Oh, now he's not going to cooperate?

Sure, Chuck Schumer can be a little abrasive, but Mitch McConnell should maybe lay off the suggestion that Schumer calling out Republicans on their bullshit is partisan. He's made a career out of partisan. A protracted, ruinous career which, thanks to a lack of term limits on the Senate, will likely go on until he runs out of spaarti clone cylinders. 

Pictured: some of the strandcast bodies McConnell has in
reserve in the dark cloning labs beneath the Capitol building.

"Because intransigence has worked
pretty well for me so far. Remember that 
time I stole two Supreme Court seats?"

-Mitch McConnell

Again, 100% Schumer probably could have held off a day or two instead of immediately--like, the ink wasn't even dry--laying into Mitch McConnell and the GOP over the way the entire debt crisis was entirely their fault, but in his defense the entire debt ceiling crisis was entirely their fault. Probably. I don't know, I'm not an expert on these things, but this prompted Mitch McConnell to write an angry letter to the President insisting that he's not going to ride to the rescue next time. Which again, I don't understand why McConnell thinks he deserves a cookie for being intransigent in the first place. Because no cookie.

Like, a lot has been made about how offended Mitch McConnell was and how he said that Schumer has "poisoned the well" and how John Thune "...let him (Schumer) have it" and did you see poor Joe Manchin burying his head in his hands? 

Pictured: Joe Manchin getting a taste of how we feel watching the GOP
dismantle voting rights while he hems and haws over the filibuster.
Not pictured: any sympathy for Joe Manchin.

Yes, I harp on this a lot, but look at Texas.
Look, but don't ever, ever set foot there.

But as impolitic as Schumer was being--and he was, gloating is never a good look--the GOP (and I'm including Joe Manchin in this, because I mean, c'mon), has already made working with them a "hold your nose and try not to gag" prospect. Remember that time an angry mob tried to overrun the Capitol and crown a former reality TV host President for life? Because they don't. Or that time Mitch McConnell sat on one Supreme Court appointment and then rushed another so that said TV host could fill them? 

I guess what I'm saying is fuck Mitch McConnell. I know, it's not an original sentiment, but it's just that I think we're all a little sick of this man no one outside of Kentucky voted for wielding so much power over our lives and futures. And now he's unwilling to work with Democrats because Chuck Schumer--who isn't wrong--hurt his feelings? And how are we supposed to tell this new, uncooperative Mitch McConnell from the regular uncooperative Mitch McConnell we've had to endure all these years?

Above: McConnell's letter to the President. 
Here, I'll sum up: "Waaaaaaaah..."

Today in selective, militia-related amnesia:

Chad are you...are you sure you're not
ashamed of it? Like, not even a little?

I'm not sure what's more alarming, the fact that Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco was a member of The Oath Keepers, or that he forgot about it until now, or that he's not sorry about it--wait, no, definitely that one. He told the Los Angeles Daily News:

"I'm not ashamed of what I did."

-Sheriff Chad Bianco, about a

shameful thing he did

"Yer gonna have to take my
lightsaber outta my cold dead hands."

-Some lightsaber nut

But he probably should be, is the thing. Ashamed I mean. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists The Oath Keepers as the country's largest right-wing anti-government organization. The group, who've dubbed themselves "Guardians of the Republic" like they're a bunch of goddamn Jedi Knights with persecution complexes, were founded because a black guy was elected President and fragile white dudes who love guns felt threatened and formed a militia about it. The group has something like 35,000 members, mostly former military and law enforcement, which is weird, because both of those are like, government jobs.

I'm uh...I'm pretty sure that we
didn't misunderstand these people.

But apparently we've got it all wrong. According to Bianco, that extremist group he joined that one time is super misunderstood and he is sick and tired of the media portraying all armed right-wing militia groups as anti-government when really all they are trying to do is protect our freedoms. You know, by arming themselves and then storming the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election results. But of course Bianco doesn't agree with the people who tried to pull a coup on January 6th insisting that what they did "was wrong and against the law..."

"Oh no! They got us!"

-no one on the left

And that's super, but the Oath Keepers were like 100% on board with the coup attempt and are super pissed that it didn't work, so like, what else ya got Chad? Oh, Antifa. So Sheriff Bianco, in defending his former militia group which again, he totally doesn't remember joining for a year, asked why similar scrutiny wasn't applied to groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Because like any conservative when called out on their shitty worldview, Chad's first instinct is to try and turn the tables. 

Note the distinct lack of assault
rifles and attempts to stage a
coup d'etat at this BLM rally.

