Trigger warning: this one takes a turn.

Say, you may have noticed that the frequency of my posts and the quality of said posts have diminished signific--huh? You haven't noticed? Huh...not sure how I should take that. Anyway, the reason is this:

Move over Death of a Salesman.

We even made the local paper!
Yup, live theatre and print media,
we are on the cutting edge!

Bikini Werewolf Massacre! The Musical. I am, if I haven't mentioned this before, a fan of theatre and even go so far as to spell it with an "re" instead of an "er" to really drive home the pretentiousness. And BWMTM (acronym!) is the show I've been working on. Well worked on. Tonight's closing--what? Like I said, I've been busy. I know it's hard to tell from the image above, the title, or the fact that I'm writing this blog and not say, writing professionally, but it's actually an entirely amateur production. Like, super amateur. You won't believe how aggressively amateur we are, but that's the part of the appeal.

Click here for tickets. What? Don't
look at me like that...in twelve years I've
shilled for something once. Once. 

Don't worry, I'm not going to plug my show, or go on a l'art pour l'art tear, although, for real, art for art's sake. Also, if we, as a civilization funded the arts like we should, we wouldn't have a lot of the problems we do. What I'm saying is that kids who pick up paint brushes or do theatre or play the piccolo don't storm Capitols. Yeah, I know, Hitler was a painter, but need I remind you that he was a shitty painter. My point is, on Thursday I had to have a serious conversation with my co-director about cancelling the show. Yup, this just took a turn, but stay with me.

There's no funny photo or caption I can come
up with for this one, so here're some puppies.

So I live in Santa Cruz, California, and on Thursday morning while at work, we got word that there was an active shooter at the local high school. The entire district went on lockdown, and rumors circulated about students having been shot, and people with kids were frantically calling and texting hoping to find out if they were ok. It was awful, but the good news is that this was a false alarm. Evidently a hoax or a prank or something. But the fact of the matter remains that for a full two hours the entire town was waiting to hear if we were the next Uvalde. 

And this is no way to live, you know? Sure, nobody was hurt and a community theatre production is far down the list of things to worry about, but ours is a show about a high school beset by werewolves and it includes a scene where a character hands the protagonist a gun full of silver bullets. There's a satirical line about how handing a gun to a highschooler is a bad look. Ha ha. 

But handing guns out to your family for a
Christmas Card is responsible gun ownership.

We have an actual military now, and
professional law enforcement (in theory anyway),
so yeah, at this point gun ownership is a hobby.

And it's not unreasonable to ask if this line or the show in general hit too close to home just thirty six hours after our scare. And yeah, it does. I'm not a parent, but yeah, it absolutely does. But the thought occurs that jokes about how easy it is for kids to get their hands on guns is less of a problem than how easy it is for kids, and really anyone, to get their hands on guns. So shy should we call off our show or cut a line because a minority of Americans with outsized political influence care more about their gross hobby than people's lives? 

That line isn't the reason ten thousand kids had to hide under their desks waiting to see if a Second Amendment enthusiast would burst in to their classroom. The good news is, nobody stormed out of our show, which I'm taking as a good sign.

Fine, one guy stormed out. God, people are so sensitive these days...

Goon Range

"It's not terrorism because we're white."

-some MAGA shitheel

Look, I know that these are divisive times and we're all tribed up and everything is fraught, but surely people know that if they're on the side that has masked, armed vigilantes sitting in lawn chairs and waving their guns around to keep people away from ballot drop boxes as part of some insane, fascistic plan to take secure white supremacist rule all under the guise of preventing the zero cases of voter fraud that happen every never, they're the bad guys, right? Like, good people don't do that. You know how I know? Because if what they were doing was ok, they wouldn't need masks and guns. Those are for crime. 

Well, blue collar crime. Rich people do crime in the open. It's called the unfettered capitalism. Wow, get me: I'm salty today!

"Here's to being above the law!"

-rich people

How have these folks never considered the
possibility that Donald Trump was terrible
at his job and most of us can't stand him? 

Anyway, the epicenter of all this so far seems to be Arizona, where you might recall the local GOP staging a long and bullshit recount that still showed Joe Biden winning. Poll intimidating is just this year's strategy and something The Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans and Vote Latino are asking federal prosecutors to step in and do something about. And I just can not for the life of me wrap my head around how it's come to this. Like, where are the police here? Shouldn't they be, I don't know, investigating armed randos with masks lurking around polling places? Well, good news and bad news. 

