If you live in a small town, sooner or later you have to go to Wal-Mart. It's not a pleasant experience, but sometimes you have no choice. This happened to me recently and it was every bit as awful as you'd expect, (right down to a great big pile of poop--possibly not human--in the middle of the bathroom floor) but I did find something that will turn out to be either kind of neat or even a more harrowing experience than going to Wal-Mart: several collections of what promise to be terrible movies for $5 each.
I picked up three of these collections. The first was Freakshow Cinema, which features 12 recently made (and based on the first one, I'm guessing mostly amateur-made) horror movies, which I bought entirely because one of the movies is called Order of One: Kung Fu Killing Spree. How could I pass that up? I love me a good Kung Fu killing spree. I also got Sci-Fi Fever, which features 20 sci-fi flicks from a 1948 movie called Counterblast to what looks to be a 3-part mini-series from 2001 called The Infinite Worlds of H.G. Wells. Of course it was the 1983 Fred Williamson cheese classic Warriors of the Wasteland that really made me buy this one. Finally, I got The Best of the Worst, a collection of epic bad movies including Manos: The Hands of Fate and The Beast of Yucca Flats.
I've always claimed to like bad movies, and now I'm going to put my money where my mouth is. I'm going to watch all 44 or these awful movies. I'm not going to set a time limit on this since some may require a certain amount of recovery time and repeated viewings of Terry Gilliam movies to afterwards restore my faith in the art of cinema. However, once I start watching one of them, I will not stop until it's over, no matter how much I want to. Then I'll post reviews of them here, because presumably some of you also like bad movies but don't want to watch this much crap to find the good bad ones. Consider it a public service.
The first movie on the list is from Freakshow Cinema and is called Zombie Genocide: Legion of the Damned. Watching the opening credits, I was reminded of The Howling: New Moon Rising. Much like Clive Turner before him, Gary Ugarek wore many hats while making this movie: he directed it, stars in it, wrote the original (I'm guessing extremely unpublished) short story it was based on, etc., etc. Unfortunately, Gary is no Clive Turner, and that's really saying something.
Right from the opening credits, you know this is not going to be an easy movie to watch. The soundtrack music sounds almost like an instrumental version of a Cinderella song, and it takes skill to make something made in the 21st Century that starts with knock-off 80s glam rock watchable. This music (or something very similar to it--it's so perfectly bland I couldn't really tell) will appear in the movie a few more times, and when it shows up is actually a welcome change from the steady-drumbeat-dirge-like-seriously-can't-you-hear-how-atmospheric-and-spooky-this-movie-is-even-though-you're-bored-out-of-your-mind? music that dominates the soundtrack.
Anyway, once the Cinderella tribute band finishes, we're introduced to what I will generously call our protagonists, Pony-Tail Man and Bald Guy, one of whom I assume is Gary. Pony-Tail Man has a wife and kid. His pal Bald Guy is recently divorced and likes to party all night (we know this because they mention it about a dozen time in a stilted five-minute conversation). They're going somewhere, and after Pony-Tail Man's wife warns Bald Guy not to let her man get into trouble, they take off in Bald Guy's Sweet Ride (TM). Are they going on an exciting adventure? Of course not, they're going somewhere to shoot some bottles. On the way to their bottle shooting, they talk about...something. You can't really hear them because the music in the car--presumably Gary's band--is a little too loud (it's neither Cinderella nor overdone attempt at atmospheric music, at least). The only thing I made out was some hilarious joke about Keith Richards not being human or something. This was just one example of the fresh, totally original humor Gary wrote into the script. Later on we'll get a "men don't stop to ask for directions" gem and I can only assume there was a "bad airline food" gag somewhere in there that I couldn't hear over the terrible soundtrack.
