Religious conservative “morals” are anything but

Here we have two stories that perfectly sum up the fucked-up values of America’s religious conservatives.  Let’s start with this:

Republicans Are Pissed About Crackdowns on Vaccine Exemptions

The fight against measles in a handful of states is facing staunch opposition from Republicans and anti-vaxx parents as lawmakers crack down on exemptions that let kids skip vaccinations.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that through Friday there have been 839 individual cases of measles throughout 23 states. That’s the most cases since 1994, making this the worst measles outbreak in decades. In response, a number of states where it’s spread have been trying to limit exemptions, with efforts mostly led by Democrats.

Washington State got rid of personal/philosophical exemptions.  California is making it harder to claim false exemptions.  Oregon got rid of the “moral” exemption.  Connecticut is looking at removing religious exemptions.  Maine has tossed philosophical exemptions.  Slowly but surely, reason and common sense are making headway against tidal waves of anti-vaxxer bullshit, and naturally Republicans are howling like the infantile little assholes we all know they are.  Oh, you don’t want the government dictating your health choices in the face of a nationwide epidemic?  Let’s come back to that when you stop taking womens’ uteruses  hostage because you think a blob is a person.  And speaking of which…

Alabama Governor Signs Abortion Ban Into Law

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a controversial bill that bans nearly all abortions into law Wednesday evening.  It’s considered the most restrictive abortion law in the United States. The law makes it a crime for doctors to perform abortions at any stage of a pregnancy, unless a woman’s life is threatened or there is a lethal fetal anomaly.

This is the “pro-life” world we now live in, folks:  religious conservatives (overwhelmingly men, naturally) forcing women to give birth to unwanted children, while at the same time fighting legislation that prevents those same children from getting sick…and possibly dying.  They’d also like to let anyone of any mental state purchase automatic weapons, because without all those dead schoolkids they wouldn’t be able to look and feel compassionate by publicly spouting their Thoughts And Prayers™ on Twitter.  And let’s not forget that they overwhelmingly support the death penalty.  Yep, sounds “pro-life” to me all right.

But wait, we shouldn’t stop there.  We can take this so much further.  First we need steep fines on non-procreative ejaculations.  Outlaw jerking off — it’s causing trillions of innocent pre-babies to die in a holocaust of towels and tissues!  Next we need to outlaw the burning of coal and oil, because carbon is one of the building blocks of life (if you believe in that science stuff, anyway).  And what about those poor fetuses and blobs which have now been granted full personhood?  First we need to give them voting rights.  They’ll also have property rights with the ability to rent out space in the womb.  Make them attend church, because Jesus died for our blobs’ sins.  And let them be the second passenger in the carpool lane, fer chrissakes!  That blob is a person, you monster!

But enough of that.  To paraphrase Saint Carlin, these people don’t give a shit about you once you’re born.  Once you’re out of the womb, you’re on your own.  They’ll use their power to bring you into the world, but they don’t want a single government dollar going to help feed and care for you if your mother can’t do it all on her own.  They just want you born, and then you’re not their problem.  This is how they keep women in their place, as the Bible clearly dictates.  Praise be!

This all leads me to believe that the mind of an American religious conservative can be a dark and twisted maze of contradictions and misguided piety.  Selfish, irrational, willfully ignorant and dismissive of established knowledge, compromised by their belief of a guaranteed spot in Heaven, wielding religion as a weapon against those they don’t like, driven to control the behavior of others under the guise of “moral concern” — it’s a scary place, and minds like this have been very busy chipping away at whatever legal protections we still have against their influence.  Now that Trump is in power and appointing hundreds of right-wing judges into lifetime positions, I’m starting think these motherfuckers just might get their wish of a real-world “Handmaid’s Tale.”

I’m fully aware that conservatives automatically call this attitude intolerant.  “Typical intolerant libtard! Can’t stand different opinions.  Fuckin snowflake.”  But you know what?  Nobody should tolerate the kinds of immoral and inhumane things these people are getting away with.  So if I’m an intolerant asshole to them (and I’ve been told as much by a few), I’m fine with that.

