Aww, it's never actual cyborgs...

Hey, this is terrible news, Anthem, the second largest health insurance company has been the victim of a cyberattack which has compromised the data of-huh? What's that? No, I had the same thought, but it just means that someone gained access to their records, there were no actual cyborgs involved. Yes, I was disappointed as well.

So could we just call it data theft or something? 'Cyber attack' is just misleading.

Although if left untreated...

Anyway, the breach has potentially exposed 80 million people to medical identity theft, which is apparently a whole new thing that until today I didn't know I should worry about. But you're probably wonder what's the big deal? Ok, so somebody finds out about your horrible and embarrassing rash or that time you had crabs, who cares? Well, it turns out it's a huge deal. The theft I mean, nobody cares about your crabs. This thing could potentially kill you, and again I'm referring to the theft, not the crabs. C'mon, stay with me.

Goddamnit, I said don't do that.

Say I stole your medical identification, like hypothetically. I don't mean call up the FBI and say that I hacked Anthem, just imagine that I'm the kind of computer-douche that would steal your information. Anyway, say I did that and now, as far as the hospital knows I'm you and have your insurance and medical history so any care I receive is chalked up to you and your account. As far as the hospital's hive mind knows, I'm you, and you can't possibly need insulin you big faker.

And good luck straightening that out. Sure, our privatized, free-market healthcare system might be fueling innovation and be the envy of the world or whatever horseshit the GOP keeps harping on while they pretend to repeal Obamacare for the 56th time, but you'd have better luck reasoning with Comcast. Honest to god, Comcast.

"I'm sorry but according to our records you still owe Anthem
$35,000 for your prostate surgery. Hmmm? Yes, Miss Zweig,
I know you don't have a prostate, they removed it in June." 

-Judy from Anthem

and an excellent reason 

to move to Canada

Wow, that was some sports thing, right?

Hey, did you watch the Superball? No, me neither. I guess we'll just have to fake our way through every conversation at work today.

"Hey, did you see the part when the guy kicked
the thing? That was the best. I sure love the sports."

Thanks football, thanks for nothing...

As I may have mentioned once or twice before, I'm not really a sports guy. I've tried to muster enough interest to sit through an entire football game, but holy shit, those things are like three and a half hours long. I looked it up, and they're only supposed to last 60 minutes, but the clock gets stopped like every three seconds so it takes forever. I think it's sort of like how traveling at close to the speed of light distorts time, so by the time the game ends, years, maybe centuries will have passed and the world you know will be long gone.

"Alright, products! We love those!
Hey, after the game, let's go buy some!"

Anyway, I mention this so you can see where I'm coming from when I say there's a lot I don't get about football in general. The yards, the scrimmage, why we call that thing a ball when it's pointy and un-balllike. But the Superbowl, which I take to be the Oscars of football, just blows my mind. Like, why does everyone look forward to the commercials? I mean, they're just ads, right? Psychological Trojan Horses we willingly allow through the front gate and then go to sleep so they can burst open in our minds and we wake up with an uncontrollable urge to go buy Skittles and whatever the hell Wix.com sell.

And why is everyone upset with Katy Perry for lip-syncing the half-time show? I mean, you're probably watching her on TV either way, so why do you care?

Sorry to disappoint, but Katy Perry is not only not singing live, but she's
also not four inches tall and living in your television, so cut her some slack.

Pictured: Rome being sacked by the Vandals
who, I'm assuming, were sick of the Romans
and their stupid, pretentious numerals.

Hey, and what's up with the Roman numerals? Like, yesterday was Superbowl XLIX, which, by all rights should be pronounced Superbowl Eckslicks, because this is America and Roman numerals are ridiculous. Sure, I suppose that they're trying to be classy, but this is a game traditionally enjoyed with Budweiser and Doritos (dammit advertising!) which, let's face it, taste like feet. And far be it for me to rip on a civilization that basically owned Europe, North Africa and parts of the Middle East for centuries, but their numbering system was clumsy, hard to read and made up of goddamn letters. Letters!

Why then are we asking people with sports-related head injuries, and sports-watching related inebriation to parse out history's most hilarious mathematical system?

"Woo! Time for Superbowl X...L, extra-large? No. L is fifty? So L minus X?
What's that, forty? Then, I, X...You know what? Screw it, let's see if tennis is on."

Huckabee Hearts Gay People!