Meanwhile, back at Pony-Tail Man's place, Mrs. Pony-Tail Man and Pony-Tail Man, Jr. are out in the yard when suddenly there's a noise (I won't go so far as to say a loud noise, but definitely a sound effect). After some voice-overs that make Harrison Ford in Bladerunner sound like a game show host and filler-sound-packed radio announcements (I forgot to mention that the opening scene established that the TV didn't work, presumably because they didn't have the budget to put together a newsroom set), we discover that there was some kind of unspecified terrorist attack. Also, there's a big traffic jam. At some point, some people stop by and tell Mrs. Pony-Tail Man to lock all the doors and windows and stay in the house, so of course she immediately grabs the kid and leaves. They also make a point to get the dog, but when Pony-Tail Man returns later the dog is still there, so I can only assume that they have a teleporting dog. You'd think that would be a bigger part of the plot, but Gary never does anything with it. They run over a zombie (which unless you count a couple of shootings is the closest anyone in the movie actually comes to fighting a zombie). Behind them, you see some footage from a zombie walk and a couple of scenes of half-assed zombies--or possibly juggalos--eating chicken livers or something that have been piled onto the bodies of people lying on the ground. Maybe it's the Maryland yokel version of those Japanese restaurants where businessmen eat sushi off a naked woman's body.
While all this is going on, we see scenes from a shelter. There are some scenes of people arriving at the shelter, then a redneck shows up with non-specific but dire warnings that there's no way the people in the shelter will survive. Then the zombies attack (or at least montage threateningly) and manage to kill everyone except the redneck, who bravely hides in the one zombie-proof room in the shelter. After it's all over, he comes out, sees the carnage, and is never seen again. Somewhere during this, Mrs. Pony-Tail Guy (who apparently was able to avoid the traffic jam which is we're told is keeping anyone from going anywhere) arrives at her destination, the home of some guy. He's got a motorcycle AND a John Deere Mower, which I assume is important given the way they were set out showroom-display-style for the camera to lovingly pan over. He's also got a shotgun. Obviously a guy who can handle some zombie scum (luckily he never has to).
Eventually, about an hour into the movie, we return to Pony-Tail Man and Bald Guy, who are trying to figure out how to get home through the traffic jam. After naming some random road names, they apparently succeed and arrive back at the house where they find a note from Mrs. Pony-Tail Man telling them where she's gone. Apparently it's the home of a survivalist nut who I think is Pony-Tail Man's brother. After promising the dog that they'll come back for him (which seems pointless since we already know the dog can teleport), they easily make their way to the completely-nowhere-near-the-traffic-jam-that's-stopped-all-traffic-in-twelve-states home of Motorcycle Lawnmower Guy.
Six months later, they're still at Motorcycle Lawnmower Guy's house, but it's getting harder to find supplies and Bald Guy is wondering whether they should move on. This planning for the future is no doubt a sign of character growth, since we were told repeatedly in the first five minutes of the movie how he used to party all night and not think about the future. Luckily, the group doesn't really decide what they're going to do and the movie ends. Presumably somewhere out there is a redneck and a teleporting dog, but we never find out what happens to them. I bet they met up and had wacky adventures.
Takeaway: This movie is kind of like The Walking Dead if it were written by gin-drunk Korean child slaves, starred The People of Wal-Mart, and was 80% montages. It might be possible to enjoy this with enough people and booze, but it would have to be very funny people and very strong booze.
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Did Patton Oswalt Plagiarize Mr. Rogers?
Following news of the bombing in Boston, comedian Patton Oswalt posted a short piece on Facebook that boiled down to "when bad people do bad things, remember all the good people who rush in to help." Did he steal it from Mr. Rogers?
Of course he didn't. Oswalt credits the central idea of his post to FAKE Gallery founder Paul Kozlowski and Kozlowski, whether he realized it or not, was expressing the same sentiment that Mr. Rogers expressed (on Good Morning America, I think) following 9/11 (chances are good that your Facebook feed is lousy with that meme today as well). Oswalt took the central idea and expanded it into his own mini-essay about the events in Boston.
So why ask whether Patton Oswalt is a thief in my headline? Easy. To make you click. It's called link-baiting, and usually consists of using a headline that suggests something is more controversial than it really is so people will click and share (often without actually reading) the link. This increases your page's rankings on social media sites and search engines and, more importantly, gives you traffic (and ad revenue). Unlike this post, most link-baiting sites will front-load their "stories" with several paragraphs of fluff and quoted text (which we'll get to in a minute) so you have to click through multiple pages of ads before discovering that the source for the controversial fact is some random idiot with absolutely no credentials in the subject being discussed (probably Jenny McCarthy).
