Magic Rainbow Wish Glove: The Movie

So yesterday, Avengers: Infinity War made sixteen million dollars bringing its total gross to over five hundred million dollars which, according to Variety magazine, is the second fastest a movie has made it to half billion dollars. Star Wars: The Force Awakens being the first. I suppose this is good news if you happen to have been in this movie or own stock in Disney or something, but terrible news if you would like movies to not be terrible.

"Good? Bad? Whatever..."

-People who see movies, evidently

"And why do characters in movies
these days have to swear so much?"

-My grim future

Look, I know it's been out for a couple weeks, but I was sick of trying to avoid spoilers so I finally went and saw it and found it, you know, disappointing. This was kind of weird because I didn't think I had terribly high expectations for it going in. I expected big, dumb explosions and boring battle scenes featuring wave after wave of CGI monsters, and characters quipping at wildly inappropriate moments and it had all that. But that was it. I didn't go in expecting Shakespeare here, but I did go in expecting a story. Maybe some kind of dramatic conflict? Oh, and how about some compelling characters? Something. Anything.

Wait, hang on, I should also mention that in the course of this totally one-sided discussion, I'm probably going to spoil the shit out of it, so if you're one of the six or seven people in America that haven't seen it, just bail out now. Still there? Super. So like half the characters die at the end. Only not really. But I'll explain.

"Marvel using impermanent character deaths as a cheap narrative ploy
to give false weight to thin story lines? I'm shocked. Shocked I say."

-Jean Grey

Who among us hasn't wished they could
cull the population of the planet? I mean,
the availability of parking spaces alone...

Here, let me sum up the plot first. Thanos, who is Josh Brolin somewhere under a lot of CGI chin, has some Malthusian scheme to wipe out half of all life in the universe because the environment. Which, great. A villain who's motivations aren't based on revenge or just being evil. Cool, I'm on board. Thanos believes that people are selfish and wasteful and that having fewer of us around would stretch our galaxy's resources. Ok. Evil, but not necessarily wrong. We are, and I mean this constructively, the worst.

The Infinity Gauntlet: one
of sci-fi's gayest MacGuffin's.

Instead of building a death star or something, he's going around collecting the six rainbow-colored infinity stones which when joined together in a magic gauntlet will allow him to vanish half of the universe's life forms away. Because comic book logic. Anyway, the story is loosely, ok, very loosely, adapted from a comic arc from the early nineties. It was one of Marvel's big crossover events which, like this movie, was just a thinly veiled attempt to get fans of one comic series to buy other ones by continuing the storyline in different books. And like these crossover comics, this movie didn't really tell a complete story either. You'll have to wait for part 2 to see how it ends. Also, if you didn't see the previous movies, you probably won't get why Loki biting it five minutes in is a big deal or get why Tony Stark has an Iron Spider suit in Tom Holland's size just lying around.

Which is to say not at all stand-alone.

It may have sounded like director Joe Russo was insisting in interviews that the movie stood on its own, but here's what he actually said:

"In the way that all Marvel Movies sit as a stand alone, this one's a stand alone."

-Joe Russo, really

clearing that up for us

It's as stand alone as any of the other totally-not-stand-alone movies in the series. I see. And you know, that's fine, I think I saw them all and I guess it's really not the writer's responsibility to write for someone who didn't...is it?

Of course not. Besides, all fans have to do is study this flow chart outlining the
complicated narrative relationship of these nineteen movies. And yes, there will be a quiz.

In Thanos's defense, Ewoks
don't separate their recycling.

But whatever, most of the movie is Thanos closing in on one stone or another and some Avengers (or whomever) trying to stop him and ultimately failing. Yeah, he assembles the pride glove and disintegrates half the universe. The End. Whether or not 'half of all life in the universe' refers to intelligent life or all life, like plants and fish or whatever, isn't really addressed. Nor is he super clear on whether or not some primitive planet with a small population of stone-age aliens gets the same treatment as some polluted, overcrowded mess of a planet like ours. But who cares? Really we're only interested in Earth.

