Month: April 2018

So let me see if I understand this.

Comedienne Michelle Wolf is being castigated by Trump and his supporters, and even the press, for presenting a monologue during the White House Correspondents dinner that was deemed too mean and crossing the line.

Seriously?

Trump is condemning her?

Trump has dropped the level of discourse in this country to depths that it has never known, and HE is complaining?

The press barely reacts anymore to Trump’s non-stop verbal assaults on anyone and everyone, driving us to worry about nuclear war because he thinks calling a demented despot names is a good idea. To say nothing of the insulting nicknames that he hammered against everyone who ran against him, reducing the debates to something akin to squabbles in an elementary school playground. And THEY are complaining after doing nothing to challenge him over his behavior.

What the hëll, people.

All Wolf did was give as good as others have gotten, but boo hoo, the press thinks she went to far. Screw you guys. Trump goes too far on any day ending in the letter “y,” and the press does nothing about it aside from reporting it and then moving on to something else. And Trump, the insult president who doesn’t even have the balls to attend one of these dinners, thinks the entire thing should be shut down.

I’m warning everyone right now: when Trump decides to shut down the White House press briefing room, you don’t get to claim that it’s because Michelle Wolf was mean. It’ll be because you weren’t mean enough.

PAD

This is the beginning of my Cowboy Pete review:

Ten years after the launching of the Marvel movie universe with the astoundingly successful (obvious in retrospect but shocking at the time) box office performance of Iron Man, Marvel has now finally come through on the teaser that they situated at the end of the first Avengers film. Thanos has been lurking around in films ever since, not really doing much of anything except for showing up in the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie and just sitting there making threats, none of which he carried out.

Well, that all ends with the latest Avengers film: technically the third but really the fourth since Captain America: Civil War was actually an Avengers movie in all but title. Infinity War gives us the movie version of a story that fans of comics in general and Jim Starlin in particular know all too well: Thanos, the mad god of Titan, wants to destroy half of all lives in the universe. And the Avengers want to make sure that doesn’t happen.

What follows is a blink-and-you-miss it two hours and forty minutes that brings together every dámņëd character in the history of Marvel cinema, with the exceptions of Hawkeye and Ant-Man. Which is fine because a guy shooting arrows and a guy who shrinks or transforms into a lumbering giant wasn’t really going to make that much of a difference in the outcome.

And things happen. Oh boy, do things happen.

The rest can be found on my Patreon account.

PAD

So Trump must be feeling pretty spiffy this morning. The GOP-controlled Senate released their findings that claimed there was no evidence of collusion with Russia.

This was a document with reasoning so flawed that they stated Trump’s endeavors to set up a backchannel to the Russian government was proof there was no collusion in the first place. How, they “reasoned,” could they have been colluding with Russians before the election when they were colluding with the Russians AFTER the election? Yes, I know that makes no sense. What made far more sense was the Democrats who stated that the GOP’s opinions “have been crafted to advance a political narrative that exonerates the President, downplays Russia’s preference and support for then-candidate Trump, explains away repeated contacts by Trump associates with Russia-aligned actors, and seeks to shift suspicion towards President Trump’s political opponents and the prior administration.”

And we’re left sitting there thinking, “Of course they did. They’re the GOP. It’s all about holding on to power and blaming Hillary and Obama for everything (which naturally they did in this report.). On “The Tonight Show” they had a guy with a microphone on the street asking people if they thought Hillary Clinton should be impeached and bunches of likely Trump fans said yes, absolutely, we should definitely impeach a woman who holds no political office.

Continue Reading “Freak Out Friday – April 27, 2018” →

Introducing our list of contributors and the titles of their stories:

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
They Keep Killing Me: A Foreword of Last Words
The Killing Croak by David Gerrold
The Look on Your Face by David Mack
Revenge of the Clipper Kin by Joe Corallo
“Is it You?” by Bob Greenberger
The Hardwicke Files: The Case of Hauman’s Comet by Russ Colchamiro
House Hunting by Keith R.A. DeCandido
Patient Zero by Dean Scott
Buried in Books by Mary Fan
The Case of the Industrial Revolution by Kathleen O’Shea David
For Whom the Bell LOLs by Setsu Uzume
Too Ðámņ Tall by Lorraine J. Anderson
DuckBob: All In by Aaron Rosenberg
R is for Roadster by Blair Learn
The Long and the Short of It by Brett Hudgins
Marathon by S. Brady Calhoun
For Cockeysville by Michael Jan Friedman
Rhino by Amy Lewanski
Waking Things by Jenifer Purcell Rosenberg
The Day of Killing Endlessly by Paul Kupperberg
That’s All, Folks by Peter David

PAD

I’m a big fan of “Designated Survivor.” In this season, President Kirkman has pretty much been going through hëll. The accidental death of his wife shattered him, and at the insistence of his staff, he wound up sitting down with a therapist and trying to piece his life back together. But it turns out that someone has obtained recordings of the sessions (it’s always recordings that screw presidents, isn’t it) and released them to the nation. Kirkman’s self-admitted mental difficulties have prompted the VP and his cabinet to implement the 25th amendment in order to relieve him of duty.

And I couldn’t help but think what a stark line has been driven between fact and fiction. Kirkman is victimized by some áššhølë who releases private moments and doubts, and his cabinet wants to push him out. Yet Trump’s private recordings get released, and he’s still elected president. While in office, he displays the clear attitudes and actions of someone who is not mentally fit to be president, and yet the VP and his own cabinet do nothing to challenge him. They look away or they look up their own áššëš and ignore him, giving him license to do whatever the hëll he wants even though it lowers the bar for what is considered acceptable behavior.

Continue Reading “Freak Out Friday – April 20, 2018” →

What the HÊLL is everybody bìŧçhìņg about?!?

I expected to go into the first episode and see a recreation of the horrific film from back in 1998, which I saw at a special screening with freaking Bill Mumy seated there. That was what I thought I would be getting based on a stream of lousy on-line reviews.

Jesus Christ, are they all nuts?

I’m one episode into it and I loved it.

I’m going to be binge watching this over the next few days and will do a Cowboy Pete over on my Patreon account. But my first impression was extremely positive.

More soon.

PAD

It’s Friday the 13th, so what could possibly go wrong?

For Trump, the answer is simple: Everything. In the past week, every single thing that could possibly have gone wrong for Trump has done so. It’s like he’s lived through a week of Murphy’s law, Word from insiders is that Trump is figuratively falling apart: lashing out at everyone, fuming incessantly, shouting, having fits. Remember that this is someone who is haunted by two things: the investigation into Russia, and his utter inability to handle criticism. This week has been a banner seven days for both.

Continue Reading “Freak Out Friday – April 13, 2018” →