Even when these sites aren't creating fake controversy, they're experts in siphoning away other peoples' web traffic by "reporting" on comments or actual journalism from other sources. These "reports" of course, don't offer any analysis or additional information, just enough of a frame to allow them to quote the original content, usually very nearly in its entirety (how many of you first saw Oswalt's comments via Huffpo?). Since these sites are optimized for social media sharing, (and since people are lazy), the site owners are fully aware that most people who see the "story" will share it rather than click a link or do a Google search to share the original source. The practice is somewhere between plagiarism and vampirism. Once you know about it, it's not hard to spot. When you see it, either don't click those links or take the extra step and share a link to the site of the person who actually wrote the content or reported the story instead of the site that's leeching their traffic. Making money off the labors of others without contributing anything meaningful is something Wall Street can handle just fine without help from Buzzfeed.
By the way, it took me every bit of one Google search and one click to reach Oswalt's Facebook post. If you want to share what he said, link to it so he gets the credit in terms of newsfeed placement and rankings.
Of course he didn't. Oswalt credits the central idea of his post to FAKE Gallery founder Paul Kozlowski and Kozlowski, whether he realized it or not, was expressing the same sentiment that Mr. Rogers expressed (on Good Morning America, I think) following 9/11 (chances are good that your Facebook feed is lousy with that meme today as well). Oswalt took the central idea and expanded it into his own mini-essay about the events in Boston.
So why ask whether Patton Oswalt is a thief in my headline? Easy. To make you click. It's called link-baiting, and usually consists of using a headline that suggests something is more controversial than it really is so people will click and share (often without actually reading) the link. This increases your page's rankings on social media sites and search engines and, more importantly, gives you traffic (and ad revenue). Unlike this post, most link-baiting sites will front-load their "stories" with several paragraphs of fluff and quoted text (which we'll get to in a minute) so you have to click through multiple pages of ads before discovering that the source for the controversial fact is some random idiot with absolutely no credentials in the subject being discussed (probably Jenny McCarthy).
Even when these sites aren't creating fake controversy, they're experts in siphoning away other peoples' web traffic by "reporting" on comments or actual journalism from other sources. These "reports" of course, don't offer any analysis or additional information, just enough of a frame to allow them to quote the original content, usually very nearly in its entirety (how many of you first saw Oswalt's comments via Huffpo?). Since these sites are optimized for social media sharing, (and since people are lazy), the site owners are fully aware that most people who see the "story" will share it rather than click a link or do a Google search to share the original source. The practice is somewhere between plagiarism and vampirism. Once you know about it, it's not hard to spot. When you see it, either don't click those links or take the extra step and share a link to the site of the person who actually wrote the content or reported the story instead of the site that's leeching their traffic. Making money off the labors of others without contributing anything meaningful is something Wall Street can handle just fine without help from Buzzfeed.
By the way, it took me every bit of one Google search and one click to reach Oswalt's Facebook post. If you want to share what he said, link to it so he gets the credit in terms of newsfeed placement and rankings.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Let Them Secede, But Let Us Leave First
So, since any group of idiots can create a petition, I made my own. Basically, I think it would be great to get rid of a bunch of wingnuts and led them drown in their own Objectivism. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in states where petitions for secession have been filed (including yours truly) who love their country and would like to remain American citizens. My petition attempts to allow the best of both worlds. You can sign it here: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/take-steps-insure-orderly-peaceful-secession-states-and-repatriation-american-citizens/VY8X2Lpc
Unfortunately, the whitehouse.gov site has a word limit, so I had to slightly edit my original petition, which appears in full below:
This petition requests that the federal government take steps to insure the orderly, peaceful secession of any state that ratifies, through legislative process or referendum, the decision to withdraw from the Union. These states are entitled to the right of self-determination and besides nearly all of them are states that receive more federal money than they pay in taxes, so allowing them to succeed would reduce federal expenditures by cutting non-productive “dead weight” out of our nation.
Because simple secession would result in involuntary expatriation of the 30-45% of citizens who voted for President Obama in states where secession petitions have been filed, not to mention the Romney and third party voters who believe that calls for secession are an extreme reaction to losing an election, this petition also requests that the federal government enact legislation to assist in the relocation of those in soon-to-be former U.S. states who wish to remain United States Citizens. The steps below outline a very rough plan for allowing for orderly secession and repatriation.