Oh, and I know it's like super nitpick-y to even ask, but if the Infinity Gauntlet can do anything-and we are led to believe it can, can't Thanos just make more resources? Like, his beef is that there's just too many people in the world-or universe-and that we're a drain on resources. Yet with this glove, couldn't he just zip around the galaxy like a lantern-jawed Santa Claus making food and bauxite appear in front of grateful aliens? Seems like kind of a plot hole to me.

"Eh...sounds like a lot of work..."

-Thanos, Marvel's laziest super-villain 

Above The Bureau of Printing and
Engraving busily printing more money
for us to buy more tickets to Black Panther

Anyway, the stakes here were the destruction of half of all living things in the universe, so first of all, good luck topping that in the next one. But the problem is that the cliffhanger is immediately undermined. Thanos gets the glove and blamo, half the characters sort of vaporize. Holy shit, shocking twist, right? No, not at all. because like the first or second Avenger to go all dust in the wind is Black Panther. A character whose movie is still in theaters and has made all the money ever printed. Since Disney isn't idiots, it's a safe bet that Black Panther will miraculously return to life in Infinity War 2.

It seems like maybe if they'd just disintegrated characters like Hawkeye whom no one cares about (and isn't even in this movie), or Captain America (Chris Evans says he's done playing him anyway), the outcome would have at least seemed in doubt. Anyway, this should have been Marvel's The Best of Both Worlds part I. Instead it was two and a half hours of under-servicing a cast of twenty-five characters while building up to a tension-free cliffhanger we can predict a year out.

What's Best of Both Worlds? Really? Here, click on this
and I'll pretend we never had this conversation. 

Post Blog Bonus Scene! 

Someone get on that...

Oh, and I'd also like to mention that one of the many crimes committed by this movie is the fact that it ends with the Avengers mourning their totally-not-permanently-dead comrades instead of showing us the global panic and confusion over the sudden disappearance of three point five billion people. We do however get a post credit scene with Nick Fury driving around New York mid-Thanos rapture. People are vanishing, helicopters are falling out of the sky. The scene was eerie and terrifying and should have been the ending of the movie. I imagine that it's the closest we'll ever get to a Left Behind remake starring Samuel L. Jackson. Which, goddamn, I would watch that, wouldn't you?

Finally, something to look forward to!

So what, like in five years?

So, is the unceasing shitshow of American politics getting you down? Well don't worry, the end is in sight. According to an international team of astronomers, the sun will expend all of it's hydrogen, expand, consuming Mercury and Venus and then turn into a gigantic glowing ring of luminous gas visible from as far away as the Andromeda Galaxy. Huh? The Earth? Well, I suspect it'll be cooked by the expansion of the sun, but don't worry, we'll all be dead by then.

"Are you goddamn kidding me? I just
charged it...better buy the new one..."

-us, falling for it

The study, led by Professor Albert Zijlstra from the University of Manchester, is the latest to try and nail down exactly how the sun will die. Most stars-this is internet research by the way, I'm not like, a science-er. Anyway, most stars reaching the end of their life, expand into a red giant before shedding their outer shell of gas and dust in a big, fiery whooosh. But many scientists, nay-sayers, really, were predicting that our sun is just too small to go out with a bang. Instead, they insisted, it would just sort of sputter and go out like a light bulb or an iPhone after an update. Which, bummer, right?

Pictured: the inevitable, yet festive
conclusion of everything we know.

But not so says Professor Zijlstra. According to his team's models, previous studies underestimate the amount of time needed for a star to burn through its supply of hydrogen and that our sun's mass is more than sufficient to-look, full disclosure: this is getting super science-y and while it's all very interesting, I'm a little more into the fi than the sci. The important thing to take away from this is that Professor Zijilstra's data suggests that our primary star has absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, and in five billion years it too will explode in a spectacular blaze of glory.

Huh? Yes. Five billion. With a 'B.' You've got to love this about science: when it predicts the end of the world, it does so in the most 'cover their ass' way by putting it eons into the future.

"In many ways, the astronomical timescale is all that separates me from 
the guy on the street shouting End Is Nigh. Well, that and the sandwich board."

