Today in reasons to move to New Zealand:

So a couple of rocket launchers and a grenade were found in someone's trash last week in Riverside, California, and the deeper one goes into this story the more one wants to move. Where? I don't know, New Zealand maybe? I hear it's nice and I don't think they have these kinds of problems in New Zealand.

Although I do gather that they have a problem with hobbits burrowing into
hillsides. While they may be quaint and charming, they are an invasive species.

If they practiced with, I don't know, mangos,
we wouldn't be having this conversation now.

Anyway, the weapons themselves aren't actually the upsetting part--I mean, they are--but the rocket launchers were just the empty tubes and not like, live ordnance. Although it does beg the question where are the explode-y parts of these things? And the grenade isn't a grenade per say, it's a practice grenade. Which I'd never heard of before, and I kind of feel like any small, oblong object of similar weight could be a practice grenade, but sure, this is an official practice grenade so fine. Whatever.

Wait, am I thinking of raccoons?
I might be thinking of raccoons.

Ok, all of this sounds like no big deal, right? Sure, this house is near a school, so obviously there's a concern that kids might get their hands on whatever this homeowner is throwing out--assuming of course that kids root through trash. Kids do that, right? I'm out of touch. Last I heard they were into dabbing and the TikTok. Doesn't matter, the point is school proximity or no, it's probably illegal to throw military equipment in the trash, right? Probably?

"Awlright lads, the moment they let their
guard down, we move it. Got it?"

Who can say? But what I can say, is that it's evidently not illegal to own rocket launchers and grenades, practice or otherwise. "What the what?" I hear you say. And yes, I had a similar reaction which brings us to the second most alarming thing about this story: apparently rocket launchers and grenades are--under the current interpretation of the part of the U.S. Constitution that says we can form musket-armed militias in case the Redcoats come back--technically legal with the proper registration.

"How else are we mediocre white
men supposed to feel powerful?"

-The entire pro-gun argument

Even if one lives near a school. Which, say what you will about American Conservatives, and I will, but you have to admit, they lean into their batshit hypocrisy, don't they? Like, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just signed his "don't say gay or trans" law (which 100% says don't say gay or trans) into effect this last week on the bullshit premise that it's about protecting the children, but the Right, as a thing, also loves guns, and gun ownership. And will defend guns and gun ownership to the death. Specifically about forty-five thousand deaths. Per year.

Be kind to your local recyclables collectors
and please remember to sort your automatic
from your semi-automatic firearms.

Anyway, yeah, so even if you're not suppose to toss your rocket launcher tubes in the trash--check to see if they're recyclable I guess--it seems like not the kind of thing one should find in a residential neighborhood, right? Except get this:

"The Incident was not an unusual one, as we routinely find and seize inert military ordnance."

-The Riverside County Sheriff's Department

on why I now want to move to New Zealand 

Why? Why isn't this an unusual incident? This should be an unusual incident. But it's not. Why are randos playing with rocket launchers and practicing grenade throwing? There's no way you can convince me that this is what James Madison had in mind when he wrote the Second Amendment.

"There: a well-regulated militia. That should clear things up.
I mean, we don't want a bunch of gun nuts stockpiling weapons
or showing up to Starbucks armed to the teeth, now do we?"

-James Madison

Smooth, crunchy, or razor sharp?

Well, you can add steel shard peanut butter to the list of things to watch out for in this dystopia of late-stage capitalism. Yes, it's now available in smooth, crunchy, and metal shard. I'm not saying we should have seen it coming, because that specific horror isn't something we'd necessarily expect, but I can't say it surprises me. Very little at this point surprises me.

Remarkably, despite the risk of lacerations, Americans prefer
new metal shard style peanut butter to natural peanut butter,
finding the oil separation that occurs to be weird, and off-putting.

Eventually. The manufacturing facility's
internal detection systems eventually
identified the concern. Because quality.

