We are all in the gutter...

Say, something's not right here...something I can't quite put my finger on...huh? Oh, I'm referring to the tweet the President sent out after Doug Jones' probably-shouldn't-have-been-this-close victory over Roy Moore, noted child moles-oh, sorry, alleged. Alleged child molester. Anyway, lookit:

Wait, where's the real Donald Trump and what have you done
with him? I mean, you can keep him, it's just that I'm curious.

"Next tiiiiime..." the President rasped before

before stroking his cat with his cold, metal claw.

I'm not saying that it's a classy response, like, what's his beef with write-in votes? And yeah a win is a win, that's why they call it a win. Of course, as the sitting President he probably should have just left it at congratulations and skipped the "I'll get you next time, Gadget..." part, but still, there's none of his usual petulant hashtags or unnecessary digs at Hillary Clinton. In fact, it's almost like a rational person wrote this one-hang on, you don't suppose that a rational person wrote this one, do you?

Like maybe after admitting on Twitter that he knew about Mike Flynn lying to the FBI before he asked James Comey to drop his investigation, someone at the White House pried his phone out of his leathery mitts and is writing his tweets for him? Or is at least screening them? Or maybe it was after this swing he took at Senator Kirsten Gillibrand:

Oh...oh no...

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us
are looking at the stars. Of course, others
of us are the goddamn President so..."

-Oscar Wilde

I think the words you're looking for are 'holy shit.' Gillibrand recently joined four other U.S. Senators in asking the President resign over all the terrible things he's done to women over his decades as a groping, leering symbol of everything wrong with America. And if you're taking the quotation marks around the word 'begging' and the phrase 'would do anything for (campaign contributions)' to mean that the President is making lewd suggestions about Gillibrand, it's because your mind is in the gutter. That of course is the official statement from Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Um...this.

No, really, this is for real. I'm not even kidding. When April Ryan from CNN asked if Senator Gillibrand was owed an apology for Trump's clearly suggestive tweet she replied, without a hint of a whiff of the ghost of irony:

"I think only if your mind is in the gutter would you have read it that way and...um...so no."

-Sarah Huckabee Sanders on 

how we're all filthy-minded juveniles

Seriously? I'd argue that everyone in the world would read it that way. Dead people would read it that way. Deep sea sponges would read it that way. Does...wait, does Sarah Huckabee Sanders know who we're talking about? Like, is it possible she's confusing the President with someone else? Someone less gross?

Above: April Ryan physically unable to accept the
the unmitigated horseshit that is Sarah Sander's response.

To boldly monetize...

Pictured: the long shaft of 'Oumuamua,
thrusting its way through space, its rigid
form penetrating deep into the solar system.

Hey, remember a couple of months ago when astronomers spotted that object careening through the solar system? It was the one that instead of being the usual irregular blob shape of an asteroid is instead long and shaped like a...let's say cigar. And then in November it was announced that based on its angle and speed it had to have come from outside our solar system making it the first confirmed extra-solar object. Because of this, the International Astronomical Union  even named it 'Oumuamua, which is Hawaiian for 'scout' or 'messenger.' So....aliens? Yes. Definitely aliens.

Ok, it's probably not aliens, but it is smaller than most asteroids, weirdly shaped, reddish, and it comes from outside our star system. So it could be anything from some usual, heretofore unobserved classification of asteroid to the ship from Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. The point is we don't know, so maybe let's not scoff at aliens.

I'm personally not willing to rule out the Jupiter Mining Corporation either.

Two and a half hours in and all we
get is her dead dad on a beach
 telling her 'Good effort, sport!'

In fact, you know who's not scoffing at aliens? SETI that's who. You know, the organization that looks for extraterrestrial intelligence? Like Jodi Foster in Contact, but somehow with slightly more satisfying results. Anyway, bananas as it might sound, they're not willing to rule out the possibility that 'Oumuamua is more than a giant space log whipping through the galaxy at 196,000 miles per hour. A privately funded SETI program is turning the world's largest steerable radio telescope onto 'Oumuamua, just in case it really is aliens.

