This post was written at a discount for my honest and unbiased opinion

File this one under #firstworldproblems…

Shopping on Amazon has become increasingly annoying over the past couple of years thanks to a tidal wave of phony reviews that skew product ratings.  I call them “phony” because they were written by people who got the item for free or at a steep discount, and all Amazon required was that people state “I received this product for free in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion” somewhere in their review.  As a seller, you can sell a completely shitty product and still have great reviews if you provide enough freebies in exchange for “honest” reviews.  And these reviews have been proven to be overwhelmingly positive, because (duh!) the reviewers want to continue to get free/discounted stuff.  Here, check this out:

Amazon has been completely overrun with this crap because it works wonder for sales — it got to the point where 90% of the reviews on a product were incentivized.  And if you looked at the negative reviews, you’ll find that they’re the ones who didn’t get it for free.  Nope, nothing shady about that!

Amazon wasn’t doing anything about it despite massive amounts of complaints in their customer forums, so eventually I (and a lot of others, apparently) began to just mark them all as Unhelpful whenever I saw one.  It’s kind of an asshole thing to do because I’m sure some reviewers really do try to be honest, but these reviews are also making Amazon an unreliable place to research products, and therefore the reviews are useless.

Eventually sites like FakeSpot.com began to pop up.  They will analyze product reviews from a variety of businesses and grade them on how honest the reviews appear to be.  If it spots a lot of incentivized or paid reviews, it’ll let you know.  I began using it on almost everything I bought on Amazon.  I could just do my online shopping elsewhere, but it really is hard to beat Amazon for most things.  I’m a slave to Prime…

The interesting thing about these phony reviews is that many reviewers really get into it, presumably to show the company who sent them the item that they’ll do and say anything to keep getting free stuff.  It’s not uncommon to see an exhaustive 5,000-word review for a cheap $9 iPhone case.  It just seems kinda gross and desperate.

Case in point:  while looking around on Amazon for a good motion-sensing hallway light, I came across this one which looked decent.  One of the “most helpful” reviews comes from someone who obviously writes them a lot…because it is EPIC.  This is one of the longest pieces of puffery for a $20 product I’ve ever seen.  It’s a LED light, for fuck’s sake!  You’d think he was reviewing an expensive piece of electronics with dozens of features that need in-depth detail.

Super convenient, perfect size, and rechargeable motion sensor light for those hard to reach dark places.

By Kermit “Indieviewer” Jones, Jr. on September 25, 2016

WHAT IS THIS, AND WHY MIGHT I WANT IT?: These are stick up lights with motion sensor that are convenient for closets and small spaces where you just need occasional light, but don’t want to go through the process of wiring or having a plug. They have built-in rechargeable batteries, and the LEDs last for for a surprisingly long time.

FIRST IMPRESSION: Nice, clean white appearance. Wasn’t too sure about the plastic “hanger” but it does a good job of letting you pop up anywhere temporarily, with even a thumbtack. Pretty bright, given their small size. Silver trim is a nice touch.

ASSEMBLY: Not much to it. You can hang them on a wall or mount them with the included double-sided 3M mounting tape. To recharge the battery, just twist the light off of the base (sort of like a smoke detector). Goes back on very easily.

FUNCTION: Charging is easy, and the light glows red to let you know. It goes off when charging is done. If you see the video, it shows that even after 5-6 hours of being left on, there is still enough useable light. So if you’re just using these for a few minutes at a time, expect it to last a very long time. The switch is clearly labeled with On, Off, Motion.

I have mine in a closet where we keep over the counter medication in the basket. These lights work well because they automatically come on when I open the door, allowing me to see without having to pull the basket out of the closet. However, while the motion sensor works, it’s not as consistent as I would like, which is why I’m taking off 1 star.

FIT & APPEARANCE: These lights are 3 inches in diameter. White plastic with white light and nice silver trim. There are 5 LEDs that are very bright.