Hormel, the company that manufactures Skippy Peanut Butter, issued a voluntary recall due to steel fragments that found their way into the jars:

"Skippy Foods, LLC, out of an abundance of caution and with an emphasis on the quality of its products, is issuing a recall to ensure that consumers are made aware of the issue. The manufacturing facility's internal detection systems identified the concern."

-Skippy Foods, being abundantly 

cautious...with their liability

I'd also like to express some opinions on
the topic of dungarees being warn too low
and the number of kids on my lawn.

Um, so couple of things. So I don't mean to be that old guy shaking a fist and complaining about how in my day there was such a thing as corporate responsibility, because there wasn't. But letting people know that the peanut putter with which they may have made their kids sandwiches this morning might contain gum-shredding chunks of stainless steel feels less like an abundance of caution and more like the bare minimum one would expect from human beings. And should that kind of recall be voluntary? I'm not a lawyer, but could they just sort of opt out of telling people?

Too far? Fine. But I don't think:
"sorry about the metal shards,
our bad" is too much to ask.

And if you read carefully you might notice that there's not even an apology. Mostly it's about how awesome they are for recalling their razorbutter. Like that? Just made it up. Anyway, why not something like: 

"In compliance with basic human compassion, Skippy LLC is recalling peanut butter that may shred customers' soft tissue. We sincerely apologize for our lax quality control that led to this situation and hope you can forgive us. In the meantime, our CEO has resigned and our board members will be pilloried in the town square so you can hurl abuse at them."

-Skippy's statement in some

alternate, less bleak timeline

Look, I know it's a little weird that I'm jumping all over a peanut butter manufacturer, but it's more of a general frustration I'm just taking out on Skippy. I get that they want us to think they care, but giant corporations aren't exactly famous for human weaknesses like emotion. There's a calculus to this. Like, somewhere, someone at Skippy LLC corporate HG applies a rubric to determine whether the number of lawsuits resulting from kids bleeding from the mouth outweighs the cost of the recall. 

Don't look so smug kid. Peanut butter is a gamble. You may
have won this time, but one of these days, bam: metal shards.

Shouldn't that be Obliviate culture?

Wow, I'm glad we don't have to choose one of these two to root for. Like obviously it's noted TERF and walking example of the struggle to separate the art from the artist J.K. Rowling, but I mean, she's arguing with a guy who's trying his best to start World War III.

"I kill your friends and family to remind you of my love.
Da-da-da, dat-da, dat, da-da-da, da-ya-da..."

-Russian President Vladimir Putin

I mean, if it's going so badly that your troops
are running over their own commanders with
tanks, yeah, I think calamitous is the word.

Huh? What am I even talking about? Yeah, sorry, I guess I rely too much on this dumb in medias res opening to my posts where I start talking, pretend that you interrupt me with a "Huh?" and then go back and explain what I'm talking about. I can't promise that I'll knock it off, but I'll say that I'll promise to knock it off. Anyway, I'm talking about Vladimir Putin comparing the backlash against him for his unprovoked and thus far calamitous (for both sides) war against Ukraine to the backlash against J.K. Rowling for her unprovoked and shitty opinions about trans people.

After a meandering rant against U.S. culture for largely ignoring the Soviet role in defeating Nazi Germany (which is kind of fair, we do love to pretend that we single-handedly won the war), Putin went on to complain that:

Pictured: Sergey Rachmaninov,
the real victim here.

"They canceled Joanne Rowling...just because she didn't satisfy the demands of gender rights. They're trying to cancel our country. I'm talking about the progressive discrimination of everything to do with Russia...They're now engaging in the cancel culture, even removing Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninov from posters. 

-Vlademir Putin, on the tragic removal of dead

Russian composers from posters...or something

Russian President Vladimir Putin hard
at work on his debut children's book:
"Give me Everything I Want or I Shall
Bomb Your Cities to Rubble."

