Pat Robertson: Nuanced Asshat

So obviously Alabama is run by backwards zealots still smarting about that time we kicked their asses over the question of whether or not it was ok for them to own people, but when Pat freaking Robertson says you've gone too far, it's time to reevaluate, dontcha think?

I'll stop bringing it up when they admit that they were
wrong, take down the statues and stop sucking so hard.

What? You don't know. They're
always shooting him from the waist
up, he could be all gears and hydraulics
under there for all any of us know. 

Let's hear what Robertson has to say about Alabama's crazily unconstitutional, Atwoodian dystopia new abortion law:

"I think Alabama has gone too far. They've passed a law that would give a ninety-nine year prison sentence to people who commit abortion. There's no exception for rape or incest."

-Pat Robertson or some kind

of animatronic doppelgänger? 

Saudi Arabia? Just give Alabama a
couple years. Huh? No, that was not
a tasteless joke, that was a prediction. 

Wai-wai-wait a minute, this is someone who just the other day announced that God will smite America if the Equality Act passes and gay people are suddenly protected from people like him. Someone who once suggested that women would happier if they'd just shut up. Someone who once advised a man to move to Saudi Arabia so he can legally assault his wife. But somehow, improbably he's scrapped together an iota of human decency and spoken out against Alabama's Pro-Life shitheel mafia? I... I'm not sure I can handle-

-oh wait, hang on, there's more:

"But the Alabama case, God bless them. They're trying to do something, but I don't think that's the case and I don't want to bring it to the Supreme Court."

-Pat Robertson, not talking

about gay sex...for once

Above: the face he usually makes when talking about gay sex. 

Above: The worst person
they could find in 2018.

Ah. Well, I guess that tracks. So while he's against Alabama's batshit new law, it's not just because it's a gross violation of a woman's constitutional right to control her own body, he's also thinking about it politically. His reasoning is that if this goes to the Supreme Court it will lose, and Roe V. Wade will be strengthened. Which, sure, sounds like the kind of shrewd political maneuvering Jesus was famous for. Anyway, the GOP's been working hard to pack the bench with the literal worst people they can find for years now, so who knows?

But motivations aside, Pat 'God Can't Tell the Difference Between Dungeons and Dragons and Actual Magic' Robertson is, for once in his long, long, long, long-I'm saying he's old-life, not entirely on the wrong side of something. Well, credit where credit is due. Ok, not that much credit, I mean, he's still Pat Robertson.

No, of course Pat Robertson is still a reprehensible asshat he's just a slightly less reprehensible
asshat than Governor Kay Ivey and the Alabama State Senate when it comes to this one issue.
You see, I think it's important to have a nuanced approach to calling people asshats.

Look, I don't know how dragons work, ok?

So first of all spoilers. That's your fair warning. If you haven't seen the most recent episode of Game of Thrones, go do that. Second of all, and I can't believe I have to point this out again, Game of Thrones is not news. I mention it because this. Again.

Pictured: Not news.

Oh c'mon, yesterday's post was
tangentially related at best.

I'm not picking on Huffington Post here. All kinds of news sites are reporting on the events of this TV show like it's news. And if this complaint sounds familiar, it's because it's in no way new. Remember the Red Wedding? Of course you do, even if you don't watch GOT (acronym, nothing I can do), you probably saw something on the news about it. I guess talking about the TV show that everybody's into at the moment is a cheap and easy way to get people to read your website. Or blog.

Changing the subject, awkwardly, I'd actually like to nitpick Sunday night's Game of Thrones. And no, this is not about how characters behaved so out of character, and no, I'm not going to complain about how that horse somehow knew to go pick up Arya. What I want to discuss how dragons work. Biologically I mean.

That's easy, she pressed up on the d-pad.

Hey, you got warcrimes all
over my escapist television!

So Emilia Clark's character spends the last half hour of the episode napalming a city with her dragon. A huge city. I know this is a fantasy and not the actual middle ages and it doesn't necessarily follow that the fictional King's Landing should follow the rules of historical cities, but it's clearly intended to be an enormous place with a population of like a million people. That's bigger than anything in real-life medieval Europe. London for example wouldn't hit a million people until the eighteenth century.

