Peter Steele: Spin Wizard

Connecticut: "Come for the fall
foliage, stay for the heroin..."

"These are the things we have done: Number one, I've got a bill in to the legislature right now to take the traffickers. Now the traffickers, these aren't people that take drugs, these are guys that are named D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty. These type of guys they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home." 

-Governor of Maine Paul LePage

opening his face-hole

Now wait, because here comes the shitshow...

"Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave. Which is a real sad thing, because now we have another issue that we've got to deal with down the road."

-Words that came out of Maine 

Governor Paul LePage's mouth

"Nyaahh, see?"

-Noted mobster

Shifty McGee

Yeah, right out of his mouth, although my problem is with his communication director who thinks we're all idiots. But we'll get to him. First of all, Shifty? Is Maine being overrun by heroin-peddling mobsters from the 1930's? Secondly, half the time? Really? Like 50%? And finally, holyshitwhatthefuck? The Governor's comments have been widely called out for being racist and I guess state-ist, and they are. But we've heard Governors spout insensitive and outright disgusting bullshit before, so what makes this particularly egregious?

Why the response offered by the Governor's staff which presumes that everyone who had a problem with LePage's racist remarks will fall for some half-assed misdirection:

"The Governor is not making comments about race. Race is irrelevant."

-Peter Steele, LePage's communications director,

apparently using an Old Jedi Mind Trick

Peter Steele just wants to know
 why you hate children so much?

Yes he godddamn is making comments about race and if race is so irrelevant, how come he's bringing it up? Steele goes on to say:

"What is relevant is the cost to state taxpayers for welfare and the emotional costs for these kids who are born as a result of involvement with drug traffickers. "

-Steele, explaining that 

uh...hang on...did he just? 

I'm confused, is Peter Steele suggesting that we shouldn't worry about Governor LePage's racism because it's distracting us from the more important issue of caring for hypothetical children that 'young white girls' are having with hilariously named drug dealers? Holy shit, Peter Steele is clearly some kind of spin wizard.

Pretty much.

Adverpology!

Boooo! Go back to your
outdoor activities!

Don't worry everybody, Hasbro's ridiculous omission of Rey from the Star Wars: The Force Awakens version of Monopoly was totally not sexist. In fact, you're insane if you even suggest it. What the hell am I talking about? Oh, well originally the tie-in Monopoly set only included the characters Finn, Luke Skywalker, Kylo Ren and Darth Vader who-spoiler alert-isn't in the movie at all. The move invited fan backlash and accusations of sexism as it looked like Hasbro left Rey out because including her would make it a girl's toy and girls have no business enjoying Star Wars.

Damnit poster, I wanted
to be surprised! 

The company has since explained that the real reason the central character of the movie was left out was to avoid spoilers:

"The Star Wars: The Force Awakens Monopoly game was released in September, months before the movie's release, and Rey was not included to avoid reveling a key plot line that she takes on Kylo Ren and joins the Rebel Alliance [sic]."

-Hasbro, on how we're stupid idiots
for having ever doubted them

Yeah, bet you feel like a jerk now. Hasbro was just trying to keep the movie's big twist, you know, that the protagonist is female, under wraps and now the secret's out. I hope you're happy.

Spoiler alert: thimble.

Wait, wah? Since when was Rey a secret? And how would a half-inch game token give away the plot line? I mean we all knew Daisy Ridley was in the movie and that she had a major role. She was all over the trailer, the poster, other tie-in merchandise and the internet as a whole had been dissecting every scrap of information released right up to the release date. And besides, the movie was an almost beat-for-beat remake of A New Hope, so it's not like J. J. Abrams was super concerned about plot twists.

"Yeah, we love product!"

-Some kid

It seems like the classy thing for Hasbro to do here would have been to admit the glaring oversight, include the Rey token and move on, which they did. Sort of. I mean, the character is in the Monopoly set now, but admitting mistakes isn't a very business-y thing to do. The closest they come is an adverpology:

"Fans will see more Rey product hitting the shelves this month, including 6 and 12 inch Rey action figures. We are thrilled with the popularity of this compelling character and will continue to look for ways to showcase Rey across all our product lines."

So they're not so much sorry as they are thrilled to showcase Rey now that everybody has noticed that they left her out because of some weird notion that Star Wars is for boys and that kids must gender-identify with Monopoly. Lame guys, lame.

A group shot of female Star Wars fans at the...wait, that can't be right,
they must have gotten lost on their way to a My Little Pony conven-

-tion, wait, male Pony fans? Female Star Wars fans?
Ow! My worldview! I don't know what to believe in anymore...

