investigate illegal campaign contributions, he assumed that they were looking into a crime against him? Like, there's an epidemic of foreign billionaires secretly funding American officials' political careers and he's just another victim? I have a problem with this. Either he's admitting to some serious naiveté and probably shouldn't have a job where anyone is counting on him or he's calling his constituents dumb, which I mean, something tells me it's the latter. 

"Because I care about Nebraska, that's why."

-Gilbert Chagoury

And look, I'm not a legal expert, but he's saying that he told the FBI the truth, and they're saying he didn't. Fine. But since Fortenberry is only now just being indicted, and it's for lying rather than for accepting the contributions, the investigation probably went something like this: "Hey congressman, did you know where this money was coming from?" And Fortenberry was all "Nope." "But then why would this Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire make such a large and clandestine donation to your campaign if he wanted nothing in return?" "Um..."

Like, that's not how a tit for tat works. Ever. I don't know if he lied to the FBI, but I mean, of course he lied to the FBI and now he's lied to the people of Nebraska, his dog, and Celeste, his weirdly silent wife, too. And again, I'm not from Nebraska, but between the pickup, the cornfield, and the absurd suggestion that he was somehow the victim of a foreign billionaire forcing money into his hands, I'm kind of insulted for them. 

Pictured: what to do if someone tries to make
an illegal contribution to your political campaign.

What'sa motto with you?

Well, this is going to make them lose their minds. What? You wonder aloud? And who? Well, the who is Conservatives and the what is Superman. Yes again, but this time it isn't about how bi he is but rather his new motto. 

"Everything that falls outside my personal experience confuses and outrages me!"

-Conservatives

Pictured: Some kid reading the
issue in which Superman makes the
case for supply side economics.

Traditionally Superman stands for truth, justice, and the American way, but according to Jim Lee, DC's Chief Creative Officer at today's DC FanDom, it's now--huh? Oh, it's like their version of that day once a year when Apple holds a press conference and the media pretends its news. Anyway, the new motto is truth, justice and a better tomorrow. And that sound you hear? That's a million Conservative fingers Tweeting their outrage. Suddenly a bunch of asshats who've never picked up a comic book in their life will wax--or more accurately tweet--nostalgic about their youths spent biking down to the five and dime to buy the latest issue of Action Comics and bask in the righteousness of American values.

"It has absolutely nothing to do with
all the countries we've bombed..."

Gross. Anyway, Lee didn't address why the "American way" bit was dropped, other than to say that the change is to

"...better reflect the storylines that we are telling across DC and to honor Superman's incredible legacy of over 80 years of building a better world, Superman's motto is evolving..."

-Jim Lee, speaking fluent corporate

Which...sure. I mean, narratively, Superman isn't the jingoistic boy scout he might have been in the olden days, so the change makes perfect sense. But I suspect this is Lee's way of saying they'd like to get away from the "America can do no wrong" nonsense implied in the old motto without pissing people off. Except it will, it totally will, so break out the popcorn.

Pictured: The new Superman, seen here kissing his boyfriend,
probably while thinking about universal health care.

Ecco the Dolphin was always terrible.

"So then the other person got the ball And they
ran with it? How interesting. Please, do go on..."

-Me, sarcastically

Yeah, but does anyone actually want Ecco the Dolphin? The answer, of course, is no, but Nintendo sure thinks that it, and a couple dozen other thirty-year old games justify a thirty dollar price increase for their online service. Don't worry, I'll nerdsplain, but if you're not a retro game person then this will be incredibly uninteresting for you. Like, sports or stories about other people's kids and or pets are to me. Anyway, brace yourself, a grown up with a job and everything is about to offer unsolicited opinions about a video game thing. 

Where is that pill supposed to go,
and wait--is he even licensed? 