Under His Eye…

News nuggets from the American hellscape

It’s been a few years since I’ve done this, so maybe it’s time to give it another go. Some of these stories are a little outdated by now, but I’ve been saving them for a rainy day… 😀

 

Oh, this fetid hunk of wormy shit again?  I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise since the most toxic turds tend to resurface after flushing, as if to say “Hi, remember me?  I’m a huge honkin’ hunk o’ human garbage!  I’ll never go away.  MAGA!”

YouTube bans secondary Alex Jones channel hosting NZ conspiracy videos
YouTube has terminated a channel Alex Jones was reportedly using to skirt his ban from the platform. On a video posted on Resistance News, which was a secondary Infowars channel according to Media Matters, Jones described last week’s New Zealand mosque shootings as a “false flag” operation and attacked Muslims.

But wait, there’s more.  They’ll resurface elsewhere, but eventually their fans will get tired of having to hunt down which service is temporarily allowing them to spew their psychotic twaddle.

Facebook Bans Alex Jones, Louis Farrakhan And Other ‘Dangerous’ Individuals
Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan are running out of places to espouse their views online.  Facebook banned these high-profile personalities and several others from its social media platforms Thursday, becoming the latest tech company to officially declare them persona non grata. Many of them have already been banned from Twitter, YouTube and Apple’s Podcasts app.

 

Possibly inspired by Alex Jones…?

The worst toy: Flushin’ Frenzy
Flushin’ Frenzy [Amazon] is a toy wherein you push a plunger until a poop pops up. All the fun of clearing out a blocked toilet! The game’s tagline is “Poop there it is!”

 

Well, well, well. I guess this guy is just following in the scammy footsteps of his hero Papa Trump.  Should we expect anything different?  Because he’s a little criminal conservative twat, I’m sure he’ll soon be at the top of Trump’s list for some position he has absolutely no experience with (because having zero experience is the only qualification Trump looks for…other than being a criminal conservative twat).

He Founded ‘Students for Trump.’ Now He Could Face Jail Time for Impersonating a Lawyer.
According to the federal government, at the same time he was building a nationwide political network and serving as one of the most visible young faces of Trump’s populist movement, Lambert was also posing online as a high-powered New York lawyer, eventually making off with tens of thousands of dollars in fees he stole from unwitting clients seeking legal services.

 

This is fabulous. Anytime a swarm of YouTube robots experience some sort of disaster because their “influencers” told them to do something, a kitten gets its wings. Or something like that.

Giant Brawl Ensues After Dueling YouTubers Tell Their Fans To Meet Up
Agence France-Presse reports that 100 officers arrived at the scene to break up the fight. The police reportedly used tear gas on the crowd and arrested nine people. Two officers were reportedly injured in the large altercation.

 

These anti-science Christians and their persecution complex are literally becoming a health hazard.  Yes, it may be your precious “religious belief” to decline vaccinations (as directed in the Bible, surely), but don’t expect everyone else to take your side when you’re at risk of being the next Patient Zero, asshole.

Unvaccinated high school student is suing the health department for banning him from school during a chicken pox outbreak
Jerome Kunkel, 18, is suing the Northern Kentucky Health Department and its employees because the department said students who haven’t been vaccinated need to stay out of school until three weeks after the onset of a chickenpox rash on the last sick student or teacher, the department said.

But Kunkel’s father said the family’s Christian faith keeps his son from getting vaccinated.  “I don’t believe in that vaccine at all and they are trying to push it on us,” Bill Kunkle said, according to NBC affiliate WLWT.

So while you’re busy not believing in vaccines (and hopefully scratching at some newly-acquired chicken pox sores), you might want to do some light reading.  Maybe you’ll learn something…?

• Anti-vaccine community behind North Carolina chickenpox outbreak
• Italian anti-vax politician hospitalised with chickenpox
• An anti-vax religious group apologized for its role in a major measles outbreak in Japan
• Anti-vaxxers face backlash as measles cases surge
• Measles Outbreak Spurs Vaccination Surge in Anti-Vaxxer Hotspot

 

UPDATE: He lost.  Haaaa!  Reason wins this round.

