Tweaking the ghost nipple!

Hey, if not applauding like an idiot every time the President makes that stupid tiny violin gesture while bloviating about nonsense is treason, then treason me up!

I mean, what do we even call that? Tiny violin? Turning the
 invisible dial? Oh! Can we call it tweaking the ghost nipple?

Thanks to Trump's remarks, this scene
from The Force Awakens is now the second
most preposterous accusation of treason.

Yeah, the President, while visiting a manufacturing plant in Cincinnati, Ohio, made a speech in which he called the fact that Democrats looked bored and disinterested in whatever he was reading off the teleprompter during his most-watched ever State of the Union, treasonous.

"They were like death. And un-American. Somebody said treasonous. I mean, yeah. I guess. Can we call that treason? Why not? I mean, they certainly didn't seem to love our country very much."

-President Trump speaking today in 

Cincinna-are you fucking kidding me?

Before you suggest that I'm being
unfair remember that he once leapt
to the defense of literal Nazis.

Well, technically he said he heard someone-didn't say who-call them treasonous, so I guess he's covered. Anyway, fuck that guy. Fuuuuck him. For real. Like, I know the ridiculous horseshit he spews forth is designed specifically to get a reaction from people. That reaction being outrage from those of us who think he's an unqualified buffoon who rode a wave of white nationalism and gerrymandered district lines into the White House. And incoherent grunts of approval from those who despite everything he's said and done in the past year or so still wear those stupid Make America Great Again hats. 

And it works, the reaction I mean. I fall for it, I'm outraged. I even take precious time away from blogging about Star Trek and video games  to complain about him. But goddamn. I mean, treason? You know, if he's going to get all butt hurt over Democrats not cheering him on as he outlines his plan for ruining what's left of America's credibility, could he maybe wait until after the investigation into his possible collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice is complete before calling other people traitors?

Above: Exactly the same thing as selling nuclear
secrets to a foreign power. Apparently.

Opposite Day: Still Not Real

Does the President know that opposite day isn't a day? I ask because he recently declared February to be Black History Month, which is already a thing, and I wonder if maybe he's unfamiliar with how observances work. I mention this because of this tweet he sent out-yes, another tweet. It's a gold mine:

No thanks? Well, at least he's politely
lying to our faces...well, to our twitter feeds...

Above: The exact opposite of what
 the President said. Exact opposite.

Um, ok, so like none of this is correct. First of all, while there is growing support among Democrats for universal healthcare and we all wish there was more, that's not the same thing as saying the Democrats are pushing for it. As for thousands of Britons marching in the streets over healthcare, that's technically true, but they're marching to get more funding for it because it's awesome and exactly no one wants to privatize it. He kind of makes it sound like they're marching to get rid of it and that's not the case-

-hey wait, you don't suppose the President is trying to deliberately mislead us, do you? I mean that would be totally out of character. He is, after all, been nothing but honest and forthright with us since assuming office and-sorry, sorry, I can't even get through that. He could tweet that water is wet and I'd still want an independent study.

"So far it checks out, but I'd still like to run a
few more tests. You never know with this guy..."

-Some scientist

"It's only illegal when a Democrat lies.
When we do it, it's because we love America."

-noted adulterer Newt Gingrich

Shouldn't the President lying to us be, I don't know, illegal? And yes, I know that there are times when keeping something from the public is necessary, but I'm talking about saying demonstrably false things in the interests of political gain. That has to be against the law, right? No? You're sure it's-ok...it just sounds like it should be is all. I mean, didn't we have to sit through months of Republicans crowing about how Bill Clinton lied about an affair? How come the former host of The Apprentice can straight up lie to us about something as verifiably false as Britons marching in support of the NHS?

"No, not deliberately. Screwing you
over is just a happy coincidence."

-Paul Ryan

I mean holy shit, if it's not going to be illegal to lie to us, can we at least pass a law about insulting our intelligence? Like, look at that last bit about the Democrats just wanting to raise taxes and stick us all with terrible healthcare. I mean what as ass. I get that it's just political rhetoric, or bullshit as it's more popularly know, but for crying out loud, even I'm willing to admit that Republicans-ok, some Republicans, are trying to do what they honestly believe is best for the country. They're wrong, like almost every single time, but they're not monsters who set out to deliberately screw us over.

Anyway, transparent rhetoric aside, the blustery, objective falsehoods blurted out into the world every time he picks up his goddamn phone has to stop. It has to.

"Mmmm...no."

-President and noted mass murder  of

 adorable puppies, Donald Trump

Today in things I don't care about:

Let me begin by first saying that I actually don't care about Superman, like as a character. I don't have anything against him, but I wouldn't say, pick up a Superman comic or go see another Superman-related movie.