I don't know, maybe devour a herd
of goats? I'm not the one on trial here.

Wide shots from the show make King's Landing look massive, like, modern day New York without the sky scrapers, and Daenerys makes repeated passes on her dragon to incinerate as much of it as possible so what I want to know, is how much fire can a dragon carry? Sure they're mythical creatures and that's super, but don't they need something to spit? Like naturally occurring lighter fluid or something? It felt like she should have had to land and refuel or something, right?

I've consulted all the standard texts,
but still, the answer eludes me.

Again, I know it's a TV show about wizards and shit, but even from a writer's perspective, it seems like there should have been some consistent rules about how dragons work. Within the show's logic, Daenerys' dragon is a limitless source of explosions and could just torch the whole kingdom if she wanted it to. She's OP AF to put it in to the vernacular. Also, this was kind of unnecessary. I mean, King's Landing is a quasi-medieval city in a fictional universe, but one presumably without the office of fire inspector. And what are medieval cities famous for? I mean other than plague outbreaks?

Right. Frequent and devastating fires. I don't want to tell Daenerys how to betray eight seasons of character development, but it seems like she could have just hit some key locations and commanded her dragon to go eat Lena Headey and been back in time to claim the throne and make out with her nephew. She'd would have still gotten her murder fix and as an added bonus everyone would have blamed Cersei for her lax enforcement of King's Landing's fire code. What, am I over thinking this?

Pictured: London, like every hundred years or so.

Today in fine art snickery:

Don't think about it, just get out
your goddamn credit card.

Look, I like Game of Thrones as much as the next nerd, but this is going to far, right? Yeah, I know, you're a busy person and don't have time to click on links, so let me sum it up for you before you have to go off to go scrub in for surgery or head to your board meeting: HBO® officially licensed Game of Thrones™ fine art prints. And before you ask, this is a strictly limited special edition thing so don't even think about-huh? You weren't going to ask? Oh, well they are. Strictly limited I mean. It says so right on the website.

The prints-sorry, the fine art-is made by a company called Classic Stills Fine Arts Gallery, who sell framed still shots from movies and TV shows. Each one is numbered which, according to the website "ensures that [thier] artworks remain rare and are likely to appreciate in value over time." They even come with certificates of authenticity.

You know, in case the authenticity or provenance of your print
of The Dude from The Big Lebowski is ever called into question.

Move over Justice Coin...wait, anyone
want to check and see how much the
Justice Coin is worth now? No? Ok.

Are you ordering some of these right now? No? What's the matter, aren't you a fan of the show? These are limited edition prints meaning once they arbitrarily stop producing them, the artificial scarcity is guaranteed to ensure these increase in value. Well, I mean, I assume they're going to increase in value. Like, they're already pretty expensive. Did you click on the link? No? Because they range from $145-$1,000. Of money. For a still shot from a TV show. Which...

Pictured: typical goons.

Huh...look, I'm not saying you should do this, but couldn't you-couldn't one-like, just grab a still off the show, print it out, maybe even go take it to a professional printer and then frame it for a lot less than what they're asking for these? I mean, it'd still be kind of spendy, but not thousands of dollars. Again, I'm not saying anyone should actually do this. Anything you make yourself would obviously not be licensed by HBO® and you don't want to cross them. They probably have goons. But you could do this is what I'm saying.

I don't know if it's art but-wait,
no, I do know. And it's not.

And am I being a dick when I suggest that they're taking some serious liberties when they describe these as 'fine art?' Well, yes. A dick and a snob. A snick if you will (you might). But I looked it up-yes on the internet. Do people even own dictionaries any more? Sorry, there I go again, being a snick. Anyway, fine art is defined as: "art concerned with the creation of beautiful objects" or "an activity requiring fine skill." And, I don't think these apply here. I mean for one thing, I'm not sure how selling you screen grabs of a TV show requires skill. And for the beautiful object thing..well, I mean, see corpse pile at left.