Above: the thing it's not like. At all.
By any stretch of the imagination.

No. No it's not. It's not anything like that. What the hell am I talking about? Just some comments folksy homophobe Mike Huckabee made about marriage equality this morning on CNN. Enjoy:

"This is not just a political issue, it is a biblical issue. And unless I get a new version of the scriptures, it's really not my place to say Ok, I'm just going to evolve. It's like asking somebody who's Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli."

"Holy shit, 40 cubits? Really God? You know
there are literally millions of species, right?" 

-Noah

Um...false. First of all, it is absolutely a political issue when you're talking about a person's legal right to marry the person they love. A biblical issue would be like whether or not it's ok to stone your neighbor to death for worshiping Moloch, or how many cubits long you should build your ark in order to accommodate a breeding pair of every animal on earth. A political issue is whether or not gay people are going to be treated like second-class citizens because a bunch of sanctimonious jerks insist on taking a couple of lines from a bronze age guide to living in the desert way too seriously.

Secondly, to keep with Huckabee's Jewish deli owner analogy, this would be like said restaurateur quitting the deli business, building an entire political career out of being an asshole to people who who enjoy pork and/or shellfish and then hosting a radio show on which they advocate for a law that would require everybody to keep kosher.

Although if it would end this stupid bacon craze, I'd be willing to hear him out.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa...lots of my
friends are godless deviants." 

Huckabee also talks about having friends with whose lifestyle he disagrees...meaning gay people which ok, being gay is not a lifestyle, but whatever. The bigger point here is that his assertion is clearly bullshit. Of course Mike Huckabee doesn't have any gay friends. He goes on the air every week and harps on gays for not falling into his imaginary, theocratic, 1950's worldview where nobody swears, drinks or believes in dinosaurs. It's his job to be unfriendly to gay people.

Look, admittedly I don't know Mike Huckabee and I don't know who his friends are but c'mon. Are we really supposed to buy that he spends his day fighting against marriage equality on the grounds that it violates his moral code and then invites his gay friends over for dinner and a sermon on how much god hates them? That seems awkward, and kind of unlikely.

"C'mon hon, I know you hate going over to the Huckabee's for dinner but it won't be that bad. I mean, sure,
we'll have to hear about how we're going to hell, but the Hendersons will be there. Oh, and Janet's making flank steak."

*But the gays don't heart back.

Sic semper asshats!

Now if someone wanted to compose a
 poem about said mustache, we can talk.

I admit that sometimes I get irrationally irritated when a word gets overused. 'Literally' would be a good example, but everyone's sick of hearing about it, so let's take 'epic'. It's supposed to refer to a story about a hero or an exciting event, but somehow it's become totally acceptable to use it to describe a really good party or a unnecessarily long movie. Sometimes we use it to describe someones mustache. Like, what the hell? Unless that mustache killed Grendel, we're totally cheapening the word 'epic.'

But I digress. What I really wanted to talk about is this asshat: Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, who recently took the word 'tyranny' and used it to describe the rapid erosion of same-sex marriage bans in the U.S. after District Court Judge Callie Grenade overturned Alabama's ban on Friday.

As has become traditional, Judge Grenade issued a two-week stay on Sunday so that
homophobes can get an appeal together. Of course, I'm not sure why they need two whole
 weeks when all they're going to come up with is Because Jesus, but still, the law's the law.

Huh, they taste a little like sour grapes...

"As of this date, 44 federal courts have imposed by judicial fiat same-sex marriages in 21 states of the Union, overturning the express will of the people in those states. If we are to preserve that "reverent morality which is our source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement," then we must act to oppose such tyranny!" 

-Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore,

crying in his goddamn Cheerios, because

the courts say gay people have rights too

Yeah. Tyranny. Because asking States to treat gays and lesbians equally under the law when it comes to the tax-breaks, adoption and hospital visitation rights that come along with marriage is just another example of oppressive government rule. 

Behold: The brutal tyranny imposed by our cruel overlords.

The Constitution: It says pretty
much whatever you want it to say.

I'm not like, a lawyer, but it seems that his argument is based on two points. First, that the Federal Court, in striking down Alabama's ban on gay marriage is trampling on the 10th Amendment which says that powers not specifically enumerated in the Constitution belong to the State. Secondly, on the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that "marriage is a 'divine institution' imposing upon the parties higher moral and religious obligations than those imposed by any mere human institution or government." Uh-huh, a 'divine institution.'