Kentucky judge sides with health department, rules unvaccinated teen can’t play school basketball
Boone County Circuit Judge James R. Schrand upheld the agency’s temporary ban on unvaccinated students attending school or participating in extracurricular activities, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

 

OK, that’s enough.  For now…

Cassette tapes are hissing their way back into our hearts

sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

No.  Just…no.  The most shit-tastic music format ever is now a nostalgia thing?  I have fond memories of playing tapes for most of my childhood and teenage life, but what a pain in the ass they are!  People say the same about vinyl, but your record player doesn’t suck the record up into its hungry mouth and tangle the shit out of it.  You don’t have to respool records with a pencil because it gets pulled out of its shell and mangled.  Oh, and properly cared-for records actually sound good.  That hissy tape you’re playing degrades with every listen, and eventually the tape will break…and so will your heart.  Sad emoji.

It’s cool to spool again as the cassette returns on a wave of nostalgia

Pause. Stop. Rewind! The cassette, long consigned to the bargain bin of musical history, is staging a humble comeback. Sales have soared in the last year – up 125% in 2018 on the year before – amounting to more than 50,000 cassette albums bought in the UK, the highest volume in 15 years.

…“It’s the tangibility of having this collectible format and a way to play music that isn’t just a stream or download,” says techno DJ Phin, who has just released her first EP on cassette as label boss of Theory of Yesterday.  “I find them much more attractive than CDs. Tapes have a lifespan, and unlike digital music, there is decay and death. It’s like a living thing and that appeals to me.”

What’s next?  Wax cylinders?  I can hear it now: “I looove wax!!  It sounds so shitty, like music played in a freeway tunnel during a sandstorm or something.  It’s sooooo cool and unique and retro and nostalgic.  Oh, and cumbersome to play and handle and store.  I bought the new Katy Perry cylinder and it broke after only 2 plays!  It’s, like, the best thing evarrr.”

 

iTunes hates me and my taste in music

That’s the only real reason that iTunes would inexplicably obliterate all the carefully-curated playlists I’ve had over many years. It happens at least once a year, and I’ve come to conclude that it simply loathes what I force it to play and its only escape is the occasional database seppuku. This time it wasn’t just the playlists that vanished — now iTunes acts like it can’t see my library at all. So goodbye playlists and all my nitpicky settings. Goddammit, iTunes…I’d leave you for good if there were any decent alternatives (though MediaMonkey comes close).

After rebuilding my playlists for the 487th time, a couple of years ago I finally got smart about it. I came up with a foolproof way to get those playlists back, and they’ll be up-to-date to boot. I’m probably not the first to think of it, but maybe someone out there will find it useful.

Here’s what to do. Let’s say you want to create a playlist for your favorite David Byrne songs (and why wouldn’t you?). First, create a Smart Playlist and configure it to show only songs that have “David Byrne” in the comments. Make sure “Live updating” is checked.

Next, when you want to add a track to a playlist, open the Info screen and go into the Comments field. Put something like “Playlist: David Byrne” and save it. That comment is saved right into the file itself.

Now, when you click on your David Byrne playlist, the song you just added the comment to will magically appear. Do the same thing with any other David Byrne song you want, and it’ll automatically show up in the playlist.

Using the comments and Smart Playlists together means that even if iTunes decides you’re unworthy of having such fancy-pants playlists and decides to wipe them out with no warning, you’ll never have to manually pick out your favorite songs again because the info is contained in the song files themselves, and those Smart Playlists will do all the work for you. iTunes can murder its own database all it wants, but it’ll never again be able to permanently take your playlists down with it!

“But what if I want to add a song to multiple playlists? OMG WHAT MUST I DO THEN???” OK, calm down! Jesus. No need to freak out about it. Just add multiple “playlist” comments to the song for different playlists, geez. I like to add a few spaces between them to make it easier to read when viewing them in the Songs view (remember to make the Comments column visible):

And that’s it! I first got this idea when I used to click the checkbox next to songs I wanted to sync to my phone. After several times of going through all that trouble and then losing all my work to iTunes’ abusive whims, I started using the Composer field to put the word “Checked”, and a Smart Playlist would show me what should have been checked but wasn’t, so I could easily identify and fix songs in one big swoop. You can use this Comments thing for all kinds of useful stuff. You can even make a playlist that contains all your playlist-commented tracks. I’m not sure why you’d want to, but you do you.

