Today in things you shouldn't gargle:

I guess it's kind of...well, comforting isn't the word, but is there a word or a phrase that captures the feeling you get when you see elected officials in other countries displaying even a fraction of the idiocy so many of our own so readily embrace? No? Not even in German?

"Nien, but then we believed the scientists
when they said to take the pandemic seriously."

-Some German stereotype

Yeah, that red-ish stuff they smear on
people before they go into surgery. 

Because this. Not going to click? Fine. It's about how the Governor Hirofumi Yoshimura of Osaka Prefecture in Japan told everybody that if COVID-19 patients gargle with povidone-iodine, it will prevent them from getting the most serious symptoms. The Governor was citing some study done in Osaka that said it would mitigate the-huh? No it won't, of course it won't. How do I know? Well, like everyone who's not a doctor, I'm not a doctor, but doctors both in Japan and from the World Health Organization agree that this is nonsense. Even Governor Yoshimura agrees. Which...

Pictured: Tuesday Yoshimura, seen here
saying several words about how his magic
iodine gargle has a preventative effect. 

Yeah, on Tuesday, Yoshimura talked up the health benefits of gargling povidone-iodine. But then everyone started clearing out the drugstore of the stuff and doctors pointed out how preposterous the claim was, so on Wednesday Yoshimura said:

"I never said a single word about it having a preventative effect..."

-Wednesday Yoshimura

And yeah, ok, he didn't use the phrase "preventative effect" but he did say that it's better than gargling with nothing and I'm not sure it is. I mean, that stuff can't possibly taste good, and since it doesn't goddamn do anything, I'd suggest that it is better than gargling with nothing.

Incidentally, how does one gargle with nothing?

"So maybe stop talking?"

-Doctors everywhere

Also, despite what he claimed on Wednesday, and his not at all being a doctor, he totally did say:

"I even think that gargling with povidone-iodine could defeat the Coronavirus. But it's still in the research phase and we can't say anything definitive. "

-Governor Yoshimura, saying

something definitive

So in many ways Governor Yoshimura
should, I don't know, shut the hell up?

Oh, and my claim back there about his not being a doctor? I felt bad about just saying that without evidence, so I looked him up. Indeed he has no medical training, but I also learned that he canceled Osaka's Sister City relationship with San Francisco because the Pan-Asian Alliance put up a statue honoring the thousands of women Imperial Japan's military used as sex slaves during World War II. Yoshimura insisted that the statue "present[s] uncertain claims and one-sided claims as historical facts." Super.

So I guess we're not the only country where officials make wild and unsubstantiated claims which, when called out on, they insist that they never made and then they accept no responsibility for the havoc they caused. Nor are we the only one with nationalist goons trying to other side history's most shameful moments. You know, in some ways I wonder if the biggest problem right now isn't a virus, but rather shitheels holding high office.

In Japan these shitheels lead to a rush on povidone-iodine.
Here we end up with a death toll in the hundreds of thousands.

You can't just sue America great again...

Oh this isn't going to be pleasant. What specifically? You may ask? I mean, yeah, there is a lot to choose from, but I'm referring specifically to the President's rabid foam railing against mail-in voting and his obvious softening the ground for himself to challenge the results of November's election. Assuming the election even happens in November. Or ever again.

"Here's your ballot, please indicate on a scale of 'Great' to
'So Great you can't even believe', how great President Trump is."

-Our increasingly likely future

"What? You expect us to win
elections based on our merits?"

-Mitch McConnell, 

without irony

Lawmakers in Nevada passed a bill on Sunday that would require every voter in the state to be sent a mail-in ballot in times of crisis, like say, when there's a super-contagious and deadly respiratory virus floating around coupled with an aggressive form of Presidential incompetence that makes everything like a hundred times worse than it needs to be. The vote was unsurprisingly along party lines since Republicans just openly acknowledge now that when more Americans are able to vote they loose. You know, you'd think they'd take the hint, but here we are.

The President's argument, that he's been making forever despite never providing a hint of a whiff of a shred of evidence, is that mail-in ballots would compromise the integrity of the vote. Which...sure, but since since baseless arguments are apparently not working, why not sue?

Cool, he knows what a coup is, right?

Above: The Republican Party reacting to
the suggestion they they might actually
have to stop being so awful all the time.

So couple of things. It was a vote, not a coup. Also, it was a vote by lawmakers who won their respective popular votes. Um, it's not impossible for Republicans to win, they just have to persuade voters instead of relying on gerrymandering and voter suppression. And I can't speak to the Post Office's ability to handle more mail, but they'd probably have an easier time of it if Republicans weren't trying so hard to dismantle it. And as far as COVID goes, the fact that it's still a massive problem is kind of his fault so...