Yeah, privately funded. It's called Breakthrough Listen, and it was founded by Yuri Milner. He's a Russian billionaire who, in addition to investing in other trademark-able, yet preposterously named ventures such as WhatsApp, ZocDoc and AirBnBsuper is super into space. Breakthrough Listen is part of a series of initiatives which have a collective goal of, among other things, contacting alien life and then, I shit you not, starting the Federation. Yes, like on Star Trek.

Hes also a huge Facebook investor which makes me wonder if perhaps
someday in the future we could be screwing up elections on other planets.

If successful, Milner will no doubt
monetize his discovery, probably with an
app, probably called MuuN or some shit.

Just last month he announced that he's planning to fund his own project to send a probe to Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that some scienticians think might harbor extremophile life forms deep below the icy surface in some liquid ocean warmed by geothermal vents or something. So germs, but still, alien germs. Which, on the one hand, hurray for science. Finding any extraterrestrial life, even alien microbes, would be a world changing event and make the idea that we're not alone in the universe a lot more plausible. But on the other hand, is this the kind of thing that should be privately funded?

"We come in peace for all Zynga-kind."

-PrôB

I don't begrudge this Milner guy his enthusiasm, it's just that maybe someday one of our space probes or transmissions will be intercepted by an alien civilization, and I'm not sure how I feel about first contact being handled by business people. I mean, are we really comfortable with a discovery of that magnitude being owned by the people who force us to endure those stupid Farmville notifications? I just think it should be an international team of nerds whose motivations are nobler than finding new markets for their free-to-play bullshit.

Ok, so my fears of a grim future run by start-ups and venture capitalists aside, it is pretty exciting that someone's going to probe this thing for signs of intelligence. Sure, the likelihood of 'Oumuamua being something artificial and alien is slim, but what if it pans out? What if it is some kind of extraterrestrial generation ship or a probe or something? We could be on the cusp of the greatest discovery in human history. Or, it might just be a vaguely phallic rock shooting through the solar system.

Oh shit, what if it wants to talk to whales?
Do we even have those anymore?

Tarantino-oh no!

Um...no? Like, I know I shouldn't judge a movie before it even comes out, but I have some pretty strong, possibly unfair feelings about the prospect of the next Star Trek movie being an R-rated Quentin Tarantino joint.

"Yeah, I look at Star Trek and think, you know what this
needs? More guns and characters shouting motherfucker."

-Quentin Tarantino

(probably)

In my defense, the last one had
Krang. Krang! I'm only human.

I don't necessarily have anything against Quentin Tarantino, I mean I, like most people, had a brief flirtation with his gritty, dark humor and ultra-violence in college, but I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old and curmudgeonly, but I kind of outgrew his two hour murderfests around my late twenties. It's weird to say since I outgrew anything since I'm a grown-ass adult who still plays video games and saw not one, but two Michael Bay directed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies.

Unless you're infested with alien parasites,
in which case it's set phasers to head'splode.

There's something about a Star Trek film with 'from the director of Inglorious Basterds and Death Proof' plastered on the poster that just doesn't sit well with me. It's not that Star Trek's never had violent scenes before, I mean red shirt jokes aside, the original Enterprise had a serious crew fatality problem. It's just that Tarantino characters tend to approach violence with gleeful enthusiasm and most of his movies are about bloody revenge rampages. Starfleet officers on the other hand tend to treat violence as a last resort.

No really. Go ahead, name something
Star Trekkier than that. Well? 

Of course, Tarantino is purportedly a huge trekkie and there's no reason he couldn't make a Star Trek movie in line with the series philosophy, but according to this, he's only agreeing to make the film if he can have an R-rating which...look, I'm not against R-rated movies. I mean, I really could care less about your kids, but Star Trek? Sure, Deep Space Nine was pretty gritty for what it was. Half the series was taken up with the Dominion War, but that war ended because-and this is a spoiler-our heroes taught the Dominion's leaders about what we humanoids call 'love.'