So today I’m rebuilding my iTunes collection and playlists yet again, but it’ll take a teensy fraction of the time it used to take. Wow…I feel, like, smart and stuff. I’d feel smarter if I could just give up iTunes altogether, and believe me I’ve tried, but I always come back to it because 99% of the time it’s great. I just come up with ways to get around its occasional weird behavior.

Nostalgia is the new…nostalgia?

I know, that’s a stupid title. But whatever, it sounded clever for at least two seconds…

OK, it’s time for a Curmudgeon Moment™.

I can’t be the only one who feels that we’re experiencing 80s nostalgia overload. There’s a relentless firehose of 80s memorabilia blasting us in the face from every direction: movies, videogames, toys, T.V. shows, etc. It’s reached the point where it doesn’t feel like a celebration of pop culture from our (my) childhood anymore — the marketing twats have discovered that people will buy anything that reminds them of anything from the 80s, and they’re milking it for all they can. Nostalgia from that decade is its own industry now, and it’s not going anywhere soon. At least, not until 90s nostalgia (ugh) overtakes it.

I think I first noticed this stuff a few years ago when LEGOs became a thing again. For a while it felt like every other post on the tech/nerd blogs was absolutely gushing about something LEGO-related, which was super annoying. I just couldn’t get away from it.

“OMG check out this life-size X-Wing Fighter made with LEGOs!”

No.

“Here’s an awesome [insert 80s pop culture icon here] made ENTIRELY of LEGOs!”

So?

“Visit LEGO Land and relive your childhood dreams! SO COOL!”

Fuck off.

This is all coming from supposedly adult men, mind you. It got so bad that I had to actually stop reading some of my favorite blogs for a few months. LEGO news is kind of like Trump news: with some strategic filtering you can manage to get through at least a few hours a day without being reminded that it’s still a thing.

Around the same time that I noticed LEGO’s stranglehold on the tech/nerd blogs, the soul-crushingly mediocre Transformers movies began to steadily plop from Michael Bay’s movie-hole (actually that first one wasn’t so bad), with more blatant assaults on our childhoods to follow. I’m looking at you, Smurfs.

It’s not all crap, though. The show “Stranger Things” is a pretty good example. It’s custom-tailored to the 80s kid: the music, the cast, the sets, the story, and even the opening titles are all carefully crafted to extract as much memory juice as possible from those of us who watched a lot of Lucas and Spielberg movies as teenagers. People went apeshit over this show — it’s a love letter to a genre of films we grew up with, and for the most part it’s done right. But while watching it, I often felt very conscious of the lengths they went to in order to tug on those memory-strings. They seemed to be saying, “Hey look, remember this toy? And D&D? And Star Wars? And this song playing in the video arcade?? Remember????” Yeah, yeah, yeah…we remember. We were, like, there and stuff.

The success of “Stranger Things” and LEGO stuff has been a blinding bat-signal to advertisers that they need to double down and cash in on this shit right now. So now we have more (and lesser-quality) LEGO movies, an attempted TRON reboot, a Trolls movie, new Voltron cartoons, that vomit-inducing “Pixels” movie, a Castlevania show, a mini Super Nintendo console, a Dark Crystal show in the works, toys of every 80s pop culture movie/T.V. character you can imagine…on and on. And this recent movie “Ready Player One”, which brings nostalgia-pandering to a new level. It references 200+ pop culture characters/things from the past 30 years just so the audience will oohhh and ahhhh in recognition. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m sure it’ll happen eventually….and I’ll probably do some of my own oohhh-ing and ahhhh-ing despite myself. Damn you, Hollywood, and your pinpoint-accurate targeting of my feelgood memory spots!

