Let's get libelous!

Pictured: The thing I'm not saying
George R. R. Martin must be on.

I'm not saying that George R. R. Martin is on cocaine. I'm really not. I mean, how would I know? I don't know the guy, or anyone who lives with or works with him. I only know what he writes and what others write about him and he does, by his own admission, have a lot on his plate. Two books, three TV series and three short films and that's not counting signing books, appearances and going to see Jurassic World, which he didn't write or anything, he's just going to go see. You know, like a regular person.

Anyway, take all that stuff, add sleeping, eating, a reasonable number of bathroom breaks and my question is: no really, how much coke is George R. R. Martin on?

I asked this off-duty mall Santa, but he just told me to fuck off.

What? He is and there's not.

I'm not criticizing or judging or anything. Aaron Sorkin wrote the shit out of the first four seasons of The West Wing while subsisting on a diet of idealism and all the drugs ever made and that was just one TV show. Martin, as I mention above is working on three along with all that other stuff. So like, where does he find the time? I mean that. I can barely find find two hours every couple of days to hammer out a blog post and all I do is write about what a dick Mike Huckabee is or complain that there aren't enough Star Trek shows on TV.

Oh, and just to be clear, I'm only speculating as to how this guy can get so much done in a day, not complaining about how long he's taking with A Song of Ice and Fire: Book VI: Everyone Dies, Even Arya. I've given up on that and resigned myself to that series being a generational thing. You know, like colonizing space.

"Eight decades of cryo-sleep and the ice zombies still haven't
 made it to the goddamn wall? What the hell, Martin?"

-Disappointed space colonists,

orbiting Proxima Centauri

Let's get exploity!

So I was going to talk about this article from the Advocate about Mike Huckabee refusing to apologize for a funny funny joke he made about how he'd like to pretend to be transgendered so that he could shower with high school girls, but then I noticed an ad for Alaska Airlines.

Mike Huckabee: Comic genius and possibly a candidate for a database somewhere.*

Oh, thanks for clearing that up.

See? On the right? Way more interesting than pointing out once again that Mick Huckabee is an insensitive, bigoted asshat. Although, he totally is. Here, this is from the airline's website:

"At Alaska, we have been longtime supporters of the LGBT community and remain committed to a more equitable society...To show our continued support we are encouraging the LGBT community to travel, not only to Seattle, but to Pride events and gay friendly destinations all over the country."

"Alaska Airlines: We love that you're into dudes.
Or ladies. Or both. It's totally cool with us."

Ok, so the sentiment here is great and I'm sure Alaska airlines has been at the forefront of not being dicks to gay people. Their website proudly displays the Human Rights Campaign logo and their perfect '100' score when it comes to workplace equality and that's super. I mean it. But check out the slogan up there.  'Who you love is not a choice. How you fly with them is.' First of all, shouldn't it be 'whom you love?' Secondly, is it me, or does that ad feel a little, I don't know, exploity? Thirdly, can I question their grammar while using a word like 'exploity' in the next sentence? 

"Getting married after the long hard fight
for marriage equality was nice, but what
we'll remember most are the savings."

The fact that sexual orientation is an immutable part of a person's core identity is like a super-important concept and the basis of the argument that everyone should be treated equally regardless of whether they prefer same or opposite sex partners. Alaska's slogan kind of reduces it to a discount card. Like, hey you've been the focus of bigoted legislation, hate groups and politicians trying to win the homophobe vote for years, so to make up for it here's 7% off airfare to Gay Days at Disney World. Even Steven? 

"Sorry about the last few centuries
of marginalization and persecution.
Here, we got you Kindle."

On the other hand, I suppose being identified as a commercially viable demographic is the ultimate measure of equality and acceptance...in a depressing sort of way. Besides, old people have been getting senior discounts and all they've done is age, so why not a LGBT discount? You know, a little something to help make up for years of buying wedding gifts with no expectation of anyone returning the favor. Or maybe just cut out the middle step and buy your gay friends something nice. I mean, seriously, it's like years of wedding presents.

*Oh, and I should probably clarify that in the scenario Mike Huckabee laid out, he would also be in high school. The way I worded it kind of sounded like the 59-year old former governor wanted to shower with underage girls and that would come off as lecherous instead of just incredibly transphobic. Which I guess he's totally comfortable with. 

