Does he not know he's on camera?

She played Signorina Lola Lasagne
because the writers loved drugs.  

Did you see this thing about the Texas cop pepper spraying passing motorcyclists? No really, and yes, it's as dangerous as it sounds. And I can't even say 'because Texas' and write it off as 'from the people who brought you Rick Perry,' because this is just that far off the map. It's like Batman villain crazy. Not like A-list Rogue's Gallery villains like the Joker or the Penguin but maybe somewhere between the Riddler and whoever Ethel Merman was supposed to be. So like evil, but unfocused, with no particular goals in mind.

It's ok, Texans love living up
to their own stereotypes. 

It started when Fort Worth police officer W. Figueroa pulled over a pickup truck and cited the driver not having a license and for passengers standing in the bed while the vehicle was in motion because, well, because Texas (there it is). The pickup truck was being driven by members of East Texas Heat (again, because Texas), a motorcycle club that was out for a ride on Sunday. When the bikers began to pass, the cop pulled out his mace and went to town spraying them in the face with a debilitating, eye-searing aerosol while they're traveling at speed down a busy highway.

Now if you're thinking to yourself holy shit he could have killed somebody, you're not alone because holy shit, he could have killed somebody.

The cop then started quacking maniacally and threatening to
pluck that meddling caped crusader once and for all.

Granted, the East Texas Heat kind of look
like idiots, but that's no reason to mace them.

But surely officer Figueroa must have had a good reason to endanger both the motorcyclists and everyone else on the road. According to the police department, they'd received several calls about the motorcyclists driving erratically and even stopping traffic with their pickup so the people in the truck could video how cool everyone looks doing sweet motorcycle tricks and wearing matching East Texas Heat t-shirts or whatever. 

Sure, these were just unsubstantiated complaints and East Texas Heat (kind of want to mace them for the name though) weren't actually breaking any laws when Figueroa decided to go all Judge Dredd on them, but had he waited for evidence of wrongdoing, several more motorists could have been allegedly annoyed. 

Um, he knows that Judge Dredd was a meant as a nightmarish criticism of authority
run amok and not like a guide to sound law enforcement practices, right?

Cameras like the ones on the motorcyclist's
helmets, the one on his cruiser's dash and
 the one he was wearing. Because he's a genius.

Officer Figueroa acted in the only way he could: with reckless disregard for safety and the law. In many ways he's a goddamn hero. But in many more ways he broke all kinds of laws and is a danger to the community and that's why he was taken off duty while the police department conducts an investigation into any "potential misconduct"-by which I assume they mean all the blatant misconduct that Figueroa committed while being recorded by several cameras because we live in the future. I know that the department needs to be careful and thorough here, but he's totally guilty.

Look, I get that that motorcyclists are batshit crazy and often weave in-between lanes because traffic laws laws for other, less cool people and that's fine. But I don't care where you are, it's actually not ok to try and murder people on motorcycles. Not even in Texas and especially if you're a cop. 

It is however, open season on segways.
I mean, look at'em. Mace away.

Today in disappointing former superpowers...

Above: An unrelated photo of a shirtless
Vladimir Putin feeding his horse. 

Russia really bums me out. Ok, obviously it's a grey, depressing wasteland run by an doughy ex-KGB thug, but look at this shit. Yeah, ok, I know you're not going to click, so I'll explain why you should join me in judging the world's largest country by area. Russian authorities, whom I think we all picture as be-joweled, humorless men with comb-overs and bushy mustaches, have been getting complaints about a Calvin Klein ad being too gay, begging the question what's too gay for Russia?

 Чао. It's Russian for 'ciao.' Yes,
even their alphabet is lame.

Any gay people at all. The ad's sort of a montage of young, attractive couples doing young, attractive montage-y things like frolicking and hanging out around a bonfire and riding around shirtless on mopeds. And sure, some of the couples are same-sex couples because you know, there are gay people in Russia too. And besides, Calvin Klein doesn't see things like labels and barriers. They love everyone in their key demo. But according to Russian law, the ad might qualify as gay propaganda. Wait, how's that?

They were even decades ahead of us in
the race to maroon a dog in space.

Yeah, back in 2012, Russia, once the core of the mighty Soviet Empire that kicked the shit out of the Nazi's, sent the first humans to space and nearly started a war with us that would have wiped out all life on Earth, passed a law banning gay propaganda. What the shit is gay propaganda? I suppose it's whatever the aforementioned authorities decide it is. Milk cartons, Pussy Riot, wearing your dungarees too low. Remember a couple years ago right before the Olympics when the mayor of Sochi compared gay people to child molesters? And just this last January, the Russian Parliament stopped short of passing a bill that would have fined gay people for kissing or holding hands in public.