I guess I have a hard time reconciling something like that with whatever Tarantino has in mind that's going warrant an R. But on the other hand, the new show, Discovery is rougher than previous incarnations, what with its casual swearing, Klingon war and a seriously uncomfortable sex/torture scene, but it's still recognizably Star Trek.

Sure, this guy did eat Michelle Yeoh's character, and his ship
has a corpse room, but I think Captain Lorca has a tribble...

Sadly, not even a Rihanna tie-in music
video could save Beyond from a
 mediocre domestic performance. 

Ok, so maybe it'll work. Just because his Star Trek would be full of the swears and murder sprees doesn't meant it can't also explore strange new worlds or whatever. But it still seems like a dramatic 360 after the bright and colorful J. J. Abrams series, so what gives? Money. Try to act surprised. Star Trek Beyond was pretty good but didn't do as well at the box-office as the studio hoped. In fact, and this is the nutty part, it might have been disappointing enough to re-reboot reboot-universe altogether. With me?

Oh yes, buckle them nerd belts because noted blowhole enthusiast and actor Sir Patrick Stewart says he'd love to play Picard again if it means working with Tarantino. If it pans out, it would mean abandoning the alternate reality of the Abrams movies and picking up up where the TNG movies left off. Which I'm all for, but more importantly it would mean Captain Jean-Luc 'Let's Work it Out Over A Cup of Earl Grey' Picard in a movie directed by the guy who brought us Reservoir Dogs.

"It's like I always say Mister Data: fuck the prime directive, phasers on kill."

-Jean-Luc Picard,

about to make it so

Today in shutting down the containment grid:

So he's moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, what's the big deal? I mean other than recklessly upending seventy years of U.S. foreign policy and potentially setting off a wave of violence and distrust that could end any chance of a lasting peace in the region?

Yes, other than all that.

I read the wikipedia page...well, some
of it, making me more versed on the
subject than Trump seems to be.

What am I talking about? Here, let me explain. You see...wait, no, look, I really don't understand all the geopolitical nuances of the situation, but I do know that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is rooted in an impossibly complex knot of religion, politics, national identity and decades of violence and that the President's move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and move the embassy there flies in the face of the rest of the world's efforts to maintain a status quo in which peace may some day be brokered.

So why in the name of hell is President Trump doing this over the objection of basically the entire planet? Because he promised the goons who voted for him he would. Goons who live here, half way around the world from Israel, in our many electorally over-represented red states where they'll never see the dire repercussions of their actions.

Fun fact: a voter in Wyoming's vote counts for 3.6 times that of a Californian.
So in many ways the electoral college can go fuck itself.

"Vote for me and I'll recognize the
crap out of Israel. Big fan. Big fan."

-Candidate Trump to the rubes

Apparently support for Israel among American Evangelicals is like super-high even though its political situation has exactly zero impact on their lives. So why do they care so much about where the U.S. keeps its embassy? If you said 'because Jesus, you'd be correct. According to this Pew Research poll, 82% of white American Evangelicals said 'yes indeedily doodily' when asked if they thought that God gave Israel to the Jewish people. Guess how many Jewish respondents agreed with this? Go on, guess? 40%. So this isn't so much about the Jews and the Palestinians so much as it's about the Ohioans and Minnesotans.

Sure, it sounds crazy, but you have to
admit, the four Horsemen are pretty metal.

And look, I'm not like a religious scholar or anything, but I gather that part of this whole American Evangelical interest in Israel has little to do with the people who live there and everything to do with Armageddon, which they're totally into. I don't know all the details, although that's apparently not a prerequisite, but my understanding is that Evangelicals support Israel because doing so will hasten the second coming, Judgement Day and the end of the world. Yup, they're voting eschatologically and if a buffoonish gameshow host can get them there, then so be it.

I don't think he, the President that is, even knows what he's doing. Like, at all. I think in the face of low approval ratings and increasing scrutiny from the Mueller investigation he just wanted a win and since this is something he can do unilaterally...blamo. And I mean that onomatopoetically. As in the sound of the explosions the people in the middle east can look forward to because our President wants to score some points with American Evangelicals who literally want to watch the world burn.