Except Antifa isn't really a group, it's just anyone who's anti-fascist which should be all of us, right? And Black Lives Matter is a social movement and while there are organizations that are part of it, they're not, you know, trying to overturn election results by force. BLM is just trying to get law enforcement officers, like Chad Bianco, to stop murdering black people. So yeah, I guess the short answer to why no one is treating Antifa and BLM like domestic terrorists is because, unlike The Oath Keepers, they aren't domestic terrorists.

I mean, c'mon, that guy's even wearing
an Oath Keepers hat. They've got merch.

Just so we're clear: the Sheriff of Riverside County, California, once joined an anti-government militia group and then forgot that he joined an anti-government militia group, but then when it came out that he joined an anti-government militia group, he claimed that it wasn't really all that anti-government even though it tried to overthrow the government as recently as ten months ago, but why are we even talking about that while BLM and Antifa are allowed to roam free? Have I got all that right?

Cool. Ok, I don't live in Riverside County, but this is California and because of our preposterous system, we were recently put through a recall election that could easily have ended with the sitting governor being replaced by someone with like, 11% of the vote, all because dumbs didn't want to wear masks during a pandemic. Are we saying that the people of Riverside County can't recall a Sheriff with selective amnesia who used to belong to a terrorist group? Because that seems like a valid use of a recall system.

"What? I can't possibly be expected to remember all
the right-wing, anti-government militia groups I join."

-Sheriff Chad Bianco

Well, it was nice while it lasted...

Did you notice feeling lighter? Less aggravated today? As though a cloud had briefly lifted from your life and for a moment, just a moment, the world was slightly less of a garbage fire? Well mystery solved: Facebook was down.

"Good riddance..."

-Everyone

"Oh, thank God, Facebook's back up.

-Everyone six hours later

Huh. I bet he's regretting breaking up.
Maybe you should like his dog pic?

Instagram and WhatsApp too, although I don't send many instant grams and I don't actually know what WhatsApp is even for. Facebook however was offline for about six hours forcing users to share dumb political memes and links to totally legit studies showing that the COVID vaccine reprograms your DNA to make you more open to socialist mind-control. It was tragic. For six hours today, you couldn't keep anonymous tabs on former classmates, coworkers you don't really talk to, and your college ex. Did you know he got a dog? 

Did uh...did no one notice her
walking out with piles of evidence?

And today the hilarious joke on the internet is how great it would be if Facebook went down for good. And maybe it would be great. I agree. In fact, just yesterday a former employee called Frances Haugen identified herself as the whistleblower who quit and walked out the door with reams--well, I don't know if they were literal reams, do documents even come in reams anymore? What is a ream? Doesn't matter, the point is Haugen put a ton of documents out there suggesting that Facebook knowingly spreads hate speech and misinformation because money. Which, I mean, that tracks right? Because bullshit and trolling is was more click-on-able than well-researched information and reasonable debate. Also everything is like, super-fucked up right now. 

But I think the question is, would we miss Facebook if it suddenly disappeared for good and I think the answer is yes, in the short term anyway. The short term being a few hours. But in the long run, no. Not because it isn't slowly killing us and its absence would trigger a renewed interest in kindness, civility, and real, human interaction, but because something else would inevitably replace it and we'd forget it ever existed in the first place.

Exactly.

Today in things that definitely won't backfire:

Santa Cruz County--which is where I live--has moved from orange to yellow on Wednesday. And to celebrate, the county has decided to lift the mask mandate, so now we no longer have to wear masks indoors in a lot of circumstances regardless of vaccination status. So basically it's mid June again, remember mid-June?

Here, check out this graph. Mid-June is that crater right before
the huge spike that happened when everyone let their guard down.

Huh? Ghost Rider. Wait,
what did you think I meant?

I mean, I don't know, would it have killed us to wait, I don't know, a week? Maybe two? Santa Cruz is one of six counties in the Bay Area to dip into yellow territory, but we're the only ones to rip the masks off and start breathing all over each other and I can't help but wonder what the rush is? Like, we've been at this for a year and a half. It's like 9/11. Hang on, I'm going somewhere with this. Remember 9/11? Ok, of course you do, but remember the decade following 9/11 where if you forgot 9/11 for even a second, there was a bumper sticker or a Nicholas Cage movie to remind you about 9/11. I'm sorry for bringing up such a difficult subject, but I'm approaching a point. After 9/11 a ton of precautions went into place, some of them reasonable, and some of them a bizarre TSA security line pantomime where we all take our shoes and belts off because it made us feel safe or something.

If ending the pandemic involved starting
a war with some country most of us can't
 find on a map, it'd be over by now.

