Shit that Pissed me Off – 4/12/19
I missed a couple of weeks again! I had really good excuses but never mind that. I’m going to try to hit on a few things that have come to my attention in the last few weeks. Enjoy the rapid fire journey!
South Dakota Schools Required to Display “In God We Trust”
South Dakota lawmakers, in a display of “patriotism” passed a law requiring the national motto “In God We Trust” to be prominently displayed in all public schools.
It may feel like this is a violation of the separation of church and state and no doubt that will be tested. I think it will actually stand because “In God We Trust” is actually our national motto and Donald Trump has been allowed to seat two conservative Christian white dudes on the Supreme Court.
You can argue that “In God We Trust” is a shitty national motto and far worse than the one it replaced (E Pluribus Unim or “Out of Many, One) but it doesn’t matter because it’s still the national motto. You could also argue that the word “God” could be referring to any god and not just the Christian god it clearly refers to.
Maybe it’s referring to Thor! You don’t know!
Hiding behind patriotism is the dodge that really pisses me off. I mean they have to do that because if they admitted their motivation was to put God on every public school wall because Christianity just isn’t enough places in our lives already, even Brett Kavanagh and Clarence Thomas might need to stop hitting on their clerks long enough to strike the law down. But the transparency of the act is galling. Of course this is about religion.
If you wanted it to be about patriotism, you’d just pass some law about posting the bill of rights in every school.
For the record, I’d be 100% behind that one. Kids should know their rights. Read More…
Shit that Pissed me Off – 7/20/18
Trump Corner: The Russia Problem
I don’t usually lead with Donald Trump because he’d pretty much always a problem. Him and the people who blindly accept everything he does as anything other than the actions of a narcissistic racist whose every action is meant to make things better for himself and his family members. And who is also a sexual predator.
This week, Trump had a private meeting with Vladimir Putin and proceeded to throw his own intelligence agencies under the bus in the press conference that followed. What he did was so blatant, even Fox news had to acknowledge it at first. They couldn’t side with Trump until a day later when he basically said that he didn’t mean what he said and also fake news.
Because the news is super fake when it is quoting what Trump said into a microphone.
Now all of this was bad. But I feel as if we lost something while we were all being pissed off at our President for being a clueless asshole.
He had a private meeting with Vladimir Putin and we still don’t know what they talked about.
Did Putin ride to the meeting on a horse while shirtless? WE DON’T EVEN KNOW THAT!!!!
Putin has even announced he is beginning to work on military agreements reached at that meeting. But we don’t know what those agreements are. It isn’t even clear that our military is aware of what those agreements are.
Understand, our President called the European Union our “foe” last week. He then had a closed door meeting with Putin in which even his staff was not allowed. And he got together with Kim Jong Un earlier this year.
When a President of the United States has nicer things to say about two dictators than he does about democratically elected leaders of state, it should scare the ever loving shit out of you.
This isn’t politics. Stop loving this guy because he’s a Republican. He isn’t. He’s a guy who will do anything and everything to better himself.
I don’t know what he talked about with Putin. And neither do you. Don’t get caught up being pissed at him for insulting the US intelligence community to forget that he was buddying up to an oppressive dictator.
….and so was Putin.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 3/30/18
Rick Santorum Suggests Students Should Learn CPR to Deal with School Shooters
It continues to baffle me that Santorum is considered the kind of person who should be taken seriously. A day after students took it upon themselves to stage a massive demonstration against guns in schools, he appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and suggested that the kids should stop asking other people to solve their problems.
Instead of asking politicians to do their fucking job, he said maybe these kids should take classes on how to deal with an active shooter or maybe learn CPR.
That makes sense, right? The kids are already in school and they don’t need to learn stuff like math and science.
He backed off his initial statement by saying he didn’t mean CPR. I’m not sure what he meant instead. Santorum has always struck me as particularly dumb and that means he might not have understood what he was saying when he said “CPR.”
I mean he clearly didn’t understand what he was saying when he chastised kids for asking politicians to do their jobs. Because the best thing an adult should do is tell kids that they should stop asking adults to keep them safe because the adults aren’t going to do it.
Even if, when he said it, he was accidentally telling the truth.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 2/2
Predominantly White Church Advertises for a Black Reader to help Increase their Diversity
When you read the ad, you think it has to be a complete fabrication because nobody would be so stupid as to say they are looking for an African-American to make them look more diverse. They certainly wouldn’t be so crass as to offer $10 and “all the doughnuts you can carry, would they?”
And they definitely wouldn’t include “must be able to read” in the job description, right?