"No, I want more harpsichord! More! And a choir, singing dirges.
I want the audience to feel like they're sitting through a papal funeral."

-Batman V Superman director Zach Snyder

Is it a spoiler when the show's
logo gives away the ending?

I mention this because it's going to sound like I'm bagging on Superman-about whom I have no particular opinion-when what I mean to bag on is superhero TV shows. Specifically I want to call out the two, yes two upcoming TV shows based on Superman in which Superman will not appear. Yup. The latest prequel nobody in the world ever asked to see is Krypton, which is about Superman's grandfather, Seg-El, living on Krypton (the planet, not the noble gas) before he and it explode in an origin story's dramatic necessity. Spoiler? I guess?

Gotham joins The Walking Dead, 
Big Little Lies and Suits on the list of
of TV shows that don't feature Batman.

Anyway, this isn't the only prequel Superman series, there's also something called Metropolis being put together by the same creative team as Gotham. Remember Gotham? It's that Batman show that isn't about Batman because it takes place when Bruce Wayne is like ten. Anyway, as Gotham is to Batman, Metropolis is to Superman, that is to say Superman doesn't really figure into it. The show will be about alliteration victims Lois Lane and Lex Luthor teaming up to solve science-crime.No, really, that's the plan.

"We saw what Marvel was doing and thought:
what if we did that, only more confusing?"

-DC

Like, I guess if there were a show about Superman that was really good, I could see the justification for spin-offs centered on peripheral characters, but  there's not. Which is weird. I mean, he's like DC's mascot so why isn't there a TV Superman? Unlike Marvel's MCU, DC's 'Extended Universe' keeps TV and film separate, so it's not like it would interfere with the movie series. Also there's a TV Flash played by Grant Gustin who's a completely different Flash from movie Flash played by Ezra Miller, and TV Aquaman will be different from Jason Momoa's. There's even a TV Superman that appears on the Supergirl series but no Superman series.

Well, it is easier than
writing new things.

Look, his year alone will see Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, Ant-Man and the Wasp and Deadpool, a Venom solo movie, Aquaman, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix. And that's just movies. On TV-well, streaming, there's Arrow, Flash, Black Lightning, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Preacher, Walking Dead, The Gifted, Runaways, Cloak and Dagger, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Daredevil and Legion. Did I miss any? Yes, I absolutely did. Also, that's not counting animated comic book adaptations of which there are many.

The point is, it's not like it's a risky time to pump out another comic book-based series. And I'm not asking for a Superman show, because again, I don't care about the character. I'm just baffled as to why they're scrapping the bottom of the Super-cannon with Superman's grandpa and Louis and Lex: Sci-Crime Squad while ignoring their most recognizable, over-powered yet under-interesting charac-wait, is it the tights? It's the tights, isn't it?

Yes it's the tights. No one, literally no one, can possibly be taken seriously in the outfit. 

Fact: The President hunts puppies for sport

In a move that surprised exactly no one anywhere in the world, living or dead, real or fictional, the President is bragging about his State of the Union viewership numbers being the highest ever. Which they're not. At all.

I mean, does he not think anyone's going to look this up?

The president tweeted today:

Wait, is he saying the SOTU was from
the heart, or that his plug for Fox News was?
Because it kind of sounds like it was the plug.

"Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history. @FoxNews beat every other Network for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart!"

-The President, upholding the
traditonion of the post-State
 of the Union tweet bluster

"Hey, maybe all those imaginary people
who illegally voted for me watched it..."

-the person we voted for

Ok, so 46.5 million people tuned in or streamed his masterful intoning of gibberish he read off a teleprompter. But, and I'll grant you I'm no mathematician, that's fewer viewers than Obama's first SOTU which had 48 million viewers. But I guess he's not counting Obama because he was a gay Muslim who was born in Kenya. Still though, George W. Bush's 2002 SOTU had 51.7 million viewers and again, check my math but that number is both higher than 46.5 million and precedes Trump's speech by a number of years-well within the scope of history.

Pictured: Some of the adorable
puppies the President routinely murders.

(source: don't worry about it)

So this claim is, what's the technical term? Bullshit? Yes, bullshit, or bollocks as British people are fond of saying. But what I don't get is, are we just supposed to be cool with that? With the President in his role as President just straight up lying about objective, verifiable data? Because if that's the case, then I'd just like to go ahead and say that the President routinely rounds up puppies from local D.C. animal shelters and then releases them on White House grounds so that he can hunt them for sport with friends and supporters.