And here we are, twenty years and two completely unrelated wars on, fully aware that a lot of these measure are just a waste of time, but we're still going through the motions. Meanwhile, COVID-19 has killed six hundred thousand of us and all we have to do is get vaccinated and wear a mask, but instead, nineteen months or whatever in and we're still fighting with asshats who hold up some story about their friend of a friend's cousin's dry cleaner who heard that the vaccine has a microchip in it as proof positive of how fake science is. 

Look, I don't know, maybe this is it (it's not) or maybe this is just another dip in an unending roller coaster of pandemic and we'll be back to masks indoors by next Tuesday (we will). But the point is could we please wait until the ride has come to a complete stop before forcing the safety harness off and climbing out like a bunch of dumbs?

"Wake up sheeple! Safety harnesses are just government tyranny."

-Some dumb about to ride a metaphor

Why not blimps indeed?

I don't know if I've mentioned this before (I have), so it may come as a bit of a surprise (it won't), but I don't like flying. Like, I can get on a plane if I absolutely have to, but it's an anxiety-filled ordeal and why not blimps? Can we just take blimps?

You have one dramatic, spectacular disaster that is forever seared
into the public consciousness and they never let you forget it... 

Here, watch these crashing waves instead of
thinking about how you're hurtling unsupported
through the sky at hundred of miles per hour.

I ask because according to Rosen Aviation, the future of air travel is windowless tubes of OLED screens running pictures of windows. Yeah. Their innovation--and I use the word sarcastically as indicated by the italics--is to replace windows on planes with screens that will display scenery as well as information about about the flight and even details about landmarks you might be flying over. So instead of enjoying the view, you can have the plane tell you about it. Cool, I'll just close my eyes and wait for the flight to be over.

The ludicrously named Maverick Project "was born from trying to bring tomorrow's technology into tomorrow's plane" gushes Lee Clark, the company's senior VP for strategy and, one presumes, awkward phrasing.

"Then what's the goddamn point?"

-Me

He went on to tell CNN that:

"One of the elements that is most critical for Rosen is the integration of technology seamlessly, that it's almost invisible technology."

-Lee Clark, on how invisible 

the cabin-spanning OLED 

wall panel displays will be

Yeah, ok, but why? Well, the CNN article points to structural advantages and I guess that makes sense. The tiny windows on planes essentially being weak points in the fuselage, but I'm just making that up. I'm not an engineer. What I am, however, is cynical and suspicious of any company whose website talks more about innovation and "stakeholders" than it does telling us what they actually do. 

"Our mission may be simple, but it's powerful. In advocating for each
of our stakeholders, we're ever mindful of their sometimes-competing
desires and define our results through their collective success."

-Rosen Aviation's mission statement...

which is about planes? I think?

Wouldn't translucent displays hovering
mid-air be, like, super-hard to read?

It feels like this is more about coming up with something that feels futuristic than practical or even desirable. The company boasts that they were recently up for an award for its holographic plane controls which let cabin crews operate the craft without having to touch the filthy, filthy control panels, which, sure. I suppose that's ok, but "holographic?" It sounds like motion sensors to me, but someone saw Iron Man so here we are, talking about holographic controls. The stakeholders love it.

Interesting word choice given how well
trickle down anything has worked out.

Oh well, you and I aren't likely to endure a six hour flight surrounded by a screen saver anytime soon. Clark is pretty clear that this is a rich people thing:

"It completely fits into business, first class--and I think some of those technologies can even trickle down to the coach environment.

-Lee Clark, sounding like quite the dick

But whatever. As stakeholder-enticing as things like holograms and OLED walls are, I'd personally be thrilled if someone would come up with something truly innovative: like tranquilizer darts so the cabin crew could knock out anti-maskers who loose their shit. Or legroom. That would be great.

Seriously, this is a problem. Can't someone shift some paradigms
or re-brand some mindshares and innovate us up some legroom?

This is Megatron all over again...

Today saw the release of a new Nintendo Direct, which are sort of like Apple's events except the press doesn't pretend it's real news, and everyone is stunned, stunned I say, by the news that Chris Pratt will be voicing Super Mario in the Super Mario Bros. movie.

Captain Lou Albano, who originated the role, could not be reached for comment.

Pictured: What happens when
you hand over creative control.

The film, still more than a year off, is the result of a collaboration between Nintendo and Illumination. Yeah, the studio who did Minions, but don't worry. After the ludicrous Robitussen trip that was 1993's Super Mario Bros. staring Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo, the video game company learned its lesson and is keeping a close eye on this adaptation to make sure it stays close to the source material and doesn't end up as another Blade Runner knock-off with dinosaur strippers.

Take it down a notch Shigeru,
he's already signed.

Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto announced both the release date and introduced the voice cast:

"First, of course, is Mario, who will be played by Chris Pratt. He's so cool! Mario will be talking a lot in the movie. Please look forward to Mario as performed by the very talented Chris San."