This is a tricky one to write about because while the ad looks genuine, I haven’t been able to find the source. Snopes is silent on it so far so I’m going to guess it is genuine. Or maybe it isn’t.
I’m so upset about something right now, but I don’t know what it is!
Thing is – if it is some kind of joke post to generate a response from the internet, it is too believable to be funny. The reason it is generating a response is because it doesn’t feel like something that is impossible. And I mean, who is your target for ridicule? Black people who would be justifiably offended by it?
So either this is real and it was generated by a clueless moron or it is fake and it was generated by a clueless moron.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 1/19/18
Douchebag MRA Makes a Fan Edit of The Last Jedi to Remove all the Women
It has been a month but this next bit is going to include Last Jedi SPOILERS! Read not forward, dear friends, lest you learn too much!
The edit is 46 minutes long and pulled from a bad videotape of the movie someone made in the theater. Because when women are given power, it is important to strip away that power as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Now one might think this is a parody. Perhaps, you imagine, some person with a sense of humor saw all these nerdbros bemoaning the fact that Princess Leia rightly criticized Poe Dameron for failing to follow a direct order or that Admiral Holdo wasn’t a dude and thought “I’m going to make an edit that takes out all the girls because that would be hilarious.”
Nope. that’s not what happened. Instead, this shitbag literally believes that Leia was in the wrong when she demoted Poe for getting every Resistance bomber destroyed in an attack that served no purpose. So he edited it out to make Poe look like a hero who didn’t have to learn anything.
Does this look like a guy who should ever have to take orders from a woman? I didn’t think so.
And you know why? It isn’t because that was a bad story arc. No – it’s because the person teaching Poe that lesson was a woman.
The edit also removes Rey (of course) because the Jedi are dudes! Just look at them waving around that phallic laser sword all the time! Girls wouldn’t want to do that! They should be in the kitchen pouring blue milk!
What truly annoys me is that this guy might have a girlfriend. Or a wife. Or a daughter. He definitely has a mother.
But who gives a fuck about the women in his life, right? He probably loves them a lot. It’s just the women in his movies that he hates.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 1/5
It is a new year and late last year, I had trouble putting this column out every week. I’m going to do better this year but I have to tell you, this shit is hard.
It isn’t hard to write but when the White House is such an amazing shit show, things get a little tiring. I could write 1000 words about the asshole in the oval office every single week but I just hate even thinking about the guy.
So for the folks who look forward to my weekly rants, I’m sorry they’ve been so inconsistent. Let’s just start with the dick in the White House, shall we?
Donald Trump Responds to a Threat from North Korea by Making a Dick Joke
Does it bother anyone else that the most mature person in an exchange is Kim Jong Un? I don’t want to speak out for the guy who is the head of a recklessly oppressive regime that seems more interested in developing a nuclear bomb than they do in feeding their own people.
But when he rattled his saber, at least he didn’t do so by referencing his dick size.
Trump pointed out that Un is an oppressive leader by observing he has a “depleted and food starved regime” which, for once, was accurate. Then he proceeded to point out that he had a much larger dick nuclear button than Un.
I mean, maybe Trump and Un regularly exchange dick nuclear button pics so he has some knowledge of their comparative size.
It’s also a really bad analogy. This doesn’t look anything like a penis.
Thing is, we need to remember that our President is a sexual predator. He is always thinking about his penis. It is the central obsession of his life.
When he makes a tax proposal, he is thinking about how it will affect his penis. When he appoints a justice to the supreme court, he is thinking about his penis. Making a dick nuclear button joke on Twitter is one of the most honest things he’s ever done because he is pointing out that when he thinks about nuclear war, he’s thinking about his penis.
He sends unsolicited dick pics to himself. And he likes it.
Three more years (oh please) of this asshole.
Shit that Pissed me Off – 10/13/17
Judge Gives Rapist Joint Custody of His Child
With all the news of Harvey Weinstein and Ben Affleck and the fact we elected a known sexual predator President of the United States (fucking fuck), we should remember that this is all part of a culture that actually rewards rapists and sexual predators.
In this case, a 12-year-old girl was raped by a much older man and she chose to bear the child that was conceived as a result. Her body, her choice.
But when she applied for Government aid, she was forced to reveal the name of the biological father. And then that biological father took her to court for custodial rights. The prosecutor claimed the young woman had approved of allowing her rapist to spend time with his now eight year old son.
Thing is, she didn’t. And the judge didn’t fucking check.
Maybe they used some sort of alien mind control.
The whole story is out now and the judge has suspended the order pending another hearing but that likely means the young woman has to sit in court with her rapist just to explain why that fucker shouldn’t get parental rights to a kid who isn’t that much younger than his mother was when she was raped by his father.