"Hey, I didn't say that I wanted to shower with your teenaged daughters,
I was saying that I should have faked gender dysmorphia so that I could,
um, take showers with your teenage...uh girls and hey, vote Huckabee!"

-Mike Huckabee nailing down

the sex-offender vote

Lapin not so agile...

So as I've mentioned before, I'm not an animal person...I mean, I understand that as a human we're all animals, but I'm sort of of the opinion that the whole point of the last 10,000 years of civilization was so that we could get away from nature. Why then people then bring plants and animals into their homes is beyond me.

"Fuck this! I'm developing agriculture and dividing labor like right goddam now."

-Early Humans

Pfft...idiot.

That said, I now have a rabbit whom I shall call Picasso. The neighbor spotted him burrowing under the house and my landlord asked me to get a rat trap. A rat trap, can you believe it? Because they're cruel and holy shit, gross, I opted for a non-murder small animal trap which I baited with some Brussels sprouts and left at the entrance of Picasso's newly dug home. Four hours later, I have the world's stupidest rabbit locked in a cage. Sure, they're known for being quick and horny, and not say clever and able to suss out a trap, but c'mon, seriously Picasso?

Bunnies realize that gender identity
is fluid. In this respect they're more
enlightened than many humans. 

Also, he was inconsiderate enough not to get caught during Animal Rescue's business hours so I had to keep him over night, which was kind of awkward. Not being a pet owner, I'm not really equipped for house guests who pee like, wherever and all I had to feed it were the sprouts. And what do you talk about? To the rabbit, I'm basically a kidnapper who gave him a name. This cannot be a pleasant experience for him. Oh, and apologies to Picasso if he is in fact female. I have no idea what sex he is, or even if they concern themselves with such limited concepts as binary gender identity.

No it does not. My hyperalloy
endoskeleton chassis however...

Fortunately Picasso's captivity is soon to be at an end, as I'll be taking him or her to an animal shelter this morning which is probably for the best. Fourteen hours as a pet owner hasn't really changed my mind on the subject. I don't have anything particular against rabbits, I mean, I wish him well, it's just that I don't know what to do with him. Also, I'd have to remember to feed him and walk him. Do you walk rabbits or do you give them a wheel or something? See? It's just not for me, does that make me a cold, unfeeling cyborg?

Ok, maybe it does, but at least I didn't bludgeon him to death with a bicycle pump...um, you should probably click on the link for an explanation on that one. Otherwise I kind of sound like a psychopath.

Denmark's not all tulips and windmills...wait, I might be thinking of the Netherlands.
What do they have in Denmark? Other and bicycles and lunatic radio hosts?

Let's hear it for the DMV!

Also, screw the DMV. You heard me. What? I'm complex and can feel several ways about things at once. I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles yesterday expecting something like Jean Paul Sartre's existentialist play No Exit, but with way more people and far less hope of getting out. Instead I was in and out in fifteen minutes feeling exhilarated, and yet at the same time conflicted. I was confliterated.

Look, I majored in theatre so can we just pretend that
was funny and that I didn't waste like four years of college?

Above: a typical DMV employee. Zing!

If you haven't already guessed, I'm about to make fun of the DMV which is, you know, pretty hacky. I'd like to apologize upfront and offer you a chance to bail out. Just so you know, I'll be going for some low hanging fruit here. Still with me? Great. Anyway, I had to go in because I renewed my license like three months ago and still haven't got it in the mail. There's no way to track it or check the status online, because apparently we live in the 11th century, so I've been driving around with an expired license which, turns out is kind of illegal.

I was kind of dreading, as one does, going to the DMV. Not just because of the interminable wait, but also because I think they staff every waiting area with at least one typhoid sufferer who will, without fail, sit next to and cough all over you the whole goddamn time.

Something something, the DMV sucks.
See? It's a comic gold mine.

Pictured: some of the many people
who hate my fucking guts.

Fun fact: did you know you can make an appointment? Well you can and totally should. It allows you to skip the just showed up like a sucker line and get into the way shorter people who took three minutes to make an appointment line. The best part is that both lines lead to the same desk with the same clerk (are they clerks? Agents? Concierges?) which means not only did I waltz past people who've been there for like forty de-humanizing minutes, but also that I was tying up the only clerk who wasn't at lunch (no, really). Their hatred was palpable.

