Discourse shouldn't involve pepper spray...

I don't have to say it, right? Like, I don't have to-you know what? I'm going to go ahead and say it. I mean, it's the internet. What the hell? Ok, here goes: "It's only legitimate political discourse when Republicans do it." 

Pictured: legitimate public discourse.

(source: people guilty of treason trying

to cover their own collective ass)

"How dare they investigate these fine Americans
for this alleged coup we all saw unfold, live on TV?"

-McDaniels, unable to hear 

herself speak, evidently 

I'm referring, of course, to Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel's preposterous claim that the insurrection was a lively exchange of ideas and not an attempted coup:

"We've had two members engage in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse. This has gone beyond their original intent. They are not sticking up for hard working Republicans..."

-the other 'rona we're all sick of,

on how accountable the GOP isn't

So this, but instead of Klingons, a political
party that's cool with voter suppression and
bounties on women who seek abortions.

The members in question, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, are the only Republicans who didn't boycott the committee whose function is to investigate that time the reality TV host the GOP let hijack the party of Lincoln incited a bunch of white people with persecution complexes to storm the Capitol Building in an attempt to overturn the election results. And look, I don't, you know, agree with them. Really, about most things, they're still Republicans, but Cheney and Kinzinger are the closest thing the Republican Party has right now to a conscience and they've just been booted for daring to suggest that maybe there should be consequences for crimes.

I'm saying it's not a witch hunt if we all
watched the witches witch and then go
after everyone who calls them witches.

Because that's what innocent people do when accused of wrongdoing, right? Attack the mechanisms and people put in place to investigate crimes? I'm bringing this up because when January 6th went down, House Republicans seemed to fall somewhere on the spectrum between "say nothing and wait to see how this shakes out" to cheering the rioters on. And I think Capitol police are still looking into the claim that Republican House members gave tours to these people days before the attack. But sure, let's all take them seriously when they condemn the investigation as a partisan witch hunt. 

Pictured: white people heroically
standing up for...uh, themselves.

And you know, I don't think I'm alone when--you know what? No, I'm definitely not alone in saying that the thought occurred, as I watched January sixth go down, that if this had been a Black Lives Matter demonstration or even The Women's March, Donald Trump would have called out the National Guard immediately. Like, immediately and with orders to go in guns blazing. But it wasn't and they weren't and here we are arguing with the people actively trying to dismantle democracy over how they're the real victims here.

Because, and I think I'm summing up the GOP's stance pretty well here: nation-wide peaceful demonstrations against institutional racism and police murder of Black people, is lawlessness. But violent good'ol boys storming the Capitol and clubbing police because they're butthurt about Donald Trump's election loss is legitimate political discourse.

Hey, you don't suppose that the Republican Party has some kind
of racially-motivated bias against people who aren't white, do you?

Let's honor this one in the breach...

"You've made a powerful enemy Chuck..."

-Bloomberg, threatening a Goundhog

So the bad news is the groundhog saw its shadow. The good news is that groundhogs can neither speak nor predict the weather, so I don't know, just keep an eye on your phone's weather app. According to news site Staton Island Live, Puxnhatawney Phil is only right fifty percent of the time while other sources place that number in the upper thirties. Of course, Silive.com goes on, with no small amount of grossly misplaced hometown pride, to point out that their own groundhog, Staton Island Chuck has a hit rate in the upper nineties. Oh, and fun fact, Chuck also once bit Mayor Bloomberg.

Look, I take no pleasure in saying this,
but what did they actually think was 
going to happen? I'm genuinely asking.

Groundhog Day is, if I haven't mentioned it before, dumb, but I guess I didn't realize that the holiday--wait, is it a holiday? Observance? Collective lunacy? Doesn't matter, the point is Puxnhatawney Phil isn't the country's only weather predicting 'hog. In addition to the one in Staton Island who now has a taste for wealthy blood, D.C. has it's own off-brand groundhog called Potomac Phil, and the town of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin has one called Jimmy and has taken the further step of declaring itself Groundhog Capitol of the World. Oh, and Jimmy bit their mayor as well.