So couple of things. I guess I'm not a hundred percent sure what cancel culture is. If someone, say an author, does or says something shitty, like, I don't know, publicly attacking trans women, and it changes how we perceive them so much so that maybe we no longer want to engage with their works, is that cancel culture? Because it sounds to me like what just happens when a famous person does or says something shitty, and it changes how we feel about them. Secondly, we're not boycotting Putin's children book so much as we're recoiling in horror at how he made murderers of the Russian military.

He went on to explain how a decline in appreciation for Russian culture in the wake of his brutal, and ridiculous war is basically the same thing as Nazi book burning:

Is it though? Impossible to imagine?
Because I'm pretty sure he banned Twitter
because of all the bombed out buildings.

"It's now the latest program to cancel world literature was conducted by the Nazi's 90 years ago. We remember the footage of them burning books. It's impossible to imagine such a thing in our country. We're ensured against this thanks to our culture. And it's inseparable to us from our motherland, and from Russia where there is no place for ethnic intolerance."

-Putin, with a bone-chilling

absence of irony

Specifically the kind of boat that
is lifted, along with other boats, by
the same rising tide, Joanne....

Which...I mean, seriously? Uncomfortably, I'm actually going to have to agree with J.K. "But Sadly Not Just Kidding" Rowling, when she responded to Putin's suggestion that they're in the same boat:

"Critiques of Western cancel culture are possibly not best made by those currently slaughtering civilians for the crime of resistance, or who jail and poison their critics."

-J.K. Rowling, being somewhat

less wrong than usual

Obviously critiques of Western cancel culture are also not great coming from someone who attacks an already at-risk community, but I suppose she's never bombed non-combatants either so in this one, incredibly specific instance in which it's a choice between a trans exclusionary radical feminist and an ex-KGB autocrat who is, as I type this, insisting that he's got a right to drop nuclear bombs on anyone he choose on the bases of any threat regardless of how minor or imagined, I'm going to say Rowling. And then go shower.

Russia under Putin is basically the assault-rifle-weilding
"Stand Your Ground" gun-nut of the international stage.

Of ICE and Spacemen

Yeah, we're talking about Star Trek and Ted Cruz again, but in my defense, there's like, twelve Star Trek shows running right now and Ted Cruz can't go fifteen minutes without disgracing himself (usually in an airport) so here we are. 

Pictured: Senator Cruz's most recent airport-based embarrassment wherein
his abusive treatment of the staff prompted them to call the cops on him.

Above: subtle social commentary.

So a common criticism of Star Trek over the decades has been that it can be a little preachy or heavy handed. And maybe that's fair. Painting Frank Gorshin half-black and half-white on the original series was inarguably dumb, but then so's racism and that's kind of the point, right? In the 1960's couching progressive messages about how war and racism are, you know, bad things was mostly about getting things past the network and not scaring off advertisers. But things are different now.

The sad fact is yes, babies are super-racist.
I'm surprised Ted Cruz was unaware.

I'm kidding. In many ways things are much worse because we should know better. Just last week Ted Cruz lost his shit on twitter because Stacey Abrams had a cameo as the President of future Earth on Star Trek: Discovery. Then, this week, he asked an eminently qualified Supreme Court Justice nominee if she thinks babies are racist. I'm beginning to think that maybe Ted Cruz just can't handle the idea of a Black women in a position of authority, fictional or not. Hey, remember that time he voted to appoint sexual assault enthusiast--sorry, alleged sexual assault enthusiast--Brett Kavanaugh to the court?

Above: Also subtle social commentary.
Perhaps a bit too subtle...

Anyway, I was talking about Star Trek and how it uses science fiction tropes to tell stories and question the real world in which we live. Like, the Klingons were stand-ins for the Soviet Union, the Ferengi represented capitalism run amok, and one time Dr. Crusher had sex with a candle ghost. Well, the new season of Star Trek: Picard has the crew transported back in time to the present day (well, 2024, but close enough), where one of the characters, Captain Rios, is immediately scooped up in an ICE raid on suspicion of being not white, and quickly put on a bus for the border.

I mean, if the body armor fits...

