Thanks Hiram...

Just...just don't be a goon, alright? I dropped my ballot in the mail today and-huh? What ballot? I'm glad I pretended you asked. My ballot for the recall election, and no, I didn't procrastinate, I just moved back to California and only now got it in the mail.

Above: me, filling in a circle as emphatically as one can. 

If it ever seems like I'm being harsh when
I call it the party of garbage people, bear this
in mind: fake ballot boxes. I rest my case.

If you don't live here or just haven't been paying attention, when it comes to elections, California is...I don't know, what's the phrase? Fucked? There's this system by which if someone can get enough people to sign a petition, it triggers a recall. The problem is that the number is pretty low (12% of the votes cast in the previous election for the office you want to recall), so like, any asshole can do it. And by any asshole, I mean the state's Republican Party. Remember them? They were the ones setting up fake ballot boxes during the 2020 election.

Anyway, making things even worse is the fact that you vote on whether you want to recall the Governor, and if you do you can then vote for one of a number of replacements. And that number is a staggering, eye-watering forty-six. Forty six. 

A menu with too many choices almost guarantees disappointment.

I mean, an American Gladiator-like
 competition would actually be more
democratic then this nonsense.

A veritable goat rodeo of third tier celebrities, fringe loonies, and randos. And whoever gets the most votes is the new governor. But hey, that's democracy, right? But hang on. If Governor Newsom looses, then the winner is whoever gets the most votes of the forty-six other possible contenders, so our next governor could easily be someone who gets like ten percent of the population actually voted for or ever heard of before. That's how Arnold Schwarzenegger got to be governor that time. I guess he was kind of ok? I don't know, I didn't live here back then.

But no such luck this time. Of the challengers the front runner appears to be Larry Elder, an anti-mask, anti-vax libertarian who wants to fight homelessness by suspending the Environmental Quality Act...for some reason. 

He knows this state is on fire, right?

To be clear, they want to recall Newsom
because the pandemic isn't over because
they won't wear masks like Newsom asked.

You might be asking yourself: "holy shit how is this even how this works?" Well, obviously Republicans who, butthurt about having to take simple precautions to save lives, have taken it upon themselves to harness the general misery to try and seize power. But we can also blame historical Republicans for the system that makes it possible. Although this was back in the olden days where instead of disenfranchising anyone not a white male, they were actually about suffrage and fighting corporate interests. 

The idea was to make it easier to get rid of shitty elected officials without having to go through an impeachment process which, I mean, we could have shaved years of the Trump era if this had been an option.. But the bar to trigger it is just so low and the way the replacement is selected is just so objectively batshit, I don't understand why someone hasn't fixed this yet. If Newsom survives this, maybe he could, you know, do something about it?

Pictured: Early 20th century California governor Hiram Johnson,
whose fault all of this is, seen here threatening us? I guess?

I have opinions about other people's dogs

Pictured: the 1986 Oscars were also not
Burning Man, but we're not discussing that.

Hey, I'm back and I'll even spare you the embarrassment of not even noticing that I was gone. I was not at Burning Man, which is to say I was in the desert, in the place where Burning Man usually happens, doing Burning Man stuff, but I was instead at an event that was similar to, but legally distinct for liability purposes from, Burning Man. The actual event was cancelled because people are dumb and think there are microchips in the vaccine, so where we are. Or were, not at Burning Man for a week. And now I'm going to talk about it.

Evidently EDM is a strong organizational
motivator. That or people just really love
doing drugs in the desert. 

The unofficial event was unofficially called Renegade Burn and it was pretty good. It lacked the organization, art, and infrastructure of the real thing, but we managed. A group on Facebook materialized after the announcement that it was canceled and self organized a rough approximation of the city layout that I think people more or less stuck to. And, while not anything anyone had any control over, the weather was decent, which, in the sun-blasted wastes of northern Nevada, is never a given. All in all it was a good year, and no, I didn't take any pictures, so you can relax. I'm not going force you to sit through my vacation slides this year.

But I am going to make you sit through my opinions about dogs. Or, more precisely, dog owners. There were dogs out there this year, which is something that's not been allowed at Burning Man for years, but this being an unofficial thing, all bets were off and a lot of people brought their damn dogs. And you know I'm not a pet person, but let me be clear that my issue is with the people and not the dogs. I am dog indifferent. Dognostic, if you will (you shouldn't). But I certainly don't want to see them come to harm and come to harm they did.

I look at this and feel nothing. I know, I'm the worst.

First timers are invited to roll around in it,
but they're, you know, sentient and can
make their own terrible decisions. 

