We all know who the Chunk is.

Pictured: an allegory for 21st century
international relations...evidently.

There's this scene in the Goonies where the kids come across a framed old map among Mikey and Brand's Dad's artifacts. They decide to take it with them, but doing so would involve removing it from the frame. So rather than violate Dad's "don't touch my artifacts edict," Mikey, Sean Astin's character, hands it off to Chunk played by Jeff Cohen. Chunk, whose role in the movie is essentially that of the lovable klutz, immediately drops it, thus giving the other Goonies plausible deniability.

Because American Presidents have 
a great history with forced relocations...

Yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu met with--and typing this will never get easier--President Trump in the White House. This coming on the cusp of further talks to extend the cease fire that has brought a temporary halt to over a year of brutal warfare the former has been waging on the Palestinian people. After the meeting, the US President held a press conference in which he suggested that the Palestinians in Gaza be relocated. You know, somewhere else. He wasn't terribly clear on that point, and something tells me he doesn't so much care.

The UN of course was quick to point out that forcible transfer or deportation of people is a violation of international law, but you know, he ran a campaign on promises of forcible transfer and deportation of people, so...oh, and also the US would take over the Gaza Strip.

Because foreign intrusion into the region has, historically, worked out so well.

It's a little like seeing OJ Simpson in the
Naked Gun movies...but way, way worse.

Which, ok, to be clear, this is a real-estate developer turned gameshow host turned President turned felon turned, absurdly, President again. Also, he was in Home Alone 2, but that's not really relevant beyond my point that he's not exactly versed in international diplomacy. Or good at business. And did I mention that he's a convicted felon? So in many ways we probably shouldn't be surprised that in the midst of these delicate times he did and said something profoundly dumb and dangerous.

And with all respect to Jeff Cohen and Sean Astin, I can't help but feel that the Israeli leader is, in this analogy Mikey to Trump's Chunk.

Of course, instead of this moment being the inciting incident to an
adventure, it's probably the inciting indecent to a global war.

Ankle deep in regret and chlorine

Pictured: noted rich doofus, Mark
Zuckerberg seen here bemoaning
the lack of masculine energy.

Just to say that while I detest the direction Facebook and other social media companies have taken--that is, cowardly capitulation to the guy who's won two presidential races and yet still never cracked Hillary Clinton's popular vote numbers--I'm still on it. Facebook that is. For now. I just...I don't want to fall out of contact with certain people but can't, for whatever reason, ask them to follow me on some other platform. Is that weird? Yes, it's weird. And I accept that. I own that.

But it's just so hard to leave it. I mean, it knows me so well. It even offered me the opportunity to buy an Outdoors Time Inflatable Pool Bar, despite never expressing an interest in an inflatable pool bar, owning a pool, or drinking in general. But somehow this vaunted algorithmically-based targeted advertising thought that I was 100% the kind of person that would want such a thing in my backyard. Which I don't have behind the house I don't own. 

Finally, a place to drink while being wet.

Above: photographic evidence that truth
doesn't exist, nothing means anything
and all is meaningless.

Now if you're thinking what I'm thinking, that is, that this isn't so much a bar in a pool as it is a bar in an ankle-deep puddle of water surrounded by inflatable nonsense almost certainly made of a plastic that will never decompose and will definitely be choking a river or joining the great pacific Garbage patch someday, you would be correct. If this qualifies as a pool than anything qualifies as a pool. Truth doesn't exist, nothing means anything and all is meaningless. I guess what I'm saying is that kiddie pools aside--which this is defiantly not--there's a minimum depth required to qualify as pool. 

Some even come with LED lighting.
It'll be just like drinking in a limo!

But that's evidently not stopping inspiring InspiredDesigns.net from offering an entire range of inflatable pools in which the most mediocre among us can sip cocktails in the luxury of standing water. Yes, nothing will lower the value of your home like one of these. And it's not just for poors who can't afford a real pool, but riches too as some models can even float in your in-ground. At least that's according to the AI images on their site which is definitely not a scam.