FEATURES: I don’t want to duplicate the description, but a few things to note:- Rechargeable battery! (most of these type lights require AA or AAA)- Convenient to hang or mount- Easy to twist off for recharging- Glow lets you know when it’s charging- Motion sensor is a bonus

BUILD QUALITY: Really good build quality. They don’t feel “cheap” which is nice.

WHAT YOU GET: Two lights with base. Two hangers. Two mounting tape pieces. Two micro-USB charging cords (which is awesome since many manufacturers cheap out on this!). Instructions.

WHAT YOU DON’T GET: No complaints here!

PRICING & VALUE: For the price (and even with the motion sensor issues), this is a good deal. While you may find some that are cheaper, they normally require batteries. The rechargeable batteries, with the 2 included USB cables, make this a really good deal.

NEGATIVES: My only issue is that the motion sensor seems to be a bit random. About 25% of the time it doesn’t work or it is delayed. Not a huge issue for me given the other features, but it is the one thing keeping me from 5 stars.

BOTTOM LINE: Super convenient, perfect size, and rechargeable motion sensor light for those hard to reach dark places.

Don’t forget to check out the video for some other comments that may not be here.

Hey folks! Reviews are a tricky thing… I mean, who do you trust? I also realize that a review of a free product may be considered fundamentally different from that of a product for which one has paid. However, I also believe such reviews can be useful when the review process is respected. I’ve tried to do that here because I want to help others in their decision making process. This product was provided as a sample for my honest and unbiased review, but I hope the detail I have contained herein provides legitimacy in helping you decide whether or not to purchase, regardless of my rating. Please leave any comments below and I’ll get to them as soon as I can.

I can appreciate that he tries to appeal to our skeptical nature with that disclosure at the end, but holy shit…this guy’s hardcore.  Still, I had to check FakeSpot.com out of curiosity and what do you know?  They graded it an “F” with an estimated 56% of biased reviews.   Needless to say, I didn’t end up buying one.

Suddenly, in October Amazon did what we thought was impossible:  they banned incentivized reviews!

Amazon is cracking down on biased customer reviews

Amazon updated its community guidelines today to prohibit so-called “incentivized reviews,” which are customer reviews of a product that was received for free or at a discount in exchange for an online write-up. The company says these types of reviews make up a tiny fraction of overall Amazon.com reviews. Yet studies have shown that incentivized reviewers are less likely to give products negative feedback and review hundreds of products on average, potentially affecting the overall sales performance of otherwise mediocre items.

They won’t remove all previous biased reviews, but they’ll apparently do some cleaning-up in that regard.  O happy day!  Now I can read a review of a $3 keychain flashlight and know that the six-page review was written by a genuine crazy person, not someone who got it for free.

It’s almost over!

There are now three more days before the election hammer comes down to smite us all.  I’m hoping that hammer won’t be wearing the mangy pelt of a roadkilled ocelot on its head, but we’ll just have to wait and see.  (Speaking of roadkill, my running list of Trump epithets has just been updated with some great new ones, including a list of names just for his hair.  Check it out, it’s therapeutic!)

Anyway, I haven’t written anything since those amazing debates, and now I feel the need to vent a bit before November 8th, a.k.a. Shitmageddon.

Remember back in May I blathered on and on about how stressful and anxiety-inducing this election is, and how I’ve been cutting back on my news and social media exposure just to keep from spiraling into a state of utter despair?

Well, that didn’t last long.

When the debates began, I felt that same sense of dread and the need for avoidance.  But I knew that they were going to be different from past debates, and that somehow they’d go down in history for…something.  We’ve never seen something quite like this in our elections before, after all.  I figured I could either ignore them and read the highlights later, or just dig in and watch them closely to absorb every bit of detail and context I could.  So that’s what I did.  And it was fascinating.  It was like watching a car crash make sweet, tender love to a train wreck whilst hurtling over a cliff.