Goddamnit, I thought I'd make it
through this one without bringing
up the mighty misogy-goon.

I mean, what happened? They used to be our rivals. Klingons to our Federation, Montagues to our Capulets and now they're spiraling back into the bullshit of the past. Dredging up old bigotries and looking backwards rather than forwards while we, their former adversaries have become a shining progressive utopia where everyone is equal and valued regardless of race, religion or sexual orien-ok, sorry, I can't even make it through that. Holy shit we're one bad chad count away from electing an orange leathery gameshow host to the highest office in the land.

Look, I don't want to tell Vladimir Putin how to run the rusted-out husk of our former Cold War nemesis. I mean, I get we're kind of a mess to, but you can get gay married in Arkansas. Yeah, Arkansas is more progressive than Russia. Enjoy.

Pictured: The lesbian couple in the perfume ad currently shaking
traditional Russian culture to its very foundation. Brava ladies, brava.

Let's pick on Mamie Eisenhower!

Maybe we don't remember it because
it happened in the alternate time-
line where Biff was like, super rich?

Look, people misspeak. It's no big deal and it happens to everybody. You, me, and today it happened to Hillary Clinton while she was speaking to NBC News outside Nancy Reagan's funeral:

"It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980's. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan, in particular Mrs. Reagan we started a national conversation..."

-Hillary Clinton,

stepping in it

"Drugs? Check. Soviets? Check. AIDS?
I say fuck it. What do you think mummy?"

-President Reagan (actual quote)*

Yeah, no she didn't. In fact, the Reagan's approach to the AIDS crisis can best be summed up as something between willful ignorance and aggressive apathy. Obviously people jumped on Clinton's remarks pretty hard, which I suppose I get. It wasn't so much that Nancy Reagan didn't acknowledge the AIDS crisis, it's that she and her husband didn't acknowledge the AIDS crisis at a time when doing so could have made a huge difference. The confusing thing is where Clinton even got the idea that Nancy Reagan ever started a national conversation about AIDS.

Was she given bad information by a staffer? Was she thinking of somebody else? Somebody else who didn't ignore a major epidemic because she thought it was 'too gay' to even talk about? Or maybe she just got swept away.

"I am however sure your viewers will remember the time Nancy Reagan covered
Nine Inch Nail's Closer with Tony Bennett. Now that was a touching moment."

-Secretary Clinton, on a role

That's right, I said it. Mamie
Eisenhower did jack shit.

And that's reasonable, it was probably an emotional day. I mean, she and Reagan did have first lady thing in common and that's actually what the interview was mostly about. How Nancy Reagan helped pave the way for more active and visible first ladies. Sure she did it by spearheading the War on Drugs and all that amounted to was a guest appearance on the Diff'rent Strokes and decades of throwing high school kids in jail for selling weed, but still, it's more than Mamie Eisenhower ever did.

Anyway, in situations like this, the classy thing to do is apologize and move on, and she did, Tweeting that she misspoke and that she's sorry. Cool. No worries. It's not like she said anything truly stupid like vaccines cause autism, or that she could shoot someone and not take a hit in the polls. I mean, that would be a career ending gaffe, right?

What? When he stops being simultaneously hilarious
and blood-freezingly terrifying, I'll stop talking about him. 

*no it's not an actual quote but seriously.

Today in important legal distinctions...

Do you know what's never a good idea? Threatening public figures. Even if that public figure is a leathery racist asshat currently trying to ride the blind, ignorant rage of disaffected white conservatives into the White House.

"We're not racists, we're just sick of elected officials not
doing enough to keep brown people out of America."

-Trump Supporters

I mean, just look at him...at the very
least you kinda want to punch him, right?

You know how I know it's not a good idea? Well, yes, common sense, but also because this guy tried it. Didn't click? Fine, I'll explain. Emadeldin Elsayed is a 23-year old student pilot from Egypt who posted on Facebook that he'd be willing to serve a life sentence for killing Donald Trump and that the world would thank him. Yikes, right? Ok, he insists that he didn't mean it and his lawyer says that it was not a serious comment, pointing out that lots of people would like to murder Trump and that Elsayed is in jail "...primarily because he's a Muslim and a Middle Easterner."

"We take all threats seriously, be they
 from Muslims, Mexicans or Democrats."

-Some Secret Service guy

Which, yeah, sounds like something we'd do, but the L.A. Times talked to a retired Homeland Security agent who said that all threats are taken "...seriously regardless of a person's nationality or religious background." Elsayed, as a foreign student, violated the terms of his student visa and that's why it was revoked, not because he's a Muslim who threatened Trump. Yeah, of course you can't go around threatening people, but this was a kid who made a stupid mistake and is now being asked to leave the country because of it. That in mind, he was threatening Donald Trump.