While I'm usually leery algorithms and commerce (e or otherwise) in general, every once in a while something like this ad comes along and reminds me that the technology isn't quite there yet. Of course, maybe it is and this isn't targeted advertising but rather bait. Like, they're just waiting to see who is the kind of person to click on something like this...which I did to write this post...damnit. Chalk one up for the algorithm I guess.

Above: the kind of people who would click on something
like this, seen here saying things like "brah." and "woooooo!"

They're about solutions...chemical ones.

Well I don't know about you, but I'm sick of the relentless horror show that is 2025. Wanna talk about something else? You do? Great. So, what are you having done with your corpse when climate change, or the next pandemic (March?) finally gets you?

No matter how bad things get, just remember:
some day it will end in death and then silence.

Depressing and bo-ring. Amiright?

For time immemorial people have had options when it comes to disposing for the rotting remains of a loved one. We can bury them underground so no one has to, you know, look at them and be reminded of the ephemerality of life and the inevitable of death and decay. But I mean, that takes up valuable retail space and let's face it, cemeteries are bummers. And what happens if a passing meteorite or weird lab-grown virus reanimates the bodies? You've got a living dead situation on your hands, that's what.

Every corpse we don't burn is
another ride on Taylor Swift's jet.

Ok, so burn them. Great, I guess you don't care about the environment. Sure, we all drive individual cars, and billionaires fly around in private jets because they can't be bothered to fly commercial. And of course container ships are, as we speak, dieseling their way across the Pacific full of plastic nonsense which, after failing to fulfill whatever void exists in our lives, is destined to end up in a landfill, but the real existential threat to human civilization is you cremating grandma. So in many ways, she is to blame. Thanks a lot, grandma.

Wow! Is there anything
capitalism can't do? Or won't? 

But only if there were some other way. If only some biotech company could come up with a proprietary solution that's superior in every way as long as you don't think about it too hard. Well, good news, because Bio Response Solutions has the solution. Specifically a solution of water and alkali heated to two to three hundred degrees that then breaks down the earthly remains of your loved one--or enemy, I mean, they don't judge--leaving behind a pile of...I don't know exactly. Bone dust? Some weird white powder or something.

"Why wait?"

-some skeleton

It may sound like I'm making fun of them, and I am, but I actually don't really care what Bio Response Solutions or whoever else comes up with to deal with the Earth's increasing three hundred billion body problem. I do, however, take no small amount of joy in the company's hilarious attempt to treat what they do with human remains with dignity and solemnity while simultaneously trying to sell you on dissolving your loved ones in acid. Or, a base, I guess. Alkali is a base? Doesn't matter, the point is there's never a graceful way to sell corpse melting.

Cremation: they're fine...if you
didn't really love the deceased.

The process, which they call Aquamation, breaks down a human body and leaves "ashes" so it's up to the FAQ on the company's website to explain why this is better than cremation. To that end, the company describes the differences between cremains--an absurd portmanteau of the words cremation and remains used by the funeral industry, and the...Aquamains? I guess? First and foremost, the aquamains are a uniform powder-like substance as opposed to the bone-chips and dust from burning. Which...super.

Above: some guy from the
recycling plant.

They also explain that pace-makers don't need to be removed from the corpse ahead of time, and that metallic implants come out clean. So clean in fact, that metal recycling facilities are amazed. Like, actually amazed. You know, in case you, in a state of bereavement, were concerned that the technicians at the local recycling plant were going to be judging the conditions of grandma's (sorry, I keep killing your hypothetical grandma) hip replacement. So that's good to know, right?

But perhaps the most ludicrous selling point has to be volume. The site seems to be touting the fact that with their process, you get more ashes. Twenty to thirty percent more than the leading corpse disposal method.

Wow, I can't afford not to dissolve grandma (again, sorry) in a chemical bath.

"Wow, so mush ashes, what a value!
Thanks Bio-Response Solutions!"

