Dec 102019
 

It’s from the Daily Fail, so take with a block of salt:

Humans are being exposed to 44 TIMES more infertility-causing and cancer-linked ‘gender bending’ chemicals than first thought

For starters, the headline doesn’t quite align with the text. The article itself indicates not that humans in the western world are being exposed to 44 times more Bisphenol A (BPA, a chemical often used in plastics) than previously thought, but rather the current “safe” level is 44 times what the researcher thinks the safe level really is. But then later in the article it says that new testing shows that the levels of BPA in people *is* higher than previously thought. Shrug.

Regardless, my interest here is a philosophical/political one. A number of researchers think that BPA is dangerous because it messes with hormones; it seems to reduce sperm count and screws up eggs. There is some thinking that BPA might mess with peoples hormones enough to screw with peoples sexuality/sexual identity.

So it’s *possible* that the current wave of transgenderism and soyboys and nonbinary nonsense might not be a result of natural human variation finally being allowed to express itself due to society becoming more permissive, but instead it’s a result of chemical contamination. Let’s say that that’s the case, and it can be proven so. Further, let’s say it can be demonstrated that if BPA is utterly eliminated from manufacturing, things will eventually return to normal. “Let’s do that,” I bet most people will say. But… the loudest people in society today are exactly the kind of people who would likely go apoplectic at the idea of reducing “diversity.” Imagine the political chaos if “chemical genocide” is proposed.

 

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 Posted by at 4:42 pm
Dec 092019
 

Huh. Now that the actual trailer has been released, it *still* doesn’t look like crap. Who coulda guessed?

From the comments:

“There hasn’t been a ghost sighting in 30 years”
2016 Ghostbusters: Is that like, a personal attack or something?
Real Fans: YES IT IS
“There hasn’t been a ghost sighting for 30 years.”
“but what about…”
“THERE HAS NOT BEEN A GHOST SIGHTING FOR 30 YEARS”
This trailer is already a better stand-alone movie than that thing they did in 16′.

And as a reminder of how *not* to do it…

And this also looks good:

 Posted by at 11:19 am
Dec 082019
 

The Austrian traditions surrounding Krampus the Christmas demon are, to American eyes, pretty bizarre. Instead of the vanilla tale of jolly old Saint Nick just wandering around doling out toys of adoring little tykes, here Santa is joined by the demon Krampus who takes the naughty kids with him back to Hell (or something like that). Sorta evens things out, I suppose. Part of the tradition seems to be public festivals where people dress up like demons and act out a bit. But it seems that they’ve been acting especially enthusiastic of late:

 

The initial reporting seems to be that these demonic cosplayers are just getting somewhat out of hand. As is the way of things, especially things written in weird alien languages like Italian, the story seems to grow in the telling, so that now it seems to be that what happened is that migrant colonizers in Austria took offense to Austrian tradition, tried to interfere, and got a wholloping for their troubles. The initial tale is just “oy”-worth bad behavior; it becomes feel-good rah-rah later, and quite likely inaccurate.

The later version of the tale is certainly the preferable one, as it involves heroics and Europeans finally standing up for themselves. But I suspect that’s not actually what happened.

 Posted by at 7:59 pm
Dec 082019
 

And so Warner Brothers released the first trailer for the second “Wonder Woman” movie today. I’m not enthralled with the DC movies, and the first Wonder Woman movie was at best OK, but this looks like it’ll be reasonably enjoyable. However, what *really* makes this stand out is the 80’s aesthetic… especially the music, a remix (or complete remake, dunno) of “Blue Monday” by New Order.

Sorry, Millenials and Zoomers… your music doesn’t get to be 80’s music.

 

The original by New Order, from 1983:

Get off my lawn!

 Posted by at 4:37 pm
Dec 082019
 

Alright, children, gather around, and let me regale you with a tale of the 80’s.

See, back then we still had a sense of humor about things that, today, would get you shut down REAL fast. Sure, we were in the beginning phases of the end of western civilization, what with “Stranger Danger” and “Satanic Panic” and the paradoxical responses to AIDS (“Kids! Panic! If you touch a girl, yer gonna diiiiiiiiieeeee!!!!!” but then also “Actually do something like shutting down bath houses and quarantining the infected? Pshaw!“), coupled with whacko laws like House Amendment 777 to H.R. 4332 and the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, but at the time we didn’t really *know* that we were on a steep decline to cultural oblivion, and we certainly hadn’t ceded control of culture entirely over to the panicmongers, fear merchants and the mentally ill. Consequently, we could still laugh at things without having roaming packs of screeching harpies try to destroy our lives over wrongthink.

A case in point: “Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun.” This has several features that would make it stand out today:

1: It’s a “novelty song.” Today “novelty” is pretty much dead, and “songs” have been replaced by talent-free autotuned a-melodious crap written by low-end AI algorithms with all the soul of solar powered Casio digital watches

2: The comedian here is a woman who:

2A: Is actually funny

2B: Isn’t focusing her “humor” on raging against the patriarchy

3: The subject matter is distinctly non-P.C.

You kids will never know the struggle of trying to listen to the Dr. Demento Show when it came on long after your bedtime.

 Posted by at 1:50 pm
Dec 082019
 

Congress Agrees Space Force; 2020 NDAA Vote Next Week

The House, Senate and the White House have struck a deal that will establish a Space Force as a sixth branch of the military…

Under the deal, the Democrats in Congress okayed the force in exchange for acquiescence by the Republicans to providing 12 weeks of paid maternity leave for federal workers.

The USSF will, unsurprisingly, be underneath the Air Force (as the Marines are under the Navy) and will at least initially draw its personnel from the Air Force. I’m honestly somewhat surprised that the House Dems can accomplish *anything* right now.

 

 Posted by at 7:13 am
Dec 072019
 

It appears that Ghostbusters may have a life after the monumentally disastrous 2016 abortion of a film:

First Look at Ghostbusters: Afterlife

“Ghostbusters: Afterlife” centers not on New York City, but somewhere objectively better: rural Oklahoma. The main cast is a single mom and her two kids; there is some mystery about who the dad is/was. It might be that Egon was the absent father (or perhaps grandfather, given that the mom is played by a woman born in 1981, about the time when the original cast were of marryin’ and breedin’ age). The trailer is to be released on Monday.

With luck G:A will pick up the tone of the original, something that G2 failed at and G:2016 utterly failed to even try to do. Ghostbusters was not at its heart a comedy, certainly not a slapstick one; it was very much a Lovecraftian horrorshow with comedy expertly tacked onto it by people who were experts at it and who knew what they were doing. Given that one of the kids is played by “Stranger Things/It” alum Finn Wolfhard, it certain seems not unlikely that they’ll try to do it right. Some of the images released seem to back that hope up. But we’ll have to wait until summer to know for sure… unless, of course revelations are made before then that the lessons of G:2016 were not learned.

 Posted by at 8:08 pm