I’m not going to rehash all the weird shit that happened in the debates because it’s documented in painful detail in a bajillion other places.  But it somehow sucked me back into wanting to keep up on everything that’s happening, because this election will be historic in various ways and I don’t want to be one of those people who says, “Yeah, I just tuned it all out.  I knew who I was voting for, I don’t need to hear all that other stuff.”  That’s fine for those who still feel that way, I’m intensely interested in watching this from all angles because so much is at stake here.  I’m not following the news 24/7, but much more than when I was on my news fast.

I’m still anxious and dreading the final outcome, of course, but I want to be fully present for it…because no matter who wins, there’s going to be some ugly fallout.  A Trump win will have repercussions for America we can only begin to fathom.  We were in Germany in September, and several times we were asked (not only by Germans) about what we think of the election.  The world is watching us very closely, and from what I can tell, the majority of them correctly see Trump as the human embodiment of American ignorance and aggression.  If he wins, I think there will be major protests and financial damage, and hopefully there will be a challenge by Clinton due to Trump’s connections with Russia and his efforts to mislead and intimidate Clinton voters with obvious scams.  Hey, if Trump is allowed to ignore his promise to accept the outcome, why can’t she?

A Clinton win, however, will be better for America in various ways, including our standing in the world, but I predict there will be a lot of violence.  Many Trump voters are rabidly unstable — from everything I’ve been seeing and reading, we’re likely to see riots, bombings, and lynchings by Trump’s discouraged, lemming-like minions who think the election was “rigged.”  Right-wing militia/terrorist groups have already burned down black churches and mosques thanks to his hate-mongering, and others have been caught plotting to kill Muslim immigrants with bombs.

Right-Wing ‘Crusaders’ Militia Group Plotted Terror Attack On Muslim Immigrants, FBI Charges

WASHINGTON ― Three Kansas men who were allegedly part of a domestic terrorist group called “the Crusaders” were arrested by the FBI on Friday, charged with plotting to carry out an attack on Muslims living in the state.

According to the Department of Justice, the trio allegedly stockpiled firearms, ammunition and explosive materials, and discussed parking four vehicles filled with explosives at the four corners of the apartment complex in order to set off a massive explosion.

Add this to all the armed thugs that Trump has been instructing to show up at polling stations to scare away voters — in the guise of protecting against “voter fraud”, naturally — and you’ve got a recipe for widespread gun violence.  Clinton got a lot of hate for her “basket of deplorables” remark, but if the shoe fits…  (Side note:  of course these guys called themselves The Crusaders.  Extremist religious nutjobs like this love pretending they’re valiant destroyers of evil, and Christians especially love military imagery:  they’re “soldiers for Christ” using their “swords of God’s light” to fight the “great war against Satan” and all that eyeroll-inducing nonsense.)

Anyway, these are just my predictions and I hope I’m wrong, but I think a lot of people are hyper-polarized enough to cause some real damage out there.

Naturally, much of this polarization is directly related to our reliance on social media for news.  After diving back into that cesspool of misinformation and knee-jerk outrage, from what I can see it’s business as usual:  Facebook and Twitter continue to be the main vehicles of our intense division, with lying memes and distorted facts blindly accepted as the truth with no critical thinking or basic fact-checking whatsoever.

62% Americans Get News On Social Media

More people in the United States are now turning to social media instead of traditional media for news. According to Pew Research Center, which surveyed over 4,500 people with various backgrounds, an increasingly number of Americans — 62% to be exact — are getting their news from social media platforms such as Facebook, and Instagram. Of the 62% people, 66% of them get their news from Facebook, 23% from Instagram, 21% from YouTube, and 19% from LinkedIn.

62% is bad enough, but…Instagram?  LinkedIn?  For fuck’s sake…you may as well get your “facts” from MySpace or Walmart.com.  (Another side note:  what’s with this sudden trend of using commas to separate only two items?  You don’t need to write “Facebook, and Instagram”, just “Facebook and Instagram.”  I’ve been seeing this a lot these past few months in articles by people who actually write for a living.  #stopthatshitrightnow)

Even when meme-ified lies are utterly debunked, how many people actually do any follow-up or otherwise hear about it?  Once you state something on Facebook as a fact, it immediately becomes a truth to certain people who believe everything they’re told, and no amount of retraction or correction will matter to them.  Their outrage is instantaneous and disproportionately vicious, and these willfully misinformed morons presumably vote.

