Happy Birthday! What week it’s been, starting with the Super Bowl, then the Iowa Caucuses, then the State of
the Union address, the President’s acquittal, and Yang returning to the
debate stage. And in my life, I’ve had everything from filming the
movie I wrote to debating creationism with a youth pastor. The ridiculous letter project is still a long ways away, so I’m thinking of sending you a collection of BS every once in a while by email as opposed to immediately emailing it to you whenever I see it. I hope you enjoy. Don’t feel
obliged to click every link or whatever. I’m wondering if your
semester’s heat is turning up. Mine is around now, so I’m strapping in.
First is a video essay from Big Joel,
a leftist YouTuber who I go back and forth with regularly on Twitter. I
like his essays, even though I usually don’t agree with him on
anything, that is until now, I guess. Never thought I’d stand side by
side with a utilitarian, but this criticism of ethics rooted in empathy made relevant to the social media age, and Twitter leftism in particular, is really powerful.
Harvey Weinstein? In my 2020? Actress Jessica Mann, one of his accusers, testified that he has both a penis and a vagina and no testicles,
apparently intersex. Her description is fascinating and remarkably
improbable. Intersex people are super rare, and their extremely low
levels of testosterone mean that they are rarely
sexually aggressive. But the real question is the following: How do we
not know at this point? If it’s not true, Mr. Weinstein could just drop
trou and save himself from prison. It’s not like his genitals have
historically been deeply private objects… This should be easy to confirm
or deny! If you told me in 2017 that I’d be this curious to see inside
Harvey Weinstein’s pants, I’d have thought you’d grown a second head,
something that Harvey Weinstein just might have at this point.
CNN
received a bomb threat! It involved a Wii Sensor bar, a watch, some AA
batteries, and a ceramic grenade shell shoved into a pocket pussy. This
was deemed newsworthy.
Let’s
discuss the Super Bowl. No not the game. I didn’t watch it this time.
The commercials. I approach this topic with a degree of care, because I find the web articles about the hilarious
advertising sports fans get subjected to each year to be generally
insufferable. But advertisers get to decide things about our national
culture, and they present ideas about who we are and what we like. I
still think that there’s something interesting about high-profile
advertising.
I’ll start with Audi’s baffling Frozen X Game of Thrones pandering climate change themed ad???
Supremely strange. I do not understand this and do not have much to
say, but people apparently like this. The song has nothing to do with
the theme, no ideas are communicated. It’s just a hodgepodge of somewhat recognizable motifs with some branding. I commend this ad for totally understanding that the heart of the commercial is the aesthetic, not the substantive, and this is the humorous result of that understanding.
Then, Facebook has the gall to present itself as prosocial
in a clear attempt to make do after Dwane Johnson turns down being in
its commercial. Props to Dwane Johnson, if that’s the case. I wonder if
anyone buys this. I’m so deeply rooted in my anti-social media
circlejerk (probably my longest-lasting character trait) that I
sometimes think that everyone is kind of on the
same page, just less passionate about it. But then I see stuff like
this… Facebook wouldn’t make it if they didn’t think there weren’t
people open to this vision of what Facebook is,
and I’m sure its marketing people know better than I do. They’re
blasting this thing all over YouTube right now.
John Legend and Chrissy Teigen pretend to be relatable in one of
this year’s most fascinating ads. The premise is that the couple are
the cool, young, West Egg rich, just like the Genesis GV80, and unlike
the old, boring, fake rich. It’s message about wealth is staggeringly
direct and brazen. There’s a good rich and a bad rich and the difference
between the two is purely aesthetic, and Legend, Teigen, and this
luxury car all fall on the good rich side. I think I could ramble for
hours about how this frames the American Dream™ and dictates how we
should understand social hierarchy, but instead I’ll just take mild
offense at the jab at the guy in the loud suit. In my experience, a loud
suit does not create a personality, but it certainly indicates one. I think that this Bud Light commercial with Post Malone tells a better message about wealth—money means you can buy more stuff. That definitely checks out.
Finally, There was a Rick and Morty X Pringles ad which desperately wants not to be an ad. Pringles is literally the bad guy and at no point is the product endorsed.