Oh, and I almost forgot. He's right about one thing: we will be seeing him in court someday. I just like to think that it's not going to be in the context he thinks it will be.

I know it's just the fantasy of a bleeding heart liberal reaching the end of his
wits when it comes to watching America be dragged down in a seemingly endless
spiral of nationalism and self-destruction, but it's all that's keeping me going.

Wait, we're rooting for Megatron now?

Remember how I just said like, two days ago that I don't review things on my blog because and I quote: "who cares what I think?" Well, I stand by that. because for real, who cares what I think? That said, I watched the new Transformers cartoon and I have opinions about it that I'm going to share with you now. Just understand that this isn't me saying that you should or should not watch this thing, it's just me-a grown ass adult-having feelings about a cartoon about toys from over three decades ago.

And what's the internet if not a forum for adults to opine about
nostalgia-drenched re-imaginings of childhood cartoons?

No, really, the weeds. So if that's not
your cuppa, maybe bail out now.

Ok, where to begin? First of all, you might not know this about me, but Transformers is one of my areas of nerdery. I'm not as well-versed as say I am when it comes to Star Trek or video games, but I'm conversant. Which is why I-again, a fully grown human-spent nearly three hours of my life watching the overly be-coloned: Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy: Part One: Siege. And just, just brace yourself, because this is going to get into the nerd weeds and for that I want to apologize in advance...still there? Super.

Above: Micheal Bay's Transformers.
Or possibly what would happen if Monster
Energy drink was a Rorschach test. 

For those unfamiliar, and I'll assume that's most functioning adults, I offer some background. Transformers, like as-ugh, sorry, I hate this term, but as a franchise, has been re-booted like a dozen times meaning that most pieces of Transformers fiction exist in separate continuities from one another. TWFCTP1 (acronym!) is no different. It's a reboot/reimagining/prequel loosely based on, but set in a distinct narrative universe from, more well known versions like the 1984 cartoon, Generation 1 (G1) or the Micheal Bay series of movies (objective garbage).

So while the basic story elements and characterizations are the same as G1: Autobots are good, Decepticons are bad, and Starscream is a screechy-voiced sycophant who openly plots to overthrow the Deception leader Megatron, TWFCTP1 tries to tell a more darker, more nuanced, story. One about class war, loyalty, and genocide. No really.

Oh, and it's also trying to sell toys to adults who
will never take them out of their packaging.

"Pichew...pichew...take that Megatron,
 for, uh, trying to resist oppression..."

-Some kids playing with toys

Previously the conflict was based on Megatron's wanting to conquer the Transformers' home planet of Cybertron because, you know, evil, and the heroic Optimus Prime has to stop him because freedom. And that's all still there, except now we learn that the Decepticons were originally built as some kind of worker caste to serve the elite Autobots. After thousands of astro-cycles (yup) of slavery and being forced to fight to the death in gladiatorial games for the amusement of the Autobots, Megatron and the Decepticons rebel. Which, yeah, who wouldn't?

On Cybertron, controversy surrounds
the many statues celebrating the heroes
of the War of Decepticon Aggression. 

It's not the first time Transformers has gone dark. Transformers: The Movie, the animated one from 1986, aimed for a PG rating by throwing in a couple swears and gruesomely killing off most of your action figures including most famously (spoiler alert for a thirty-four year old movie) Optimus Prime. I was just a dumb kid back during the height of Transformers' popularity and don't recall the reasons for the conflict ever getting a lot of detail in G1. But with the Decepticons cast as genocidal fascists and the Autobots as allegorical stand-ins for southern white slave holders, I'm not sure who to root for here.

Of course, this series isn't really aimed at children, but instead at adults who fondly remember the 1980's cartoon and toys. But instead of capturing the tone of G1, it instead opts for something a little more-ok, a lot more, heavy and I suppose my biggest criticism would be that it takes itself too seriously for a cartoon about alien robots that turn into cars.

Pictured: That episode of Transformers where Powerglide goes
on a date with a human woman and rides a Merry-go-round.
Also, did I mention his name is Powerglide? Because it is.

See? I told you we'd
be getting into the weeds.

And not just too seriously in tone, but also in the visuals. I think in an effort to accurately portray the toyline, the character designs are hyper-accurate and everyone comes off as a little to boxy and, well, robotic. Which, I know, but it seems like they could have fudged it a little to give these things more range and emotion. For example, Optimus Prime has this face plate instead of a mouth and on the old cartoon it moved when he spoke, but it doesn't here. It's a small thing, but taking it away kind of robs the character of personality.

Including Moonracer, apparently one
of only three female Transformers on
all of Cybertron so, way to go Prime...