I don't want to yum yuck here, but for real? If this is something someone really wants on their wall, more power to them, but I kind of think maybe HBO or Classic Stills Fine Arts Gallery needs to dial it back on the suggestion that these things are both fine art and they they will one day be worth something.

I mean other than as a valuable object lesson in
making smarter decisions when it comes to money.

It's like the Avatar 2 of video games...

"Just...here. Take it. Take it! Goddamnit."

-Me, everytime

...except I actually kinda hope this one comes out. Then I can debate the wisdom of giving Square Enix another sixty dollars of money for a game I've already bought like three times on like three different platforms even though to this day I have never even completed it once and-huh? Yeah, I should probably explain what I'm talking about and-ok, look, there's a new trailer for the Final Fantasy VII remake-now officially and un-creatively entitled Final Fantasy VII Remake and I think we should discuss it, because, I mean, what else are we going to do? Not talk about it?

Above: me and basically anyone
else who remembers the term gametape.

Ok, so Final Fantasy VII, for those of you either younger than my FFVII game save or for those who maybe enjoyed sports and social activities, is the seventh main line game in the Final Fantasy series (they're up to fifteen now, so Final is used kind of loosely). I'll spare you the numbering nonsense, but it was the fourth one to make it to the U.S. Anyway, when it came out, despite being a huge fan of the Final Fantasies? Finals Fantasy? That particular game series, this was the first one I didn't play all the way through to the end.

It was fairly different from previous games and not all the changes were great. It had long, unskip-able cut-scenes and interminable summon animations. It just wasn't-right, I keep forgetting, you had a life. In the game, you can attack your enemies by summoning monsters. Doing this usually results in an animation that plays every time. Every time. And you can't skip it.

Using Terra Flare requires you to watch as a space dragon
nukes your opponent from orbit for a full minute. A full minute.

Pictured: the cast of Final Fantasy VI
battleing an octopus in an opera house.
Not pictured: anything that's ever topped it.

Anyway, like I was saying, Final Fantasy VII was different enough from the other entires in the series and it just didn't hook me like the earlier ones did. But it was the first JRPG to get mainstream attention. It was the one you could admit to playing without getting nerd shamed, but I just wasn't into it and have spent that last twenty years being the curmudgeonly fan insisting that the series peaked with part VI. Still though, I've been curious about what I've missed out on and have tried to go back and play it but holy shit, the graphics.

Hot garbage now, back then it looked...well,
ok, still like garbage, but cutting edge garbage.

Maybe I'm just a retro snob or something-ok, I'm definitely a snob, but 8 and 16-bit games are charming and nostalgic to me with their quaint and razor sharp pixel graphics and they even look good on LCD TV's. Final Fantasy VII on the other hand, just...I've tried to appreciate it as a product of its time, but yikes. The overworld is blurry, the characters all have Popeye arms and the models in the cut scenes are jarringly different from the ones in gameplay. It is aggressively unattractive and looks like, and I don't think I'm being unfair here, hot garbage.

It wasn't just Final Fantasy VII, or even the PS1 that didn't age well, it's the whole generation of games. The technology just wasn't there yet. Remember Goldeneye on the N64? That game was mind blowing in 1996, but, I mean:

Oh...oh no no no...this will not do.

"Huh, weirdly the 8-bit, grey market
de-make holds up better than the original."

(source: shade)

Anyway, hence the remake. The remake Square Enix has been insisting is happening for like-and I'm not kidding you-fourteen years. In that time it's been sequeled, prequeled, remastered and even de-made for the NES, but still no remake. First it was coming to PS3, now it's for PS4. At one point the developer announced that it was supposed to be broken up into several parts, presumably so we could pay them more than once. It might be an action game instead of a traditional JRPG, or maybe it's an action RPG? And as of a year ago they were still hiring staff for the project which kind of suggested that it's still a ways off. 

It's been, so far, a shit show, but today (well, yesterday now) we got the trailer and the promise of further updates next month. So maybe it's really for real coming this time? The trailer looks like an actual game, with gameplay and voiced cut scenes-in English no less-so...maybe? Hey, maybe since they're remaking it and all, they could see their way clear to rolling back some of Barrett's insensitively written dialogue? Oh, and that whole bathhouse sequence should probably go. And-huh? No? They're leaving all that in? I see...