Nintendo Switch, like the other game consoles, has an online service. And like those services, Nintendo Switch Online let's you play games with friends, save progress in the cloud, and even includes access to some NES and Super NES games. Which is great, except after a few months or steadily releasing classics like Zelda and Mario, the flow became an irregular trickle of obscure and often mediocre titles that they should really see a doctor about. I mean, literally no one ever asked to revisit Bombuzal or Joe and Mac 2. And Claymates? I ask you...

The Republican Party immediately
claimed that the poll was rigged and
 have demanded a full investigation.

But it's twenty bucks, so fine, take it. Then someone at Nintendo decided to see where that line was. Like, when does a shameless nostalgia grab run into the harsh reality of overpriced. In a couple of weeks, players will be able to add Sega Genesis and N64 games to their Switch Online Service if they're willing to part with another thrifty dollars per year. Something a lot of fans are unwiling to do according to this poll in which 43% of respondents described the add on as "an absolute rip-off."

It'd go as high as twenty if they'd ditch
Ecco The Dolphin. Seriously, it's awful.

And yeah, I mean, given the track record Nintendo has for supporting a service at the outset and then forgetting about it for months only to add goddamn Brawl Brothers and not one, but three games about cavemen, that tracks. Sure, the initial roster of games is pretty great, like, I'd play Starfox 64 and Paper Mario again, and sure, the Genesis list includes some great games but it's just not worth a thirty dollar price bump. And surely they must have market research telling them this, right?

For twenty-five years non-pirated copies of 
Bloodlines were rare and exorbitant but now
Konami's giving it away like AOL discs in the 90's.

Speaking of research, the going theory on the internet now is that it's the licensing fees for the third party Genesis titles that's accounting for most of that thirty dollar increase. Which, if true, is a baffling move on the part of Nintendo since most of the Genesis games on offer have recently been re-released on Switch, some of them--specifically the Konami and Capcom ones, have been re-released more than once. So why they feel it sweetens the pot enough to get people to upgrade is an open question. We're suckers for nostalgia, but we're not dumb. Ok...not always, anyway.

Unless they don't care if people sign up right away. This is, after all, a business and maybe the smart thing to do is to set a price, see who pays it and then if players are slow to sign up, drop it or throw in Gameboy games or something until people come around. 

Or they could just slap Mother 3 up there and make all the money
in the world, but I don't want to tell them how to business...

Like a mezzanine, but for genitals.

Look, I'm no museum curator, but this is dumb. Just...dumb and I-huh? What's dumb? Oh, this replica of Michelangelo's David on display at the World Expo 2020 in Dubai. It's not dumb in and of itself, but hang on, let's talk about this whole World Expo 2020 thing first.

Didn't we give up on World's Fairs decades ago?
Like when we all realized that we couldn't get along?

God, if you're there, now would be
a great time to Rapture these people.
It'd really help the rest of us out.

So savvy readers, or people who know how calendars work, might have caught the fact that the World Expo 2020 is for some reason happening in 2021 and is even planed to run into March of 2022. Well, you can blame COVID for that and by extension, people who made simple and vital precautions like wearing masks and getting vaccinated into some weird political thing which they then, preposterously, turned around and blamed on the rest of us. But we're not here to talk about the idiots who ruin everything, we're here to talk about David's dick. Yeah, you heard me. 

So Dubai. The Expo is being held in the largest city in the United Arab Emirates. A place known--according to an incredibly lazy internet search--for rich people and shopping...for rich people. Like, private jets for their dogs rich people.

"Luxury shopping, fine dining and a dismal human rights record, Dubai has it all!"

-Dubai Tourism Bureau

Here's hoping the exhibit glosses
over our tiki Nazi problem...

Anyway, like any world's fair, Expo 2020 has a number of pavilions, each representing a different country from around the world. We have one. Its theme is "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of the Future" and it's about how our freedom inspires uh...innovation or something. Italy has one too, which brings us to the five inch marble dong. Yup, five inches. And bear in mind that the statue is seventeen feet tall so now you know that.

Statues back in the Renaissance were modeled on the Classical Greek style, which, while totally down with full frontal dudity, also valued, uh, self-control? 