-the bereaved

And I mean, how American is that particular appeal? Volume, right? Order a meal at any one of our nation's fine chain restaurants and you'll find that quantity rather than quality is paramount. So why, the good people at Bio-Response Solutions must reason, should their customers settle for anything less than maximum aquamains when it comes to reducing their dearly departed to the constituent minerals from their bones? Look, I get that everything's a business now, but can something...anything be free of advertising? Huh? No? Ok, well, I just thought I'd ask...

Today in the darkest timeline:

On the one hand, I think the nascent second Trump administration operates under the assumption that we're all idiots. On the other hand, the fact that there is a nascent second Trump administration in the first place suggests that they are correct in at least 77,303,586 cases. Specifically the cases involving rubes. I say that because of this press release from the empty, fascistic shell of the U.S. Department of Education:

It's like the words tumbled forth from the gibberish hole of some
felonious real-estate developer nepo-baby, and not say, a government agency.

Pictured: The DoE, seen here unharmed
and definitely not speaking under duress.

To be clear, that's not a campaign ad or a mailing sent out to the most gullible among us, this is the official Department of Education website and it sits alongside another press release about how glorious leader has taken steps to eliminate the DEI because wokeness and immigrants. Or something. The "news" story goes on to explain that the department's now ironically named Office for Civil Rights has dismissed eleven complaints "that local school district removed age-inappropriate, sexually explicit, or obscene materials from their school libraries."

"I'm trans now."

-a child, reading

Wait, what kind of monster am I? Certainly a grade school should remove books about--oh, wait--vague language? Inappropriate? Obscene? This is about gay stuff, isn't it? Probably. I haven't yet been able to find which claims have been dismissed, but book-banning in a twenty-first century American context is almost always because some parent is big-mad about books making their kids gay or suggesting that maybe racism is bad. But luckily for us, Biden's Book Banning Hoax is over. Hurray. 

"Ow! Our precious, fragile worldview!"

-Republicans

Yeah, ok, couple of things. First, enough with the alliteration. Biden's Book Banning? I mean, enough. Second, the "hoax" they refer to is the Right-wing position that there are no book bans and never were. School districts were and are simply removing books from their libraries at the behest of Republican-led legislatures because they conflict with their Right-wing worldview. Which is not a ban in their way of thinking, but rather the prohibition, through legal means, of the use or distribution of materials they personally find objectionable. See? Totally different. 

I get this sinking feeling that the department is in its final months before being dissolved. Like, it will soon be deemed government waste by that fascist-salute throwing billionaire, and I really feel for the staff who got into this business because they believed in the importance of education, and now have to sit there while their new bosses tear it to pieces as part of the performative conservatism their voters crave. 

Pictured: Trump and Musk discussing how many more basic government
services they need to eliminate before their fathers are proud of them.

I think she's earned some swagger

Fun fact: the newly sworn-in Secretary of
Defense is covered in white nationalist tattoos.

Oh, but let's end on a more positive note. As you may have noticed, Reverend Budde has become an obsession of mine this week, despite my being a not particularly religious person. I think it's because of her very public defiance at a time when so many others are quick to capitulate in the face of the inexplicable success of the right. A success that comes despite being nakedly unqualified to govern, openly racist, and flatly opposed to everything we hold dear as a culture. I suppose I'm just looking for stories about people who stand up to them, you know?

Pictured: the photo in question.
Not pictured: the capacity for shame.

As I mentioned in that last post but didn't follow-up on, this isn't Budde's first brush with this President playing pious for the rubes. Durning the end of his previous reign, he had the Park Police and National Guard troops tear gas protestors who were demanding justice for George Floyd. He wanted the path clear so he could walk across the street, hold a Bible upside down and get his picture taken in front of St. John Episcopal Church. Something Budde, who, as the Bishop of Washington, should have been, you know, consulted about in advance? 

Unsurprisingly, she didn't take kindly to her Church being used as a prop in the President's pitch for the uninformed religious voters who, while self-identifying as Christians, would be hard pressed to quote anything they didn't read on wall decor sold at Hobby Lobby.

"Live, laugh, love."