-Professor Albert Ziljstra, grim

harbinger of our (eventual) doom

Above: an artist's rendering
of our sun. (source: science)

So if you were hoping for the sweet release of an ultra-hot envelope of gas to put an end to the ridiculous spiral our civilization is locked into, you've got a bit of a wait. The sun is about four billion years old right now making it middle aged. But while it's not going to save us from Sarah Huckabee Sanders or more Transformers movies, I guess we can take comfort in the idea that it, like all of us, can look forward to a massive expansion before perishing in a glorious explosion.

Get equipped with...perspective!

"She is? So what now, do I enter my 
credit card number or something?"

-Kids these days

As I may have mentioned before, I am, despite a fairly severe case of being an adult, a video game fan. Specifically games from the late eighties and early nineties. And not to sound like a cranky old person-which, ok, I am-but it was a time when video games were games and not flimsy pretexts upon which to convince players to pay real world money for in-game bullshit. That's not to say that developers weren't in it for the money back then too, it's just that given the absence of any real internet ecosystem, they had to create something, stick on a cartridge and sell it in a store.

Hot Topic:
'Stroking your nostalgia gland since 1989'

I bring this up because as much as I sometimes feel that gaming, as a thing, has moved beyond me, there really is a segment of the industry that knows that idiot retro game fans will pretty much buy anything. Like anything. Sometimes more than once. Publishers know this, that I'm an idiot I mean. An idiot for nostalgia. And that's why Nintendo's announcement about Virtual Console doesn't surprise me. Huh? What announcement or what's a Virtual Console? Because you know what kind of blog this is right? What's that? Yeah, I don't know either, and yet...

Did I say bated breath? I might have meant
labored. We don't get off the couch a lot.

Fine, I'll nerd'splain. The VC (if you're in a hurry) has for the last twelve years or so been Nintendo's way of selling you digital copies of old games on more recent consoles. It's kind of a scam in that they never let you transfer your purchases to new consoles, and the catalogue is a bit of a mess, but like I said, we're stupid for nostalgia and so we keep buying these things over and over again and we've all been waiting with bated breath for word of when VC would be available on the Switch.

"Alright nerds, you're going to relive some
cherished childhood memories, or else."

-Nintendo's marketing department

...well, that's how I remember it

Today we found out that it's never. Nintendo, a company sort of famous for hating money, has decided not to let us buy the same games we already bought but this time on Switch. Instead, they will opt to let us pay a subscription fee for their online service which will let gamers netflix (sorry, I just verbed netflix) classic NES games. Specifically twenty of them. It's actually a pretty decent line-up and they'll be online enabled for multiplayer so that's cool. But almost all of the games are ones we totally just bought on those NES Classics they forced us to buy. Yes, forced. You can't pump out tiny, adorable, working NES consoles and expect me not to buy one.

And this is probably fine. I mean, sooner or later and in some form or another, they're going to ask me to pay for Super Mario Bros. 2 for the umpteenth time, and I, like a dutiful dupe am going to do it. They know right where I'm weakest: my will power.

"We-a never leave-a the money on the table!"

-Nintendo spokesstereotype, Luigi

No, really.

So why complain? Oh, right, because this is the internet. And in that spirit of complaining about things over which I have control, I'd like to call out this ridiculous bullshit. Didn't click? Fine. A company called iam8bit (cute, huh?) recently sold fancy, limited collectors editions of Street Fighter II. Like, actual, reproduction SNES cartridges. Supposedly they worked, although the company warned buyers not to actually put them in a SNES console for fear that it might catch on fire.

Sure, it's a lttle dinged up and some kid
named 'Kevin' wrote his name on the
back in permanent marker, but still.

So what kind of person pays $100 for a reproduction cartridge of a game that costs $12 on ebay? Oh, and might burn your house down? A true fan that's who. And that's why they're now attempting to part additional fools from additional money with the double whammy of Mega Man 2 (the best one) and Mega Man X (the best-er one) limited edition (only 8,500!) repro cartridges for a hundred bucks each. Which again, ebay. I mean, don't get me wrong, these are great games but goddamn, you can buy authentic used copies of both for an eighth of the price.