According to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department, they're looking into it. Cool. Here, watch this story from CNN about a woman who got up in the collective, be-mustached face of some of these poll watchers. My favorite part is where the cops seem to take the side of the poll watchers and--hang on, can we all agree that they're not poll watchers? They're there to intimidate and harass voters, so let's call them what they are: fascist goons.

Pictured: Police confronting a woman who
confronted the goons. You know, for bothering them.

The law and order party everybody...

Evidently looking into it means measuring to make sure that the masked white supremacists and their pick-up trucks with the license plates covered up are more than seventy-five feet from the ballot boxes. Otherwise they'd be in violation of the law, because depressingly in Arizona, and I suspect most places in the US (which is even more depressing), it's perfectly legal to brandish guns in an attempt to intimidate people trying to exercise their right to vote, as long as you're not violating electioneering laws. 

Which, I mean, holy shit. Like, I'm not a firearms expert, but I'd like to propose that the minimum distance armed poll intimidation squads are required to keep from ballot boxes should be at least outside the lethal range of whatever guns they're carrying. I can't believe it's gotten to the point where we're arguing over how close armed goons are allowed to be to ballot boxes...

Speaking of effective range, while we're at it, why don't we limit gun ownership to
the kind of guns James Madison was talking about when he wrote the 2nd Amendment. 

Today in rhetorical mashed potatoes:

So on the one hand it's like: could you please stop throwing mashed potatoes at paintings? But on the other hand, ehh...they have a point.

The kind of point that can only be made by
 throwing mashed potatoes at a Monet.

"This is for the planet! And to a lesser extent
Cézanne and Manet, but mostly the planet!"

-well-rounded protestors

Throwing food at paintings is the cool new protest move being carried out by people who are, for some reason, tired of the dystopian hellscape that the planet Earth has become. This time it was mashed potatoes at Claude Monet's "Les Meules" at Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany. They were protesting the international community's general "It's probably fine/all us rich olds will be dead before the real shit hits the fan" approach to climate change. By smearing food on a French impressionist painting. 

Incessant heatwaves, wildfires and floods
 aren't doing it, but sure let's try soup.

In a video posted on Twitter, the group, ominously and probably not inaccurately called Letzte (last) Generation went on to explain:

"If it takes pelting a painting with mashed potato or tomato soup to remind society that the fossil course is killing us all, then we give you mashed potato on a painting."

-Letzte Generation helpfully explaining the

connection between Monet and potatoes

By tradition, outgoing Prime Ministers
regenerate into their successors in a spectacular
and often explosive release of energy.

The soup they're referring to is from an incident last month in which a London group called "Just Stop Oil" threw tomato soup at van Gogh's "Sunflowers" to protest fossil fuels, the cost of living, and the general shit-show that is the U.K.'s economy of late. Oh, and then they glued themselves to the wall. While the world is still careening down an increasingly destructive and irreversible path both environmentally and economically, British PM Liz Truss did recently resign while basically apologizing for still thinking supply-side economics ever worked. 

Pictured: everyone on the internet.

But probably not because of the soup thing, begging the question what's the point? Critics on the internet--sorry, I guess I can just say the internet--were quick to point out that defacing art does nothing to improve the world and that you don't have to destroy something beautiful or valuable to save something else, and they're kind of right. Housing isn't suddenly more affordable because someone threw soup at a van Gogh and Exxon and BP haven't folded because of Latzte Generation's potatoes slinging.

But we are talking about it, right? And to be clear, neither painting was actually damaged. This is the twenty-first century, these things are behind plexiglass and coated with resins or whatever to prevent exactly this kind of thing. And these groups are a hundred percent correct. Even if you don't like their methods, the ultra-wealthy and the fossil fuel industry are two of the things making the world un-livable. If these groups are willing to risk jail time to smack our collective selves out of our complacency, more power to them.

The confident expression of a Londoner who knows that these cops--or bobbies,
I guess--are about five to ten years away from having to go to work on police gondolas. 

Extortion as a business model

What do you mean where have I been? Busy. I have a life you know...what? Why are you laughing? Oh, wait, I see it. You've read previous entries on my blog and can't square that with my indignant insistence that I have a life. Irony. 

Pictured: like, the three hundredth post about Star Trek.

"Capitalism? Flawed? How dare you sir!"

-some rich

Anyway, carrying on from last week where I made an observation which I'm sure no one in the history of making observations had ever made before--that capitalism may be, in some ways, flawed--I'd like to talk about YouTube. You know, that thing you can watch videos on for free assuming that you're willing to put up with advertisements. Advertisements which count down to when you can skip them begging the question: why are you having to sit through them in the first place?

Above: Content...and, incidentally, a
grim window into my search algorithm. 