Since this is our country's chance for a "reboot," we should enact corporate reform concurrent with the above actions. This should include breaking up "to big to fail" banks, ending commodities speculation and off-shoring of profits, and enacting an Workers Bill of Rights that mandates health care, vacation time, and all the other perks that people in Europe consider essential. The legislation should also set a cap on the ratio of CEO pay to employee pay for any company that wishes to receive government subsidies of any kind. Corporations who do not wish to play by these rules will be allowed to relocate to newly-independent former states and their infrastructure will be converted for use by employee-owned startups.
Unfortunately, the whitehouse.gov site has a word limit, so I had to slightly edit my original petition, which appears in full below:
This petition requests that the federal government take steps to insure the orderly, peaceful secession of any state that ratifies, through legislative process or referendum, the decision to withdraw from the Union. These states are entitled to the right of self-determination and besides nearly all of them are states that receive more federal money than they pay in taxes, so allowing them to succeed would reduce federal expenditures by cutting non-productive “dead weight” out of our nation.
Because simple secession would result in involuntary expatriation of the 30-45% of citizens who voted for President Obama in states where secession petitions have been filed, not to mention the Romney and third party voters who believe that calls for secession are an extreme reaction to losing an election, this petition also requests that the federal government enact legislation to assist in the relocation of those in soon-to-be former U.S. states who wish to remain United States Citizens. The steps below outline a very rough plan for allowing for orderly secession and repatriation.
- Congress shall set a deadline by which all fifty states must decide, by methods of their own choosing, whether to remain members of the Union.
- Once it is determined which states will be seceding, citizens of secessionist states who wish to relocate to non-secessionist states may file a petition declaring their desire to remain American citizens. Likewise, any citizen in a non-secessionist state who wishes to become a citizen of one of the newly formed states should declare their intent to give up their American citizenship.
- The federal government will institute programs to assist refugees from secessionist states in finding jobs (perhaps by matching job skills to jobs that will be vacated by those who plan to relocate to a former U.S. state.) and relocating to U.S. states. This program should include government assistance for low-income families and individuals who would otherwise by unable to remain U.S. citizens. Similar programs will not be necessary for those revoking their U.S. citizenship, as they don’t want any help from the government.
- Once everyone has been relocated to a state of their choosing, the federal government may begin disentangling itself financially and politically from the former U.S. states.
- As soon as all formal ties are dissolved, the U.S. should erect secure borders to prevent foreigners from stealing our jobs and government benefits.
Since this is our country's chance for a "reboot," we should enact corporate reform concurrent with the above actions. This should include breaking up "to big to fail" banks, ending commodities speculation and off-shoring of profits, and enacting an Workers Bill of Rights that mandates health care, vacation time, and all the other perks that people in Europe consider essential. The legislation should also set a cap on the ratio of CEO pay to employee pay for any company that wishes to receive government subsidies of any kind. Corporations who do not wish to play by these rules will be allowed to relocate to newly-independent former states and their infrastructure will be converted for use by employee-owned startups.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Halloween Costumes Ripped From The Headlines
Not sure of the status of the issue of Bazooka Magazine that this article was originally meant for, so I'm going to go ahead and post it before Halloween's completely over with just in case it gets cut for no longer being relevant.. And yes, I realize it would have made even more sense to post it before all the weekend Halloween parties, but sometimes I'm don't brain good.
As an adventure game industry professional (aka someone who makes up stories about magical hobos), I go to a lot of conventions throughout the year. Since most of them have at least some costuming events, by the time Halloween rolls around, I’ve already seen the year’s new geek and pop culture-related costumes--Katniss Everdeens, assorted Avengers, assorted slutty Avengers, Girls With Dragon Tattoos, and all the rest. What I don’t get a sneak peek of are the more political/topical costumes, because most geeks know more about The United Federation of Planets than our own system of government. Therefore, the Halloween costumes that I find most entertaining are the ones that come from the world of politics and current events. Since I have no doubt that our readers put my personal amusement high on their list of priorities when coming up with a costume, I’ve put together a few costume suggestions.