Don’t get me wrong, I looooove trawling through my 80s memories (and what I remember of my 70s childhood) and I indulge in them quite a bit. One of my favorite things to do is take mushrooms and listen to music from my Jr. High and High School years. On vinyl. Records I played to death as a teenager that I’ve carried around for 30 years, which still sound great. God, it’s fun… I also have a deep obsession with retro gaming emulators and a weakness for chiptunes and blippy videogame music. There’s a lot more than that, but I like to indulge my nostalgia on my own terms; hearing an 80’s song in a movie or T.V. show used to be a fun throwback moment, but now it happens so often and so deliberately, it just feels lazy. “Oh look, they’re playing the song ‘I Ran’ while this guy is…running away. Wow, such a clever and totally not obvious thing to do…”

Eventually I began to wonder why we’re wallowing in nostalgia so much. We’re gladly eating up all the mass-marketed references, but why? And is it healthy? Every generation has its share of “I remember when…” but mine seems to be taking it to a weirder and more obsessive level. A personal example: I know a gay couple in their 40s who dressed up in Star Wars pajamas and built a scale-model Death Star from LEGOs on Christmas morning last year. They posted photos of it on Facebook, even. Is that taking things a bit too far? I don’t know. Maybe this is how some people reconnect to their younger selves. Or maybe this is how some people cope with living in the darker, scarier America that 2016 brought us. Or maybe we just have too much damn time on our hands. Hard to tell.

 

Disney Déjà Vu

I’ve been meaning to write and post this for months, but America’s steady transformation into a right-wing hellscape led by a hateful troglodyte and his band of loathsome swamp trash has been somewhat distracting.  More on that later, I’m sure. 😀  Anyway…

Heihei: the true star of the film.

I really enjoyed “Moana.”  Colorful characters, excellent songs, amazing visuals (I’ve never seen CGI water look that good).  The story is compelling, but even from the first act it began to feel familiar.  I found myself predicting events and plotlines, probably to my husband’s annoyance.  “The grandma knows a secret, and of course she’s eccentric and/or crazy.”  “I bet her father lost someone at sea and that’s why he has issues with going beyond the reef.”  “The grandma’s gonna die and Moana will freak out and run.”  “There’s gotta be a small animal sidekick – all these movies have one.”  “Moana and Maui are gonna have a falling out and go separate ways, then they’ll make up before the final battle – that always happens.”  And sure enough, all that stuff happened…because I’ve seen this movie before.  Only it wasn’t called “Moana” – it was called “The Lion King.”

I tend to notice trends and patterns in pop culture and advertising, so at some point I began to do some reading about The Hero’s Journey, which is – as Wikipedia broadly puts it – “the common template of a broad category of tales that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, and in a decisive crisis wins a victory, and then comes home changed or transformed.”  There’s a lot more to it than that, but it’s something that tends to resonate with people on some universal level.  George Lucas famously used it for “Star Wars”, for example.  Naturally, once Hollywood caught on to this recipe for storytelling, screenwriters have used it as a template for zillions of movies over the past 20-30 years…which is one reason why so many movies these days have a familiar, predictable feeling.  I can’t decide if it’s lazy storytelling or just a formula that truly appeals to people.  Maybe a bit of both?

The Hero’s Journey can be fairly complicated, but various writers over the years have condensed it into a series of general stages.  Once you get a feel for them, you start seeing it being used quite a lot.  I’ve noticed it in many Disney & Pixar movies, though they’re hardly the only ones.  “Moana” is the latest one I’ve seen, so I thought it would be fun to compare it with “The Lion King” since that’s the movie I kept thinking of while watching.  They both seem to be built around this narrative which makes them so predictable.  It’s not a perfect comparison in every way, but you can see the similarities.

---

1. THE ORDINARY WORLD. The hero, uneasy, uncomfortable or unaware, is introduced sympathetically so the audience can identify with the situation or dilemma. The hero is shown against a background of environment, heredity, and personal history. Some kind of polarity in the hero’s life is pulling in different directions and causing stress.

• Moana:  All Moana wants is to travel beyond the reef and explore the outside world, but noooooo.  Her father scares her with stories of monsters and death out there, and basically bullies her into giving up her dreams and taking her intended role as the village Chief.  Bummer.
• The Lion King:  King Mufasa tells his son Simba to stay away from the scary elephant graveyard.  He also tells him that he’ll be king someday, whether he wants it or not.  Simba isn’t impressed.

2. THE CALL TO ADVENTURE. Something shakes up the situation, either from external pressures or from something rising up from deep within, so the hero must face the beginnings of change.

• Moana:  Oh shit!  The fish and island vegetation are dying and things are starting to suck.  Even the coconuts are turning crappy – and they have lots of coconuts.
• The Lion King:  Mufasa gets killed and Scar tricks Simba into thinking it’s his fault, so he wigs out and runs away across the desert.