"Hey, you know what's also really good
at predicting the weather? Science. 
Why don't we just use science?"

-Some meteorologist

I won't go so far as to say that this is animal abuse, but it's at least animal bothering and--wait, actually no, it might be animal abuse. I mean, these animal are supposed to be hibernating during the winter, aren't they? Not being disturbed by some dumbass mayor sticking their hands into their burrows to drag them blinking into the light and perform for a crowd of rubes who think rodents can predict weather. The full name of the groundhog who bit Sun Prairie Mayor Jon Freund was James T. Groundhog XI, suggesting that the Groundhog Capitol of the World is going through Jimmies at an alarming rate. 

Pictured: Mayor Jackson, and the groundhog 
whose mysterious death she helped cover up.
The question remains, what does she know?

More alarming still is the town of Wiarton in Ontario Canada where--huh? Yup, apparently not even reasonable Canada has been spared this preposterous waste of time. Anyway, Wiarton's ground hog--an albino alliteratively called Willy--didn't show up for his big moment in 2021, and was revealed later to be dead. Yeah, it was a cover up. Instead the Mayor, Janice Jackson--no, really-- grabbed some random person's hat, threw it up in the air and predicted an early spring. Sure, it's equally dumb, but equally accurate and they don't have to disturb a wild animal to do it.

All this is to say that I hope you'll join me in calling for an end to Groundhog Day as an institution. Not just because it's cruel to the animal--and it is, of course it is--but because it's unscientific nonsense and makes us, like, as a nation, look like a bunch of ignorant, superstitious, backwards yokels with nuclear first strike capability. Which indeed we are, but I'm saying let's not advertise the fact.

Of course, we also lead the world in conspiracy theories about
injectable microchips, Black Friday shopping related shootings and
creation museums, so I suppose our credibility is already a lost cause.

I don't think he's doing the math here...

Because I mean, how many showed up to try and overturn the election results? Something like twenty five hundred. Which, is a lot, sure, but--hang on, I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Explain to me how they're the law and order party?

Not to be confused with the radical, vicious,
racist regular people that make up his base.

So at a campaign rally in--wait, is it a campaign rally if the person holding it hasn't actually announced that they're running? At one of those events the former President holds where a bunch of dumbasses show up and cheer all the racist, self-serving, nonsense that spews out of his cheeseburger-hole, Donald Trump started winging on about the "radical, vicious, racist prosecutors" who are after him and expressed his hope that any malfeasance on their part should be met with a spontaneous outpouring of support from Americans, in the form of mass protests. 

Speaking of, anyone else like, super excited
to watch Giuliani speak to the committee?

Yes, to be clear, whilst his political allies, aides and supporters are under investigation for their involvement in a coup attempt, one that Trump himself may be implicated in--and let me be clear, of course he incited it, we watched him do it, and then stand by while it played out and then it wasn't until it had definitely failed did he tell them how great they were and then grudgingly ask them to maybe go home now--wait-where was I? Right, ok, so while the January Sixth committee is still investigating the coup attempt, he's already publicly calling for another one.

I guess he only loves America when
he's got the nuclear launch codes...

Huh? Jumping to conclusions? Me? Never. What he said to his rabid-foam supporters was:

"If these [prosecutors] do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we ever had in Washington, D.C.,  in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt..."

-Former President Trump, on what

a corrupt country we all live in

"No, it's not you. Naked hypocrisy
is a prerequisite for joining the GOP."

-The guy who stole two

Supreme Court seats

Wai-wai-wait. Let me see if I've got this: when you or I say, maybe criticize some aspect of the United States, we're America hating, socialist liberals. But when he makes a vague blanket denouncement of America as a whole, and our electoral system, the very one that let a guy who lost the popular election by three million votes, he's get a round of applause? Is it me, or is criticizing America only un-patriotic when Democrats do it? Anyway, it kind of seems he should take the advice we usually get when we expresses frustration with some aspect of the United States: "if you don't like it, leave." 

Which might not be the worst idea for someone in his position right now. I mean, look, I think there's at best a one in a hundred chance that Donald Trump faces consequences for his actions before, during, or after his time in office. He is, after all, a wealthy white male. But one the off chance that he does face charges at some point, some country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S. might be a nice move.