Look, again, I love old video games in general and Mega Man in particular, but holy shit. The line must be drawn here. Artificially scarce copies of not-at-all-rare games that may or may not burn you to death selling for a hundred dollars a pop? Are we that driven by our over-inflated sense of nostalgia that we, as fans, will continue to fall for this time and time again? Yes. Of course we will. I guess they've really got our number. Goddamnit...

Yeah, that all sucks but did I mention that the Mega Man 2 cart is blue. Blue!

Today in ground penetrating disappointment:

Science, the discipline famous for crushing our hopes and dreams under its ponderous and stubborn insistence on facts and evidence has, claimed another victim: Queen Nefertiti.

"Why? Because he hate joy, that's why."

-Scientists

Ancient Egyptians were very advanced and
were among the first to discover that people
on vacation make poor buying decisions.

Ok, sort of. Scientists announced on Saturday that the recently identified room beyond Tutankamun's tomb is, in stark contrast to the parkour and murder simulator Assasin's Creed: Origins, not filled with treasure but instead, disappointment. Well, that's not entirely true. It's not filled with anything. Archeologists had hoped the void might be Queen Nefertiti's burial chamber or something equally likely to rain down curses on those who desecrate it, like the Valley of the Kings' Gift Shop. But now they're saying it's just a ghost image picked up by ground penetrating radar.

"Well, we Eqyptologists have a saying:
if at first you don't succeed give up right
away. I mean, why waste your time?"

Back in 2015 a scan showed a void, but a second scan in 2016 couldn't find it so this last February they tried again. According to National Geographic, they came up empty and now the researchers are calling it a bust:

"We conclude, with a very high level of confidence, that the hypothesis concerning the existence of hidden chambers adjacent [to] Tutankhamen tomb is not supported by the GPR data."

-Quitters

"Shit, this thing is USB 3? Anyone got a
Lighting adapter? No? So much for that..."

Which, ok, great, all signs point to there being no chamber full of dead Queens or treasure or un-lockable achievements and power-ups. But again, all signs are two out of three. Since when is archeology based on rock-paper-scissors rules? Like, thirty three percent of ground penetrating radar scans did seem to indicate a bonus level in King Tut's tomb, so is it really time to dust off our hands and call it a day? Is the ground penetrating radar equipment really that hard to set up or something? Like, why was it a year between scans anyway?

Well if there is something back there, I suppose we may never know. But on the bright side, given the problematic history of rooting around in the burial grounds of ancient people, an undiscovered tomb is an un-desecrated tomb.

"And over there is where I paid a local work crew a laughably small 
 wage to take pickaxes to millennia-old tomb walls so that I could cart
away precious pieces of your country's cultural heritage. Cigar?"

-Howard Carter, noted tomb raider

An ABBA-gram for the Queen

Pictured: sci-fi bullshit we can look
forward to sometime next never.

So, I'm conflicted about holograms. On the one hand, awesome. They're a great way to let everyone know that something takes place in the future, and from a dramatic standpoint it's way more interesting than watching characters use FaceTime. But they're also bullshit, I mean, obviously they're bullshit, everything in sci-fi is just a little bullshit. It's what makes it more interesting than living our real lives, but holograms are a special kind of bullshit because we like to think they're just around the corner.

Which, they're not. Like all. And I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing. Something like 20% of all Star Trek episodes are about the goddamn holodeck malfunctioning, and in Marvel movies they're little more than plot exposition devices used to distract us from the fact that the writing is kind of lazy. And can the Empire in Star Wars seriously not improve upon constantly flickering blue palette of their only method of long-distance communication?

"Luke...adjust the tracking."

-The role Sir Alec Guinness

will be remembered for

It's probably best not to underestimate
Swedish pop-technology again.

But the closest thing we have even to these kinds of holographic technologies are incredibly lame by comparison. They're never the free floating, three dimensional images and computer interfaces TV and movies have lied to us about, but instead they're basically screen projections which, when viewed from the right angle in the right lighting might just give the impression that the members of ABBA have worked out they're differences, spontaneously de-aged 35 years and are going on tour again. Huh? No, really, apparently ABBA-gram has been performing since like 2016.