And Ununoctium for the win!

Hey look, new elements! The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry have just given their blessing to four, count'em four new elements that scientists have just made up.

"Aaaaaand...radium! Science: achieved."

-Marie Curie circa 1898

Pictured: Element 113. To gaze upon it is to
invite madness and death. (source: science)

You heard me, made up. The elements, created by researchers from the U.S., Russia and Japan were created in a lab and do not exist in nature which is weird because you know, elements, right? Like, an element is, by definition, the fundamental building block of something, so how come they needed to make it in a lab? Shouldn't they have found it somewhere? Preferably in the form of some sinister, glowing orb buried deep under the earth in some kind of ancient vault? Maybe with a curse on the door? I mean, showmanship. 

Behold: an adorable chimera
known as the Cat/Dog!

And if they are the fundamental building blocks of whatever, what did they make it out of? Even fundamentaler building blocks? According to this, the researchers shoved atomic nuclei together and then recorded the new elements in the fraction of a second in which they exist before they decayed into nothingness. So again, I'm not a scientist but isn't that a little like stacking your pets and saying that you've discovered some new, magical creature? At least until the hissing starts.

But you know, that's cool, new elements. I suppose the IUPAC knows what they're talking about and I should probably just take their word for it. After all, they're not the International Union of Explaining Science to Me.

Speaking of, why haven't I been assigned my own team of scientists whose
sole job is to explain science to me? Seems like kind of an oversight. 

Above: Iron as represented by Fe,
because shut up, that's why.

Oh, but they are however the organization in charge of naming the elements and as such they've invited the researchers to come up with names and nonsensical atomic symbols for their brand new elements. Which, well, I guess they did discover them but still, I think we should put it to a vote on the internet, seems like that would be the democratic thing to do. I mean we crowdsource planet names now, and the IUPAC are the people who came up with flerovium and spell sodium with an 'n' so why not put it out there? With that in mind, I'd like to propose mythril, or adamantium, or-oh! I've got it: Calcium II: The Quickening. You know, I think I just figured out why we don't let just anyone name elements.

Anyway, the important thing to note here is that these elements finally fill out the seventh row of the periodic table which I gather is kind of big deal. For some reason. Probably gambling related, because. You know, that team of scientists who explain things to me would come in pretty hand right about now.

Pictured: Kosuke Morita from the Japanese research team who
discovered element 113, and in doing so won chemistry Bingo.

To boldy infringe...

Hey remember the good old days when you could just up and make a crowd-funded fan movie based on intellectual property owned by a massive corporation? No? Well, you could until Paramount suddenly decided it wasn't cool.

"Copyright schmopyright, go nuts." 

-Paramount Pictures official stance

on fan-films, until like, Wednesday

Remember the one about Newt Gingrich
and his slave-children on the moon?
You don't? I see how it is.

What the hell am I talking about? Remember back in June of 2014 when we talked about-huh? You mean you don't commit every post on this blog to memory or periodically review older posts on the off chance that a topic might come up again? I...I had no idea. I guess the truth comes out, huh? I suppose I should be glad you told me but still, stings you know? Anyway, here, click on this. Or just wait until I give up and summarize for you, like I always do. You know, we should really have a long talk about where this relationship is going.

You heard me.

Ok, so back in June of 2014, a group of trekkies released a sort of teaser trailer for their homemade Star Trek movie, Axanar. It's based on some vaguely referenced space war that happens after Star Trek: Enterprise (the one with Scott Bakula) but before the original Trek series. Anyway, because fans are hungry for new Star Trek that isn't all rehashed plot lines, explosions and Beastie Boys soundtracks, the project took in a ton of funding, beating its Kickstarted goal by all the money in the world (or something).

Fan-made Star Trek isn't anything new, nerds have been doing it for years. Sure, a lot of it is poorly acted fanon filmed in front of a green screen in someone's laundry room, but some of it is pretty well done.

Of course the laundry-room stuff outnumbers
the professional stuff by a fairly wide margin.

They got Chekov, Uhura and, uh,
Cameron from Ferris Bueller's
Day Off...it's a long story.

The New Voyages series has authentic-looking sets and impressive special effects and Of Gods and Men stars a Comic-Con's worth of former cast members lending it an air of legitimacy even if the story is an an incoherent jumble of fan fiction. The important thing is that up until now, Paramount has apparently not minded if serious fans want to shoot their own Star Trek shows as long as they don't make any money off of it. But then suddenly they did mind. Like, out of nowhere.