-Jesus, I guess

Turns out they do do communion
wine. I looked it up. You're welcome!

Understandably outraged, Budde released a statement denouncing the President's actions and affirming the Church's support for George Floyd and other victims of police violence. She then went on to write a whole book about how we need to brave in the face of injustice, falsehoods, and former gameshow hosts with histories of sexual assault that somehow get to be President twice. But if that's not enough to paint Budde as five foot nothing of righteous badassery, hold my, uh, communion wine? 

I guess what I'm saying is, if you're voting
the same way these folks are voting, maybe
it's time to reevaluate. Everything.

If you're my age or older, you might recall the murder of Mathew Shepard, whose brutal murder in 1998 drew national attention to anti-gay hate crimes and to hate groups like the Westboro Baptist Church, an organization who routinely demonstrated against LGBTQIA+ rights at funerals and indeed tried to do just that at Shepard's. What I didn't know is that Shepard's ashes when unburied for years because his family feared vandalism. A fear back then, and outside the realm of possibility today given everything that's going on. Hate-groups are in, I guess.

Anyway, Bishop Budde was instrumental in inviting the Shepards to have their sons ashes interred in the National Cathedral, which--shut up, I'm not crying, you're crying--is the very same Cathedral she called the President out on for his hate-filled political agenda. So I'm not saying I'm ready to drink the communion wine, but I am saying that we need more people willing to speak truth to smug, undeserved power.

Pictured: the confident swagger of a women who
just humiliated the world's leading hypocrite. 

American Idol

I'm asking, I'm genuinely asking how a group of people whose only personality traits are loving Trump and how Jesus-y they are, don't see the problem.

Pictured: that time Republicans literally made
a golden idol out of Tump and worshiped it.

I know I bring this up a lot. I just like
to imagine the non-trashfirew timeline we
could have been living in all these years.

Why am I asking, you may ask? Because we're like a week in from the Right Reverend Mariann Budde's sermon and she still hasn't offered the apology so petulantly demanded by the narrowly elected former President now felon who is now once again President. Somehow. Because--I don't even know--my point is he's still a felon and Hillary Clinton got more votes than him in 2016 than he did this time and--sorry, the thing about the last eight years or so of living with this gasbag in our lives, is an increased tendency to spin out.

Above: Rev. Budde seen here doing her
damn job without whining to the press
about how everyone is mean to her.

Where was I? Oh, right. Reverend Budde (sounds like buddy, by the way), if you haven't heard, came to prominence again (we'll get to that in a second) durning her sermon the day after the inauguration when she asked the President "In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon people who are scared now." They are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in both Democratic, Republican and independent families who fear for their lives." And ok, sounds pretty on brand for the religion. 

This is either really bad casting or
Hans Holbein was terrible at his job.

Specifically Episcopal. The Church refers to itself as "Protestant, yet Catholic" and Robin Williams once called it Catholic Light, but it's basically an offshoot of the the Church of England. For some context, you remember The Tutors starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers preposterously cast as King Henry VIII? The Church of England as it is today was formed when history's fattest, gingerest king threw off the authority of the Pope and declared himself the head of the Church before going on to murder a couple of his wives. 

"Dat-da-da-da-da-ya-da."

-George III, former 

Pope of America

Welp, fast forward another two hundred and fifty years or so, when we threw off the authority of the porphyria addled King George III, and decided it would be kind of weird to become a republic while keeping the king as some kind of a pope in a powdered wig, and so the Episcopal Church was born. Which, by all rights these MAGA goons, if they were serious about being both patriotic and Christians, should be all about. It's the don't tread on me flag of origin stories. 

"You know I railed against the rich and
told everyone to love one another, right?"

-Jesus, kind of over the MAGA goons

They keep some of the trappings of Catholicism: the singing, the robes, the architecture. But they're a bit more live and let live when it comes to things like transubstantiation and biblical literalism. Also, they were early to the party on supporting the civil rights movement, accepting women as clergy, gays as clergy, performing same-sex weddings. If you're going to pick a religion, you could do far worse. Like, say, whatever so much of the vaguely-defined, self-proclaimed conservative Right is. The ones losing their minds right now over Budde's sermon, and shrieking about how she politicized it.