But on the upside, the characters look like people
and not, you know, vaguely humanoid box-monsters.

Bezos I, Padishah Emperor of the Universe

Like for real, who does Jeff Bezos think he is? Ok, obviously he thinks he's the richest human, and I think that's true, but...I don't know...does anyone else feel icky about him ushering in the future?

Pictured: Jeff Bezos stands in front of one of his company's new lunar landers
which his employees will soon use to conquer the Earth's largest natural satellite. 

I'll stop calling them Nazis when
they stop acting like, you know, Nazis.

I ask because the guy who turned a website that sold books into the death of American retail, summoned the press before him today to announce that we'll be going to the moon-which seems like Kennedy's job. Obviously he's dead, and the current President is a-is there a word for a goon who's also a criminal? Goominal? Crimigoon? Doesn't matter. The point is the leader of what used to be the free world isn't what you'd call inspirational. Unless you count white supremacists. Nazis find him super-inspirational.

...oh, I see, he's playing the long game.

What were we talking about? Oh right, Jeff Bezos, who announced today that we'll be going back to the moon in his new rocket. And then we're going to live there. And then we're going to live in space colonies. Specifically in O'Neill cylinders. Holy shit, right? Huh? What's an O'Neill cylinder? They're kinda like big tubes in space. People would live on the interior and the whole thing spins to simulate gravity. Which I'm sure it's not as nauseating as it sounds...right? Better pack some Dramam...oh...

Ever see Babylon 5? No? It was a little like Star Trek, except way nerdier. Like, Trekkies look down on B5 fans. Anyway, Babylon 5 was a type of O'Neill cylinder.

"Neeeeerds!"

-Someone just out of frame,

dressed as Geordi LaForge

"Consume!"

-Amazon.com

And all of this sounds super. What doesn't sound super is how tech-bro-entrepreneur all this sounds. Bezos' pitch...announcement? Directive? Whatever, his plan is to make space more accessible for business. Space business. Which on the one hand I sort of get, I mean, if no one's interested in investing in space technologies we're never going to get to live in space. On the other hand, do we really want the guy who brought us dash buttons owning space?

While I mean that metaphorically, the
Bay Area might as well be radioactive.

I live in the Bay Area...well, Bay Area-ish. About an half an hour south of San Jose. Like, if you were to picture the housing prices on a map, sort of like those Cold War-era maps that show nuclear blast radius' overlaid onto American cities, I would be in the slow death by radiation zone. My point is entrepreneurs might be really good at taking an idea, slapping a dumb, trademark-ably misspelled name on it and making a billion dollars, but they're not good at not ruining cities they live in.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for outer space, and living in outer space and let's face it, the planet is probably doomed, so we're going to need a plan B. I just don't want that plan B to be some kind of orbital tilt-a-whirl under the iron fisted rule of Jeff Bezos.

"Your Amazon Air® subscription is about to run out,
would you like to renew? You have thirty seconds to decide."

-Our grim future

Q-tips, just slathered with history!

Science, it turns out, is gross.

Hey, get this: since 2015, researchers at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. have been furiously swabbing the pages of their collection in search of DNA. It's called Project Dustbunny, and the idea is to collect and eventually analyze genetic samples from their books. The Library has the world's largest collection of Shakespeare manuscripts and folios, some of which date from his lifetime and may contain his some of his skin flakes, eye gunk or-fingers crossed-dried sneeze. Note: may. 

Look, I don't want to tell them how to science, but it strikes me as a little like swabbing the program from Hedwig and the Angry Inch on the off-chance that Neil Patrick Harris might have licked it.

Which, ok, bad example. Like, he might have.

If only there was some way to be sure
that Shakespeare touched-oh. Right.

So super-big waste of time, right? Yes. But also no. Sure, the Folger Library has a ton of stuff he could have touched, but lots of other people probably touched that stuff too. Also, he was a writer and loved to sue people so his name's all over things, plays, lawsuits that kind of thing, so I guess we can be reasonably sure he touched those. But ok, say someone at the Folger Library wants to know if some four-hundred year old eyelash wedged between acts II and III of Much Ado or something is from the man himself. I suppose Project Dustbunny could step in. 