3. REFUSAL OF THE CALL. The hero feels the fear of the unknown and tries to turn away from the adventure, however briefly. Alternately, another character may express the uncertainty and danger ahead.

• Moana:  Still, her father says “No way!” when she says they need to forage beyond the reef, so she gives up the idea of ever leaving the island.  Turns out he lost his friend to the sea when they were kids (I knew it!), so go figure.  She ventures out to the reef anyway and almost gets killed.  Whoops.
• The Lion King:  Simba and Nala go to the elephant graveyard and almost get killed by a trio of asshole hyenas (which is redundant, I suppose).

4. MEETING WITH THE MENTOR. The hero comes across a seasoned traveler of the worlds who gives him or her training, equipment, or advice that will help on the journey. Or the hero reaches within to a source of courage and wisdom.

• Moana:  Hey look, it’s the crazy/eccentric grandma who conveniently happens to know allllll the secrets of the village’s past!  She shows Moana that her ancestors were sea explorers, then tells her to get the hell off that island…and then she promptly croaks.  The phrase “remember who/where/what you are” makes its first of many appearances.
• The Lion King:  This happens later in the story – see #9.

5. CROSSING THE THRESHOLD. At the end of Act One, the hero commits to leaving the Ordinary World and entering a new region or condition with unfamiliar rules and values.

• Moana:  Moana bursts into song, grabs one of her ancestors’ old boats, and speeds out beyond he reef.  Her boat gets trashed in a storm and she finds herself stuck on a small island with the demigod Maui.  Whoops.
• The Lion King:  Simba flees across the desert and almost bites it.  He befriends a smartass meerkat and a farting warthog who teach him to eat bugs.  Their philosophy is “hakuna matata”, which apparently is Swahili for “I don’t give two shits about anything important.”  He grows up to be a lazy, ambivalent brat.

6. TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES. The hero is tested and sorts out allegiances in the Special World.

• Moana:  She and Maui bicker and fight.  A lot.  But eventually they decide they need each others’ help.
• The Lion King:  Simba’s childhood friend Nala finds him and tells him he needs to reclaim his throne from that pompous twat Scar.  Simba says, “Oh hell no!  That’s none of my business.  But hey, you’re kinda hot now.  Wanna roll around in the jungle?”

7. APPROACH. The hero and newfound allies prepare for the major challenge in the Special world.

• Moana:  They head out to sea in search of Maui’s magic hook thing.  Together they defeat a few enemies like freaky pirate coconuts and a giant crab with an addiction to bling.

8. THE ORDEAL. Near the middle of the story, the hero enters a central space in the Special World and confronts death or faces his or her greatest fear. Out of the moment of death comes a new life.

• Moana:  Finally they’re ready to return the Heart of the Sea (a magic rock) to where it belongs and defeat the evil darkness thing.  Maui gets his ass beaten by a lava demon, quits the quest, and takes off feeling like a total loser.  Moana gives up her quest, also feeling like a total loser.  Like, such a bummer.
• The Lion King:  Simba’s being super whiny and feeling guilty about his dead father.  He refuses to return home and save the day.  Nala leaves instead, unimpressed.

9. THE REWARD. The hero takes possession of the treasure won by facing death. There may be celebration, but there is also danger of losing the treasure again.

• Moana:  Her crazy grandma’s ghost appears and reminds her of her destiny and stuff.  She says “Remember who you are!” for what must be the 12^th time in the movie.  Moana is probably tired of hearing that, so she…remembers who she is.
• The Lion King:  The crazy monkey shaman Rafiki finds Simba and, in a fun Cher moment, whacks him on the head to snap him out of it.  He then mystically reveals to Simba his destiny as King.  “Remember who you are!” and whatnot.

10. THE ROAD BACK. About three-fourths of the way through the story, the hero is driven to complete the adventure, leaving the Special World to be sure the treasure is brought home. Often a chase scene signals the urgency and danger of the mission.

• Moana:  She takes the Heart and decides to do everything her own damn self.  You go, girl.
• The Lion King:  Simba finally grows a pair and decides to go back home to kick some Scar ass.