All I’m saying is that women shouldn’t have to fight these fights, should they? Read More…
Shit that Pissed me Off – 8/4/17
Marvel Editor Posts Selfie With Her Staff and Gets Harassed
Look – this sort of thing just doesn’t happen to guys. I keep bringing it up but that is only because there is some subset of the human race that will respond to this story by saying “what’s the big deal?”
The big deal is she posted a fun little picture and a bunch of people harassed her because she’s a girl and they don’t think girls should be working in comics. That’s the crux of it.
There are guys out there who think women ruin comics simply because they are involved. It’s like they think comics are the one geek medium that is reserved just for them. What with Star Wars being completely overrun with women, they really need something in this crazy world that isn’t covered in girl cooties.
The Justice League, for instance, is completely swimming in girl cooties.
So they decide to take it out on a group of women who were having lunch. Because they worked in the wrong industry.
And no, this isn’t all guys. This isn’t even most guys. This is some tiny subset of guys who feel they are losing power because the comic industry is hiring women. Not a lot of women. Not enough women. But more than zero.
If we pretend that this subset of guys isn’t a problem, though, we don’t get it. Because if a bunch of male professionals in comics posted selfies, nobody would give a shit.
It shouldn’t happen to anyone. The fact that it happens only to women should piss us off. We shouldn’t be talking about how few people are doing this. We should be talking about how nobody should be doing this at all!
Shit that Pissed me Off – 6/23/17
Women Can’t Get Directing Jobs in Hollywood But Men Can
You know what is great about Wonder Woman? It was directed by a woman. Not because women should direct female helmed super hero films but because hardly any women direct feature films. Is it because they don’t want to or because Hollywood is notoriously progressive until it comes to actually giving women jobs?
Before you answer that question, keep in mind that Patty Jenkins directed Monster in 2003. Charlize Theron won Best Actress for the film. The next feature film Jenkins directed?
Wonder Woman in 2017
The article above talks about Colin Trevorrow, who was handed the keys to Jurassic World after having made one mildly successful Independent film. He’s now the announced director for Star Wars Episode IX. He also directed the new, apparently horrible, film Book of Henry.
The problem here is men with no experience are handed the keys to major films all the time. Women with experience are not. Know how many movies Kathryn Bigelow has directed since she won an Oscar for Best Director in 2008? Two.
Maybe someone tried to hand her a Star Wars movie. But I’m betting they didn’t.
I mean it’s not like there’s anything in Star Wars for women to like, right?
The issue here isn’t Colin Trevorrow getting work. It is the fact he is being handed major blockbuster films when more experienced women don’t even get a call. I mean, Michael Bay makes unintelligible crap but at least his films make (for some inexplicable reason) gigantic piles of money. When Trevorrow was given Jurassic World, there was no evidence he could do the same.
Except for the fact he was making a Jurassic Park movie so of course it was going to make gigantic piles of money.
If you handed a Captain America movie to a woman director, it would also make piles of money. So why doesn’t that happen? They only super hero movie handed to a woman so far is the movie about a hero who is a woman.
It can’t be sexism right? It has to be something else.
No. It’s totally sexism.
Shit That Pissed me off – 6/16/17
Conservatives and Liberal Alike Freak Out Because They Have No Idea What Julius Caesar is About
So last week Delta and Bank of America withdrew financial support from the Public Theater because their production of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare drew inspiration from politics of the day. As the article I linked to states, this interpretation isn’t new.
In fact, the Guthrie did an Obama themed version of the play five years ago. Outrage generated: zero.
What pisses me off here is the fact all these pissed off people apparently haven’t actually read the play. Or if they read it, they didn’t understand it.
And I get that. Shakepearean language can be challenging.
“Villain: I have done thy mother.” Titus Andronicus Act IV, Scene II
So here’s the thing: Julius Caesar is not a play about how awesome it is to assassinate political leaders. The assassins in the play all end up dead!
The motivations of one of them, Brutus, are noble. The motivations of the rest are less clear and certainly more selfish. Caesar himself is complicated – neither wholly good or wholly bad.
To pitch a fit because the subject of the assassination is kind of like Donald Trump is missing the point.
But further, what the hell has happened to our country that our President is off limits completely? We can make jokes about him but heaven forfend we depict him as the subject of an assassination attempt. We can only do that with fictional Presidents?
If the concern is that we’ll give people ideas, I’m sorry to say that they already have those ideas.
The events of this week already prove that.
Basically, this should be a non issue. The left shouldn’t care because fuck Trump and his party if they can’t take a joke (which this isn’t even) and the right shouldn’t care because they should fucking read the play.
Grail Diary 