Although I suspect it's difficult to get aroused while being attacked by snakes.

Pictured: Just the tip.

Anyway, I said marble dong, but really it, and the rest of the Italy pavilion's replica of David, was recreated out of marble dust and recycled plastics using three dimensional scans of the original so it's supposedly quite accurate. Which is great, except the UAE is a somewhat uptight culture and dicks just won't fly (figuratively speaking) so the solution here was to display David in a sunken shaft designed so as to make the offending five-inches invisible from the top, even if you lean over the side. Unless you're rich. 

No really. If you have a VIP pass, you get access to the lower, more crotch level of the exhibit. It's like a mezzanine, but for genitals. Plebs on the other hand, just get is a chest-up view of this loving recreation of one of the most famous pieces of Italian Renaissance art. The whole thing is just, ridiculous for a number of reasons. 

Rich or poor, everyone deserves the opportunity
to titter at the Bible's most amusing willy.

Ah! Got it! Italian Star Wars
knock-off Starcrash starring David
Hasselhoff. Where's that pavilion?

For one, as one of the most famous pieces of Italian Renaissance art, it's not like people in Dubai are unfamiliar with the statue and its Goliath-induced terror-shrinkage. Secondly, all the trouble of 3D scanning the original seems rather wasted if they were just going to show the replica from the top up. And thirdly, why bother with any of this? Has Italy not produced any culture worthy of export since the Renaissance? Like...uh...ok, fine, I can't think of anything, but that doesn't mean there isn't something.

The answer is, of course, that the United Arab Emirates is a cautionary tale of what happens when you let misogynisitic, hypocritical theocrats run the show. And while that may sound incredibly judgmental of me, remember that as hilarious as the squeamishness towards five inches of marble flaccidity is, this is a country that jails protestors for protesting, stones people to death for blasphemy, prosecutes women for reporting sexual assault. So it's basically Texas in five years or so. 

Pictured: Greg Abbott signing a bill that puts a bounty on people
who help women exercise control over their own bodies.

Paging Dr. Wertham...

I really, really don't want to give DC too much credit here. I mean, it takes so little to draw the performative ire of conservatives eager to out homophobic quip one another in their tired quest to appeal to dumbs. And in this case so little was the reveal that Superman is bi. Except he's not, or at least not the Superman you're thinking of, but first the shitty comments from people who suddenly give a damn about comics. 

"The Super-Man? A bisexualist? I am outraged. Outraged! 
What's next a Lesbian Little Orphan Annie?"

-Conservatives, suddenly

Sexualizing comic book characters?
Has uh...has he read a comic book?

Were not going to go through them all, because there's a million of them and I have to go to work soon and really, my level of effort here should be consistent with theirs, which is to say, minimal. But take Raymond Arroyo from Fox News who went on Laura Ingram's show to wax nostalgic about how as a kid he loved superheroes and how straight they all were, and can you believe that they're sexualizing comic book characters now? For shame! Someone call doctor Frederick Wertham. Is he still alive?

Who said conservatives aren't funny?
Oh, right, everyone. Ever. Sorry.

Something something woke culture ruining whatever. I mean, the funny funny jokes practically write themselves. Arroyo went on to add:

"We loved those heroes. We just wanted them to get the bad guys, not venereal disease."

-Raymond Arroyo, thanks 

folks, he'll be here all night, 

try the waiters, tip the veal

Josh Mandel, some guy running for Senate in Ohio, said "They are literally trying to destroy America." Which is weird coming from a member of a party that literally tried to do a coup. And in self-owns, Arizona Representative Wendy Rodgers posted that Superman Loves Louis (sic) Lane before suggesting that DC rename bi-Superman Thooperman, because you know how the gays are always lisping? Oh that Wendy...what a card. 

A hate-filled, homophobic, fascist, gun-obsessed, anti-choice, 
Trump-cult, insurrectionist card. Also, does she know you don't
have to write "period?" You can just up a period at the end.