The personality of a robot who is also a toy, but still. And that's probably my second criticism, that some of the characterizations feel a bit off. As a reboot, it's not really setting out to re-create the original characters exactly, but some things are just weird. Like seeing Megatron fighting to free Decepticons from the oppression of the ruling elite. Or Optimums Prime being bad at his job; lurching from disastrous plan to disastrous plan and getting a couple of Autobots killed in the process. But that's just one nerd complaining that the new show isn't exactly like the old show-which again, isn't its job.

On the other hand, the people this is made for are the same people who probably tear up when they hear Stan Bush's You've got the touch. So I guess I feel like this shameless three-hour piece of fan-service only kind of hit the mark. It aimed to give fans of a certain age a deeper, more complex version of the fiction that was also closer to the incarnation they remember than say the live-action movies, but instead maybe went a little too far down the path of grim dark social allegory and forgot to be, you know, fun.

If you're not tearing up at this, you're not human.
Or you're over forty-five or under thirty five. Either way.

Oh toss a break to your witcher...

That sound your hearing? That's just the soft scraping noise of me rolling my cynical eyes at the news of a Witcher spin-off series.

Sorry, a spin-off of the TV adaptation of the English-language
version of some Polish novels that were popularized by a series of
video games of which most of us only noticed the third one.

Pictured: Novelist, train conductor and
mall Santa, George R. R. Martin, seen
here not working on book six.

And I don't know, maybe it'll be great. I don't like, review things on this blog because who cares what I think? But I enjoyed the Henry Cavill series. The inevitable and probably too obvious comparison was Game of Thrones since they are both grim/dark fantasies based on novels with built in fandoms and lots graphic violence and nudity to make us adults feel like we're not watching nonsense for babies. But unlike the unrelenting self-importance of GOT, The Witcher didn't feel like it took itself so goddamn seriously all the time.

Look, if you want to drive to Colonial
Williamsburg and ask, be my guest,
but I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one.

Ok, but if The Witcher was good, then more Witcher should also be good, right? Weeelll...no. Not necessarily. For one thing, we've seen exactly one season of the show so cranking out another, separate series seems a bit premature. There's striking while the iron is hot and then there's starting on another horseshoe before you've even dunked your first horseshoe in the water-or whatever. I'm not great at blacksmithing metaphors, but I guess my point is that maybe give it a minute?

Thank God. I assume. I've never
seen it, but I hate everything.

And another thing: it's a prequel. Because of course it's a prequel. And I suppose that tracks since there's also going to be a Game of Thrones prequel. Oh, and don't expect this to be the Young Witcher Chronicles, this prequel is going to be set way before the Henry Cavill series. So it's not like Deep Space Nine where characters could cross over because again and it's not even like Young Sheldon where actors play younger versions of the characters we're familiar with. This is set twelve hundred years before The Witcher.

Above: Idiots and goons. Yes, I'm
making it about him. Everything is about
him until he's out of office and in jail.

Again, maybe The Witcher: Chronicles of the Rise of the Origins of Whatever will be great. Who knows? Maybe all we've been needing to get us through the never-ending horror that is America's decline and inevitable balkanization at the hands of idiots and goons is a second TV show about characters who existed hundreds of years before the characters we found tentatively interesting in that one season of one show we all watched because George R. R. Martin's heart warming tale of incest and ice zombies ended.

Still though, I can't help but wonder why this is a prequel and not an original thing. I mean, twelve hundred years? That's a prequel to The Witcher in the same way that the Middle Ages were a prequel to Katy Perry. They both happened in the same world but are separated by so much time, what's even the point? Oh, right, brand recognition...

What? Don't give me that look. You know it's true.

Today in Omega-level campaign trolling:

Hey remember that time a photographer caught Donald Trump's poorly spelled, large-print notes about how guilty he's not (but totally is), how much quid pro quo there wasn't (there was tons) and how hoax-y the impeachment was (but totally wasn't)?

Well, it wasn't state secrets of nuclear
codes so...bright side I suppose.

"Oooooops...hope nobody saw that..."

-Joe Biden, unconvincingly

Well in a similar, more staged and more coherent move, Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden's handwritten note was caught on camera and has fueled speculation that California Senator Kamala Harris may be his VP pick. I say staged because, c'mon, no one could possibly be so careless and dumb as to wave around clearly written notes they don't want everyone to see. Ok, well, almost no one, I mean, see above.

Qualified and stands in front of
 out-of-focus flags? Yes please!

The notes, with the heading: "Kamala Harris" followed by a bunch of lines about how great she is, also contains talking points like: "Restore... Rebuild...Unite Country." And then a bit reading "VP-Highly Qualified...Diverse Group" (his caps). So it doesn't take a lot to draw a line between Harris and running mate, nor is it much of a leap to suggest that Biden is expertly and hilariously trolling Trump's previous gaffe.