Is it true? Of course not. Well, probably not. The point is that I'm a little over getting outraged about the President tweeting demonstrably false claims, instead I think we should all just start countering with equally ludicrous claims. I mean, when a guy who spouts as much bullshit as he does, he has exactly zero ground to stand on when it comes to denying his long history of puppy killing, right?

"As everybody knows, I love puppy hunting. Big fan. Probably the 
best puppy hunter in the world. Olympic-level. I could go professional."

-President Trump*

*actual quote. No, for real.

Today in challenging Nikki Haley's worldview...

Pictured: the woman most
of us voted for.

So just to be clear, I don't care about award shows. I think it's great that the film and music industries set aside a few nights each year to pat themselves on the back and hand out little trophies and all, but I just don't feel the need to watch. But I kind of wish I'd watched this year's Grammys because of this skit in which a bunch of celebrities auditioned to read the audio version of Fire and Fury. Cher was in it, Snoop Dogg and get this: Hillary Clinton.

Obviously the best part was when Donald Trump took to twitter to...to...huh, he hasn't gone on twitter yet? Wow...he must be pissed. Give'm a day.

Maybe his staff wrestled him to the ground and took his phone?

'I mean, why should artists be
allowed to challenge my worldview?'

-Haley, evidently 

unfamiliar with art

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley however wasted no time in embarrassing herself before the world tweeting indignantly:

"I have always loved the Grammys, but to have artists read the Fire and Fury book killed it. Don't ruin great music with trash. Some of us love music without the politics thrown in."

-Nikki Haley on how this

 ruined the Grammys for her.
Way to go, music industry...

Yeah, that seems about
right. Good call Elton.

Gauntlet thrown. I guess it's cool that Nikki Haley loves music all, but I feel like music probably doesn't love her. I mean, music is political. Rap, punk, rock maybe even country-I wouldn't know-are all full of politics. I think Nikki Haley's problem is that she doesn't like when music disagrees with her politics which is going to be always. Nobody's rocking out to songs about how awesome it is build a border wall or pull out of a climate agreement. Here, check out this article from the campaign. It's about all the artists who would like Trump to please stop using their music. Mike Mills from R.E.M. called him an 'orange clown,' Pavarotti's estate called Trump's worldview 'incompatible' with the late opera singer's and Elton John asked 'Why not ask Ted fucking Nugent?'

It's good to know that the worst of
the 1980's bro culture is alive
and well in Donald Trump Jr.

Of course, in characteristically dickish behavior, the President's son Donald Trump Jr. was more than willing to hop on twitter and start running his tweeter saying:

"Getting to read a #fakenews book except at the Grammys seems like a great consolation prize for losing the presidency."

-Donald Trump Jr.

son of President Trump

and noted dick

And even more preposterously this, I mean, this:

Not pictured: a sense of irony. Like, he means that.

"Say, I've got one."

-Hillary Clinton

You know it was hard to hear over the crowd's roaring approval while Clinton read from the book, but-and correct me if I'm wrong-no one, anywhere in the world saw that skit and realized 'how awesome it is to have @realDonaldTrump in office" Like no one. If anything, every time I see Clinton in the news I find myself hoping for the briefest of moments that these last fourteen months have been some kind of terrible nightmare in which shitty electoral math handed an objectively unqualified reality show goon the most import job in America, but then I remember that this waking horror show is in fact the reality into which we've been thrust. Oh, and again, I don't put much stock in industry awards but how many Grammy's does Donald Trump have? Is it zero? I'm pretty sure it's zero. Not that it matters.

Net responsibility quotient: 0.01%

 It seems vapid morning
 chatter knows no borders.

Ugh...I mean, ugghhh. Here, watch this gross excerpt from Piers Morgan's upcoming interview with Donald Trump on Good Morning Britain. After an awkward greeting in which the President attempts to simulate warmth, Morgan asks the President if he regrets re-tweeting those anti-Muslim videos back in-huh? Oh yeah, remember back in November when the President shared anti-Muslim propaganda from Britain-First, an ultra-right wing British hate group?

"Whaaaat? Maybe you guys
are the racists. Shut up! Racists."

-Sarah Sanders, spin-wizard

You don't? Yeah, there's so much of this kind of shit coming from the White House, it's hard to keep it all straight. Anyway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders in what I think must have been an Oscar-worthy performance tried to spin it:

"I think his goal is to promote strong borders and strong national security..."

-the actual White House 

Press Secretary, no, really,

without a hint of irony

Wait, is he suggesting that the President
has the capacity for hindsight?