Above: What doctors say will happen to
your brain if you think about this too hard.

Sounds a little religion-y, but doesn't the First Amendment prohibit any law respecting an establishment of religion? So like I said, I'm not a constitutional scholar or anything, and he's a Judge, but yeah it sounds like he's trying to have it both ways. He's totally down with the 10th Amendment when he's cherry-picking a couple lines from Leviticus as grounds to deny civil rights to gay people, but the First Amendment can suck it if anyone tries to tell him he can't make Jesus-ism the official religion of Alabaman theocracy.

Incidentally, what the shit is up with anti-gay marriage people holding up opposite-sex marriage as the only thing holding our civilization back from spiraling into the dystopian chaos of a Mad Max movie? Like is there some magical power of societal stability that only comes from straight, married sex?

Pictured: Alabama after same-sex marriage causes the collapse
of civili-actually, that might be Alabama right now...it's hard to tell.

Patricia's new campaign slogan:
Don't fuck with me. Seriously.
I will break you. Vote Todd.

Because if that's the case, then the people of Alabama are about to have a problem. State Representative Patricia Todd is threatening to go the media with her fellow Representatives many extra-marital affairs if they don't back off and stop trying to stymie marriage equality in the state. Todd, Alabama's only openly gay lawmaker, says she's fed up with these jerks who spend their days railing against gay people and bloviating about family values while Gingriching* all night.

It may sound like a jerk move, I mean, the personal lives of lawmakers aren't really anyone else's business-wait, no, actually it's an awesome move. Awesome, both in the literal sense of awe inspiring and the informal sense of kick-ass.

*to Gin-grich, 

verb \giŋ-gər'ich\ 

to have an extra marital affair, whilst at the same time leading impeachment proceedings against a sitting President for an extra marital affair. 

Thundersnow II: Electric Blanket-a-loo...?

Sorry, that title worked better in my head but the point is there's a shit storm of a snow storm going on right now on the east coast and it's supposed to bring more thundersnow. Regular snow too, but thundersnow! Ok, so what the hell is thundersnow?

Pictured: Thundersnow...or possibly Ragnarok.

No he doesn't. Like, at all.

 Here, click on this to watch Al Roker...um explain:

"It's called literally thundersnow, when you get a very violent storm, a very vigorous storm like this last one, you basically have the same ingredients as a thunderstorm, however, instead of getting rain out of it, you get snow." 

-Al Roker, on how thundersnow

is snow...with thunder 

Still unclear? Me too. That's because Al Roker didn't give us any information that we didn't already glean from the term 'thundersnow.' Maybe this graphic will clear things up:

Above: Nope. Still confused.

Hey, how about those Greek election
results, huh? Wanna screw?

Anyway, in addition to the usual panic and unnecessary hoarding, there's also this thing about ads for anonymous sex on Craigslist using the storm as a pretext. As in (and I'm paraphrasing): 'hey it's snowing, so come over to my place and we'll have like, snow sex.' Which, whatever, it's cold out and people want to get laid, but why are they dragging a snow emergency into it? It's not like the world is ending, it's snowing. On the east coast. In winter. I mean, when the storm's over, are they going to latch on to some other current event?

Oh, and just to be clear, I'm not judging anyone for using the internet to meet people, it's just that...Craigslist? People have been eaten on goddamn Craigslist. I realize that most ads on the site are not placed by crazy people who plan to murder you, but still, it's probably safer to stay off the roads and stream Black Mirror or something...

* Jan 27 HIGH PRIEST of Kali Seeks TERRIFIED VILLAGER for dark ritual 

Pls incl pic! (Secret Temple/mine complex under Pankot palace) human sacrifice 

The one with telescopes, not fortune tellers.

Ready to have your mind exploded? You are? Great, because astro-scienceticians (or astronomers as they prefer to be called for some reason) believe that there might just be two, count'em two heretofore unknown planets in our solar system. Not planetoids, not more loser dwarf planets. Planets, possibly even bigger than Earth.

I propose we call them New Alderaan and Pluto 2: The Revenge.

Way to go astronomy...