Renegade Burn happened in a dry lake bed in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The ground is made up of a sometimes compacted, sometimes not, dry, powdery dust that's like super alkali and awful on the skin. People can wear shoes, but dogs can't. And did I mention how hot it can get? Because it can get hot. It was in the upper 90's a lot of the time and dogs have, you know, fur. Or hair. Or both? I don't know, I'm not a vet, the point is dogs didn't evolve for this climate so what is with these people who thought their dogs would like to spend a week panting and limping around on dry, cracked foot pads?

What's worse is that people are now finding dogs wandering the desert because the asshats that brought them couldn't see their way clear to keeping an eye on them. So now they're lost. Awesome. Again, I don't care about dogs, but I do care that people take care of their dogs. I mean, I'm not a monster. Cold and unfeeling, sure, but not a monster.

Pictured: Somebody's dog. Is this your dog? If so, what were you thinking?

They look them up before hiring them, right?

This Jeopardy! host thing is just, as the kids would say, a goat rodeo, isn't it? Huh? What, don't the kids say that? Like, when something is just an unmitigated disaster, it's a goat rodeo. No? Fine, would you prefer shit show?

Pictured: Basically Jeopardy!

Is it just me or does Richards have a
punchable face? Even before I knew about
him, I kind of wanted to punch that face.

In the seemingly unending quest to fill the un-fillable shoes of late host Alex Trebek, nothing, like, nothing, has gone right. They went through a series of guest hosts including everyone's favorite and objective best choice LeVar Burton, but then chose Mike Richards, pleasing no one. Then suddenly noticing Richards's list of problematic comments and actions that everyone else had been pointing out all along, they did an about face. Richards stepped back and agreed to sensitivity training which I'm sure is definitely going to happen and which I'm also sure he's going to take super seriously and reevaluate his own behavior.

And thanks to billionaires selling rides
on their dick rockets, I guess "this isn't 
rocket science it's _____" is out too.

Ok, fine. In the short term, Mayim Bialik, the other host Sony announced for Jeopardy! specials is going to take the reins. Cool. Except she has a history of espousing anti-vaxxer nonsense, blaming Harvey Weinstein's victims for dressing too sexy, and promoting creepy, survival of the fittest views on parenting and child birth. Which is super-disappointing because, I mean, she's a scientist. A neuroscientist in fact. Like, that's the go-to branch of science we bring up when we want to say something's easy. Like, we say" "this isn't brain-surgery it's whatever is way less difficult."

Pictured: the exact amount of
research Sony needed to do.

So a scientist with a passion for pseudo science and debunked crackpot theories about vaccines and autism is maybe not the best choice for hosting a gameshow all about knowledge. "But whatever, bring on LeVar Burton!" you say. Weeeell, here's the thing. LeVar Burton was--oh! No! Don't worry, he's fine. He's not like secretly a flat-earther or a MAGA goon or anything. As far as we know he's great. The problem is that apparently he wasn't even in the running, and that Sony was only every considering Bialik and Richards. So now what?

Ken Jennings was the original front runner, but he's also someone who doesn't know when to shut his tweet hole. So LeVar Burton, right? He was the next favorite on that poll. Ahead of Bialik even. The studio apparently felt he just wasn't a good fit, but we know how good their judgment is, so maybe it's time to give him a second look?

"Nah...Hey, what's Pharma Bro doing? Is he still in prison?

-Some Sony exec

The vast, maskless divide!

Well it was a long, harrowing drive, but I'm glad to be home and-huh? You didn't notice I'd gone radio silent for like a week? I'll uh...I'll try not to take that personally. Anyway, I just completed a four day drive across country back to my adoptive home of California after being gone for more than a year. Long story, you don't care, I just wanted to talk a little bit about what I noticed while passing through half a dozen states during a pandemic, twice. 

Above: literally any point along this drive.

What? Not only is that comparison fair,
it's also apt. If anyone knows STD's...

Usually around this time of year, I'm off to Burning Man which--don't judge me--anyway, it doesn't matter because it's been canceled because of COVID. Again. Well, more precisely because dumbs turned some simple precautions like wearing a mask and getting a life-saving vaccine into a weird political issue. Because Trump. Yeah, I blame him for a lot of things and in a sense that's oversimplifying. That's like blaming open sores instead of herpes or the decisions that led you to herpes. 

Above: a crowd of people angry at, yet
lacking a working definition of, socialism.

My point is that the thing that's actually killing us as a nation is divisiveness. Well, ok, and a virus. And I-huh? No, COVID, not herpes, but I can see where you--doesn't matter. Where I'm going with is that I don't mean divisiveness in the both sides-y, the solution is somewhere in the middle sense. I mean divisiveness in the sense that one side hates the other so much that they're listening to junk science and endangering their own kids (and the rest of us for that matter) because actual science is librul and they'd rather die than let the socialists win. 

First of all, I asked you not to judge me.
Secondly, it's not like I said Coachella.