Yup, ICE are the bad guys. Not a draconian, ICE-like species of aliens, but the actual Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency. While at first this might seem a little--say it with me--heavy handed, and they are portrayed as a bunch of violent thugs abusing their authority and violating civil rights, I have to ask, where's the lie? This is a governmental agency whose mandate amounts to "round up brown people" we're talking about. 

So can something be dismissed as preachy and heavy-handed if it's accurate? I don't know. What I do know is that if one finds oneself allegorically cast as the villain on an episode of Star Trek without the writers even a bothering make up some sci-fi nonsense, then one should probably reevaluate some life choices.

Looking at you, Senate Republicans...

No one cares what you think, Ron.

Ron DeSantis knows he’s not the governor of college sports, right? I ask because he yesterday he declared Florida native Emma Weyant the winner of the NCAA Division I title in women’s swimming. Which is interesting because she actually placed second. And I may not be a sports person, but I'm fairly certain that second place isn't first place.

Wait--uh...yeah. Yeah, the math checks out.

Pictured: the sack in question.

The winner, Lia Thomas, is trans and Ron DeSantis has opinions about whether or not trans women should be allowed to play women’s sports. But the good news for everybody is that Ron DeSantis isn’t in charge and a sack full of his opinions is worth the sack. It does track however given the GOP's policy with regards to results they don't like: question their validity and then storm something. Anyway, while the Governor's proclamation carries about as much weight as his opinion sack, it's still a shitty move on the part of a shitty human being.

"Hear ye, hear ye, whereas Ron DeSantis
is a small, petty, insecure man lacking basic
 human empathy, I do hereby declare that
 he can shut his transphobic word-hole."

-Me, making an equally

valid proclamation

After a series of transphobic "WHEREAS" statements describing Lia Thomas as a male identifying as a woman and about how the NCAA is eroding women's sports, the proclamation goes on to say:

"NOW THEREFORE, since she is a native Floridian from Sarasota, I, Ron Desantis, Governor of the State of Florida do hereby declare in Florida that Emma Weyant is the rightful winner of the 2022 NCAA Division 1 Women's 500-yard freestyle, congratulate her on yet another significant achievement, and express pride that she is a Florida resident."

-Ron DeSan--oh please, no one 

is proud of being from Florida

But of course this isn’t about college women’s sports. In fact, I’m pretty sure if Lia Thomas didn’t win the Division I title, which she did, Ron DeSantis wouldn’t give a shit. Instead this is all a part of a larger culture war being waged by the American right who, in a struggle to stay relevant in a world that’s moving past their hate-filled, grievance-fueled outlook, are working hard to convince their base that trans people constitute some kind of threat to their made up vision of the 1950’s that never was.

"What I'm saying is that your mediocrity isn't your fault. It's because of
trans people. So remember, vote DeSantis. I promise to re-enforce your
worldview, no matter how many at-risk communities I have to vilify."

-Ron DeSantis, the "Don't Say Gay" guy 

Today in amateur geopolitical observations:

Look, I know everyone is dispensing geopolitical advice from the comfort of their couch right now, but this thing with Chinese humanitarian aide to Ukraine is weird right?

"Dear President Xi Jinping, you don't know me, but I have an internet connection
and some opinions about how you should conduct China's foreign policy..."

-Basically everyone on 

the internet right now

What I'm saying is that the ultra-rich
are why we're all broke now. So let's get'em?

I mean, I don't want to tell the People's Republic how to walk a diplomatic tightrope between Russia--the nuclear superpower with whom they share a border, and the rest of the world who buys container ships full of stuff from them, but seriously? $2.4 million? That's what the Chinese Red Cross is sending to Ukraine and that's super. Like, everything helps, right? And $2.4 million dollar is a lot of money. I think. It's actually hard to tell when Elon Musk has $233 billion--with a "b"--while the rest of us are doing Kickstarters to pay for kidneys and medication. 

Huh...an insecure autocrat holding a 

rally for himself to create the illusion of

widespread support. Fancy that... 