Pictured: that time Commissioner
Gordon wearing a robot bunny suit
filled in for Batman.

Ok, obviously she meant to say Lois Lane and not Louis, but she doesn't actually know what she's talking about because like I mentioned before, this isn't the Superman most people are familiar with. This is Jonathan Kent, ex-Superboy and son of classic Superman and Lois Lane, so while I'm sure Jon loves his mom, Rodgers should probably have bothered to check before riding hard for oedipal Supes. And while this isn't as big as retconning Clark Kent's sexuality, Jonathan Kent is Superman, or at least a Superman (there are two Spier-Mans...Men? Spiders Man right now, so why not?). At least for the moment. DC (and Marvel for that matter) loves to make big, bold changes with their major comics, insisting that they're the new status quo, only to reverse them a few months later. But whatever, representation is representation and a Superman in the main continuity  is queer now and that's great. 

And sure, there are plenty of reasons to take issue with DC's narrative choices over the years. The frequent and inconsistent reboots, Wonder Woman snapping Max Lord's neck, that time they wussed out on Batwoman getting married and if anyone piping up about this had a real criticism that would be different. But then, this was never about criticism, this was about being shitty, so I don't know, good job? 

"What a beautiful day! So many way to be
shitty to other people, where to even begin?"

-Conservatives, apparently

Oh, now he's not going to cooperate?

Sure, Chuck Schumer can be a little abrasive, but Mitch McConnell should maybe lay off the suggestion that Schumer calling out Republicans on their bullshit is partisan. He's made a career out of partisan. A protracted, ruinous career which, thanks to a lack of term limits on the Senate, will likely go on until he runs out of spaarti clone cylinders. 

Pictured: some of the strandcast bodies McConnell has in
reserve in the dark cloning labs beneath the Capitol building.

"Because intransigence has worked
pretty well for me so far. Remember that 
time I stole two Supreme Court seats?"

-Mitch McConnell

Again, 100% Schumer probably could have held off a day or two instead of immediately--like, the ink wasn't even dry--laying into Mitch McConnell and the GOP over the way the entire debt crisis was entirely their fault, but in his defense the entire debt ceiling crisis was entirely their fault. Probably. I don't know, I'm not an expert on these things, but this prompted Mitch McConnell to write an angry letter to the President insisting that he's not going to ride to the rescue next time. Which again, I don't understand why McConnell thinks he deserves a cookie for being intransigent in the first place. Because no cookie.

Like, a lot has been made about how offended Mitch McConnell was and how he said that Schumer has "poisoned the well" and how John Thune "...let him (Schumer) have it" and did you see poor Joe Manchin burying his head in his hands? 

Pictured: Joe Manchin getting a taste of how we feel watching the GOP
dismantle voting rights while he hems and haws over the filibuster.
Not pictured: any sympathy for Joe Manchin.

Yes, I harp on this a lot, but look at Texas.
Look, but don't ever, ever set foot there.

But as impolitic as Schumer was being--and he was, gloating is never a good look--the GOP (and I'm including Joe Manchin in this, because I mean, c'mon), has already made working with them a "hold your nose and try not to gag" prospect. Remember that time an angry mob tried to overrun the Capitol and crown a former reality TV host President for life? Because they don't. Or that time Mitch McConnell sat on one Supreme Court appointment and then rushed another so that said TV host could fill them? 

I guess what I'm saying is fuck Mitch McConnell. I know, it's not an original sentiment, but it's just that I think we're all a little sick of this man no one outside of Kentucky voted for wielding so much power over our lives and futures. And now he's unwilling to work with Democrats because Chuck Schumer--who isn't wrong--hurt his feelings? And how are we supposed to tell this new, uncooperative Mitch McConnell from the regular uncooperative Mitch McConnell we've had to endure all these years?

Above: McConnell's letter to the President. 
Here, I'll sum up: "Waaaaaaaah..."