I mention this because on this trip back to California, like the drive I did back in 2020 to New York, masks were few and far between everywhere in the emptiness that is the states in between and I blame them. You know, for the fact that we're still talking about COVID in the present sense. Granted, this is just based on observation and my sample size when gauging the vast, maskless divide in America was limited to the gas stations that line Interstate 80, but holy shit, if they'd just get with the program, we could all go to Burning Man again.

And the most frustrating thing--ok, apart from the death toll, the continued need to mask, and the crushing economic repercussions of a sustained crisis--forget it. A frustrating thing about all of this, is that very same people who can't stop shrieking about how that they have a God-given right to military-grade weapons to protect themselves and their families are often the least likely to get the damn vaccine.

They know they can't shoot the virus, right?

The Great Chicago Ire

Everyone: 1, Amazon: 343,123,653, which, I mean, still pretty bad, but hey, at least they won this one, right? Which one? Why this one: the City of Chicago's Park District moved a bank of Amazon lockers they for some reason--ok, money, but we'll get to that--agreed to instal in the middle of the sidewalk. Like, just right there, bolted to the concrete.

"Are you for goddamn kidding me?"

-Everyone who tried to

squeeze past this

Remember when they were content
to just run bookstores out of business?

The lockers, which we're supposed to refer to as an Amazon Hub™Locker System, are, well, lockers where packages can be securely delivered or picked up. They have some at convenience stores and other businesses and I was apartment hunting recently and I saw a place that advertised a Hub as a selling point. And I guess it's slightly less invasive than say, letting the delivery person open your door and come in to your home, which is another "service" the company offers, but it's still an unsettling reminder that they have their tentacles everywhere.

"You left out the part where I get a
cool hat and go to space, but yeah, that's
pretty much been my business model."

-Jeff Bezos

While part of the public outrage in Chicago was practical; the lockers blocked park access, especially for people in wheelchairs. It also came from the idea that public spaces should be free of commercialism. The petition that went around referred to Amazon as a predatory business and it is. They can sell things for less because they underpay workers and they don't have to pay for overhead (or taxes). This kills brick and mortar retail, leaving more people unemployed and desperate, leading to crime like porch piracy, hence the need for the lockers. Am I warm? 

Ok, people wanted them gone because they're a business-y eyesore in what's supposed to be a retreat for city-dwellers. But I guess what I'm left with is utter bewilderment at how anyone at the Park District could have thought that everyone would just be cool with these things? Turns out it's money. Try to act surprised. 

"Whaaaa?"

-No one

"Our aim was simply to improve the park
by utilizing otherwise wasted green space."

-Amazon (probably)

According to Alderwoman Rosanna Rodriguez, whose office took the brunt of the complaints, it's a case of a municipality desperate for income:

"When you have public institutions that are not well-funded, and can't function with the budget they're provided by the government, they need to look for other sources of revenue. This is how we get a company like Amazon to have a presence in our public parks. It's disheartening."

-Rosanna Rodriguez on the corporate 

dystopia we're sliding towards

Yup. Disheartening is the word, although the fact that the reaction and subsequent removal was so swift (it took like three days from tweetstorm to crowbar) gives me some hope--like, the faintest hint of a whiff of hope, but still quantifiably hope--that we've not completely surrendered to our hyper capitalistic overlords.  

Remember how in Blade Runner the future was just a constant barrage
of advertisements and copora-oh, sorry, that's actually a picture of now.

The white whale of immature adulthood

So let me begin by assuring you that I realize that there are far more important things to worry about than what I'm about to rail against. The pandemic, voting rights, who's hosting Jeopardy!, lots of things matter more. That said, can we just talk about how aneurysm-inducing it is to try and get one's hands on the new Xbox?

Pictured: the part of the brain responsible for
loosing one's mind over retail scarcity.

They were a nail in the coffin of small
business, but Amazon was the last nail,
so I'm in the clear right? Right?

I mention this because yesterday I got a notification that Walmart was going to restock the new console at noon and then again at nine. And yes, I've become the kind of person that signs up for notifications. Want to know when a Funko Pop is up for preorder? No, me neither, but here we are. And before you judge me know that I boycotted Walmart for years for paying low wages, selling guns, and for being the death of American retail and it's only now that they've begun offering to pay employees' college tuitions that I'm even thinking about buying something from them. Thinking about mind you, but we'll get to that. 

"Take it. Taaaake iiiiiit!"

-Me, evidently

Putting aside my uh, what do you call them? Ethical qualms? I decided that I'd try to snag an Xbox from Walmart. So the time came, I hit refresh again until the "add to cart" button appeared. I hit it and nothing. Sold out. It sold out in actual seconds. The notification had said that the store would make more available every ten minutes for the next hour so I sat there until one, finger hovering over the refresh waiting, but to no avail. Sold out every time. Ok, fine, I'll just wait for the next batch at nine. I mean, what else am I going to do, not give them my money?