Although he did dismiss a number of those countries as shitholes,
leaving Maldives, Bhutan, Madagascar--wait, goddamnit, why
are all the countries ousted strongmen can flee to vacation spots?

Free with every vote!

But we were talking about his threat of another coup, and yes, you're right, he didn't explicitly say "take to the streets and instal me as President for life." He did however essentially say that any election that doesn't result in him winning is corrupt and he also suggested that if he becomes president again, there might be pardons coming for those charged with crimes during the January 6th coup attempt. And I don't think it's much of a walk to say that an offer of pardons for last year's insurrection isn't a tacit offer for pardons for a future insurrection. 

Above: That time they sent Press
Secretary Sean Spicer out to lie to our
collective face about crowd size. 

But if somehow he does end up in court, I don't think his fans are going to need some misstep on the part of the prosecution to take to the streets. These people are still out there raving about how the election was stolen and how the COVID vaccine causes cancer. Or mind-control. Or lycanthropy. Or whatever. My point is that they're already primed and loading their guns because that's what nutters do. But the biggest protests ever? I find that unlikely. Remember his inauguration crowd?

I'm just suggesting that some hypothetical "Keep Trump from Facing Consequences for Crimes March," is going to have some stiff competition. There's the 2017 Women's March when five million people showed up the day after Trump's meager inauguration turnout. Oh, and then there's the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations that saw something like twenty-six million people come out in the middles of a pandemic. Again, for those keeping score, that's a thousand times and ten-thousand times the insurrection's turnout respectively. 

But yes, I'm sure Americans will turn out in droves to
support the guy most of us voted against--twice.

Well, it's not like he's entirely wrong...

Ok, no matter where you fall on the political spectrum, you have to admit, "beneath the dignity of the office" doesn't quite have the same weight as it used to. 

Pictured: Trump humping the flag.
Not pictured: a shred of dignity.

I mean, stupid is as stupid shouts
from the back of the pressroom.

That said, I think we can all agree that Joe Biden shouldn't have called Peter Doocy of Fox News a "stupid son of a bitch." But he did, and a hot mic caught it. Obviously, it's a wildly inappropriate thing to say. The "b" word is loaded, misogynistic, and beneath the dignity of the office. Stupid sure. Doocy asks dumb-ass questions all the time. In fact, he was shouting a dumb-ass question about whether or not inflation was a bad thing, when Biden muttered his comment. But I always figured that it's because Doocy's a parrot for right-wing bullshit, not because he's unintelligent. He might be, I don't know.

In Bush's defense (those are some words
I never thought I would type), he did say "Major
League" asshole, which, as assholes go...

If this all sounds familiar, you might remember that time George W. Bush was running for President and referred to Adam Clymer of the New York Times as a "Major League asshole." The difference here is that Bush immediately expressed regret--wait for it--for getting caught.

"I regret that a private comment I made to the vice-presidential candidate made it into the public airwaves."

-Bush calling the kettle an asshole

Biden, on the other hand did call Doocy to apologize. Like, immediately. Sure, I have no doubt that he'd not have done so if the mic hadn't picked it up, but I mean, have any of us called to apologize for things nobody heard us say? My point is, while I think Joe Biden has been a pretty okay President so far (not the best, far from the worst), he's shown himself to be a way better human being that anyone the GOP has going for them right now. Which, admittedly is an increadibly low bar. Like, on the ground.

I'll take a politician who makes the occasional honest (and not inaccurate)
hot mic gaffe over the racist, transphobic, anti-science, anti-democracy,
 rabid foam lunatic insurrectionists on the right any day of the week

Really? We're going with "My Way," huh?

Apologies to anyone who doesn't care about video games, but I'm going to have to talk about the Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin trailer that came out yester-huh? Yeah, I know, it's an absurd title, but hang on, it gets weirder and I have to discuss this with somebody.

From the Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler schools
of "just throw some words out there and call it a title."

What's to explain? Cornelia
finally got an Old Navy.