The KONY 2012 Guy
For a few weeks, Kony himself was in the running as a 2012 Halloween costume, but all the slacktivists who were just so fucking concerned about the plight of child soldiers in Africa predictably forgot all about it after a week or so. Some found out that the people behind the video supported warlords and regimes every bit as bad as Kony and decided to just pretend that they’d never shared the video. Others forgot about the poor little guys as soon as it stopped being a “thing” on the internet. Not long after the Kony video dropped off the radar, one of the fine upstanding Christian missionaries behind the video got totally fucked up and ran naked through the streets of San Diego furiously masturbating. That shit got its own South Park song, which makes it fully costume-worthy.
Pros: It’s a really simple costume. You just have to get all hopped up on goofballs, get nekkid, and wander around beating your dick like it owes you money.
Cons: You’re going to get arrested.
Occupy Protester
Just when the T.E.A. Party’s tri-cornered hats and badly spelled signs had run their course, along came the Occupy movement. Since it didn’t have corporate sponsorship and advocated real systemic change, the image of the Occupy protester didn’t fare as well as that of his astroturfed, low-information, gun toting counterpart. By the time the pundits and politicians from our two not-at-all-exactly-the-same political parties were done, the Occupy protester had become a filthy, violent, almost feral anarchist and/or socialist vagrant who was simultaneously an over-educated, bourgeois hippie with an iPhone and a trust fund. Because we Americans don’t know the meaning of the words “cognitive dissonance.”
Pros: This is another easy costume. All you really need is a snarky “I am the 99%” sign and a complete lack of understanding of what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck. Congo drums, Communist Manifesto, and poop are totally optional.
Cons: This costume is only good for house parties, because just about every single person who will be handling your food and drinks if you go out is a member of the 99%, so the chances are good that at least one of them will be pissed off by your costume. If you don’t understand why this is a bad thing, you should probably watch Waiting.
Vladimir Fucking Putin
If somebody submitted a Bond script with Vladimir Putin as the villain, the studio would send it back with a note that the bad guy is too unbelievably over-the-top. I mean, the guy flies supersonic jets as a hobby, hunts whales with a crossbow, and probably punches bears just because he can. Most recently, he dressed up in a bird costume and flew a hang-glider to get a bunch of endangered cranes to migrate, because even guys who punch bears have a heart.
Pros: This is one of those costumes that most people won’t get (even if you go the crane route), but those who do will really appreciate.
Cons: Vladimir Putin might find out about it, kill you, and drink your blood from your own skull.
Romney Administration-Era Big Bird
The Big Bird meme came out of the first debate between Romney and Obama, and is in many ways a perfect snapshot of everything that’s wrong with the American political system. Those on the right were willing to blindly accept that cutting PBS funding, which is .000014% of the federal budget, was a meaningful example of fiscal responsibility. Those on the left were more outraged by the idea of losing a giant puppet than by indefinite detention, erosion of Constitutional rights, and the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens. While a lot of political cartoons and memes have gone with the “Big Bird as Thanksgiving turkey” concept, that probably won’t be easy to make work as a costume. Instead, you’ll probably want to go with “Big Bird as a homeless person,” complete with ratty old coat, fingerless gloves, and bottle of Thunderbird.
Pros: Everybody likes Big Bird, even Mitt Romney.
Cons: To be honest, the whole Big Bird thing has kind of run its course. The sheer number of memes about it made it get old pretty fast.
A Drone
As I hinted in the previous entry, one of the (many) Obama deal-breakers for me that Democratic party loyalists are willing to blissfully ignore is the fact that Obama has been very liberal in his use of drones, especially in foreign countries we’re not actually at war with. Worse still, he’s used drones to carry out the summary assassination of American citizens without the slightest hint of due process, which I’m pretty sure used to be frowned up by most Americans. If you also feel this is kind of a big deal, a drone costume will double nicely as a soapbox.
Pros: If you get drunk and kill somebody while driving home, you can retroactively declare them terrorists so that nobody will label you a criminal.
Cons: This is going to be a bulky costume, and most people only have a vague idea of what drones look like.