Capitalism, that's why. It seems to be the answer to all the worst questions. Thanks Milton Friedman...But savvy internet users know that you can pay YouTube to remove the ads. I don't do that of course, it's dumb and only plays into their hands. I make it a point to look away or tune the ads out. Yes, I know it's how ugh...I hate this term: content creators, make money, but the algorithm or whatever doesn't know if I actually watch the ads, so win/win, right? Anyway, I bring all this up because I just read this thing about how they've raised the price of the family plan.

"Enjoy some goddamn content!"

-YouTube

Which doesn't affect me at all, because like I said, I don't pay for YouTube and even if I did, I'm a childless shut-in three cats and a pair of crocs away from giving up entirely, and it's only the family plan that's getting the price hike, so what do I care? I don't. I just saw this article and was reminded that there is such a thing as paid YouTube subscriptions and I now want to talk about the insane corporate thought process behind it. Like, they're essentially extorting subscribers, right?

I always skip the ads before I become
invested in toilet car person's plight,
but I do hope it works out for them.

Ok, extortion is a strong word, you don't have to watch YouTube. But their business model is "endure this forty-five second ad for an ulcerative colitis ad or pay us $11.99 per month." The assumption being that ads are terrible and we (YouTube) know they're terrible but we just put them there so you'll want to pay us to take them out. It would be like Kia including a vuvuzela recording that plays while you drive and can't be shut off unless you subscribe to Kia Premium or something. 

And fine, I get that YouTube, like most successful companies now, doesn't actually produce anything and in order to keep the lights on they have to generate revenue somehow and ads are that somehow. I just thinks it's bizarre that it's both in the running of ads and the not running of ads that they make their money.

"Rather than ask subscribers to pay to opt out of ads when they watch videos,
on You Tube, I propose we take the videos and the ads out of the equation
entirely. Let's just bill people. It's called thinking outside of the box."

-some YouTube exec

Breaking News: Commerce is kinda gross.

Hey, do you know what's not news? Huh? Yeah, actually, the pumpkin contest thing from the other day was not news. I'm glad you're with me on that. But do you know what else isn't news? Amazon having a sale.

This just in: a company that sells things is selling things
for slightly less money in the hope that you'll buy more things.

"Give it a rest, not everything's a scoop."

-Some reporter

And yet a simple internet search of the words Prime Day yields a list of articles from news sites falling over one another to tell us all about the best savings and deals and it's gross right? Like, I get that we're past any sense of, uh, what do you call it? You know, that thing that reporters used to have back when the object was to report on things that happened and not sell us shit? Ah! Got it: journalistic integrity. We're past journalistic integrity, as a thing. Which I find troubling. Not in a "back in my day" news sources had standards, but in a--wait, I think they might have?

I don't know. The shift from reporting on news and shilling happened so gradually, I'm not sure I can put my finger on when the changeover happened, but it did. I mean look at this:

Pictured: not news. At best it's free advertising. At least I think it's free?
Wait, does Amazon own CNN? Or maybe a company that owns a company that
owns CNN? Wow...end stage capitalism is a hell of thing, isn't it?

I mean, basically, right?

The piece above doesn't even have that little "sponsored" disclaimer. Just a line of fine print at the top explaining that:

"Content is created by CNN Underscored's team of editors who work independently from he CNN newsroom. When you buy links through our site, we may earn commission. Learn more."

-CNN's legal department's Fig Leaf division

"Must...buy more...fulfillment..."

-Some consumer

Learn more? Ok. If you click on the link it takes you to an explanation of CNN Underscored: "an online shopping and product review guide covering deals, tech, style...and more. We research and test to find the best products and deals so you can live a smarter, simpler, and more fulfilling life." And--wait, a more fulfilling life? Through shopping? That's bleak, right? Like, it's not just me? Anyway, they go on to say that the Underscored Team works with editorial independence. And gets commissions.

Wait, people like money, don't they?

So they're editorially independent from CNN, but also get money from the manufacturers whose products they review every time you buy one. And look, I'm not a business person, but if I follow, they make money when we buy the things they review. And if they review things positively, we might be more likely to buy them. So if they write more reviews, then the Underscored team makes more money. But we can totally trust their impartiality, right? Because journalistic integrity. God, why am I so cynical?

Oh, right, observation. Look, I'm not picking on CNN. A lot of news sites are running similar "articles" about Prime Day and presenting them as consumer guides and reviews while at the same time accepting money for--what? Why are you laughing at me? Is this--what's that? Going on for years you say? Journalism is dead and these are just the corpses of news sites being operated by corporate interests like that fungus that turns ants into zombies? 

