More like the Establishment Guideline...

So there was a time, like, in the 1970's where it was illegal to advertise to children on television, but then Reagan came along and ruined everything. I mean that, everything. Want to see the exact moment that the former star of Bedtime for Bonzo made sure that Boomers would be the last generation with a decent shot at retirement? Here it is:

It's been like, forty-three years and everything is terrible
so could we like, maybe come up with a new plan?

If you don't teach your kids about the
Cybertronian Wars, who will? The schools? 

Ok, that was the trickle down speech, but he also lifted the regulations on advertising at children, opening the door to those cartoons we were all raised on. Do you remember The Transformers, and The Care Bears fondly? Sure, me too. Did you know that they were thinly-veiled, half-hour toy commercials? You did? It's common knowledge? Ok, but my point is that regulations were there for a reason. Kids are impressionable and can't necessarily distinguish between useful information and advertising. 

"The Establishment Clause only applies
other people's religions, and 'well-regulated
militia' means whatever we say it does."

-Conservatives

Which is why I find this argument for the Louisiana Law requiring the Ten Commandments in school so...what's the word? Cockamamie? Poppycockfull? Horseshit. It's horseshit. What law? What argument? Settle down. The Law is H.B. 71 and it requires that schools display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. But doesn't that violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment? Of course it does. It absolutely does. But the proponents argument is two-fold: first: it's an historical document. Second: we have a super-majority, so shut up.

The Northwest Ordinance also prohibited slavery,
but that didn't stop Louisiana from seceding, so...

But lots of things are historical documents. The Declaration of Independence, The Mayflower Compact, and the Northwest Ordinance to name three. Why those three? Because the law also authorizes, but doesn't require those document to be displayed as well. Why those? If I were to guess: the Declaration of Independence because America. The Mayflower Compact because white people. And the Northwest Ordinance because it contains a stipulation about encouraging religion. 

Don't believe me? Well then check out
this photography from 1445 B.C. of Moses.
What's that his his hand? Exactly. Fact.

And yes, it was written before the First Amendment which specifically says "no state religions allowed." Which, according to the 1947 case Everson v. Board of Education, applies to state and local governments. The argument the laws sponsors are trying to use on the people of Louisiana is that as an historical document, the Ten Commandments aren't an example of the state promoting a religion, but instead just the schools educating kids on the laws God definitely handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai thirty-five hundred years ago.

The law also requires Louisiana residents
to house 18th century British soldiers in
a clear violation of the Third Amendment.

Opponents, which include agnostics, atheists, members of any of the world's other religions (including all the Christian denominations that don't think their narrow interpretation should be foisted on everyone else), as well as every single civil liberties organization in the U.S., point out that this is a clear and willful violation of the First Amendment, you know, the right's second favorite amendment? I mean, the first commandment is God specifically saying I am your God, all other gods are dumb and total nonsense. All of which sounds sounds pretty establish-y, so what are we even doing here?

They built an idol of him.
They literally idolize him.

But I guess the thing that I find the most frustrating is that they know this is horseshit. They know the law violates the First Amendment, and they know they'll be sued, and that they've got nothing to lose. If, god forbid, they win (after all, the walking, rambling example of the opposite of virtually every one of the commandments, got to appoint three Supreme Court Justices in his single, disastrous term as president), they'll be the party that brought church back into state. If they lose, they're the plucky underdogs standing up for what's white--sorry, what's right. 

It's performative faith and they're wasting everybody's time with it in an attempt to appeal to white evangelical voters. Speaking of, HB 71 is part of Governor Jeff Landry's "Dream Big Education Plan" which also includes a bill lifting vaccine requirements, an anti-trans law, and a new don't say gay bill. Remind me why we let Louisiana back into the Union?

If their religious worldview is so fragile that they need to pass laws
enforcing them, maybe their faith isn't that, you know, solid?

Today in internet troll fragility:

"Now, are you going to watch The Acolyte
or am I going to have to start shooting?"

-Disney, evidently

"Anti-entertainment...one of the most devastatingly embarrassing spectacles [he] think[s] [he's] ever witnessed on TV...[f]orty solid minutes of relentless, unadulterated, unapologetic, unaware cringe distilled down to its purest and most toxic form..." Those are some quotes from the first few moments of The Critical Drinker's review of the third episode of The Acolyte, and I have some questions. Chief among them: are The Critical Drinker and similar internet critics aware that they don't have to watch The Acolyte it if they don't want to?

"Women? In genre TV? Quickly, to the
internet! We must add to the toxic discourse!"