The most apt analogy I can think of here is that Trump is Walter Peck who, over the
objections of a room full of people who know what they're talking about, shut down
the containment grid and will then blame everyone else when shit goes sideways.

Today in totally plausible explanations:

"No please, go on about my emails..."

-That women we elected

So did you see the thing on Saturday about the President's Tweet? You know, the one about how he fired Mike Flynn for lying to the FBI? Which he did, lie to the FBI about his Russian contacts I mean. In fact he plead guilty to doing just on Friday, which as a member of the Trump transition team can't be good, right? For the administration or for a President who keeps asking everyone to stop investigating him and his associates' connections to Russia. You know, because there's nothing to see here. Move along.

Anyway, the Tweet was weird because it suggests that if Trump knew Flynn had lied to the FBI and then went and asked James Comey to stop investigating Flynn, then it might look like obstruction of justice. Of course this was certainly a big huge misunderstanding, I mean, the President would never Tweet something so blatantly incriminating. Right? ...right?

"So lawful, you wouldn't believe how lawful.
Just like my entire administration. So lawful."

-President Donald 'Lawful' Trump

"Yeah, that's right, I wrote the Tweeter-post
or whatever it is. My client is innocent."

-John '(insert lawyer joke)' Dowd

Gee that's pretty damning...this certainly calls for an immediate investigation into-oh wait, I'm getting something over my earpiece which-huh? Hey, you don't know I'm not wearing an earpiece. Like I was saying, in breaking news you can all breath easy, the President didn't write that buffoonishly self-incriminating Tweet after all. His lawyer did. Yes, today in a mea-culpa, youa-idiotas one of the President's many lawyers, John Dowd, announced that it was he, and not the hot-tempered and famous-for-ill-advised-Tweets Trump, who wrote Saturday's seemingly incriminating Tweet.

Amazing! All my suspicions
have completely vanished!

Well, that settles that. After all, what would Donald Trump's personal attorney have to gain by lying to the American people about something that could possibly bring the Trump administration crashing down in-huh? Where's the proof? Well, according to Dowd, he dictated the Tweet orally to the White House Social Media director who in turn blindly published the Tweet on the President's account. Obviously this raises a more serious issue, namely: "holy shit, is he saying that the White House has a social media director?"

Keep up the good work Dan.

Well, they do and his name is Dan Scavino and he used to run one of Trump's golf courses, and if his name sounds familiar it's because he was charged with an ethics violation like two months into the job. So at least we know that the President chooses his staff with the same scrutiny and high standards that he fills his cabinet with (zing!). Anyway, just to be clear, what Dowd is saying is that this Tweet went through the social media director and still got posted? Which raises further questions.

Questions like: 'Do all Trump's Tweets go through Dan Scavino or just the ones he'd like to disavow?' and 'Exactly how stupid do they think we all are?' Um, far be it from me to question the word of a lawyer who works for probably the least trustworthy person this side of Norse trickster god Loki on opposite day, but seriously? Seriously.

"Ouch...hey! Don't...don't say things you can't take back."

-Loki

Today in the one thousandth trip to the well:

Hey guess what? This is my one thousandth blog post! Post 1K. Sorry, that was kind of stupid...and technically this is one thousand and one, but I don't think I should count that first one as a proper post, but whatever, I really appreciate your taking the time out of your day to read all of my...you didn't read all of-well thanks for reading most-oh. Some? The occasional? Occasional's good? Super. Thanks for reading the occasional post!

My first post was a 29 page comic about how
 mad I was that they rebooted Star Trek...no, really.

Or, you know, prison. Six of one...

Without the support of my ones of readers, I'd just be screaming into the void about the things that are important and/or infuriating to me. Things like the social justice and the environment-huh? Ok fine, I talk about nerd stuff and vent about politics-and holy shit, I know, there's been too much about politics lately. Are you sick of talking about the President too? Because I'd be happy to never talk about him again if he'd just resign and oh, I don't know, go back to that gameshow he used to host.

My solution involves orcs so
like, look out Warren Buffet. 