"C'mon, zombie brain fungus is a little harsh don't
you think? I prefer to think of it as synergy."

-some guy

A grower and a shower.

"So wait, it just sits there?"

-some jerk (me)

Look, I don't want to rain on anyone's, uh, gourd festival and I get that I'm just being a huge jerk here, but I mean, the pumpkin does most of the work, right? I'm referring, of course, to yesterday's Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off in Half Moon Bay, California, which is only an hour away for me and I can't believe no one told me about it. Anyway, according to this NPR article, the winner was Travis Gienger, horticulture teacher from Anoka Minnesota and, you know, congratulations. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving, uh, person who's pumpkin grew to be a remarkable size. 

Skills like owning at pumpkin
patch and...uh, patience?

I'm the worst, I know. There probably is some kind of skill involved in growing unusually large pumpkins, even if that skill absolutely eludes people like me who see articles generously described as news online and then writes sarcastic blog posts about them. But still, I have questions. For one, what would motivate someone to grow and then haul a twenty-five hundred pound pumpkin more than two thousand miles to Half Moon Bay. A trip of around thirty hours. Huh? Ok, fine, it's obviously the glory.

Tens of pumpkin weigh off
enthusiasts apparently think it is.

But it kind of seems like you'd have to know how much it weighed to begin with, right? Like before you load it onto the flatbed or whatever, you'd want to know how much it weighed, so can't they just, you know, tell the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-off committee or whatever regulatory body governs pumpkin-related world records? It just seems like it'd save on gas, you know? And if cheating is a concern, it kind of seems like it'd be easier just to fly a judge out to Anoka to confirm the results right? I guess it's less fun that way. Wait, is it fun?

And yes, it's come to this. After twelve years of this blog, I'm down to ragging on pumpkin contests, but I mean, I'm not wrong, am I? Sure, Travis Grienger planted and watered it or whatever, but otherwise the pumpkin did the growing. It just seems like gambling or the stock market. Sure, people who do it have to have some knowhow but at some point it's down to dumb luck. But then, this is Grienger's second win, so what do I know?

What? I just don't think using money to make other money is an achievement.
More like a serious flaw in out civilization's economic system.

I'm not proud of it, but they had me at Moriarty.

I'm not sure what bothers me more: the lazy nostalgia grab of deep cut references or the fact that I am 100% there for it. What am I talking about? Why this of course:

Pictured: Jean-Luc Picard about to tuck in to his breaded cod and chips
only to be interrupted by the call to adventure in the Picard Season 3 trailer.
Not pictured: the part where he looks around wearily and mutters "I'm too
 old for this merde." Before answering the aforementioned call to adventure.

The internet: 20% fans weighing in 
on trailers they watched on Youtube, 25%
 unfocused rage. The rest is just ads.

Surely you didn't think I was not going to have opinions about the Picard season 3 trailer, because I do and as per usual, please take this opportunity to ask yourself, I mean, really ask yourself if you're prepared to fall down this nerd-hole with me. If you're not, or are but would rather not discuss spoilers, I suggest you bail out now. Still with me? Cool. Did you watch it? No? Well going on, think of it as required reading. I'll wait. Back? Super. Now I think you'll join me in saying: "what the actual?"

Pfft...something new. Screw that.
Give me more crossovers.

Recently Star Trek, like as a thing, has been kind of about eating itself. The newer entries in the--and I hate this word--franchise, have relied very heavily on references to earlier incarnations. Which, I mean, sure, that's what being a--ugghh--franchise is all about. It has to build on previous installments. Everyone loves franchises. Why would anyone want to watch something new or original when they can consume additional entries in a single, interconnected narrative universe? But the degree to which Star Trek shows do this fluctuates pretty wildly. 

There's also The Orville which is basically
Star Trek with the serial numbers filed off
and more Seth MacFarlane jokes.

Discovery is probably the most out there in terms of departing from the source material while Strange New Worlds feels the most like a twenty-twenties version of the original series. Lower Decks relies fairly heavily on lore and references, but gets away with it because it's played for laughs, while Picard is...well it's for the fans. Which is a nice way of saying both seasons started really strong and then kind of devolved into something only the people who read Memory Alpha could love.

Fine, me, but the Enterprise-F
was in it. I mean, I'm only human...