-Dudes

No, I'm seriously asking because this new Star Wars show has drawn a surprising amount of ire from--sorry, did I say surprising? The series centers a number of female and BIPOC characters, so this is exactly the amount of ire we should expect the kind of person who spends X amount of hours writing and editing a screed about a TV show they hate. Anyway, out of morbid curiosity, I decided to watch one of these videos, just to see just what their beef is and spoiler alert it's ladies. 

Let the hate flow through you...

The example I chose was The Critical Drinker's video, but that was just because the title was "I'm done and so is Star Wars." Which, I mean, I seriously doubt both that Disney is going to stop making more Star Wars, and that TCD (acroyms are just easier) is going to stop making videos about how angry he is about this fact. If anything, he needs Disney to continue to disappoint him, lest he have nothing to critically drink about, or whatever his deal is. 

Hey teens, are you guys still saying
"big mad?" Am I using that correctly?

I should be upfront and say that I've seen The Acolyte, and it's by no means perfect, and it's not the best entry in Star Wars, but it's fine. It's only three episodes in, but I like it so far and while I'm not offering a critique of this show, I feel the need to say that the backlash is far from justified. Also I am starting to detect a pattern. That is, when a long running series (or franchise) introduces new characters and those characters aren't straight white dudes, straight white dudes get big mad. And then they make YouTube videos about being big mad.

"We lesbian space witches believe 
in the free market, thank you very much."

-Mother Aniseya

If they didn't like it that would be one thing. And in my extremely limited sample size, that is, just this one guy's video, he did levy some complaints that weren't steeped in weird, misogynistic insecurities. He took issue with some of the lore the series established; he's wrong about it, but it's a fair criticism. Also, he found the chanting scene kind of silly which, ok, I did too. But he can't talk about the show's protagonist, without snidely referring to her as "strong female character," and he constantly calls the new Force-wielding coven "communist lesbian space witches." 

I love David Tennant, but you've got
to admit this felt a little...pander-y?

It all just feels like there's more going on here than just nerd nitpicking. That the negativity isn't about the story or the characters, but is instead a certain segment of the fanbase, say entitled straight cis white dudes, playing gatekeeper. It's something that's been happening a lot in the past few years. For every fan backlash resulting in something positive--like, fixing Sonic's teeth--we get two or three instances of something icky, like Kelly Marie Tran sitting out Episode IX to look at schematics or Jodi Whittaker's regeneration into David Tennant. I just hate it when trolls win, you know?

And again, I'm not saying you should or should not watch The Acolyte. I liked it, and your mileage may vary, but it won't leave you screaming into the void about how Kathleen Kennedy burned your childhood to the ground. And surely something that makes so many misogynists this upset is at least worth checking out.

Pictured: Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy, seen here laughing maniacally
over how many grown adults she's driven into to rabid-foam fits over a kids' TV show.

Today in my great shame:

Pictured: the Switch Dock

So it is with no small amount of shame that I tell you that I scratched my Switch screen and sent it back to the manufacturer to be fixed. And yes, I scraped it on the dock. If you don't know what I'm talking about, rest assured that this is both infuriating and embarrassing. Infuriating because the surface area of the Nintendo Switch is like 95% highly scratchable, breakable plastic. This is a problem because one of the console's key features is that you can place it in a dock that connects it to a television, which is great, but it can also damage the screen. Wait, can? No, will damage the screen.

 

What's that? More anxiety? Oh, just
go ahead and put it with the others.

Yes, it was a barely visible scratch on the left hand side of the screen, but there are two kinds of people in the world. The kind that walk around with a spider-web cracked smartphone screen, and those for whom even the slightest blemish keeps them up at night. I am obviously the latter, and while $140 is a ridiculous sum of money to fix something that is both not a big deal and is almost certain to happen again, I know it would cause me no small amount of anxiety. 

This glass has survived since the
twelfth century. I'm just saying is all.

And, unlike all the other things keeping me up at night, this could be fixed relatively easily--albeit expensive--to fix. "But why didn't you simply put a screen protector on it in the first place?" you might ask. Well, couple of things. First, there exists types of glass that are scratch and crack proof and the fact that they're using a plastic with the structural integrity of meringue is inexcusable. Here in anno domini MMXXIV it seems unlikely to me that science cannot produce a screen that can hold up to being tossed in a bag or whatever. This is just bad design.

This feels like pretty solid proof that
dust is sentient and has out for me.