Again, not condoning threats here, but he is running for President on a platform of Islamo-phobia and anti-immigrant crazy-rage. Also, he likes to make funny, funny jokes about how he could murder random people on the street and his idiot supporters would still love him. So how come 's not getting investigated or being deported? Oh, right, the vast wealth and power. Sorry, I answered my own question there.

"Sir, for the record, I'm not assaulting you because you're Mexican,
I'm assaulting you because you're protesting Mr. Trump's politics.
This is not a hate crime, just the disturbing early signs of fascist rule."

-Trump's security guy drawing 

an important legal distinction

Today in insulting paper boxes...

Those consequences being a slightly
lower risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Does Chick-fil-A not get that they're a fast-food restaurant and not some kind of moral authority? I ask because they do this thing now where they leave a called a paper box on the tables called a 'cell phone coop.' The idea is that you and your family-huh? Yes, and family, because the single and/or childless have no business eating at Chic-fil-A. Anyway, everyone turns their phones off and puts them in the coop.  Families that obey the restaurant are rewarded with ice-cream. Families who don't, face the consequeses.

Yes, fine, it is true that people spend a lot of time on their phones, texting, talking, playing shitty touch-screen based games, whatever. And sure, this is probably at the expense of genuine, in-person human interaction. That's fair. But who does Chick-fil-A think they are?

Above: Sarah and Todd Palin taking
part in Chico-Fil-A appreciation day. 

Pictured: Dan T. Cathy
donning his crazy hat.

Oh, right, they think they're a chain of restaurants owned and run by Dan T. Cathy, an evangelical Christian who has absolutely no problem serving up his religious beliefs alongside waffle fries like some kind of judgmental dipping sauce. I'll spare you having to read my previous posts about them (if you're feeling frisky, click here, here, this and then this) but the gist is that back in 2012, Cathy decided to put on his crazy hat and announce that: "...we're inviting God's judgement on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage." 

Really it's our own fault for being less
interesting than Words with Friends.

Well they lost that one. Despite the best efforts of Mike Huckabee Kim Davis, and the late Antonin 'Sour Grapes' Scalia, gay marriage has been a thing for a while now and God has yet to be smite America from on high.* Anyway, I guess now Cathy is turning his attention to something at least vaguely related to what his business actually does. Our ridiculous, almost Borg-like inability to put down the damn iPhone for five minutes is obnoxious, and everybody hates it when the jackass in the next booth is carrying on a conversation on speaker phone, but still.

I mean, a cell phone coop? It's just insulting. I mean it's not unreasonable for a restaurant to have a 'no cell phones' policy. Sure, it's usually better restaurants than this, but whatever. There's just something condescending about the little paper box with rules printed on the side. Rules about what they expect of their customers. Like, I'm not ever actually going to go to a Chic-fil-A, but if I did, I think it'd pointedly switch my phone off and leave it next to the box. And Dan Cathy can keep his damn ice-cream.

No thank you Chic-fil-A, the price is just too high...

*Today in logical inconsistencies...

Besides, you'd think God would be
better at making it look like an accident.

Hey speaking of, how come when we wanted marriage equality we got vague threats of divine retribution from conservatives, yet now that the Court ruled in favor of it and the guy who wrote the descending opinion died suddenly, it's either natural causes or some kind of liberal conspiracy? Look, I'm not saying God smote Antonin Scalia, that's ridiculous. What I'm just suggesting is that Evangelicals should think God smote Scalia.

By their own logic, shouldn't they see his passing as a sign that they were waging a hurtful and pointless struggle? And that maybe they should, I don't know, reevaluate their worldview and turn their efforts towards helping the poor or feeding children? Like whathisname tells them to do in that book they're always droning on about.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto-wait a minute,
that can't be right. Where's the part about God hating gay people?"

Let's clone Jaime Escalante!

Above: mathematicians
wasting their lives.

Hey look everybody, math is stupid and hard and we should all just stop trying to learn it. Finally, right? At least that's what Professor Andrew Hacker says in his book, The Math Myth and other STEM Delusions. Yes, a professor! Ok, professor emeritus, and when he professing regularly he was a professor of social science and not math, so multiply his idea by a factor of salt. See that? That's was a little math humor. If it's not funny it's because I'm bad at math.

There is, unfortunately, only one
Jaime Escalante. Also, he's dead. 

Anyway, in this interview with NPR's Anya Kamenetz, Hacker draws a distinction between basic arithmetic, which he says we should totally all use and more complex computational skills like trigonometry, algebra calculus. The more complex stuff, he says, is keeping a fifth of students from graduating and since nobody really needs to find the area of a circle to be a functioning adult, we might as well drop it from the curriculum. It's not that Hacker is anti-math, he's just realistic. He'd love to see an educational system that inspires kids to love math, but passionate, dedicated math teachers are kind of few and far between.