Which, she didn't. Of course she didn't. But the felon who failed to put his hand on the Bible during the swearing in, and who told a crowd of MAGAs (who evidently weren't listening to anything he said) how he himself isn't a Christian, is just performing piety for white nationalists and playing the victim. Both things that look even worse and less convincing on him than they did during his first, disastrous administration. 

I guess what I'm saying is he shouldn't hold his breath for that apology.

Oh, don't look so surprised...

I guess what I'm asking is how hard is it not do do a Nazi salute? Like, I'm genuinely asking. And I don't think I'm alone when I say I can't, in memory ever raised a straight, right arm in anything resembling a Nazi salute. 

It's fairly easy to not do.

Hillary Clinton got 2.7 million more
votes that Trump in 2016 so...

I've been trying, for my own piece of mind, to avoid the news. I know today is going to be about the Right swaggering, posturing, and crowing about that historically narrow election which they will present as a mandate but is in no way a mandate. Not being from California, the President may be unfamiliar with what constitutes a landslide, but there is no math in which winning by two point three million votes in an election in which a hundred and fifty two million people voted isn't one.

But that doesn't matter to these people because it's day one and we've already been pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, fifteen hundred January 6th insurrectionists have just been pardoned, and the billionaire who bought the election is already throwing up the Nazi salute.

Day. One.

Literally any other gesture is on the
table and he picked that one? 

Yeah. Now, according to the Anti-Defamation League in what can only be described as the greatest benefit of the doubt ever given in the history of benefit of the doubt giving, he was simply making an awkward gesture and we should all take a breath. But I mean, he did it twice. And again, how hard is it not to do a Nazi salute? Within in the entire range of human motion, there's like one really specific gesture we associate with Nazism, and we're saying he hit it on accident?

Musk, you may recall, attracted ridicule for his bizarre leaping into the air at Trump rallies, which his people later explained as him making the "X" logo...you know, that famously trademark-able letter, X? So I'll grant you that he's bad at imitating human bevaior, but you'll forgive me if I find this dubious at best, and a racist dog whistle at worst. 

Pictured: Definitely something humans do.

Do rich people not have phones?

Remember a few months back when I was bemoaning The New York Times and the weird phenomenon of newspapers that sell ads that just completely envelope them? You don't? That's ok. To catch you up, sometimes The New York Times comes completely wrapped in an advertisement. That's it. That's the phenomenon. Oh, and it happened again today:

Well, I suppose there's not much going on in the world right now so...

"Extra! Extra! Interconnected computer
network renders newspapers obsolete!"

-Newsies, I'd imagine

I mean, what even is that? Look, I'm not a reader of newspapers and haven't been since the advent of this cool new thing called the internet, so take my issue (pun unintended) here with a grain of salt. But say I was an old (ok, older) and every morning I pop down to the local bookstore to pick up my only link to the world and the events contained therein, and find this? I'm not saying that The Times and really most newspapers aren't little more than delivery methods for advertisements day-old headlines but...well, ok, they are, but still, people find them comforting, and these wrap-around ads are getting out of hand.

This one is for Swiss Watchmaker Vacheron Constantin and I checked out their website because I believe in being thourough and their jewel encrusted watches range from $25,000 to "Price On Request." Which I think means if you have to ask, you're too poor. 

I'm sorry, is there a lot of overlap between people who buy
the morning paper and can also afford $32,000 watches?

A homophobic, racist, Christian
nationalist with numerous sexual assault
allegations? He certainly fits the profile.

As I get increasingly old and curmudgeonly, I find myself ever more enraged by advertising and I don't know whether it's because there's simply more of it (there is) or if I'm just getting crankier (I am) or both (probably). Again, I don't even read The New York Times, and yet I'm getting all indignant about the idea that there's not even the fig leaf of journalistic integrity. LA is on fire, the Senate is questioning a grossly unfit but almost certain to be Trump's Defense Secretary, and instead the cover is an ad for Swiss luxury watches. 

