No really, what's with the eyes?

Are uh...are we just not, as a civilization I mean, going to talk about this Happy Meal for adults thing? Specifically the figurines? Because:

"Four eyes, why do they have--what the actual...what?"

-Everyone, like actually everyone

"It's ok, I don't literally hyper-understand
what the hell I'm talking about either."

-Hassan

Happy Meals for adults are, at least according to the company, an attempt to cash in on nostalgia. Nostalgia for Happy Meals, which, I don't have, do you? Whatever. Here's a statement from the company on why they've done this thing:

"We're taking one of the most nostalgic McDonald's experiences and literally repackaging it in a new way that's hyper-relevant to our adult fans."

-Tariq Hassan, McDonald's Chief Marketing

executive in charge of befuddling statements

"Hey kids, like Go-Bots? Here's a shittier
version of one with your six-piece McNugget."

-McDonald's, circa 1988

The boxes, which are more properly and ludicrously called: Cactus Plant Flea Market boxes and--huh?--Yeah, I know, maybe they're collectively having a stroke or something? Who can say? They're somehow a marketing tie-in with a street wear clothing company--I don't know, clothes to wear on the street?--called Cactus Plant Flea Market which is some hipster nonsense I've never heard of, but then I am an out of touch shut-in. If I had then maybe I'd get the nostalgia angle. My hazy memories of Happy Meal toys were that they were based on, yet were vastly inferior version of, toys I was already into. 

Reagan, seen here signing one of the many
 bills that continue to ruin lives to this day.

And look, I don't want to tell them how to exploit nostalgia, but the appeal wasn't any toy packed in with the meal, it was a familiar toy. A toy kids actually wanted. Back in the 1980's President Reagan killed any attempts at regulating advertisements aimed at children. Because there's no sating the beast that is unfettered capitalism, fast food restaurants who owed their existences to parents too exhausted after work to cook, quickly started having weird, synergistic business sex with toy manufacturers and the Happy Meal prize was born.

What I'm saying is that this is crass consumerism at its worse, but if you're going to do it, do it right. Put Skeletor or Megatron in these things and not these bizarre, Lovecraftian nightmare versions of McDonald's corporate mascots.

Pictured: A horrifying tower comprised of Grimace, Birdie, The Hamburger
and Shoggoth, an unknowable, shapeless horror for the depths of space whose
very appearance is enough to drive one into insanity. Collect all four!

Terminator? Who said Terminator?

It's like those size comparison videos
that remind us all how insignificant we are
and how we need to close IRS loopholes
and slap some windfall taxes on the Sun.

To be clear, my, whatever, my issue with Elon Musk isn't about him as a person. I mean, maybe it would be if I knew him, but I don't. My issue is with him as the world's richest human. And while I get that no matter what there will always be someone that has more money than everybody else, for me it's an issue of scale. Like, a quick and lazy quarry of the internet tells me that the median net worth for Americans is worth something like a hundred and twenty thousand. Musk is worth two hundred and forty-nine billion. Dollars. Of money. With a "B." 

And that, in my most humble, mere, non-billionaire opinion is ridiculous. It's too much and I think it's probably criminal, or at least should be. But whether the problem is with the system or the person who takes advantage of the system is another question.

"Why can't it be both?"

-Some billionaire

Pictured: Elon Musk's latest invention.
And by "invention" I mean project he green
 lit between selfies with election deniers.

But why am I even on about this? Because robots. Because the headline right now is that Elon Musk has unveiled humanoid robot called Optimus. Ok, fine, Tesla unveiled it, but they're talking to Musk like he was tinkering in his lab someone and eureka'd up C-3PO. Is he even an engineer? I guess I always thought he was an investor. You know, a person who starts with money and uses it to make even more money and then we all talk about them like they're some kind of genius but really they're just really good at being rich.

"You keep his name out of your mouth!
Also marketing materials..."

Bitter? Sure I am, but more like bitter on behalf of everyone who works in exchange for money and no, I don't consider playing the market or whatever it is ka-jillionaires do work. It is, at best, gambling. But back to the damn robot. Optimus, yeah, Optimus--and incidentally, how dare they name it after my generation's surrogate sentient space truck dad--isn't I gather more advanced than other humanoid robots. Evidently what makes this one newsworthy is Musk's name attached to it. 