But the other problem is I don't have access to a clean room. Because for real, have you ever tried to put a glass screen protector on a device with a screen? There is no amount of rubbing alcohol wipes or number of passes with a microfiber cloth that is going to keep the screen dust free long enough to apply the tempered glass. It's a physical impossibility to not end up with dust motes trapped forever in air bubbles under the glass.

I know this sort of thing shouldn't bother me, but you're with me, right? Even if you don't play video games, surely you've cracked your phone screen or felt your skin crawl whenever a coworker jabs at your monitor with a greasy finger. It's not a touch screen! you scream inwardly, but they just keep doing it. Is it asking too much that the screens in our lives remain perfect and unblemished forever? ...huh? Yeah. No, hear it. I get it, I need to relax.

Above: Nintendo, seen here counting the money I've given them over the years.

On the virtues of Quantum Toast:

Um, ok, I think we can all agree that the word "quantum" sounds like the future, right? Like, before quantum, it was cyber and before the year two thousand, you could just stick a 2000 after anything and it was instantly catapulted into the twenty-first century. That said, let's not insult our intelligence, ok?

Of course, that was before we actually got to the twenty-first century and it turned out
to be an end-stage capitalism nightmare where you have to Kickstart a kidney transplant and
a convicted felon is running for president on a platform of "I'll only be a dictator for a day."

Above: the future!

What brought this up? Why this. Yeah, if you click, you'll be whisked to the website of ultra-modern kitchen appliance manufacturer Kitchenery and their line of cordless--they're not really cordless, but we'll get to that--blenders, tea kettles, air fryers, pressure cookers, and toasters all powered by their proprietary Quantum Energy Pad. To say the word is to be smacked full in the face by the future. A future you can pre-order right now, so what are you waiting for? You from the future having traveled back in time to tell you to buy one?

Pictured: you, seen here making toast
without a Kitchenery Quantum Energy Pad.

The company says that--huh? What's that you ask? What is a quantum energy pad and what does it do? Why you poor, analog primitive. You slave to the electrical outlet. A Quantum Energy Pad™ is a pad that uh, quantum energizes your Kitchenery brand appliances. All you have to do, is set your Kitchenery brand toaster on your Kitchenery brand Quantum Energy Pad and sit back and let it do its brand thing. Which in this example, is toast bread. Does quantum toast taste better than regular toast? I don't know, does regular toast taste better than actual garbage?

"My live-in chef is going to love this!"

-a prospective induction

cooktop customer

Yes. It does. But hyperbole aside, the Quantum Energy Pad which I one must legally spell out every time because branding, powers your equally branded appliances via wireless power transfer, so no cords. You know, except the one for your Kitchenery Quantum Energy Pad. So it's not really wireless, is it? The Verge article that clued me into this in the first place said something about being able to power these things off an induction cook top. As in the kind of stove rich people have because they have too much money and don't know any better? 

"Just have your butler order another pad."

-some rich guy

But the company's site doesn't say anything about that. Oh, and did I mention that these things cost two hundred and fifty dollars? Of money? That's for two devices of your choice, and the pad. Which, I mean, I guess isn't that outrageous if they're decent appliances, but the whole selling point here is that they're wireless which they are definitely not. And I'm unclear as to what happens if you want to use say, your toaster while you've got something going in the pressure cooker?

Look, I don't want to rag on the company's utopian vision of the wireless kitchen of tomorrow, just because it includes an actual wire and therefore is, on the face of it, a lie, but uh...huh, I guess I do want to rag on that. 

Although I have been thinking about getting an air fryer. I mean,
there really is no better way to cook food that smells like burning plastic.

Today in why you should read the fine print:

Pictured: not a Gameboy

See that? That's not a Gameboy. It looks like a Gameboy, but instead it's a 21st century, FPGA-based (don't worry about it) handheld gaming console that happens to play Gameboy games. And yes, upon learning of its existence, I pre-ordered one. Why would I make such an impulsive move? Because scarcity, that's why. Remember the NES Classic debacle? Or the PS5 hootenanny? Despite the entire Industrial Revolution, there never seems to be enough of these things to go around. 

What? I don't like gettin lumped in with Gen-X.
They're all like fifteen years older than I am.

Scarcity in video games is a tactic. A tactic I will fall for every time, but at least I know this about myself now. Can they make more of whatever? Sure they can, but they know rubes like me will pounce on them if we think it's going to be hard to find. And pounce I did, so cool story, right? No! It's not a cool story, because just hours later I tried to cancel my pre-order. In my haste to secure one of these young Gen-Xer/Elder Millennial nostaglia stroking devices, I failed to notice that it was a Palmer Luckey joint.