There was also, of
course, the halftime show, hosted by Jennifer Laurence and Shakira. It
doesn’t seem like something that should have happened this decade, but
it was actually pretty well put together. It’s one of the better shows in a long history of flops, especially after Adam Levine’s abysmal showing last year. They did, however, push the line a bit. There was a lot of
skin, even for Super Bowl halftime standards. There were poles. There
were butts. I don’t really care, but I can respect how some parents
weren’t fans. However Coach Dave Daubenmire is taking it one step further. He is suing the NFL for $867,000,000,000,000 dollars. For real. He claims that the show put his soul at risk of
hellfire. I suppose JLo lit up his loins or something because damn does
he have a high valuation on his wretched soul. You have to watch this.
THEY WON’T EVEN LET YOU TALK ABOUT HOMOS ON FACEBOOK!!
This ridiculous week in politics began, but did not end, with Trump posting a shockingly normal tweet showing his “exercise” regimen. This was followed by Andrew Yang proposing a ban on killer robots.
This is the future, I guess. The real insanity began with the Iowa
Caucus disaster, which has shot the entire Democratic party in the foot.
Before the Caucuses, began Yang joked about knocking elderly voters unconscious, and dragging them to the polling place. Unfortunately, the old people put up a fight, and he only got 5% of the first-alignment vote… once it was actually counted.
The
action inside the caucuses was entertaining, as Biden continually
failed to make it to the realignment, and at least one Buttigieg voter
felt cheated upon discovering the former mayor’s homosexuality. This video is hilarious and very worth watching.
Apparently the cause of the embarrassing counting trouble was an app used to count totals.
You’d think that counting could be done in-house, but apparently not.
No one knows who made this app or how it works. The developer literally
calls itself Shadow. This was immediately after the Iowa Democrats had touted new security measures.
Along with that, it was reported that many leading the caucuses did not
understand the rules and counted wrong. These people want to run our
healthcare, and every Democrat ought to be upset about this process.
Also, apparently, /pol/ tried to interfere by clogging the phone lines.
To investigate this, reporters went to /pol/ and started sharing contact
info to get interviews. God I hope this produces some stories.
But
0% results on Tuesday did not deter everybody. Pete Buttigieg, who did
end up winning by a narrow margin (and losing the popular vote) due to
his heavy Iowa campaigning decided to declare victory
with NO VOTES IN. He literally says “an incredible result” when there
are 0 reported results. The results that we did get were game changing.
Now Buttigieg and Sanders are surging, and Joe “kisses his granddaughter
on the lips” Biden is in deep trouble after barely campaigning in Iowa
and achieving only 15% of the vote. His campaign was so shocked, it filed an injunction questioning the accuracy of the results.
The President had a very strong State of
the Union address, exclaiming his significant economic achievements and
avoiding the whole “withholding funds from Ukraine so they’ll
investigate Rudy Giuliani’s conspiracy theories” thing. In it, he gave
the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh, which was a pretty good meme.
As I’m sure you’ve heard, Limbaugh announced his cancer diagnosis this week,
and it looks like he doesn’t have long to live. I don’t give a fuck
what anybody thinks about his politics or his sleaziness, no one
deserves cancer… and I do mean no one. Twitter disagrees. Democratic
Congresswoman Gabbard posted her prayers for the Limbaugh family and got
raked over coals for it. I’m still thinking about the vileness that I
saw and my personal ethical philosophy. The celebration of suffering is evil, and I think I need to take a stronger stand against it.
Then
Trump was, predictably, acquitted but, as I’m sure you know, not evenly
on party lines. Based Mormon Mitt Romney wrecked his entire political
career to go against the circlejerk. Lou Dobbs, perhaps the nuttiest
dude on Fox News, rated this as a betrayal worthy of Judas and Benedict Arnold.
Following acquittal, Trump had an unhinged address in which he swore on
National TV and described Steve Scalise getting shot in graphic detail
with finger guns and sound effects and everything. Supremely
entertaining and a bit disturbing.
As
for me (if you even made it this far down… I don’t blame you if you
didn’t), my atheist club had a guest, and I got to debate creationism
with a youth pastor! It was like old times. What an idiot though… My
classes have taken off, and I’m embarking on a project to build a Linux
shell. Wish me luck. I got to see the second screening of the feature film I worked on. It’s coming together. I can’t believe we managed to pull it off. My movie’s production is kind of
a mess at the moment, but that’ s usually how it goes. I’m really just
trying to stay sane this time around. Take it a little easier. Write
more, even if its in the form of unrequested emails. I hope you’re doing well,
Thanks,
Jacob Morris
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