It's like they're right there in the room,
slowly suffocating in a giant tube.

Anyway, holograms. Bullshit, but that's not stopping anyone from taking another swing at them. Researchers from Queen's University in Canada are working on yet another hologram that's not really a hologram technology. This one uses a cylindrical screen and is basically a tele-presence device, allowing someone far away to appear to be standing in the room with you. Standing in a human-sized transparent tube and going all blurry if your viewing angle changes, but still...holograms.

Pictured: the death of human language.

The team behind the device, called the Telehuman 2 (ugh), point out that other, non face-to-face forms of communication loose a lot of non-verbal information. A raised eyebrow, or body language can totally change the message, and ok, they've got a point. Don't we all kind of worry about how a text we send will be read? Sure, we can just use emoji to clarify our tone but I don't know, could we maybe, you know, not?

Still though, I mean, I suppose progress is progress and maybe the work done at Queen's University will someday lead to the terrifying, sentient holograms or our darkest, Black Mirror-iest nightmares. So, fingers crossed?

"Soon my scientists will compete the Holo-Queen and ensure that my reign will be an
 everlasting one. No one, not even the ABBA-gram will be able to stand in my way."

-HRH Elizabeth II, Queen of England and

Canada and soon-to-be immortal holographic

Who's to say the lizards won't do a better job?

"Are you going to keep throwing
Galileo up in our faces forever?"

-The Pope

Do you know what I love about science? It's that anything, absolutely anything no matter how bananas is fair game. I'm not knocking religion when I say this, but what's nice about science is that you can ask questions without risking a heresy charges or an inquisition or something. Got an hypothesis? Just add science. Maybe you're wrong, maybe you're right. Science doesn't care. Take this new paper by scientists Adam Frank and Gavin A. Schmidt about how maybe there used to be lizard people.

Pictured: A Silurian which, look,
 nobody saw HD TV's coming so...

Yes, lizard people. Ok, not really lizard people, but they did title paper the Silurian Hypothesis as a reference to the Silurians from Doctor Who. The Silurians, according to series lore, are an advanced prehistoric civilization of evolved lizards with telepathic powers which begs the question what the shit does this have to do with science? Ok, settle down. Frank and Schmidt's paper poses the question of whether or not it would be possible to detect evidence of advanced, industrialized civilizations like ours, hundreds of thousands or millions of years after they go extinct.

Ok, so obviously this is dancing super-close to crazy-town conspiracy theories that a secret cabal of shape shifting lizard people secretly run the world government. But Frank and Schmidt are not saying that there was a mighty Reptile Empire that once ruled the Earth, just that if there were, we might not know it.

You know, like countries that aren't America.

Wow, those civilizations must have
been pretty stupid to make it so far
only to go extin-oh...oh, I get it now...

Our planet, the they point out, has been home to complex life for about four hundred million years, but humans have only been around for a couple million years and have only been industrialized for three hundred years. That's a lot of time in which you could see the rise of a species through its own version of the stone age up to its industrialization followed by the invention of computers and the inevitable decline into a complacent, media-obsessed civilization staring at its phones and choking on its own carbon footprint.

Preposterously lucky huh?
 I know exactly who to call.

Yeah, ok, but shouldn't we have dug up ancient lizard ruins or some kind of half buried reptilian Statue of Liberty or something? No necessarily, say the scienceticians, citing another study that says the industrialized surface of the Earth right now is only like 1%, so even if some hypothetical, earlier civilization was similar in size and scope you'd still need a preposterous stroke of good luck to just happen upon some remnant of it like a road or a building or something.

Dirt...the final frontier...

Ok, but obviously the fact that the Earth is too old and tooexpansive to definitively rule out the possibility of ancient lizard people isn't the same thing as "hey look, lizard people." Cool. But what's interesting about the Silurian Hypothesis is that it opens up the search for non-human life to a fourth and somewhat less hopelessly vast dimension: time. Sure, space exploration is sexier, but goddamn is it expensive and very possibly, futile. The geological record is finite and doesn't require billions of dollars and tons of rocket fuel to explore, just like, a shovel.