"We're simply leveraging our branding
so as to better monetize our content."

-Business

On Wednesday, Paramount and CBS announced that they'd be suing the shit out the people behind Axanar. How come?

"The producers of Axanar are making a Star Trek picture they themselves describe as a fully professional independent Star Trek film. Their activity clearly violates our Star Trek copyrights, which, of course, we will continue to vigorously protect."

-Paramount explaining that they're suing their

 own fans for having good production values

The company is asking for an injunction and damages which, wait, damages? How are they 'damaged' by it, if hasn't even come out yet? Hey, can the fans sue for sitting through Nemesis? That was pretty damaging...

Pictured: A scene from Star Trek: Nemesis in which Captain Picard
is menaced by his clone, who's also a vampire I guess. It's kind of a blur.

Again, a zero percent chance of confusing
 fan-made Star Trek for the real thing.

Ok, Paramount does kind of have point. I get that they've got to be able to exercise control over their intellectual property. There's a new movie coming out this year and a new series in 2017, but c'mon. This film was not going to 'dilute their brand' of whatever the company is afraid of. Nobody's going to mistake fan films for official productions. Also, Axanar was going to be freely available on the internet, it's not like they're taking money away from Paramount. If anything, cracking down on it will do more to damage the studio in the long run.

I mean, they're suing the very fanbase that's kept Star Trek popular (and profitable) for like fifty years. These are people who love Star Trek so much they're willing and eager to put on ill-fitting costumes and immortalize their geekery on the internet for all time. Not for money, but for the love of their nerdom. Going after them is not only a dick move, but it also seems like it'd be bad for business.

To be clear, this is a fandom that spends weeks sewing costumes,
spirit-gum-ing forehead-ridges to their face and making their own
bat'leths. What I'm saying is, don't make an enemy of these people.

Let's go out on some schadenfreude!

So like, it's New Year's again. That festive holiday where we drink, pretend that we're going to suddenly break bad habits and turn our lives around and most importantly take a somber account of all those we lost in 2015.

'Happy New Year's everybody! What a year, am I right?'

-The Grim Specter of Death

So long Don Featherstone, the world
is slightly less tacky with out you.

Did I say 'all the people?' That's a lie. We only sit around and remember the famous people. The planet's population is something like seven billion, so the vast majority of us will shuffle off our mortal coil in total anonymity. Instead we reflect on those who have made an impact on the lives of others by say playing Al on Happy Days or being the guy that invented Pink Flamingos. Nobody cares about your 8th grade English teacher. What? I'm sure she inspired in you a life-long love of reading, but since she didn't write Hollywood Wives, or found Motörhead, you're probably not going to see her in anyone's 'celebrating those we've lost' montages.

Just...what the fuck...

In music, B. B. King died, as did Scott Weiland of the Stone Temple Pilots and James 'All movie scores from the 80's and 90's' Horner. Actors Omar Sharif, Dick Van Patton and the extravagantly be-eyebrowed Robert Loggia are also dead. Batgirl Yvonne Craig died as did Nicholas Smith, the last surviving cast member from Are You Being Served? Oh, and so did Wes Craven, the writer/director of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Not dead is the guy that came up with Human Centipede. I'm just pointing it out.

Yeoman Rand was in charge of serving
coffee to the crew because sexism.

Trekkies lost Grace Lee Whiney who played yeoman Rand and Bruce Hyde who played lieutenant Riley, the ship's official Irish stereotype. Now brace yourself for this one, Leonard Nimoy. Yeah, Spock died this February, can you believe it? It's been a rough year for nerds. We also say so long to novelist Sir Terry Pratchett, and actor-vampire-wizard-Sith and notable metal enthusiast Sir Christopher Lee. In fictional character deaths, we also lost-oh wait, probably shouldn't say that. You know who I'm talking about. Anyway, the way I see it, the universe owes us a solid in 2016. So maybe, I don't know, aliens?

Pictured: the worst.

In abstract concepts, the last lingering shred of respect I might have had for American conservatives was brutally hatcheted to death by Donald Trump when his poll numbers hit the high 30's among Republican voters. Yup, it looks like the party of Lincoln is seriously going to run a racist, misogynistic gameshow host in November. Look, it's not like I'm ever going to vote Republican, it's just I'd like to be able to respect them. And, well, this guy, he's just, just the worst.

Journalism also died this year when the landlord of the townhouse where the San Bernardino shooters lived, opened the doors and let the media in to, I shit you not, rifle through the dead suspect's worldly possessions and speculate wildly on how Muslim they were.