Yeah, I don't remember him either, but
he has a decidedly punchable fact, doesn't he?

Who even is Palmer Luckey? Great question. You may have noticed that I've been less, shall we say, politically shrill of late? Huh? You haven't noticed? Ah. Well, anyway, I am, and it's because I live in cold terror that a certain convicted felon might somehow electoral college his way pack into a position of power and it's stressing me out. A lot. Like, it's literally keeping me up at night. And just today some rando was walking down the street shouting "Vote Kennedy" (you know, the anti-vax guy? The one with the worm?) which is terrifying.

We've been down this road before
people and look what happened that time.

Not because I don't think people have a right to their own opinions, I do, it's just that that particular opinion may well end democracy in America forever. No matter what we may think of the system, it's been very carefully divvied up between the two dominant political parties. No, it's not fair, but since we're not likely to get a ranked choice voting system before November, we all have to vote for Joe Biden or the aforementioned felonious goon is back. 

And yet they lack the part of the brain
necessary to appreciate the irony here.

I'm not trying to bum anyone out, but that's the math. But what does this have to do with my impulse purchase? Luckey Palmer, that's what. He was the designer of the Oculus Rift, but went on to found a defense contractor company that builds drones for the military. Sounds a little Elon Musky, right? Well yes, except he went right-wing nutter back in his twenties, writing checks to pro-Trump groups including one that put up those "Too Big to Jail" billboards during the 2016 election.  

He's a real piece of work and today I handed him two hundred dollars of money for a fancy off-brand Gameboy. Yeah, I'm judging me too, but I mean, it's like a really nice fancy Gameboy, and I'm only human. But, in my defense, I'm trying to get said money back as we speak, so cut me some slack?

Pictured: that time most of us voted for Hillary Clinton but one of 
the worst people ever ended up President because the Founding Fathers
wanted to make sure under-populated states felt appreciated. 

Obviously it was Jawas

Pictured: all of us as we realize how much
of our lives we've wasted reading Screenrant.

You know how sometimes you're in the middle of something and it dawns on you that there will come a day when you wish you had that time back? Well that just happened to me. I was scrolling--ugh--and came across this, I don't know what to call it, article? Theory? Needlessly padded, possibly AI written discourse heavily marbled with ads? Yeah, that one. It postulated that Michelle, you know, the youngest daughter on Full House? Yes, that sitcom from the 90's that we haven't thought about in years. Anyway, this suggested that she's dead.

"How rude!"

-some kid's catchphrase

The character that is, not Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, although the fact that they (neither the actors nor the character) appeared on the revival show Fuller House is why they're even suggesting that a fictional character is dead in the first place. I won't explain the theory (you could read it yourself, but, don't), it doesn't matter, the point is that it's pure head canon. That is, backstory or explanations for things in fiction that aren't addressed in the fiction itself. And I can't help but wonder who's sitting around coming up with head-canon that kills off a sitcom toddler? Isn't that the actors were unavailable enough?

But when I examine my own life, I find that I'm guilty of the same nonsense. I mean, I didn't invent gruesome explanations for Judy's disappearance from Family Matters, but we all probably do this from time to time? You know, fill in the blanks?

Carl Winslow's got some explaining to do.

Well, ok, maybe they didn't do
their job but it's a better answer than:
"shut up kid, it's just a movie."

I guess that's what we do with fiction, right? Maybe if all the questions are answered for us, there's less for our brains to lock on to and think about, and the fiction is less interesting. I mean, it's no excuse for lazy writing, or hoping we won't notice that one of the kids went missing, although most of us didn't. But we're inevitably going to have questions about stories. I think someone--maybe George Lucas?--once said that if you're only catching the plot holes in the parking lot after the movie, then the director has done their job, and yeah, I guess I agree with that. 

Head-canon is just us engaging with the material, which is in a lot of ways a mark of good story-telling. So my harsh judgement of anyone weaving elaborate backstories to explain Michelle's absence on Fuller House is not only hypocritical, but missing the point. Well, ok, there are probably more hypocritical things out there. And in some cases the writers do just hope we won't notice. And I suppose the real headline here is "grown adult wastes three minutes of his life reading an answer to a question he never asked."

Speaking of George Lucas, what happened to the rockets R2-D2 had in the prequels?
Well, I'm glad I pretended you asked, because I think the Jawas stole them. Mystery: solved.

(source: head-canon)