"Come get your products and services!"

-Some Endoskeleton

Terminator? Who said Terminator? Well, Musk did: 

"This [the robot] means a future of abundance; a future where there is no poverty, a future where you can have what you want in terms of products and services....We always want to be careful we don't go down the Terminator path..."

-Elon Musk assuaging fears 

we didn't have, until now

But what does it do? Good question. So far it just sort of lurches around stage at unveilings, but Musk promises that it "really is a fundamental transformation of civilization as we know it." Cool. But since he recently threw a tantrum at paying taxes in California so pulled up stakes and moved Tesla to Texas, I'm a little suspicious that the company's engineers are helping to build their own replacements. 

"Good work everybody, thank you. Now go clean out your desks."

-Musk, in about fourteen months I suspect

Let's hope this doesn't go all Goldblum...

Well, I hope NASA is satisfied with itself. They just plowed a $330 unmanned million spacecraft into an asteroid. Huh? Yeah, million with an "M," but I mean, still...

Unmanned? What about our ragtag crews of misfits?
Is NASA trying to put them out of a job?

When bullseyeing an asteroid is an 
easier sell than lowering carbon emissions
we seriously need to reevaluate.

And yes, plowing into the asteroid Dimorphos was the point and yesterday's impact was in fact a huge success and the first step towards creating a defense against potentially extinction-level catastrophes in the future. Well, I mean, extinction-level catastrophes we didn't make for ourselves. And really, when you think about it, $330 million isn't all that much when it compared to a planet-killing rock falling to earth with the kinetic energy of a thousand nuclear bombs. So hurray! Good on you, NASA. To boldly divert asteroids no one has ever diverted before! I am 100% onboard. But couple of things:

"Let's uh...let's hope not?"

-Some astrophysicist

First of all--and I'm sure this is a pretty dumb question--but are there like, unforeseeable consequences to altering the course of asteroids? Such as causing some other impact? The idea here was only to divert Dimorphos--dumb name, I agree--by a tiny degree, but it orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos and like, NASA looked into what diverting Dimorphos would do to Didymos, right? And even if they did everything right, isn't there an amount of unforeseeable-ness to unforeseeable consequences? I mean, something something gravity, right?

Like I said, dumb question. Of course they matched all of this out. But like most non-scientists my age, my understanding of science comes from Star Trek and Jurassic Park and so there's always going to be a part of my brain slapping a table and um-ing my way through a monologue about chaos theory.

"Space rocks..uh...find a way..."

Kind of feels like an ape problem.
What? Don't look at me like that.

Ok, but in fairness, I'm not alone in my paranoia about the unknowable. The idea with the DART mission is to see firstly if we could divert an asteroid or whatever from a potential collision course, but I mean, how often does that happen? The last serious impact was like, sixty-six million years ago and is maybe what killed the dinosaurs. I'm not saying it couldn't happen tomorrow, but I'm saying that there's also a decent chance that it could be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years away, right?

But sure, it could happen next week or in a year or even a hundred years and in anywise, better to be prepared than not, right? And really, $330 million is chump change in a world where a single billionaire has seven hundred and seventy times that much and just uses it huck roadsters at Mars and to not buy Twitter. 

Also, anyone else notice how much the impact video looks like the 
meteor crash scene from the opening of Final Fantasy V?

No? Just me? Ok...

Power Creep

Have you ever heard the phrase power creep? I think it comes from video games and refers to updates that increase the player's stats or powers and while it gives them a brief sense of superiority, it ultimately makes the game less fun. 

Hearthstone seems to be held up as an example of
power creep, but was it ever fun to begin with? 

Before Halle Berry's Toad line in X-Men, this
was the dumbest moment in comic book movies.