Assuming they have a sample of Shakespeare's DNA. Luckily Shakespeare, despite what some conspiracy theorists say, was a real person and is buried in Startford-upon-Avon. Well, most of him is anyway. The point is that if we need some DNA for comparison all we really need is a shovel.

He said don't move his bones, he didn't say anything
about retrieving samples for autosomal DNA testing.
Although in fairness, not many things rhyme with autosomal.

That baby is Shakespeare's 14th great
niece. So really anything less than 39
timeless masterpieces of playwriting
 from her will be a huge let down.

Ok, of course Shakespeare handled his own documents. What does Project Dustbunny do that you can't accomplish by looking at a signature? Folger Library director Micheal Witmore says that crazy sci-fi nonsense aside, DNA is valuable new tool for archeology. With it, you can learn a lot about an era and the people who lived it through their genes. Who were they? Do they have any living descendants? Did they cover their mouths when they sneezed? The possibilities are...well, those are the only ones I can think of, but then I'm not a researcher, so I'm take it as read that Witmore's not just making this up.

Anyway I think the real question here, the thing on every reasonable person's mind here is how far away are we from cloned literary figures once again roaming the Earth? And, to take that thought to its logical conclusion, how long until they break out of whatever elaborate containment pens we build for them and run amok?

"Clever girl..."

-Game warden Robert Muldoon, 

moments before being devoured 

by the clone of Aphra Behn

Move over K-T Extinction Event!

Have you ever found yourself wishing there were fewer species of plants and animals? I mean, who can keep track these days? Some of them walk around like they own the planet or something, and don't get me started on coral reefs.

Psscht...coral reefs...think they're so great just because they're home to 25%
of all marine species and form an integral part of the planet's delicate balance...

Well, experts, knew but
we never listen to them.

Well, soon the other life forms we share the planet with may no longer be a problem. Yes fellow humans, our species-the best species based on Avengers Endgame's unprecedented box office returns last weekend-may be on the brink of victory in our millennia-long struggle against the planet and all other life that lives on it. A new U.N. report says that there are over a million species of plants and animals in danger of extinction. A million. It boggles the mind, doesn't it? Who even knew there were that many to begin with?

The U.N.'s report is apparently unusually direct since these kind of things require all member nations to agree and sometimes that can be tricky given the willful ignorance of certain members of the Security Council...cough...not saying who...cough...us.

"We object to the Rape Prevention Resolution on the grounds
that a significant segment of our citizens are ignorant goons."

-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley,

actual quote (*not an actual quote, but close)

"Huh...you know, this place is
kind of a shithole, isn't it?"

-Future astronauts

The report explains that human civilization is consuming land and resources at an exponential rate and that we're either farming or paving three quarters of the planet's land area, squeezing out the plants and animals that live there which, coupled with the related problem of carbon emissions, will, if left unaddressed, will leave the Earth just another lifeless ball of rock baking in cosmic radiation like, what's that other one we keep shooting Tesla's at? Mars? Like Mars.

What? From an ecological perspective
cats are useless at best. Invasive at worst.

Ok, plants and animals, but what have they ever done for us, amiright? Welp, turns out lots. The ever-expanding, all-consuming pavement blob that is humanity is like super-dependent on the natural world. Bees pollinate our crops, forests make the air we're so fond of breathing and cats do something. I suppose. Look, I'm not going to read the whole report, I'm a very busy person (full disclosure: no, I'm not), the point is we can't just let the planet's surface entire surface be nothing but highways and Amazon distribution centers.

We have to, grudgingly if necessary, admit that we need nature and make sweeping and immediate changes if we have any hope of surviving this mass extinction. Which, if were being honest we probably don't. I mean, how many of us view plastic bag bans as direct assault on the American way of life?

"What were we supposed to do? Buy reusable totes? No thank you."

-the last member of the human race, 

say fifty, fifty-five years from now?