A Binder Full of Women
One of Mitt Romney’s biggest obstacles with the Republican base is the fact that he’s a Mormon. A lot of Christians, especially evangelicals, believe that the Church of Latter Day Saints is at best a misguided interpretation of the Christian religion, and some believe it’s part of a vast Satanic conspiracy. Voters whose social compasses point a little more to the left have problems with the church because of its history of polygamy and underage marriage. As a result, Romney has been quiet about the details of his religious beliefs. Here’s a little hint, Mitt: If you want to downplay your involvement in a religious sect vilified for treating women as property, it’s probably not a good idea to use a phrase that suggests you collect them like goddamn Pokemons.
Pros: The phrase “binder full of women” is inherently funny, even without Romney’s political baggage being attached to it.
Cons: This is one of those high-concept costumes that you’re going to have to make yourself. It will be hard to come up with something that gets the point across without being a huge pain in the ass to actually wear.
If you don’t like these costume ideas, you can always fall back on something in the “slutty Black Widow” genre, assuming you can pull it off. I’ve seen them before, but I won’t complain about seeing it again.
As an adventure game industry professional (aka someone who makes up stories about magical hobos), I go to a lot of conventions throughout the year. Since most of them have at least some costuming events, by the time Halloween rolls around, I’ve already seen the year’s new geek and pop culture-related costumes--Katniss Everdeens, assorted Avengers, assorted slutty Avengers, Girls With Dragon Tattoos, and all the rest. What I don’t get a sneak peek of are the more political/topical costumes, because most geeks know more about The United Federation of Planets than our own system of government. Therefore, the Halloween costumes that I find most entertaining are the ones that come from the world of politics and current events. Since I have no doubt that our readers put my personal amusement high on their list of priorities when coming up with a costume, I’ve put together a few costume suggestions.
The KONY 2012 Guy
For a few weeks, Kony himself was in the running as a 2012 Halloween costume, but all the slacktivists who were just so fucking concerned about the plight of child soldiers in Africa predictably forgot all about it after a week or so. Some found out that the people behind the video supported warlords and regimes every bit as bad as Kony and decided to just pretend that they’d never shared the video. Others forgot about the poor little guys as soon as it stopped being a “thing” on the internet. Not long after the Kony video dropped off the radar, one of the fine upstanding Christian missionaries behind the video got totally fucked up and ran naked through the streets of San Diego furiously masturbating. That shit got its own South Park song, which makes it fully costume-worthy.
Pros: It’s a really simple costume. You just have to get all hopped up on goofballs, get nekkid, and wander around beating your dick like it owes you money.
Cons: You’re going to get arrested.
Occupy Protester
Just when the T.E.A. Party’s tri-cornered hats and badly spelled signs had run their course, along came the Occupy movement. Since it didn’t have corporate sponsorship and advocated real systemic change, the image of the Occupy protester didn’t fare as well as that of his astroturfed, low-information, gun toting counterpart. By the time the pundits and politicians from our two not-at-all-exactly-the-same political parties were done, the Occupy protester had become a filthy, violent, almost feral anarchist and/or socialist vagrant who was simultaneously an over-educated, bourgeois hippie with an iPhone and a trust fund. Because we Americans don’t know the meaning of the words “cognitive dissonance.”
Pros: This is another easy costume. All you really need is a snarky “I am the 99%” sign and a complete lack of understanding of what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck. Congo drums, Communist Manifesto, and poop are totally optional.
Cons: This costume is only good for house parties, because just about every single person who will be handling your food and drinks if you go out is a member of the 99%, so the chances are good that at least one of them will be pissed off by your costume. If you don’t understand why this is a bad thing, you should probably watch Waiting.
Vladimir Fucking Putin
If somebody submitted a Bond script with Vladimir Putin as the villain, the studio would send it back with a note that the bad guy is too unbelievably over-the-top. I mean, the guy flies supersonic jets as a hobby, hunts whales with a crossbow, and probably punches bears just because he can. Most recently, he dressed up in a bird costume and flew a hang-glider to get a bunch of endangered cranes to migrate, because even guys who punch bears have a heart.
Pros: This is one of those costumes that most people won’t get (even if you go the crane route), but those who do will really appreciate.
Cons: Vladimir Putin might find out about it, kill you, and drink your blood from your own skull.