But whatever, we also touched on a lot of things that aren't Star Trek, homophobes and politics. It's been a busy seven years. We've discussed sports, video games, British people, rich people, Nazis ('couple of times), religion, unreligion, space religion and even a religion I made up, which I suppose is also space-related. Oh, and I don't know if you know this, but I actually solved the world's economic woes back in 2011 so...you're welcome.

And also whatever this is.

We've talked about science, pseudoscience and batshit crazy science. And, of course, batshit terrifying crazy science. And space, we talked about space a lot and the people who've gone there, the people who want to go there (turns out they're Dutch) and people who've done weird, weird things to it. Then there was assault rifles, Black Friday, nude restaurants, a couple of Popes, The Titanic and breast feeding. Then there was the time the an ad on a bus told me that the world was coming to an end. But then it didn't. Um...spoiler.

Did you order yours yet?
Or do you love terrorism?

Hey, did you see what I did there? I cleverly snuck in a bunch of links to previous blog posts in the hopes that you'll revisit earlier, funnier entires. Like this one about the 9/11 coin. I think it might be my favorite. Anyway, It's sort of like when a TV show's writers are on strike and the whole episode is a clip show? Like that. And isn't the first time I've done this either, I did if back at number 500 and my annual posts about Federation Day and New Years are full of that kind of lazy padding. It's like a middle school English paper.

And you know what? I'll probably pull something similar when I run out of ideas and do a final post. So like, check back in a few weeks?

Pictured: the inevitable conclusion.

Hey, you know what else is kinda garbage?

Russia. To be clear, I'm not referring to all of the people in Russia or even the geographical area that is Russia necessarily, but rather to the chest-thumping, mob-run, burnt out husk of a global super power that beat us to space. So what's my problem with the land that gave us Tetris and...well, mainly Tetris? This.

"Ridiculous! Russia is free and open society! We even spread democracy
around world. Are you saying you don't like president I choose for you?"

-Unrepentant oligarch

Vladamir Putin

Pictured: soccer, which
 I suddenly care about. 

Did you click? No? You didn't? You know what? Fine, don't worry about it, I'll explain. FARE, an organization that works to combat inequality in football (soccer football, not whatever it is we call football) is warning gay soccer fans not to hold hands or show signs of affection while attending the World Cup in Russia next year. How come? Because Russia is a seething, lawless cauldron of homophobic rage and FARE is concerned that foreign attendees might risk assault or worse by being all gay and shit.

"Look, maybe just watch the World
Cup on TV. Russia? Kinda garbage."

According to Piara Powar, executive director of FARE, the guide will:

"...advise gay people to be cautious in any pace which is not seen to be welcoming to the LGBT community. The same message is there for black and ethnic minority fans."

-Powar, agreeing with 

my earlier assessment 

Pictured: Russian riot police bravely
apprehending a kid with a rainbow flag.

Homosexuality isn't illegal in and of itself in Russia, but it is illegal to promote to minors thanks to a law entitled and I'm not kidding: 'for the purpose of protecting children from information advocating for a denial of traditional family values.' What the shit does that mean? Admittedly I'm not an expert on the Russian legal system, but I think the law just means whatever the arresting officer wants it to mean. You might recall anti-gay watch-dogs once went after a milk company because they had a rainbow on their cartons.

This guy made a career out of ranting about
 gay sex. It's just gay-gay-gay with him...

And look, I'm keenly aware that the U.S. is also chock full of petty-minded homophobic jerks, many of whom hold high office. We're still fighting in the courts with cake bakers and repair shop owners who insist that 'because Jesus' is valid legal ground to refuse service to gay people. Lawmakers seem to collectively loose their shit over who gets to use what bathroom, and have even tried to ban the word 'gay.' But at least in America we have the wherewithal to call homophobes out on their bullshit and publicly shame them on the internet.

I'd like to think that if the World Cup were held here in the States, foreign fans could at least feel safe in the knowledge that the danger they face just walking down our streets would be random and impersonal rather than a hate crime. Probably.

"Hey, it's nothing personal..."

-America