All that was missing was the Benny Hill theme music. 

The English Language:
435 AD-2015 AD
'...sleepy face in peace sign...'

The Oxford English Dictionary lost whatever respectability it might have had left by choosing a goddamn smily face as its word of the year. Would-be cyborgs lost this century's most obnoxious eyewear when Google quietly killed Google Glass for being both ridiculous looking and kind of dangerous to wear. Oh, and we learned that bacon is secretly killing us. It's not, but we learned it anyway and then promptly forgot about it when we remembered that it's delicious and that we kind of hate science.

Oh, and no retrospective on what we, as a civilization, have lost would be complete without remembering that 2015 was the year that the Jesus-given right of homophobes to live in a gay marriage-less world was brutally murdered by 55.5% of the Supreme Court. Yup, we're really feeling for those people. Anyway Happy New Year's!

I'm just kidding. Seriously though, fuck those guys.

Today in valuable life lessons...

Hey, thinking about New Year's resolutions? Great, do those resolutions involve lying to your children and distorting their very sense of time? Cool, because Netflix has you covered.

This holiday, deceive your children with Netflix®!

This would probably do it too...

Yup, they're streaming six new kid's specials which will help you weave a festive web of deception using popular cartoon characters like The Care Bears (apparently still a thing) and Inspector Gadget (ditto) who will count down to 2016 whenever you hit play. That way your kids will think they've just rung in the new year and you can get them to shut up and go to bed in plenty of time for you to enjoy the drinking and the making of resolutions you'll never keep that are so much a part of the holiday. Think of it as The Truman Show, but for lazy parents.

In fact, I suspect your kids will never
ask to stay up late ever again. 

There, I said it. Lazy parents. Of course, I'm a childless shut-in who doesn't understand why people have pets or plants much less kids, so take my criticism with a grain of salt, but if it's that important to your kids to watch the ball drop, why not let'em? They're probably not going to make it past 9:30 anyway, and even if they do, they'll just see Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper shooting the shit while a bunch people in those stupid 2016 glasses yell 'woo!' at the camera. The planet's odometer will roll over and that'll be it. Bo-ring.

Or you could sit your kids down on the couch, turn on Netflix and let it parent for you. After all, that's what TV is for. Sure, smarter kids are going to notice that the sun just went down and suddenly the Care Bears are telling them it's midnight, but then I suppose you can turn this into a harsh, but valuable life lesson.

That lesson being that they should trust no one, and that
everyone, even Care Bears, are going to disappoint them.

Oh, and then this happened...

Going bananas, but on fire.
That's how crazy things got.

Is there like a zombie rage virus in the air or something? I'm only asking because two thousand people went bananas foster at a mall in Kentucky on Saturday. How come? That's the thing, nobody knows, but afterwards witnesses told police that a bunch of kids between 13-20 years old just started fighting and then one fight led to another and to another until the whole place erupted into something like a prison riot but with a Forever 21. Which I assume prisons don't actually have...

Anyway, there was punching, maybe even some shots fired, business tried to close those big metal gate things, but kids started climbing them. In the end it took like two and a half hours and fifty extra police officers to settle things down although, weirdly, nobody was arrested.

"You know according to Kentucky law, mall riots aren't technically illegal. And to answer your
next question, yes, cousin marriage totally is illegal, so suck on that, southern stereotypes."

-Some Lawyer

Above: This but with iPhones instead
of a conch and pig's head on a stick.

So I guess what I want to know is what the fuck? According to this, the police think that parents have been just dropping their kids off because you know, parenting is hard, and that left to their own devices, the whole mall naturally devolved into a sort of Lord of the Flies thing. Which c'mon, I have no love for malls. They're commercial wastelands of shitty food and low wages designed to suck out your income in exchange for useless crap you don't need but they're not your goddamn babysitters. That's just not fair to the staff.

What does he want a cookie?
Because he can have one.  

The bright side here and I mean the only bright side, is that nobody was seriously hurt.

"Our officers, they showed great restraint. Officers were focused on dispersing crowds and keeping them moving."

-Police spokesperson Dennis McDonald

proudly pointing out that his officers 

didn't beat the shit out of children

Yup, that's a police spokesperson telling us that we should be grateful that officers didn't start clubbing kids, which I'll grant you is a low bar, but 2000 rampaging tweens? That'd test anybody. But really, what is up lately? Is this a new thing? There was that thing in Florida the other day and all those fights on Black Friday including one in this same mall. Suddenly my rage virus theory isn't looking so bananas foster.

Above: The most reasonable theory.