Yes. It felt exactly like that.

So I get up to the only clerk, the eyes of everyone behind me stabbing into the back of my head like daggers, and I explain my situation. The clerk, let's call her Nicole, looked up my file and discovered that my address was wrong in their system. She fixed it, printed out a temporary license, resent my new one and I was out the door in fifteen minutes like the King of Department of Motor Vehicle-ing (and like, the Duke of Appointment Making). So thank you Nicole, you are now officially my favorite person until I forget about this whole thing and move on. So like, for a couple of hours. Tops.

Step 1: Press 'print.'
Step 2: Wait 8 weeks.
Step 3: Put it in the mail.

Ok, so a visit to the DMV didn't suck for once, where's the conflict in my otherwise exhilarating confliteration? You'd think it'd be from guilt surrounding the class based system which separates appointment people from non-appointment people, but to my surprise, it's not. I mean, just make a appointment. It's not hard. What I want to know is why is everything at the DMV always seems like such a brutal, time-consuming ordeal when it took Nicole like 30 seconds to fix all my problems. Like, when I renewed my license in the first place, the website said they'd need 60 days to send it out. 60 days. Nicole hit 'enter' and it was on its way. What gives?

I mean, is she a wizard? Or could it be that everything the DMV does is like secretly super easy and that they just complicate it deliberately with their bureaucracy, arcane forms and phone trees that lead nowhere because they enjoy cultivating an air of arbitrary authority combined with a shocking contempt for our time?

"Greetings registered driver. The auspices are good. If you fill out a change of address form today,
the fates may see fit to grant your request. Take a number and have a seat over there by the coughing man."

-Nicole, DMV clerk and wizard

Long Live King Chrrls the Furst!

So there's good news and there's bad news. Let's start with the bad news: a reporter for the BBC announced on Twitter today that Queen Elizabrth has died. The good news is that there is no Queen Elizabrth and reporter Ahmen Khawaja has learned a valuable lesson about the importance of spellcheck.

"Uh...whoops."

-Ahmen Khawaja, BBC News

"Tragedy today as Queen Elizabeth
was devoured by wolves..."

The similarly named Queen Elizabeth II is, of course, alive and well and had gone to hospital (I know, but it's how British people say it) for a routine medical exam. The BBC explained that Khawaja's tweet was part of a rehearsal for the day when the Queen really does die. Which, ok, kind of ghoulish right? But I suppose preparing for unforeseen celebrity deaths is pretty common in the media. I mean, anyone could be picked off at any time by a Squeeky Fromm or botched eye tuck, so it's probably good to be prepared for anything.

"Dead? Us? Oh not quite. In fact,
I daresay we shall bury you all..."

-The Dread Queen Elizabeth II

But rehearsing the Tweet? I don't think I buy that. They're the BBC, reporting on things that happen is their entire job. Good health or no, she is like 89. Reporters should be able to overcome their shock and manage a Tweet when the time comes without too much preparation. Like are they trying to see how quickly they can type out "The Queen is dead?" Is it a race to see who can announce the Queen's death first? Is that really-wait, holy shit that's exactly what it is. 

Wow that's cold. Sure, there's probably some prestige that comes along with breaking important news like this. I get that, but calling it early just makes everyone look like vultures circling a wounded gazelle in the desert. They probably even have a pool going. 

Rick Santorum just picked his hill.

So yesterday on Meet the Press (what? It was an action-packed installment), Chuck Todd asked Rick Santorum if he would continue to fight against marriage equality if the Court throws out the state-level bans by ruling that they violate the 14th amendment. Spoiler alert: He will. In fact, he will have not yet begun to continue to fight.

Is it me or does Rick Santorum always look
like he thinks someone's about to punch him?

"He knows what 'supreme' means, right?"

-The Supreme Court

"Well, of course I'd fight it. Roe Vs. Wade was decided 30 some years ago and...I think the court got it wrong...I'm going to continue to fight as we have on the issue of life. That's the role of a citizenry, we're not bound by what nine people say in perpetuity. We have an obligation and a right in a free society to push back..." 

-Rick Santorum pushing back

you know, cause it's what you do

Just so I'm clear, we're not bound to what nine people have to say, even if those nine people are the Supreme Court of the United States, but we are totally bound to what a bunch of guys wandering around the desert three thousand years ago thought about gay people.