Romney Administration-Era Big Bird
The Big Bird meme came out of the first debate between Romney and Obama, and is in many ways a perfect snapshot of everything that’s wrong with the American political system. Those on the right were willing to blindly accept that cutting PBS funding, which is .000014% of the federal budget, was a meaningful example of fiscal responsibility. Those on the left were more outraged by the idea of losing a giant puppet than by indefinite detention, erosion of Constitutional rights, and the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens. While a lot of political cartoons and memes have gone with the “Big Bird as Thanksgiving turkey” concept, that probably won’t be easy to make work as a costume. Instead, you’ll probably want to go with “Big Bird as a homeless person,” complete with ratty old coat, fingerless gloves, and bottle of Thunderbird.
Pros: Everybody likes Big Bird, even Mitt Romney.
Cons: To be honest, the whole Big Bird thing has kind of run its course. The sheer number of memes about it made it get old pretty fast.
A Drone
As I hinted in the previous entry, one of the (many) Obama deal-breakers for me that Democratic party loyalists are willing to blissfully ignore is the fact that Obama has been very liberal in his use of drones, especially in foreign countries we’re not actually at war with. Worse still, he’s used drones to carry out the summary assassination of American citizens without the slightest hint of due process, which I’m pretty sure used to be frowned up by most Americans. If you also feel this is kind of a big deal, a drone costume will double nicely as a soapbox.
Pros: If you get drunk and kill somebody while driving home, you can retroactively declare them terrorists so that nobody will label you a criminal.
Cons: This is going to be a bulky costume, and most people only have a vague idea of what drones look like.
A Binder Full of Women
One of Mitt Romney’s biggest obstacles with the Republican base is the fact that he’s a Mormon. A lot of Christians, especially evangelicals, believe that the Church of Latter Day Saints is at best a misguided interpretation of the Christian religion, and some believe it’s part of a vast Satanic conspiracy. Voters whose social compasses point a little more to the left have problems with the church because of its history of polygamy and underage marriage. As a result, Romney has been quiet about the details of his religious beliefs. Here’s a little hint, Mitt: If you want to downplay your involvement in a religious sect vilified for treating women as property, it’s probably not a good idea to use a phrase that suggests you collect them like goddamn Pokemons.
Pros: The phrase “binder full of women” is inherently funny, even without Romney’s political baggage being attached to it.
Cons: This is one of those high-concept costumes that you’re going to have to make yourself. It will be hard to come up with something that gets the point across without being a huge pain in the ass to actually wear.
If you don’t like these costume ideas, you can always fall back on something in the “slutty Black Widow” genre, assuming you can pull it off. I’ve seen them before, but I won’t complain about seeing it again.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Kentuckians: Your Vote Is Already Symbolic
This November, a lot of people will vote for a candidate they don't really support. Some will do it because they buy into one party's lesser of two evils narrative in which a win for the opposing party means apocalyptic changes to the American way of life--40 days of darkness, dogs and cats living together, you know the drill. Others will vote either Democrat or Republican because they see a vote for a third party candidate as a meaningless symbolic gesture since third party candidates have no chance of ever winning an election in the current political climate.
The big problem with the mindset that a symbolic vote is a wasted vote is that in most states, your vote is already symbolic barring a major swing in voting patterns. If you don't believe me, check out the electoral vote map tool at http://www.270towin.com. Since I live in Kentucky, I'll use it as an example.
To begin my little experiment, I'm going to award states to a party if that party has won the state in the last five elections, which gives us a map where the Democratic party is ahead 242 votes to the GOP's 102. Things are not looking good for Romney, so let's try to help him out by awarding any state that has been red in three of the last five elections to the Republicans UNLESS that state went to Obama in 2008. Kentucky stays undecided even though it meets the criteria because I'm trying to set up a situation in which my vote matters. After doing that, Obama is still at 242, but Romney is in slightly better shape with 181 electoral votes. If Obama wins Florida, Romney can't win, so let's go ahead and turn it red.
Now we've got 10 states left in play: Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Nevada, New Hapshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. None of these states is big enough to give Obama the win on its own, so since Romney's still behind 41 electoral votes, let's see if we can even up the score. Most of the remaining states are fairly evenly split or tend to vote Democrat, but there are 3 states that went to Obama in 2008 where a GOP victory is the norm (at least back to 1972--the earliest election shown on the site): Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia. We'll let them plead temporary insanity for 2008 and give them to Romney as well, bringing him up to 240 votes.