I've also heard it used in terms of comic books. Take Superman for example. When he started out, Supes (it's what the cool kids call him...the cool kids from 1930...) was more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap entire buildings in a single bound. Then over the years writers, faced with writing the genre's most iconic and boringest character added new abilities. Laser eyes, flight, that weird cellophane "S" he throws at Bull from Nightcourt. They just kept making shit up, which, sure, that's fiction for you, but still, let's be reasonable. 

Speaking of reasonable and people being not...uh, that, I feel like we would be remiss if we didn't at least mention the former, electoral college but not popular vote winner, turned President turned Jesus stand in to millions of America's most gullible, Donald Trump's recent assertion on Sean Hannity's show. 

Pictured: the listing for President Donald J. Trump: The Son of Man - The Christ,
a book that asserts that Trump is, and I wish I were joking, the second coming. 
Of Christ. Yes, literally Christ. Mike Pence is his Judas. No, really.

You know the one I'm thinking of. The one about how the mere power of his thoughts while President are enough to declassify documents without any sort of procedure or witnesses or signatures of paper trail or oversight or...you get the idea.

Above: Mar a Lago, the resort/legal null
zone where things are whatever Trump
says they are and no one can prosecute.

"There doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it...if you're the President of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it's declassified, even by thinking about it. There can be a process, but there doesn't have to be. You're the President--you make that decision. So when you send it, its declassified. I declassified everything."

-Donald Trump, on how everything 

he touches is instantly less classy

Not since Gandalf fought Sarumon has
the world witnessed two septugenarians 
battle each other using magic powers.

Which, I mean, that's not how it works. Of course that's not how it works. If there doesn't have to be a process, then why is there a process? It's not optional. Also, he's not the President anymore so by this logic can't Joe Biden just use his magic President powers to re-classify the documents Trump stole? You know, just by thinking about it? And what's this "as I understand it" nonsense? Is that his lawyerly move to avoid prosecution? Because someone explained to him how this works. Of course someone did. This is national security we're talking about.

This guy's preposterous political career has been nothing but a power creep. Just a narcissistic goon laying claim to powers he has absolutely no right to. I can shoot someone on fifth avenue, I can overturn the election, I can grab'em by the--nevermind. The point is, if there's any justice in the universe, we'll all someday gather around our phones and televisions to watch the live stream of the perp walk into a minimum security prison. For like six months. What? I'm realistic, he probably won't even get that.

Followed by rioting MAGA nuts who think he's Jesus. Like, actually Jesus.

A tenuous, but I think fair comparison.

This is why we have a government people. I'm not sure that this is the soundest argument to push back against Republicans and their weird insistence that unchecked capitalism and total reliance on individual responsibility are the only way to America properly, but these:

And the rockets red glare...

"Yup, me again."

"Yeah, what even is that?" You might reasonably ask. Why it's a male to male--that is, prongs on both ends--extension cord. And if you're anything like me (not an electrician), your first response would be "surely there must be some application for such a thing, even if I don't know what it is." But evidently no. No, there is no safe or useful reason for such a thing to exist and yet it does and Jeff Bezos (and in fairness, a number of other online retailers) will sell it to you.

Right next to your lawn darts, 
Bucky Balls and Talcum Powder.

According to this article from Consumer Reports the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a warning the other day saying, and I'm paraphrasing here: "Holy shit, what are you thinking, stop buying these things immediately and if you own one cut it into pieces and bury it in the yard. What's wrong with you?" Evidently people have been buying these things, plugging one end into a generator and the other into like, a regular home outlet, under the mistaken impression that this will power their home in the event of an outage. Fun fact: it will not.

Instead, the more likely results are shock, electrocution, fire, and carbon monoxide poisoning when the generator shorts out or whatever. 

Turns out there's a reason people go to school and
apprentice for years to be an electrician.

Pictured: pedantry.

And what's more--wait, can I just tangent for a moment here, because this has been bothering me. A lot of people use the word electrocuted when they really mean "received and electric shock." Which, whatever, who cares, but the word electrocuted is a portmanteau of the words electric and executed and means "death by electric shock." So no, if you're around to tell everybody about how you were electrocuted, you weren't electrocuted. And sorry, yes, I know how I sound. Anyway, where were we?