The game is a prequel to the first Final Fantasy game which was set in a quasi-medival world, but threw in some robots and flying city towards the end. Stranger then, is evidently the back story of Garland, a knight you fight early on who--and spoiler for game from 1987--turns out to be Chaos, the big bad of the end of the game. Stranger's first trailer elicited some head scratching from fans for putting Garland in a henley, and having him repeat over and over again how much he wants to kill Chaos. 

FFXV was about a magic teleporting
prince taking a road trip with his
buddies. Also, there are dinosaurs.

But then, Final Fantasy has always been weird. It's usually compared to the Dragon Quest series, which ran more or less parallel with it and has a similar audience. Dragon Quest was the traditional JRPG. It's always set in a sword and sorcery fantasy world and uses turn-based battle systems. Final Fantasy on the other hand tended to be more experimental. It started making use of similar fantasy settings, but then went through steam punk, cyberpunk, and then full on sci-fi with Final Fantasy XIII. 

Astos looks...sad? Is there something going
on between them? Because I would ship
them. Wait, am I using that correctly?

But back to SoP:FFO (acronym!). The new trailer starts off JRPG-ish enough, with some stilted exposition and scenes of Garland and other heroes battling monsters from the first game. But then about half way through Frank Sinatra's My Way starts playing and Jack--which I guess is Garland's first name now--is checking his phone and fist bumping Astos the Dark Elf. It's bananas. Not bad, mind you, just bananas. I mean, really it's kind of weird that in a game about wizards and krakens I'm getting hung up on the protagonist's iPhone. 

I guess it's a tonal thing. It would be a little like Gandalf doing a Tik Tock challenge with Shelob. It would be a little like that, again, Final Fantasy has always been pretty kooky. But hey, most of the time, the kooky works. And then other times things like this happen:

"You know what this scene of large scale death and destruction
really needs? A stuffed cat despairing at the carnage."

-Final Fantasy's developers

There's no license to have kids, and yet...

I am, as I may have mentioned before, not a parent. Or a pet owner. Nor do I have any plants. But it's because of this that I typically keep my opinions about how other people raise their kids to myself. 

It's important to me that nothing depends on me for its very life.

Yeah, Florida is right now passing a bill
banning discussion of LGBTQ issues
in school. Guess what it's called?
The Parental Rights in Education Bill.

I bring it up because I'm about to express some fairly strong opinions about a Virginia parent and gun enthusiast called Amelia King. In a school--hang on, I should probably mention first that Virginia recently swore in a new governor, Glenn Youngkin who, making good on campaign promises, has used his power of executive orders to make masks optional for school kids--that is, now it's up to the parents, not the schools, which is the right's new thing right now: parental rights. Don't like masks? Parental rights. Upset that schools might teach that slavery was bad? Parental rights. Hate gay people? Parental rights.

"I don't personally have COVID right
now, so it must be over with, right?"

-Youngkin, Republicaning

And I'm not saying that I'm against parents having rights--again, I'm not one so what do I know? But it's a policy that doesn't work if parents are say, uninformed, misinformed, or just rabid-foam right-wing crazy. Which brings us back to Amelia King who, at a school board meeting where the district was trying to decide what to do now that a reckless governor pandering to his base just made their lives even more difficult, announced that if her kids were asked to wear masks, she'd be showing up to school armed. You know, to murder people.

"My children will not come to school on Monday with a mask on. Alright? That's not happening. And I will bring every single gun loaded and ready to--"

-Amelia King, parent of children

Above: King, seen here promising to come to her children's
school armed if the board doesn't do what she wants.

"Well I mean, she's white so..."

Um, and that wasn't for effect she just ran out of time. Like, everyone gets three minutes to speak, and King's simply elapsed. So mid death threat, when someone on the board let her know that her time was up, she just said "See ya'll on Monday..." and took her seat. Well, that bit probably was for effect. I mean, the unspoken follow up being "...when I come here to shoot people." Anyway, she's been arrested and charged, and is even now out on bail--which, wait, why is she out on bail? And does she still have guns? Tell me someone confiscated her guns...

Oh...shit, right...