Most of us, through luck of the draw, got stuck with bored, disengaged middle school math teachers who'd be hard pressed to generate enthusiasm for candy and R-rated movie day much less algebraic equations so, maybe we should lower our expectations a bit when it comes to advanced mathematical proficiency.

"Ok kids, what's it going to be? Predator 2 or Showgirls?
Anyone? How bout skittles? Everyone likes skittles, right?"

"What's a train?"

He's got a point. I mean, the first thing a frustrated middle-schooler does when things get confusing is raise their hand and ask 'when are we ever going to use this?' It was hard enough to answer back when everyone had calculators, but it's almost impossible now that everyone has iPhones with access to the sum of all human knowledge. I mean, should we really be flunking kids because they can't tell a numerator from a denominator or math out the arrival time of trains?

Sure, I suppose the wifi could go out and civilization could devolve into a savage battle for survival, but these kids have already read Hunger Games, so they're pretty prepared already.

If each of the twelve districts send two tributes, how many kids do you
have to murder on live television to get Donald Sutherland off your back?

"And thanks to our skill set, we know
exactly how shitty our pay is..."

-Some math teacher

It's just that there's something lazy-feeling about Hacker's suggestion that we lower standards for students rather than raise standards for math teachers. Ok, maybe not lazy, just cheap. It's hard to make enthusiasm a job requirement, especially when we pay teachers something like $40,000 a year which is on par with park rangers and dance instructors. I'm not saying that the people who take care of our parks aren't super-important or that our children don't need a solid foundation in jazz and tap, I'm just suggesting that maybe we reevaluate our priorities as a society when it comes to things like professional sports and Fortune 500 company CEO's who make something like 400 times a teacher's salary and no, I didn't do the math myself, I asked Siri.

I mean this is America, right? We went to the moon (shut up, yes we did), we didn't decide it was too far and then settle for a trip to Vancouver or something, and we did it with math. We did it because it was the hard thing to do. We did it because we believed in American exceptionalism and-holy shit, it is really hard for me to get enthused about math. Like, I'm really trying here. Thanks a lot, public school.

"238,900 miles? That's like a million miles! Fuck this..."

-NASA

Today in new lows...

Hey, you know what always wins sympathy? Suggesting that the victim of a crime is better off for having been victimized. Did I say sympathy? I meant public scorn. But lawyers for the Nashville Marriott are going to give it a go anyway in their defense against a lawsuit filed by sportscaster Erin Andrews. Today in court-huh? 

There probably should be a lawyer joke here...uh, like,
something, something they're all terrible people...

One team wins, the other looses, so why
do they need a desk to tell us about it?

Oh, yeah, I didn't know anything about this until today either, so let me explain: back in 2009, some stalker called Micheal David-yes of course there's a middle name-Barrett secretly recorded video of Andrews while she was nude in her hotel room and then posted it online. Yeah, he's in jail now, but she's suing him and the hotel because holy shit, how did none of the staff notice him holding a GoPro up to the peephole? Oh, and a sportscaster is like a reporter but for sports. I looked it up.

Anyway, Andrews is understandably upset and is suing the hotel's owners and Barrett for damages. I'm not sure where her stalker is going to come up with $75 million but whatever, the incident left her distraught and paranoid about staying in hotels which is kind of a problem when your career involves traveling to sporting events around the country. 

Great, so now you can add hidden cameras to the list of things to worry about
along with bed bugs, black-light sensitive stains and getting the room next to the ice machine.

"You're gonna be a star, whether
you like it or not..."

So this brings us to today when Marc Dedman, a lawyer for the hotel's owners asked her about her career and how it was going since the all the stalking. It turns out pretty well, endorsements, a new job, sure it's with Fox but-wait, hang on a tick...you don't suppose that Dedman was trying to imply that Andrews' being an unwilling participant in Micheal Wayne (you heard me) Barrett's creepy candid camera hotel porn movie has been good for her career? Ok, so he didn't explicitly say that Barrett helped her career by putting video of her online for creepers to ogle, but...uh...

That's exactly what he did do. Look, I know it's his job to get his clients off, but this is like victim blaming only worse. If Dedman were victim blaming he'd be saying that Andrews had it coming for being nude alone in her room. Here, he's saying Andrews should be thanking her stalker and that's just fucked up. Even for-you know, just insert a lawyer joke here.

"Stalker? Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I submit to you that my client is a hero and-
I'm sorry, what's that your honor? No, I think we've established that I have no shame."

-Marc Dedman, 

class act