What I'm saying is that dumbs are going to
dumb, but other people shouldn't have to suffer.

Right, the reckless behavior of online retailers who are selling a products whose only function leads to death and property loss and how I'm straining to make this into an analogy for the utility of government regulation. I guess what I'm getting at is that individual responsibility is super, but the world is full of dumbs who will try things like, say, plugging a generator into a wall outlet and hoping for the best. And ha ha, Darwin Award or whatever, but house fires have a way of spreading. 

That's why we have agencies like the CPSC. And I know, "boo, government interference!" but there's a difference between laws that say things like "you can't sell a product that kills people" and laws that say "you can't seek an abortion because it offends some peoples' religious sensibilities." Huh? Yeah, that's where I'm going with this. 

I guess what I'm getting at is that a commission telling businesses that they
can't sell dangerous products is infinitely more reasonable that laws telling
people they can't seek abortions because of other peoples' religious beliefs. 

Look at me, taking the bait...

Just...just don't. Don't what? Oh! Sorry, I'm not talking to you really, I'm just saying don't to whomever left this dumb card at the book store in which I work:

Literally nobody ever has asked them why they vote Republican. Ever.
But if people--as I'm sure they'd like us to believe--did ask and asked so often
as to make this card a time-saver, I'd invite them to reevaluate their answer.

Apostle's Creed, Nicene Creed, doesn't
matter. The GOP welcomes everyone who
subscribes to one of two different forms
of Christianity. They're a big tent.

Don't bother squinting, both because it's not worth it and because I'm going to get into it. The bullet point is about individual freedom which is weird because Republicans just proposed a nation wide abortion ban so right off the bat this card is preposterous. The next is about equal rights "regardless of race, creed, sex, age or disability." And I mean are they maybe thinking about some other Republican Party? Because the one we're familiar with has really leaned into racism, sexism, transphobia, and general Nazi-ism of late.

The rest of the card is about free enterprise, fiscal responsibility, the proper role of government--and again, I'd direct their attention to the Supreme Court's recent Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision--patriotism (ha!), and how America famously spreads peace, freedom, and justice around the world. Through drone strikes, I guess.

Don't worry, this isn't the kind of patriotism that asks you to do anything
to serve your community, you can just hump the flag and that'll cover it.

He was basically this
truck in human form.

I'm not sure who exactly left the card, but I have a good idea. There was this rando in the other day, probably in his twenties, white tank top, American flag shorts--what is, shorts where half is the stars and the other side, the stripes. Oh, and a couple of norse tattoos. You know, the kind white dudes get because they think it's like their culture or whatever. It's not, and they're usually adopted by white supremacists who latch on to Viking imagery because they lack any unifying cultural identity of their own beyond whiteness and, I don't know, Trump.

I'm making an assumption here, but
money, actual money says that if asked this
dude would not be able to define socialism.

Anyway, he and some friends wandered around our book store in our blue as blue can be hippie little California beach town talking loudly (you know, so we could all hear) about how our store is full of socialist propaganda and something something liberal agenda and I think there was some stuff about God in there as well. Why? Who the hell knows? I'm sure in their heads they were changing minds with their unsolicited and performative right-wing nonsense, but mostly we all just felt like we needed a shower.

God, remember this asshat?

And what even is with the card? It was found--and I'm sure we'll be finding more of them stashed about all over the coming weeks--on a display of banned books. Was the rationale that someone would be looking at some of the titles rejected by school boards and certain states run by insecure white men and be converted to their way of thinking? Or was it just so that someone like me would see it and work themselves up into a frothy, righteous frenzy over how full of shit Republicans are? Because if that's the case then mission accomplished. 

Also, for someone who's so far up his own ass, our store's supply of left wing propaganda and insidious liberal agenda didn't stop him from spending like two hours in the store and buying stuff, but whatever. Well, at least we got his money.  

It's not like we go into right-wing book stores and preach about universal
health care and equal rights for--kidding! I'm kidding. They don't read.