Look, was Joe Biden everybody's first choice? No. Would electing him solve America's seemingly insurmountable problems and immediately undo the last four years of openly hostile governance and erosion of American values? Of course not. Still though, wouldn't it be nice to have a couple functioning adults in office?

I'm just saying is all.

Get me, talking about a sports thing...

Above: sports players playing
a sports game. Rugby, I believe.

I uh...look, understand that I'm not a sports...person. I've talked about this before, but the whole sports fandom thing exists for me in this weird alternate universe for which I have no context. From the outside it just seems like people arbitrarily choose some team to root for? Support? I don't know, but whatever it is it's like you just put on a hat or a jersey and then get really excited over the outcome of a game you have nothing to do with. Not you personally, just the general you.

Pictured: A helmet bearing the team
logo which is...wow...I mean, I know
they're changing it, but still. It's 2020...

Doesn't matter, all this is to say that I have no stake in sports whatsoever. But a subject having no bearing on one's life has never stopped anyone on the internet from having and also voicing an opinion that subject, so I'm going to chime in on this Washington D.C. football team thing. I don't care about sports and I don't live in Washington, but I, like a lot of people, have been rooting for (now I'm doing it) the people fighting to change the team's name from the incredibly offensive Washington Redskins to almost any other word in the English language. And good news: they won!

The team's owners announced recently that they'll be ditching the old name and considering alternatives with the help of "fans, business partners and alumni". In the meantime, effective yesterday, they'll be removing the previous team name and logo from everything and adopting the placeholder name:

Uh...well, it does what it says on the tin I suppose.

Most countries wouldn't put up statues to
the losers in the first place, but here we are.

Bland, sure, but it's not super-racist and that's a step in the right direction. The move comes at a time when, despite the American political right's best efforts, monuments to slavers and insurrectionists are coming down, Mississippi is changing its flag, military bases and even towns are being renamed, and maybe we, as a nation, are starting to acknowledge that maybe America has and has had a problem with racism? That maybe just maybe ignoring the centuries of injustice non-white people have endured doesn't do anything to address the underlining causes of-

-uh...I don't want to diminish the progress that dropping the old team name represents, even if the temporary name is a little m'eh, but didn't George Washington own a big planation full of enslaved people? Sure, he freed them (after he died), but still, he enslaved like a hundred and twenty three people and rented-yes, rented, dozens more. Not saying this isn't progress or that we need to go rename Washington D.C., but I don't know, maybe we aught to at least acknowledge the you know, the irony here?

Pictured: George Washington and some of the people he owned and forced to work for free...

(source: my liberal guilt, but also history)

James Cameron: Master of Understatement

Say, that's a bummer. Disney announced today that due to the, you know, the pandemic, the new Star Wars movie has been-brace yourself-delayed. In other news, Disney's making a new Star Wars movie. Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are.

It's as if millions of fans suddenly shrugged indifferently
and then suddenly went back to whatever they were doing.

What? I'm not wrong.

After the not as bad as everyone says Solo and the aggressively loud mess of nonsense cobbled together from toxic fan Tweets about how Last Jedi had too many girls in it that is Rise of Skywalker, and the general sentiment on the part of everyone everywhere that maybe it's time to give Star Wars a rest, Disney was evidently planning to do the exact opposite of giving it a rest with not one, but get this three new Star Wars movies. Yes, a Star Wars trilogy if you will.

Pictured: that time Star Wars
taught us to lower our expectations
as a way to cope with disappointment.

The new trilogy was supposed to kick off in 2022 but we're now going to have to wait until 2023-an interminable three years-to be disappointed again. Sorry was that was probably not fair, but I mean, maybe it'll be great? I don't know, I'm old enough that I remember what it was like to wait the sixteen years between Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace only to-huh. You know, now that I think of it, that kind of prepared me for the way the world in general has gone to shit. So, thank you?

He also directed Aliens and the 
two good Terminator movies, 
so go watch those instead.

It's not just Star Wars, Mulan's been delayed too as have the Avatar sequels. Yes plural. The first sequel (sigh) was supposed to come out in December of '21. According to director James Cameron on Twitter:

"There is no one more disappointed by this delay than me."

-James Cameron, making 

a massive understatement

Anyway, next time you see one of America's many dumbs who are stubbornly refusing to put on a goddamn mask and take even a hint of a whiff of a modicum of responsibility for getting the pandemic under control, be sure to thank them. Because of them we'll all have to wait until 2022 to not care about Avatar 2, but more importantly we have to wait until 2023 to see if Disney's going to make up for Rise of Skywalker. 

In addition to delaying Star Wars, these idiots are literally killing us.