So nine p.m. rolls around and this time I get a button that says "press and hold" so I did. It was some new captcha thing they apparently decided to implement since earlier that day. I suppose it was designed to screen out the bots. You know, that software dirtbags use to snap up scarce items and then resell them at an inflated price?

I'm sure the programing skill required to create software capable
of pressing and holding is far beyond the capabilities of resellers.
I mean, that's just the stuff of science fiction. 

While we were pressing and holding like a
bunch of chumps, some reseller was putting
 the last Xbox up on eBay at a $300 markup.

Super, so Walmart was finally doing something about that. Except no. The progress bar filled up, and I got a check mark, but nothing happened. And it wasn't just me, my fellow grown-ass adults on twitter seemed to be experiencing the same frustrations. It went on like this for an hour while I sat there holding the button, reevaluating the life choices that led me to spend my evening trying in vane to hand a symbol of everything wrong with capitalism five hundred dollars. This is actually the third time I've tried to order one of these, so you'd think I'd have learned, but no. 

I'm not even sure I could tell you why I want one at this point beyond the fact that they're impossible to find. But buying something from Walmart? In the end all I'll have done is surrendered five hundred dollars and my self-respect and for what? A slightly improved version of a game console that's already taking up too much of my time and space under the TV? Has it come to this? Well, it does has ray-tracing--whatever that is--so yes, I guess it has indeed come to this.

Pictured: basically.

The host with the least!

In a move sure to please no one with the possible exception of Mike Richards, Mike Richards has been confirmed as the new host of Jeopardy. 

Oh...a nondescript white guy in suit. Way to think outside the box.

"Hurray!"

-No one. In the world

And my question is why? And also, who? As you probably recall, when beloved and Canadian host of 37 seasons Alex Trebek died of cancer last year (because fuck cancer), the show's producers including, Mike Richards, were left with the difficult task of filling the position. Their solution was to test the waters with a series of guest hosts these past few weeks including Dr. Oz, Katie Couric, Anderson Cooper, Mike Richards himself and some sports guy that some people don't like I guess? I don't know. Anyway, there were a few others, but by far the objective best choice was LeVar Burton. Or Mayim Bialik, she would have been good too. But instead they went with Richards. 

And I guess I just feel that Jeopardy! should be hosted by smart people. Ok, I have no reason to suspect that Mike Richards isn't smart, but LeVar Burton is the walking, talking embodiment of reading to millions of Americans and Mayim Bialik is an actual neuroscientist. And to be fair, she will also be hosting, but only the specials, begging the question: why isn't she the regular host?

Pictured: Mayim Bialik talking about something way the hell smarter than whatever
gameshow producers talk about. Ratings probably? Or which case has the money in it?

"Fuck mailboxes."

-Alex Trebek 

(actual quote)

Also, isn't Mike Richards the subject of numerous discrimination lawsuits from his time producing The Price Is Right? The answer is yes. Alex Trebek was never a jerk to anyone, that we know of I mean. I did extensive research of his wikipedia page and the worst thing he ever did was fall asleep at the wheel and take out some mailboxes. And that was an accident. Probably. Mike Richards, fired a Price is Right model for being pregnant, and sexually harassed and fired another one. Oh, and he demanded that the models' skirt be shorter and that they appear in bikinis more often, which, I mean, that's gross right? He's gross. 

Ok, all of that is alleged, but he settled in both cases, but I mean, if nothing else the Jeopardy host should be above reproach, shouldn't they? 

Like this guy. This guy would never fire you because you're pregnant.

Maybe he cried at the interview?
Worked for Brett Kavanaugh. 

There was a poll that found that 74 time champion Ken Jennings was the frontrunner, with Richards as the number two choice and Burton in third and Bialik in fourth, but hear me out. Jennings is recognizable to Jeopardy!'s fans and he was the first guest host, so no surprise that he came in first. Richards was second so he may have seen a bump there as well. Now I'm just speculating but if Jennings was un-cast-able thanks to his habit of shitty tweets, shouldn't Richards also have been out of the running for the firings and the bikini thing?

Sure, the poll had LeVar Burton in third but they only surveyed 1,003 people while he had an internet petition with a quarter of a million signatures. And Mayim Bialik has a huge following as well not to mention a PhD. So is it me or does this look really bad? I mean, who knows why they went with Richards, but it kind of looks like they skipped two more qualified choices and went with a white guy with a history of harassing women.

Pictured: Not the new host, but should be.

Pictured: Also not the new host, and should
be, but at least she gets the specials?
Which is something...I suppose...