So me. And this trailer for the new season definitely feels like the writers are inserting some kind of long, hollow, metal tube into my skull, hoping to extract subscription fees directly from my nostalgia gland. From go, the trailer definitely gives me J.J. Abrams Trek movie vibes: quippy dialogue, sinister-looking starships emerging from dark and foreboding space clouds, a mysterious voice talking about vengeance. There're plenty of pew-pews and exploding corridors and blink-and-you'll miss it moments for nerds to scrub and pause through and the--huh? No. Not me. Other nerds...not me.

Twisted, cunning, and in the public domain,
Moriarty is truly a force to be reckoned with.
Unless of course, you turn off the holodeck.

And three villains? Three. There's the aforementioned vengeance stan (the kids still say "stan" right?) played by Amanda Plumber. Lore, because of course Brent Spiner is in it, but not playing Data. And professor goddamn Moriarty--who, I mean...deep cut, right? Even casual Trekkies are probably aware of Lore and even if they're not, "he's Data's evil twin brother" is pretty easy to grasp. But a sentient hologram based on Professor Moriarty? He was created by the holodeck when someone asked for an adversary capable of defeating Data's android intellect, but that's some serious "last time on Star Trek" stuff right there. 

"Hm...needs more social commentary couched
in sci-fi tropes. And maybe some more Ferengi?"

Except the target audience--again, me--doesn't need a "last time on." And I'm not sure that's a good thing for either of us. From a writing perspective, it's kind of lazy. Just take a bunch of episodes of the TV series, shove a stick blender in there and come up with a nostalgia smoothie. And as the nerd in this equation, I'm just drinking another ten hours of that smoothie. Which is, you know, probably full of sugar and--ok, the analogy falls apart here, but I think you get my point. Of course there's the other side of this argument which is, who cares?

Sure, maybe it won't bring anything new to the table and will just rehash stories and ideas we've already seen a dozen times over. Fine. And maybe it will pit the crew against another rando bent on revenge against the Federation for murky, illogical reasons. Whatever. If Micheal Dorn is willing to sit through five hours of latex forehead application to bring back Worf one more time, I'm going to watch it, damnit. 

Wait, again? This is like the fourth time the final voyage has begun.

You'll be hearing from my space lawyer...

The other day, Raw TV, a London-based production company, came by the bookstore in which I work to do an interview with the owner about how Amazon is a cancer on the industry and ruining everything. Or something like that, I'm paraphrasing. Anyway, they asked us to print out and then post this notice on the entrance:

You're trying to read it aren't you? Well stop squinting.
I'll tell explain the part that gave me pause.

Is this how Fred Astaire ended
up in that vacuum cleaner ad?

It's, I understand, a fairly common legal notice designed to cover the asses of the production crew should someone take issue with being in the background of B-roll or whatever. And I have questions. First, are they even serious with this? Like, that's my hand in the frame for scale. and the font is, I don't know, eleven point? All caps sure, but I make it a point to ignore things written in all caps. And it's not exactly eye-catching. One might quite easily breeze past the door without examining every piece of all caps paper scotch taped to it and in doing so have waved all rights to the use of their image. 

Have you very stopped to read a Prop 65 warning? No, me neither. In fact, I suspect no one has. Ever. And they're about cancer, so why would we stop for this? 

Um...if something at Starbucks or whatever causes cancer maybe
get rid of it instead of just posting a sign with the vague warning
that something, somewhere is slowly killing us?

Hers's some of the language in this iron-clad contract everyone who's ever walked past it is now bound to forever:

"Fool! There's no escaping our lawyers."

-A Raw TV spokesperson

"By entering this area, you hereby irrevocably consent to the use of your photograph, image, voice, and likeness in the production, and in promotion thereof, in any and all media, throughout the universe, in perpetuity, without payment."

-some piece of paper you 

may have walked by once

The universe itself will one day run out of
thermodynamic energy and simply grind to a
halt, but this document will still be in effect.

Does this really work? Can any rando type up any nonsense they want, throw in some hereby's and therefore's, and expect it to hold up in court? Every court? Throughout the universe in perpetuity? Do they mean to tell me that if I walk past their cameras, my image belongs to them in all media, even on other planets? Other galaxies? What about The Lesser Magellanic Cloud? Does this proclamation hold water there? And what about other universes? Did they even factor the multiverse into this? 

We live in a country where "well regulated militia" can be interpreted to mean any asshole with access to a Cabela's, and where decades of legal precedent can be thrown out the window because a gameshow host most of us didn't vote for lucked into/straight up stole three Supreme Court seats, but this gibberish that I printed out and taped to the door has the full force of law through all time and space? 

"I rule in favor of the paper. Perhaps in the future, the plaintiff will be more careful
about what nondescript, difficult to read notices they happen walk past."

-Some Judge