Did I miss something, or did the marketing team at Vacheron Constantin think that Mark Zuckerberg's "facts are woke" screed would make them trend again? Also, when were they ever--oh--and a quick internet search tells me that they are indeed popular and it's a $76 billion dollar industry. Which, I mean, the revolution can't come fast enough, can it?

Just add $900,000 wrist watches to the list of reasons alongside
mega yachts, Logan Paul's Pokémon Card and rocket trips for billionaires.

Betcha it's not waterproof...

Well, threats of jail-time will do that...

Speaking of Mark "Facts Are too Woke, and Also, I Suddenly Realized That I Like Trump Now That He Won" Zuckerberg and his preposterous $900,000 watch. Huh? What watch? Didn't you read my last--doesn't matter. The other day while explaining that his company, Meta, would be backing away from any kind of fact checking on their social media platforms, Zuckface was wearing a watch people have identified as a hand made, one-of-a-kind Greubel Forsey. But what even is a Grubel Forsey?

I'd never heard of them until today. That's how rich he is. There's like a whole separate world for the ludicrously wealthy (you might recall the $3 million Batmobile), and I went to the company's website to read their story:

Disappointingly, as far as I can tell, these two are business partners
and the sacred union the text refers to is about forming a corporation.

It seems like a real missed opportunity 
that they didn't get Cate Blanchett to
narrate their story in character as Galadriel

It's hard to read, I know, allow me to quote:

"It was the end of a century, even the end of a millennium. Two entrepreneurs who had trodden unconventional paths decided to combine their talents. They envisioned an extreme, uncompromising approach to fine watchmaking that would reimagine, one by one, each of the technical and aesthetic fundaments established over the previous 200 years."

-The Grubel Forsey website, 

no, really, it says all that

"Yeah, it's around the hundred billion mark."

-Elon Musk (actual quote)

Is there a level of wealth at which one is no longer able to hear the nonsense that tumbles out of them? They're making watches, a five-hundred year old technology that has long since been rendered obsolete by digital watches, then smart phones, then AI boxes that listen to your every word, thought and bodily function to better sell you socks with your pet's picture on them. I love a well-made piece of hand-crafted whatever as much as the next person, but have some perspective. 

I am seriously asking: what does 

Mark Zuckerberg do that justifies a wrist

watch worth what thirteen teachers do?

Which brings us back to the nine-hundred thousand dollar (yes, of money) watch they made for a kid who slithered his way into billionaire-dom by backstabbing his college roommates. For some much-needed perspective, $900,000 is roughly: 

The average salary of thirteen teachers

The average debt of ten American households

Two houses at the median home price of $420,000

And honestly, that last one was a little surprising to me. I kind of though he was walking around with five or six houses on his wrist, but then I remembered that in America, the housing market is an impossible hellscape laid waste by Airbnb and real-estate investors. 

"We'll take it! Honey, how much does one tip the
realtor on a forty dollar home? Four dollars? Five?"

-preceding generations

"Impossible! I don't detect a single fuck.
It's like there aren't any to give..."

-some scientist

Also, should Mark Zuckerberg for some insane reason decide to spend his entire net worth of two-hundred and eleven billion dollars on one-of-a-kind Greubel Forsey watches, he could buy 234,444 and a half of them. And yes, I know that he earned his money (if money making more money can be called earning) and that the net worth of these kajillionaires isn't like, sitting in a money bin somewhere waiting to be swum around in. But the degree to which I don't care is mathematically insignificant and undetectable by any instrument devised by human ingenuity, and we--scientists, that is--can detect water in the atmosphere of planets in other star systems.

Look, there's rich and then there's offensively, toxically wealthy and nine-hundred thousand dollar wrist watches fall firmly into the latter category. There has to be such a thing as a tipping point to our tolerance for this, and I've got to think we're getting close.

Look out McDuck, the center will not hold.