-Shigeru Miyamoto, gushing, like, 

just nerding out over Chris Pratt

Pictured: that one time Link spoke.
And no, Excuse me Princess doesn't count.

Which, I mean, I like Chris Pratt. He was fun on Parks and Recreation, and who would have thought that he'd be counted among the many leading Chris's? But "Mario will be talking a lot...?" I guess that makes sense, it'll be full length movie and yeah, I suppose the protagonist has to talk, but this is Mario. He's usually fairly mum. I mean, he's no Link, but his speech is limited to onscreen text (in the RPG's) or the occasional "Who-hooo!" or "Oh-no!" And I'm just not sure I can take a chatty Mario for two hours. And is Pratt going to be putting on a stereotypical Italian accent? The whole time? And perhaps more alarmingly, will Pratt be Mario from here on out? 

Since 1995 a guy called Charles Martinet has been the voice of Mario (and Luigi, and Wario). And he's also in the film, but according to Miyamoto, he'll be playing "surprise cameos," but not Mario. Again, I've got nothing against Chris Pratt, but "It's-a-me, Mario!" "He's we-a go!" "So-long gay Bowser!" Those are all Martinet.

Or "so long King Bowser" or possibly "so long-eh Bowser" or
whatever it is Mario says. The point is it's Martinet's voice we all hear.

Ironically, it was a bullet Hugo Weaving failed to
dodge. And uh, he was in The Matrix and-no? Ok.

But this is a business and they needed a name, and it is what it is. It's like when George Lucas CGI'd Sebastian Shaw out of Return of the Jedi and inserted Hayden Christensen in his place. Or when Frank Welker, who'd been the voice of Megatron for like twenty years, was passed over for Hugo Weaving in the live-action Transformers. Of course, in that movie Megatron was unrecognizable and the dialogue was both inaudible and dumb, so I don't know, maybe he dodged a bullet?

Anyway, this is a movie for kids, and I'm sure Chris Pratt will be fine, albeit a very different Mario. But still, I can't help but feel for Martinet who, after twenty-seven years, is basically doing "additional voices" in a movie he probably should have stared in.

Martinet may not look like a lead actor but I'd point out two things. First, this is a voice roll.
Second, did anyone really expect Andy from Parks and Rec to have the career he's had?

Yeah, but is it WATA rated?

Hey, someone just paid one million, one hundred and seventy thousand dollar for--get this: not a video game. A book. They paid $1.17 million for a book. A three-volume, first edition of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Yeah, that's the whole title. The weird punctuation, the "or," the second title. It's was a 1800's thing I guess.

"Well, they pay by the word, so..."

-Mary Shelley, on padding it out

Spontaneous combustion, incidentally, was
another dumb thing people believed back then.

To further contrast this from the recent spate of the ludicrous sale prices of decades old, but not really all that hard to find video games, Shelly's first edition of Frankenstein is legitimately rare. Shelly published five hundred copies in 1818, and did so anonymously because in the past everyone was a bunch of ignorant goons and the idea that a woman had not only written a book, but had written a book dealing with murder, alienation, and the implications of creating life, would have literally caused readers to spontaneously combust. 

Obviously the misogynistic, ignorant, classist, 
racist, 18th century is more screwed up, but
I mean, three Human Centipede movies? 

This version is also referred to as the "uncensored" edition because Shelly later published a revised, more commercial version that added lightning to the monster-making formula, criticized Victor Frankenstein's decision to play God, and made Elizabeth, his fiancée an orphan rather than his cousin. It all sounds pretty tame to twenty-first century ears, and you might question her artistic integrity, but then we live in a world of not one, but three movies about someone sewing people mouth-to-anus to see how long it takes them to die, so we have to ask, whose is the more screwed up culture?

"Suck it Austen!"

-Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly

Ok, but one point one seven million dollars? That's a preposterous sum of money to blow on a book, no matter how rare, right? Sure, but this is basically the first sci-fi novel in English, and calling attention to that fact and to the fact that the genre was invented by an 18 year old woman is pretty cool. And speaking of, this sale does beats a copy of Jane Austen's Emma out for the highest price paid for a book written by a woman record. 

But still, I'm conflicted. I think it's great that something like this makes the news and gets people interested, but it kind of sucks that rare books, or video games, or art so often end up being investments for rich people and not like, in a museum somewhere, or in the hands of researchers or preservationists. Instead it will just be on some rando's rare book shelf so they can show off to their friends, and that's a bummer. 

On the other hand, it's a book, an old one, but still, you know, a book.
I suppose we've reached the limits of what we can learn from the actual,
 physical object, so what the hell, I guess I'd take the money too.