Today in predictions that aren't:

Hey, do you know what's not news? Huh? Yes, Fox News, but what I'm talking about is--what's that? Yeah, I've heard CNN is kind of getting gross and right-wingy, but where I'm going with this is--yes, fine, those posts on Facebook about positive thoughts re-writing your DNA are also bullshit, but I want to talk about Nostradamus.

The fact that we all rely on a global porn and cat video delivery
system for our news should trouble us more than it does.

Pictured: The late Mario Reading, noted
Nostradamus expert seen here probably
being interviewed by The History Channel.

A British tabloid is--yes, I know tabloids are tabloids, but a couple of other news sites are also talking about how some writer called Mario Reading who, back in 2005, wrote a book claiming that Nostradamus predicted that Queen Elizabeth II would die in 2022 which, I mean, no he didn't. Nostradamus that is. Sorry, I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but Nostradamus, a sixteenth century French John Edward, wrote a book called The Prophecies and for four hundred years there have been people claiming that he was a goddamn wizard.

"Even I don't buy that one..."

-Mace Windu

Here, one of Reading’s claims is that Nostradamus further predicted that Charles III will abdicate and that Prince Harry would be the next king:

"For not wishing to consent to the divorce, 

Which then afterwards will be recognised as unworthy: 

The King of the Isles will be driven out by force,

In his place put one who will have no mark of a king."

-Nostradamus rhyming, so it must be true

Or how half a dozen monkeys given a
week will write a Dan Brown novel.

Divorce? Harry married Megan and everyone hated her! And King of the Isles? Britain is an island! Nailed it! Except, did he though? It's like how they say that given enough time, infinite monkeys working at infinite typewriters will eventually produce Hamlet. Nostradamus was bound to hit close to the mark eventually. And by close to the mark I mean at some point someone in the British royal family would get divorced, right? Like Henry VIII was divorcing wives and wives' heads from their bodies around the same time Nostradamus wrote this so it's not like it came out of nowhere. 

It probably would have been remembered
as a romantic story but then they started
hanging out with Hitler. Like, a lot.

Also, wouldn't this also kind of apply to Edward VIII? You know, the king in the 1930's who wanted to marry American divorcee Wallace Simpson? He said screw it, abdicated, married Simpson and then his brother who wasn't supposed to be king was then made king? Ok, it doesn't fit perfectly, but then nobody's telling Harry to get a divorce either so I guess what I'm saying is that maybe Mario is reading too much into it (see what I did there?). Or who knows? Maybe he genuinely believed he was on to something and what do I know?

Reading's feat is on par with coming
closest to guessing the price of an
Amana refrigerator without going over.

And Reading evidently did predict that Elizabeth would die in 2022 at the age of 96. I guess he came up with that through some kind of weird nonsense math having to do with the fact that the passage above is from Centurie X, quatrain XXII. Somehow the twenty-second stanza means the year 2022? But whatever, she did die in 2022 at age 96. Of course, predicting that someone will die in their mid-nineties isn't evidence of paranormal powers but credit where credit is due. Really, if anything Mario Reading was better at predicting the future than Nostradamus.

And it is. Dumb I mean. But if they abolished
the monarchy, who would wave at the assembled
masses from limos and horse-drawn carriages?

But back to Nostradamus and his weird poems. I suppose if you squint you could see how the one about the divorce and the "king of the isles" could apply to Charles III. At least if suddenly everyone was clamoring for him to divorce Queen Camilla, which they're not. My sense was that most British people are cautiously optimistic, while a growing minority just thinks that monarchy is a dumb medieval relic they should get rid of as soon as possible. Sure, he might abdicate at some point either due to age or because everyone loves Will and Kate but--damnit, now I'm doing it.

Trying to find meaning in something some crackpot scribbled down in order to impress the pre-enlightenment dumbasses of sixteenth century Europe, that is. Look, if Nostradamus really did see the future why wouldn't he give us details? Instead he just writes down a bunch of four line poems with alternating rhymes that could fit almost any story. There's an old adage that the simplest solution is usually the correct one and in this case the simpler solution is that Nostradamus was a charlatan that wanted to sell quatrains. 

Pfft...he couldn't predict Tuesday if he had a calendar.