Of course, lizard people are objectively ridiculous and I don't think I'm being closed minded when I say we're probably not going to find any. But again, Adam Frank and Gavin A. Schmidt are actual scientists posing a legitimate scientific question. It's not about whether or not lizard people used to live in cities and drive around in cars, it's about probing the limits of our knowledge and admitting that we don't know everything.

On the other hand, for all I know the mighty Reptile Empire is, even now,
waking from its eons-long slumber and is preparing to reconquer the surface
world. But they're definitely not telepathic. That's just some sci-fi bullshit.

This one time, when Ronny was super drunk...

So this, but with shit. Three rings
of ceaseless, cringe-worthy shit.

Look, I don't want to be one of those annoying people who rather than articulating the problem they're having with something, just raises one eyebrow and repeats the word 'really' again and again with an increasingly incredulous tone, but really? Really? Really? What am I really-ing against? The President's comment that-huh? Yeah, him again. I'm sorry, believe me, I'm as sick of hearing about him as you are but until this is over, what can we do? Not talk about the perpetual shitcirus that is American politics?

Anyway, the President tweeted the following:

Because really?

And then continued which is weird because I thought the whole reason twitter has a character limit is to keep people from rambling on.

No reason? Isn't being even tangentially associated with
the President kind of reputation-poisoning to begin with?

And Ronny stories usually end with the
hotel charging massive cleaning fees.

This after Tester authorized a document accusing former Trump nominee for Secretary of the VA Ronny Jackson of a number of, what's the phrase? Behavioral lapses? No, that's not fair, let's go with acts of drunken douchebaggary. Apparently stories about Ronny always start with him being drunk. Like, super drunk. One of these incidents involved the Secret Service being asked to intervene when Jackson was drunkenly banging on the door of a female college's room while on an overseas trip. The Secret Service says they have no evidence that this happened.

That's not exactly the same thing as a denying that it ever happened only that the Secret Service wasn't involved. It just means that they weren't called in to stop a drunken adult doctor who's also an admiral in the Navy from pounding on a coworker's door in the middle of the night. But ok, fine, this particular allegation doesn't come with any paper trail or physical evidence. Great, but it's not like it's the only one.

"Hey, c'mon, is it really fair to hold me accountable
for things I say and do while shitfaced?

-Jackson, defending himself

I swear, it's not about ragging on the
man's weight, it's about Jackson's
assumption that's we're all idiots.

The document cites what Tester called 'a pattern of behavior' that makes Jackson unfit to serve as the head of the VA. Excessive drinking, handing out Ambien like goddamn Altoids, harassing female staff, and did I mention that this is a grown-ass man who still calls himself Ronny? Or that this is a doctor who has repeatedly insisted that the spray-tan saturated carcass of an overweight septuagenarian who subsists entirely on KFC and bed burgers is somehow the fittest President we've ever had despite all evidence to the contrary?

"How dare you impugn this fine
man by pointing out all the terrible
things he's done? For shame, sir."

Anyway, Jackson withdrew his name after the allegations came out which is not something most people would do when they're being slandered, but ok, I don't care about that. What I do care about is that Donald Trump is suggesting that Senator Tester has sullied an otherwise sterling reputation and that because of this he should resign, which brings me back to the really? Really? The allegations made by Tester against Jackson are false so Tester should resign? Donald 'Most Attended Inauguration Ever' Trump is saying someone else should resign for making wild claims? I...can he not hear himself?

I mean holy shit didn't he spend over a decade telling us that Barack Obama was a Kenyan-born Muslim manchurian candidate? And everyday since election day insisting that he'd have won the popular vote if it weren't for millions of illegal and apparently invisible voters? Allegations which are not only preposterous and demonstrably false but for which he's not presented the slightest hint of a whiff of evidence. Ever. But sure, Tester should resign. Cool.

"Ooh...yes, everyone act shocked, a raging narcissist who’s
gone his entire life without once facing consequences for his
actions is incapable of self-evaluation. Let's all look surprised..."

-The President, kind of

making a valid point