Microblog 2

Just watched Bullet Train, which was fun. It was like watching an off brand Tarantino film and Cohen Bros film at the same time.

It was basically a stunt plot, with all sorts of implements chekhoving around for the first half and all of it resolving and becoming important at the end. Plenty of “Whoa is that?” moments with A-list actors wandering onto set for a thirty second paycheck and it all hinges on Brad Pitt as a pop-psychology spouting hired goon who doesn’t like guns. It was like reading a book from an author from whom you’ve already read ten books. The beats were there, it was fun, it was like candy, and I’ll probably remember the sushi I ate while watching it better than the movie in a year.

There’s currently a writer’s strike on in Hollywood, so I shouldn’t throw stones, but this thing had huge “I watched Reservoir Dogs last night” energy. Although, even in an old man costume Hiroyuki Sanada is still the most uncannily handsome man in a cast with multiple Sexiest Man of the Year winners.

Tucker Carlson was fired a week ago for having text messages so bad even Rupert Murdoch didn’t want him around. He’s already begun his “I was cancelled by the establishment” tour so I don’t know if he’s gonna start a substack or a podcast. I think he’s going to learn real quick that a huge amount of his success was just slithering into O’Reilly’s time slot while the channel played on in waiting rooms, nursing homes, and mcmansions. He’s not overtly extreme enough for the terminally online right and the mainstream are gonna move on really quick. My money is split between him becoming the new flagship of one of the Fox-lite channels like OANN and him showing up on CNN like the caged monster role that started his career. A quick lap of the Glenn Beck patented “Huh, maybe we misjudged him” crying bases to get the centrists on board and he’ll be back to implying that black people are lesser than him and that the poor deserve debt slavery in no time. He’ll just no longer proudly hold the torch of “most watched cable news host” with numbers that would have gotten him cancelled any year before 2010.

Since these days literally any asshole can make a couple million American’s believe that the Trumps and Clintons are having orgies with the Bidens in the Rose Garden if they have “done their own research” I’m sure he’ll be fine. But it is nice to know one of the people who have made all of my conversations about politics at least 40% worse for years has been dealt a tiny setback.

Did you know the word Apocalypse in Greek meant something like “to reveal” or “to make right”? We all are hoping for some sort of Apocalypse these days. The internal contradictions in the world are straining harder than they have in a century. I keep seeing videos of protests against King Charles’ coronation, and it seems like they all know that’s what it will take to stop a priest from spooning oil over the visibly decaying head that is about to wear the fancy hat. It’s like Ursula K le Guin said: it’s easier to imagine the end of the world. I think in a lot of ways, we all expected Covid to be that. It’s like we were waiting for the credits so we could finally go take a leak, but this movie just keeps having more climaxes.

I hate that I have to say this but Trans people aren’t even close to a new idea (we have explicit writing about them from Ancient Egypt and even older depictions) and the GOP is just going to move on to another scapegoat as soon as they can finally bribe a SCOTUS judge to give cross-dressing the death penalty. They don’t care about your kids. Red states are all signing laws to get them to work earlier and to pull them away from their parents as fast as they can. They’re seeing just how un-democratic they can get (see Montana, see Florida) while people put their fingers in their ears and pretend it’s all business as usual. Pretending that disassembling the education system, removing elected representatives, and installing governor directed committees to oversee basic aspects of society are somehow normal. The political class are committed to minority rule as a concept, and the geriatric leadership of the Democrats are just as on board as the GOP. I spent decades listening to “conservatives” railing against what they called “legislation by court” as un-democratic (which, to be clear, it is) only for them all to about-face the instant McConnell hatched his plan to have the Dems let them be the bad guys. Now every small business owner in a gown is ready to bring the gavel down on whatever they find icky and make people suffer for political points.

Transgender rights are as important as any other rights, they are as important as poor people’s rights, as elderly rights, as parental rights, as any set of “we shall not be told what to do on our own time” principles can be. When Atlanta is forcing their own populace to allow a training complex to be built to allow “police” to train to fight citizens more effectively, we should not be making being an American of any sort more illegal. If you have some phobia or bias against people just doing their own thing, consider what it will feel like the first time someone with a liiiiittle more social power gets “the ick” from you and there’s a heavily armed and legally immune thug ready to beat your brains out nearby. And if you seriously buy the grooming line then you have no idea what the reality is and probably no interest in finding out. Stop listening to these craven assholes who are directly motivated to lie to you. They don’t care about You. They don’t care about Us. The Lesser Evil is a Lie.

Trans rights are human rights. Leave my fellow Americans the fuck alone.

The Apocalypse is here because we’re all seeing the guts exposed, and we’re all too busy watching Bullet Train or pretending that China is in any meaningful way different than the US to care.

A homeless man was strangled to death while his attackers grinned and people recorded it. A very loud blob of the country has decided that being homeless and upset about it deserves death. “Least of these” indeed.

Stay safe out there folks. Watch each other’s backs and understand that we’re all just trying to get through life. The media/government/rich/pedophilic elite win when we’re scared of each other. Don’t let them win.