And what exactly was her game plan anyway? If the board did impose some kind of mask rule, did she think she'd roll in wave her guns around, maybe plug a couple administrators and then everyone would just maskless-ly go about their day? Is there some scenario in which someone waves a gun around in a school that doesn't end in a lockdown and law enforcement shooting someone? These are the threats of a violent sociopath, did she think she'd be hailed as some kind of hero?

"Yes, but what about every Amricans'
right to shoot people you don't agree with?"

-Gov. Younkin...actual quote*

So this is where I express those strong feelings I mentioned earlier. This person shouldn't be allowed to own guns or kids. Wait, do you own kids? Like I said, I'm not sure how parenthood actually works. But I think my broader point stands, and that is that we're all in this together. Sure, parents have rights, but it only works if all the parents have rights. If one family insists on sending a kid to school without a mask, then they're taking the choice away from other parents to keep their kids safe. 

Asking everyone to mask up in a pandemic isn't an infringement of rights, it's the price of admission if you want to exist in a society. Parental rights, sure, fine, but it kind of feels like parental responsibility should factor in there someone too, right?

Hey kids, remember: the lesson is "when you don't get your way, try guns."

*ok, not an actually quote, but I mean, it's implicit

A prequel? What could possibly go wrong?

Not to get all judge a prequel to a book adaptation by it's canonically questionable streaming TV spin-off's title but it's terrible right? Huh? What even am I talking about? Why this:

Huh. I guess every other combination of words
in the English language were already taken? 

Above: some early concept art

If you've not been following, or if you're like me and have kind of fell off the whole Lord of the Rings thing after the meandering nonsense that was the three movie adaptation of the Hobbit, there's to be a Lord of the Rings TV show and it's called "The Lord of the Rings The Rings of Power" and no, I didn't forget the colon, evidently there just isn't one. And it's weird. Weirder still is the the use of the word "ring" twice, which is awkward. And yes, I'm aware of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" and yeah, I'll say it, it was good show, but it had a dumb title. 

In a bold move, Amazon has tapped
two white males to write the show.

The series, which is being produced by Amazon, will be a prequel to the Peter Jackson movies. According to this article in Variety, the writers/show runners, J.R. Payne and Patrick McKay think it's brilliant:

"This is a title that we imagine could live on the spine of a book next to J. R. R. Tolkien's other classics."

-the collective entity comprised that 

is J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay

No really, the article quotes them as a single unit, which again, weird, right? Yes. And for the record, literally any book could sit on the shelf next to Tolkien's. Preferably they would be ones written by authors whose last names also start with "T," but any book could sit on the shelf. This doesn't however change the fact that their title is boring.

Nor does it change the fact that it was already used by a Sega Genesis game.

They go on to talk about the premise:

"Lore lore lore, lore lore. Lore?
Lore! Loooore. Lore lore." 

-McPayne, "writing"

"The Rings of Power unites all the major stories of Middle-earth's Second Age: the forging of the rings, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, the epic tale of Númeanor, and the last Alliance of Elves and Men. Until now, audiences have only seen on-screen the story of the One Ring -but before there was one, there were many...and we're excited to share the epic story of--"

-J.D. Payne and Patrick Mc--let's 

just call them McPayne, it'll save time

"The hoots of men are easily clerupted."

-Glerdriel, the elp

Ok, I'm going to have to stop them there. They just used "epic" twice in two consecutive sentences. And look, if you've ever read my blog before, you know it's rife with errrors. But this is just the internet and nobody's paying me. Payne and McKay are professional writers working for one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world. Did Amazon not spring for proofreaders?  Sorry, I don't mean to be so negative. Maybe the show will be great...probably not, but maybe...

I don't know, between the unimaginative title, and writers's description being full of lore and world building instead of character or story, I just don't have a good feeling about it. And not for nothing, but Tolkien's family famously disapproved of the Peter Jackson films on the grounds that they felt J. R. R. would have objected. One can only imagine how he'd feel about a company that drives bookstores out of business churning out a CG-heavy cash-grab prequel to his work.

Pictured: noted British fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien, 
is almost certainly spinning in his grave like a lathe.