It was a treat. So back to the Piers Morgan thing. In a remarkable turn of passive voice, he confronted Trump on the offense caused by the tweets:

"I do just want to get one thing out of the way: given the amount of offense it caused, do you regret now those retweets. and do wish, with hindsight, that you hadn't done it."

-Morgan, asking the President about

 those Tweets that just happened

In a bold move the President has
come out against terrorism.

The President's response was characteristically not related to the question. Like, in any way.

"Well, you know, look, It was done because I am a big believer in fighting radical Islamic terror. This was a depiction of radical Islamic terror."

-The President explaining 

that he re-tweeted racist 

videos because terrorism

A big, dumb golden retriever with a
bone. A bone of non-responsibility.
Look, it's not my best analogy.

Which, no it wasn't. Morgan interrupts to point out that the videos, which purport to show terrorists doing terroristy things, were quite likely faked, but goddamn like a dog with a big, unverified bone the President pressed on:

"...but I didn't do it, I went out and I didn't go out and-I did a retweet. It was a big story where you are, but it wasn't a big story where I am."

-Trump, on how responsible

he's not for his own actions

Ok, so his rational is he didn't make the super-racist, anti-muslim propaganda, he just retweeted it in his capacity as America's representative to the world? Super. But it doesn't matter because it wasn't a big deal in America, just in Britain. And I mean, how many people even live in Britain, like, twenty? 

Above: British people, or in their native language: Bri'ish pee-pohl. 

Ok, fine, he's not wrong...but still, what
does this have to do with racist tweets?

So Trump went on to say how much he loves Britain and especially Scotland, calling them "very special people" and Scotland "a very special place," so Morgan pressed him for an apology for the retweet and here's what he got:

"If you're telling me they're horrible, racist people, I would certainly apologize if you would like me to do that."

-The President, not fucking apologizing

Holy shit. I mean, holy shit, right? If, I would, if...That's just a masterpiece of responsibility-free, passive voice non-apologizing. Look, you'd think he'd at least do Britain the courtesy of offering a transparent lie. This fake apology thing is just insulting.

"...multiply by 'if' carry the conditional clause-my god, the net
responsibility quotient is zero! In all my years of parsing bullshit
apologies, I've never seen anything like this...it's...perfect."

-Noted bullshitologist,

Sherlock B. Noshittington

We have no one to blame but ourselves...

Hey, have you ever just wanted to immerse yourself in like a giant tub of rats like the ball-crawl at Chuck E. Cheese but with rats instead of balls? But you were afraid to because rats are sort of famous for being grimy four-legged disease vectors? And also people might think you're weird?

Just like this, but again, with thousands of rats.

Sure, the plague devastated Europe, but also
 inspired metal album covers. So it's not all bad.

Well, you can finally live your truth you rat-swimming freak, because it turns out that the popular conception of rats as a plague-carrying infestation to be eradicated might be unjustified. The rodents, and the fleas that live on them, have long been pointed to as responsibly for spreading the plague. Yes, the plague that wiped out tens of millions of people throughout Asia and Europe. But according to a new study led by Katherine R. Dean from the University of Norway, that might be a filthy lie. So who is to blame and how thoroughly should we enact our revenge?

"We may be filthy, ignorant slobs,
but we still have feelings..."

-Some Peasant

Get this: humans. Yes, according to Dean's new study, the infection patterns of the plague outbreaks between 1348 and 1813 more closely match that of human-spread pandemics. Well, flea-spread, we're still talking about a blood-borne disease so they at least aren't off the hook. But humans, particularly medieval Europeans, were filthy, ignorant slobs unaware of the concept of hygiene and who wallowed in their own filthy through much of the last two millennia, were lousy with lice and fleas, so it kind of makes sense.

"Steve, the rat, died April 4th, survived
by his wife, Ellen and 1,400 young."

You know, 'we have no one to blame but ourselves' should probably humanity's motto. Anyway, Dean's study, also goes a long way to explaining why records from plague-era Europe never seem to mention massive die-offs in the rat population. Of course at a time when paper was expensive and literacy was rarer than bathing, it's reasonable that rat-obituaries were not really high on the priority list of scribes but still, all the rats dropping dead at about the same time as a third of Europe would probably led someone-even medieval idiots- to connect the two.

Cool, right? Sure, if not super-applicable. Vindicating rats probably won't save us from the unkillable super-bugs we're breeding with the tiny bottles of hand sanitizers we walk around with like talismans against evil, but on the bright side it'll give the ape-scientists something to mull over as they piece together together the specifics of out self-destruction.

"Wai-wai-wait, lemme get this straight you had nuclear weapons, appalling wealth disparity,
and runaway climate change but it was Purel that finally got you? You fucking idiots..."

-Dr. Zira, rubbing it in