Now that things are reasonably close, let's turn any state that the Democrats have won in 4 out of the last 5 elections blue. That brings Obama up to 257 electoral votes.That means if he wins Ohio, he wins the election, and my vote in Kentucky doesn't matter. Other than Kentucky (8 electoral votes) and Ohio (18 electoral votes), there are two other states remaining on the map: Colorado (9 votes) and Nevada (6 votes). With only 240 votes, Romney can't win without Ohio, so let's give him a fighting chance and assume all the voter suppression tricks they're playing there work out in the GOP's favor.
That puts us in a dead heat with Obama at 257 votes and Romney at 258. For either candidate to win, he'll need to win 2 out of 3 states. If Colorado and Nevada go to the same party (as they have in the past 3 elections), my vote once again doesn't matter. If they split, Kentucky's electoral votes will decide the race, so if the race in Kentucky is extremely close (unlikely, since Kentucky has gone to the GOP in 7 of the past 10 elections), my individual vote for one of the two major party candidates might determine who wins the presidency.
Long story short: Unless you live in Florida or Ohio, your vote is probably symbolic anyway, so why not cast your symbolic vote for someone you can actually believe in. It's not going to allow them to win, but if enough people do it, it will send a clear message that you're tired of choosing between the same two bad options every 4 years. If enough people send that message, it might actually be heard.
The big problem with the mindset that a symbolic vote is a wasted vote is that in most states, your vote is already symbolic barring a major swing in voting patterns. If you don't believe me, check out the electoral vote map tool at http://www.270towin.com. Since I live in Kentucky, I'll use it as an example.
To begin my little experiment, I'm going to award states to a party if that party has won the state in the last five elections, which gives us a map where the Democratic party is ahead 242 votes to the GOP's 102. Things are not looking good for Romney, so let's try to help him out by awarding any state that has been red in three of the last five elections to the Republicans UNLESS that state went to Obama in 2008. Kentucky stays undecided even though it meets the criteria because I'm trying to set up a situation in which my vote matters. After doing that, Obama is still at 242, but Romney is in slightly better shape with 181 electoral votes. If Obama wins Florida, Romney can't win, so let's go ahead and turn it red.
Now we've got 10 states left in play: Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Nevada, New Hapshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. None of these states is big enough to give Obama the win on its own, so since Romney's still behind 41 electoral votes, let's see if we can even up the score. Most of the remaining states are fairly evenly split or tend to vote Democrat, but there are 3 states that went to Obama in 2008 where a GOP victory is the norm (at least back to 1972--the earliest election shown on the site): Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia. We'll let them plead temporary insanity for 2008 and give them to Romney as well, bringing him up to 240 votes.
Now that things are reasonably close, let's turn any state that the Democrats have won in 4 out of the last 5 elections blue. That brings Obama up to 257 electoral votes.That means if he wins Ohio, he wins the election, and my vote in Kentucky doesn't matter. Other than Kentucky (8 electoral votes) and Ohio (18 electoral votes), there are two other states remaining on the map: Colorado (9 votes) and Nevada (6 votes). With only 240 votes, Romney can't win without Ohio, so let's give him a fighting chance and assume all the voter suppression tricks they're playing there work out in the GOP's favor.
That puts us in a dead heat with Obama at 257 votes and Romney at 258. For either candidate to win, he'll need to win 2 out of 3 states. If Colorado and Nevada go to the same party (as they have in the past 3 elections), my vote once again doesn't matter. If they split, Kentucky's electoral votes will decide the race, so if the race in Kentucky is extremely close (unlikely, since Kentucky has gone to the GOP in 7 of the past 10 elections), my individual vote for one of the two major party candidates might determine who wins the presidency.
Long story short: Unless you live in Florida or Ohio, your vote is probably symbolic anyway, so why not cast your symbolic vote for someone you can actually believe in. It's not going to allow them to win, but if enough people do it, it will send a clear message that you're tired of choosing between the same two bad options every 4 years. If enough people send that message, it might actually be heard.
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