How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth

Whether navigating Facebook, Google or The New York Times’s smartphone app, you are given ultimate control — if you see something you don’t like, you can easily tap away to something more pleasing. Then we all share what we found with our like-minded social networks, creating closed-off, shoulder-patting circles online.

It’s goddamn disheartening and depressing to think about, and I’ll likely be taking another holiday from Facebook when all this shit is finally over with.

Let’s face it:  social media is addictive.  If you won’t/can’t cut back on social media, what to do about your pro-Trump friends who are shitting bigotry and crackpot conspiracies all over your newsfeed?  Look at it this way:  rational and informed people know that a vote for Trump is a vote against basic humanity.  It’s not a matter of Republican vs. Democrat anymore — Trump’s vileness runs so much deeper than that.  Ask yourself why you’d want to stay in contact with people who support his perverted “values” and destructive vision for America, then ask yourself what it says about their values and view of the world.  You don’t have to cut them out of your life entirely (though in some cases it’s recommended), but why allow them to continue projectile-vomiting their pro-Trump diarrhea in your face on Facebook?  Mute or unfriend these people.  You don’t deserve their verbal and intellectual abuse.  Here’s a great piece about why it’s important to clean house:

I Didn’t Unfriend You Over ‘Politics’

…This has absolutely nothing to do with politics (which, quite frankly, is something you should have been able to glean yourself, based on the agreement of a vast number of Republicans). This has to do with a man who is not only unfit for the presidency, but unfit for this country, as he seems to possess an alarming lack of regard for the principles upon which it was founded. And I will not be made to remain friends with people who see his continued attempts at oppression and discrimination as an “inconvenient consequence” of ensuring that their party remain in power.

Because ultimately, if discriminatory practices aren’t a deal-breaker for you, if they don’t inspire in you a pain and an anger so heartbreaking that it leaves you aching for your less-privileged neighbor, then I don’t want to know you. And I shouldn’t have to simply because we shared the same floor freshman year of college.

Luckily I haven’t had to boot anyone from Facebook, which is the one I use the most.  The one person I would have had to boot already booted me months ago, and suddenly Facebook seemed like a slightly less awful place to deal with.  I do know some people who are likely to vote Trump, including family members, but luckily they don’t discuss it with me.  I think they know better.  🙂

Three more days, folks!  If I were the religious type I’d be praying like crazy.  But since I’m not, I’ll just pour another goblet of wine and hope for the best.  Cheers!

 

Death, etc.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about death.  Not so much my own inevitable end, but death in general is on my mind quite a bit these days.  I’m starting to reach that point in life (turning 45 today, in fact) where one begins to lose more and more people as time goes on, and it’s brought on some interesting new ponderings.  One of the things I’m starting to experience is how social media has changed the way we find out about and deal with someone’s passing.  Along with that, we get to see how our online presence tends to outlive us.  Like electronic ghosts…

In the past couple of decades the internet has been woven into just about every aspect of our lives, especially social media, and we’re sharing more and more of what used to be set on physical (and more private) media.  Remember writing in diaries…on paper?  And ordering prints for photos when then go into a scrapbook?  Sometimes I miss it….but I also love technology and using the gadgets we now have, and like a lot of other people I tend to just fart everything into the Cloud and forget about it.

So…  In November 2014 I got on Facebook and there are all these messages posted to a friend’s profile saying things like: “Steve, why??” “What happened?”  “i miss you my best friend.”  I thought “WTF?”, with a sinking feeling.  Many more messages followed, referring to him in the past tense, and finally it hit me that he had taken his own life.  For weeks afterward, people posted messages on there as more and more people found out about it.