But fine, good for them. China, I mean. They're between a rock and a hard place here. If they back the violent thug running Russia, the international community will condemn China along with him. If they back the international community and support Ukraine, it will be super-awkward when they eventually try and assert control over Taiwan. I suppose that someone in the government did the math and $2.4 million is the sweet spot between helping out while at the same time trying to appear neutral. Great. But Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher just raised thirty million dollars for Ukraine. 

Yeah, the largest country on earth by population was outdone by a fifth of the cast of That 70's Show. That's weird, right? I know we live in a version of reality in which there have been ten Fast and the Furious movies and we let a reality TV host who lost the popular vote be the President for four entire years, but still, this is weird and I sincerely hope the wellbeing of the people of Ukraine isn't entirely dependent on turn of the century sitcoms.

I guess the ball's in your court Malcom in the Middle...

Ted Cruz: Master of Indignant Befuddlement!

Pictured: Not me, but his checking his
watch does convey my impatience.
Also, I don't own a suit. Or a watch.   

Usually when non-actor celebrities show up on television, they're, you know, terrible. I mean, acting is kind of hard, and it's an insult to actors to assume that just anyone can do it, but do you know who didn't suck in their guest role on--wait, hang on, do you watch Star Trek: Discovery? Because if you don't, then you probably won't care about this, but if you do, I don't want to spoil it. So like, get caught up. Go on, I'll wait. Well? Are you back yet? No? Ok, but remember, I've got things to do too. Still waiting...still waiting...ah! You're back. Super. 

Well? Not bad, right? Ok, but for real, last chance to not have me spoil the special guest star on the Discovery season four finalé...ok, so the President of 32nd century Earth shows up at the end and she's played by Stacey Abrams, can you believe it? 

Above: Captain Burnham and President Stacey Abrams looking
wistfully at the Earth--which she is President of. Like, the whole thing.

"Ow! My delicate privileged worldview!"

-Senator Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz couldn't believe it, taking to Twitter to express his indignant befuddlement: 

"what...the...HELL...is...this??

-Senator Ted Cruz, getting outraged over seeing  

a Black woman in power...on a TV show

And I mean, if we were to count the things that make Ted Cruz both indigent and befuddled, we'd be here until the 32nd century, so whatever. But a couple of things about that tweet. First, capitalize the "W" in "what." Also, two questions marks? Really? And another thing, Ted Cruz watches Star Trek: Discovery?

Wait...do they...do they think the
Ferengi are the heroes?

Star Trek has been, historically and with I think very few exceptions, politically left, and Discovery has been the most so. But all versions of Star Trek are set in a utopian, post-scarcity future where money doesn't exist, everyone's equal, and war, greed, and hatred have been eliminated. Which is the exact opposite of what the current Republican Party stands for, but for some reason Ted Cruz is suddenly all butt-hurt that Stacey Abrams is the President of a fictional society of space faring socialists? I don't want to gate keep here, but what's the appeal for right-wingers? 

"Well, the votes aren't all in yet, but unless the
Secretary of State objects...? No? Very well, I declare
declare myself the winner. Congratulations. To me."

-Governor Kemp, basically 

And look, while I don't think Abrams is going to win an Emmy for her appearance on the show, she did just fine and casting her as the President was brilliant. If you recall, she was robbed in the 2018 Gubernatorial race by now Governor Brian Kemp. Kemp, you might remember was, at the time, the Georgia Secretary of State meaning he was in fact overseeing the election he was running in. He refused to step down from his position despite the flagrant conflict of interests, and now he's the Governor of Georgia. 

Because I guess elections are only questionable when Democrats win. Anyway, Abrams got the role because she's someone who, instead of giving up after that infuriating nonsense, dedicated her career to voting rights advocacy, and her casting is a not-so-subtle suggestion that in the end, democracy wins. It just might take eleven hundred years...

Maybe they'll write him a part in Season five of Discovery. He can be the
Federation Ambassador from Texas IV who flees to Risa during a Borg invasion.