"Oh cut me some slack, it was the Bronze Age. We were kind of jerks back then.
I personally ordered 3,000 people put to death for building a golden cow."

-Moses

I'm not trying to tell the GOP how
to court voters, but maybe they shouldn't put
all their eggs in to one assisted living facility.

Anyway, I'm not sure his strategy is entirely sound. Long-term. Look, I'm not trying to be a dick to old people here, but when politicians hop on the Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve train, they seem to be banking on the 65 and over crowd to help then win elections. They're the last age-based demographic that isn't onboard with gay marriage. According to this, 47% of Americans over the age of 65 approve of marriage equality, up from something like 14% back in 1996. Sure, rapidly shifting attitudes are probably a big part of that, but that's almost 20 years. A lot of those people originally surveyed didn't change their minds if you see where I'm going with this...

Ok, remember a moment ago when I said I'm not trying to be a dick to old people? I failed. But I mean, with luck, we're all going to be old people someday and when that day comes I sincerely hope that no one will listen to us either.

"Adam and Eve, not Man-Unit 1A and Eve!"

-Cranky me in the future*

Sorry, but it is impossible to get a screen
capture of this guy that isn't hilarious.

I suppose it's unfair of me to suggest that Rick Santorum is just saying he'll fight marriage equality just to win the NCIS vote, but then it's also pretty goddamn unfair to try and pull freshly won civil rights away from an entire group of people just because you have some personal, religious issue with it. Like, most Americans support same-sex marriage, so isn't that the citizenry he's talking about? Shouldn't he, by his own argument, you know, shut up and deal with the fact that sometimes people are gay?



*I am, of course, joking. I wholeheartedly support doing it with robots. 

This week in weird, elderly political sex stuff...

Technically he's an Independent
with Democratic-curious leanings...

So did you see this thing about Vermont Senator and Democratic Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders having written an unsettlingly dark and rambling essay for a Vermont alternative newspaper back in the 70's? It's called Man-and Woman and his campaign insists that it's a satire about gender roles, but it contains some sexually explicit and even violent imagery that has people asking holyshitwhatthefuck? He went on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd on Sunday to do some explaining. Here's what he had to say:

It turns out that over
100 million readers can
be wrong. Very wrong.

"Look, this is a piece of fiction I wrote in 1972, I think. That was 43 years ago. It was very poorly written and if you read it, what it was dealing with, gender stereotypes: why some men want to oppress women, why other women like to be submissive. You know, something like 50 Shades of Grey; very poorly written, 43 years ago."

-Bernie Sanders, underestimating the 

power of shitty fiction writing

You know, I'm not sure that the quality of Bernie Sanders' prose is what has people upset, but hey, we've all written things that weren't great. Of course, very few of us had the shit we wrote turned into the 3rd highest grossing film of the year, but hey, there's no accounting for taste, right?

Look, I like Bernie Sanders, I do. He wants to institute universal healthcare and make college free. Like we're freaking Norway or something.

Pictured: Norwegian College students. You can tell they're Norwegian because the
hope hasn't been driven from their souls by the crushing realization that they'll be
spending the rest of their lives paying off the insurmountable debt they've accrued.

Put one of these next to your fondue
pot and you've got a 70's party.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned he wins at Presidenting, but I'm not sure he's handling this creepy essay thing very well. I'm not a political advisor or anything but it seems to me that the only thing he needs to say about this whole goat rodeo is "It was the 70's. We did all the drugs back then and I wrote some stupid shit. It was satire yes, but shitty satire. Now, sit down while I relate to you my goddamn sterling record when it comes to fighting against violence towards women."

Wait, like the Fifa scandal? I forget, do
we or do we not give a shit about soccer?

Instead he just pulls the old 'Americans want to talk about important issues' thing, which, no we don't.

"What I'm focusing on right now are the issues impacting the American people today and that is what I'll continue to focus on and what I think the American people want to hear." 

-Bernie Sanders using impact as a verb,

it's not enough to cost him my vote, but it's close

I mean, has he met the American people? We love politics and sex, and sex-politics. If Bernie Sanders could find some way to harness our fascination with smut and use it to get us talking about important issues, he might just have a shot at being our next President.

Like, if he could come up with an essay about income inequality that's also
about Japanese bondage we'd have a $15 Federal minimum wage tomorrow.