11. THE RESURRECTION. At the climax, the hero is severely tested once more on the threshold of home. He or she is purified by a last sacrifice, another moment of death and rebirth, but on a higher and more complete level. By the hero’s action, the polarities that were in conflict at the beginning are finally resolved.

• Moana:  She attempts to return the Heart despite all the danger, and Maui comes back to help.  She returns the Heart to the goddess, who is then restored to sanity and the darkness retreats.
• The Lion King:  Simba beats the shit out of Scar and the hyenas, who in turn rip Scar to shreds.

12. RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR. The hero returns home or continues the journey, bearing some element of the treasure that has the power to transform the world as the hero has been transformed.

• Moana: She goes back home where everything is thriving again.  She becomes Chief (again) and continues the island’s long line of Chiefs.
• The Lion King:  Simba assumes his role as King and brings his kingdom back to its former glory.  He and Nala get busy and produce a cub, continuing that Circle of Life thing.

Side note:  I just saw “Wonder Woman” and had similar feelings about it afterwards.  Loved the movie, but it still had that familiar structure.  And come to think of it, “Frozen” probably had the same exact same thing but I refuse to watch it again to find out…

“You made me hate my guts last night.”

I haven’t looked in my Spam folder in ages,  and the other day I needed to find a password-reset email that went in there.  Besides the usual “Make ur dick So harddd!1!!1” crapola, I was highly amused to see these ridiculous emails accusing me of something.  It’s such an obvious attempt to get a response, but I’m sure some idiot(s) out there replied to them and opened the floodgates to a shitload more spam or worse.  These are hilariously transparent and pathetic, so I thought it would be fun to share them with some responses.

Subject: Get the hell out of my life – F U
From: “Rebecca\ E.J” <Amy@cbbp.erasmunipod.com>
Date: Sun, 07 May 2017 13:15:27 -0400 (EDT)

Hi ________,

I just wanna tell you that you suck. I will never forgive you for what you did to me, you piece of crap. ASSHOLE! Do not you dare to talk to me again. Believe me, you don’t wanna see my other side, ask your goddamn sister, she has seen it.

F U,
T.B

Yeah, well my slag of a sister knows your dirty secret.  You know, the one about the goat.  Yeah, that one.  And I’m tellin’ everybody on Facebook!  Oh wait, I don’t have a sister.  Nevermind.

Date: Mon, 15 May 2017 04:43:49 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Cut the cr*p and stop stalking me
From: “Vanessa E.J” <reply@economicslearn.com>

Hey Scumbag,
Stop stalking me and my friend or I will report you. You piece of shit, cock-sucker douche. I do not know why you are doing this! You slept together once, only once. It does not mean anything. Have not you heard of hook up?
So, f*** off and leave us alone

I slept together?  What the fuck does that even mean?  Get your story straight, asshole.  I don’t have time for this mealy-mouthed nonsense, I have to get back to stalking you.  Whoever you are.

From: Inbox Message <hello@lookient.com>
Subject: About Last Night Dick
Date: Tue, 09 May 2017 14:28:43 -0400 (EDT)

You mad bitch! You made me hate my guts last night. You are an ASS. You disgust me. It makes me wanna puke when I think of you. YOU SON OF BITCH. Do not you dare to do that to me again, sucker.

Oh you deserve every bit of whatever it was you got last night!  You know why.  And I’ll do it to you again any time I want…as soon as I figure out who and where you are and whatever it was I did that pissed you off so much.

This one’s a little different, but no less ridiculous:

From: Brittney <reply@wattapelmicro.com>
Subject: why aren’t you answering me ?
Date: Fri, 5 May 2017 12:05:52 -0400

Its been a while since the last time we talked, a longer time since we saw eachother
Some say time fixes everyting but honestly its not working out for me Today I miss you more than ever
I guess I should’ve told you that when I could, now it might be a little to late
I guess you’ll never understand how much you mean to me even though I told you a million times
Hurtss to know forever ended so soon.

Oh Brittney, Brittney, Brittney.  You should have known it was just gonna be a quickie in the back of that U-Haul trailer, nothing more.  It would never have worked out anyway, with my uncontrollable gayness and you having a vagina and all.  Farewell, my love…whoever you are/were.  We shan’t meet again…