Can you believe it? No? You can't? That's fair. After all, we live in the future and have had telescopes since the 1600's. Are we supposed to believe that astronomers just missed these guys for 400 years? Well, yes, it looks that way. Sure, space is really big and dark and I suppose it's possible that something could be overlooked, but seriously? Entire planets? C'mon. Astronomy, as a scientific field of study, has really dropped the ball on this one. Although Carlos de la Fuente Marco, the scientist who led the team whose research is blowing our minds right now (click here and here for all this science I don't understand), cautions us that nothing's actually been discovered yet. All he has is indirect and math-heavy evidence.

Now brace yourself as I try and sum up something I only sort of understand: De la Fuente's team analyzed the the motion of trans-neptunian objects (space rocks floating out past Neptune) whose crazy, elliptical orbits seem to suggest that something large and planet-like, say, like a planet or two, is exerting a gravitational influence on them. Still with me?

Or possibly that Unicron's coming, although they admit it's a long shot.

Or maybe it's like discovering your dad
has a secret Canadian family. A Canadian
family with 2-15 times the mass of...forget it.

Anyway, these hypothetical planets, if real, are probably terrestrial and have a mass 2-15 times that of the Earth, each. Holy shit, right? As if we needed more reasons to feel small and insignificant in a cold, godless universe that's completely indifferent to our existence. Thanks science...this is like living in a house all your life and discovering that it has two whole rooms you never knew about. Two whole rooms with 2-15 times the mass of the room you did know about...and...ok, sorry, it's not the best analogy, but go with me on this.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served
Us Nachos, Not Any...uh, Pluto 2...The-uh-
hey, back off, it's just a rough draft... 

So if this discovery pans out, it could have enormous ramifications for...well, uh, pretty much no one. Like it's cool and all, but for the the vast majority of us, two new planets really won't have any impact on our lives. Sure, we'll have to make up a new mnemonic for the planet names, but otherwise it's just-oh, shit. Astrology. This is totally going to screw up astrology. You know, that word you always say when you mean astronomy, and then someone corrects you and you feel like an idiot?

Like, I know it's kind of bunk to begin with, but you can't just throw two more planets into the mix, can you? I mean, for the horoscope fans out there, this has got to be the equivalent of archaeologists digging up a couple new commandments or something.

"...number ten: thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's stuff, number eleven thou shalt
remember casual Friday and maybe wear a t-shirt with a funny joke on it, and finally number
 twelve: thou shalt be nice to gays, seriously people, the burning bush was very clear about this."

-Moses 

Get'em!

According to Oxfam, the richest 1% of the world's population is on track to own 50% of the world's wealth by 2016. Goddamn half. So like, let's get'em.

Starting with this guy...

0.01%. That's like an earlobe.

For real. 1% of seven billion is, what, 70 million ultra-rich people? Look, I'm not saying we should beat anyone up and take their stuff. All I'm saying is that we could. Easily. Here, let me do the math (yeah, suddenly I think I'm some kind of math guy): As I'm writing this, the world's population is 7,289,331,336. So one percent of that figure is 72,893,313.36. That means each of the remaining 7,216,438,022.64 people on earth only has to deal with .01 rich people. I think we can take them.

Above: A gold Ferrari. The seats are genuine
dolphin leather and it runs on Chateau Margaux. 

But that's just abstract numbers (calculated by my own remedial, at best, math). According to Oxfam's report, the combined wealth of 80 people, like 80 specific people at the top, equals the total wealth of the poorest half of the population. Holy shit, right? Now say those 80 people each had exactly the same amount of money (they don't, but let's just say they did), just one of them would have more than 45,558,320.85 people. That's just, mathematically speaking, seriously fucked.

So what's to be done? Well, I suggest level caps, but what do I know? Realistically, this is probably going to get worse and worse until finally it all explodes into some kind of bloody, 21st century Bastille Day. I'm not trying to be a pessimist here, but the people in a position to actually do something about the wealth disparity are generally not in the biggest hurry to do something about it.

"Yes. Totally. We'll get right on redistributing the wealth of the very people who fund our careers."

-The people in a position to actually do something

He means that literally. You
guys should probably run.

And seriously? I'm not kidding about the Bastille Day thing. The conventional wisdom is that people don't hate the rich, they want to be the rich, but I'm not sure that's going to hold out forever. Remember when all those angry people occupied everything? Exactly zero of their concerns were ever addressed. Fixing this is kind of in everyone's best interest. You know, before people start eating each other. No, really, I think we're heading that way.