Coming to terms with his death and that horrible sense of loss was one thing — but this business of someone’s Facebook profile staying active after their death, and people posting messages to it (and each other), was something new for me.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.  Is it morbid?  Is it helpful to those he left behind?  I eventually came to realize that it’s actually kind of comforting to be able to say something “to” him this way, as a form of closure.  Or maybe not closure in the traditional sense, because people still occasionally post to it.  “Steve, I found this picture of us I never shared with you.”  “Happy 40th!  Missing you every day!”  It’s kinda sweet, and I know his family appreciates it.

A couple of months ago another friend of mine, John, died…and everything happened the same exact way.  I checked Facebook before work, began reading all these strange messages to him, and realized he’d died the previous evening.  Renal failure from a lifetime of diabetes.  It hit me really hard because we were pretty close despite living far apart — so I took the day off because I was completely useless with anything else.  I posted a bunch of photos of him/us to his Facebook page and said goodbye in my own way, and all day I read all the other stuff posted by his other grieving friends.  It was about all I could do since I wasn’t able to actually visit in person, and being able to do it was surprisingly cathartic.

I know this kind of thing is hardly new, though.  For years Facebook has made it possible for family to memorialize their loved one’s account, allowing people to keep visiting and posting to it indefinitely.  I’m sure other companies do it too…  The first time I’d heard of something like it was many years ago when a story came out about The WELL online community which allowed someone’s account to remain active after his death.  At the time that sounded a little morbid, but these days it seems like the obvious thing to do, and now I get it.

This stuff leads me to ask a few questions, the obvious one being:  what are people going to read/say when I’m gone?  My internet presence, in one form or another, goes all the way back to 1994 (and BBS systems going back to the mid-80s).  If anyone cared enough they could dig through it all and probably get a pretty good picture of who I am and what I was like, and how my beliefs and attitudes evolved over the years.  I’ve never really thought about what happens to all of that when I’m no longer here, so…am I happy with the story I’ve unwittingly left behind?  Or does it really matter since, you know, I’ll be dead?

I’ve thought a lot about this while going back and reading a bunch of my older stuff, and I think I’m OK with it.  There are posts I totally forgot about that crack me up when I find them, and there are things that make me cringe a bit.  Especially on Facebook when I went through my Asshole Atheist period a few years ago (I’m pretty sure I’ve mellowed since then, anyway).  But it was all honestly written at any particular time, so I can at least say I was being authentic…even if I was sometimes being an authentic twat. 😀  Not nearly as bad as some of the unbelievably vile and hateful crap I see on Twitter and YouTube comments, though.  Now there’s some stuff I wouldn’t want my name permanently attached to, alive or not!

So considering how much of our lives we tend to put online, it strikes me as a sort of passive immortality.  After all, most of these big companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Instagram, etc. aren’t going anywhere any time soon.  The big players in the social media game are seemingly here to stay, and all this stuff we’re sharing with the world will be available for anyone to look at for many years to come (assuming you or your family don’t delete it!).  It’s something right out of sci-fi stories — people transferring their minds and “souls” onto data cubes or whatever — and I’m starting to feel like it’s becoming a kinda-sorta reality…in a sort of clunky, disorganized way.  And speaking of sci-fi stories, if you want to see an extreme take on this subject, check out the Black Mirror episode called “Be Right Back.”  It’s suuuuuper creepy, but maybe something that could really happen someday.

There’s a strange wrinkle to this, though.  A few days after John was gone, a message from him appeared on Facebook.  Apparently his mom had taken control of his account and was letting people know about memorial services, etc.  I figured that was probably a good idea, since she wasn’t normally on Facebook and people could give their condolences that way.  But soon it began to feel a little weird, because she continued to post and “like” stuff, even sent me a couple of private messages about this or that.  I eventually had to mute him (her) because it was just too painful having his name and photo keep popping up as if he were still around.  I know she means well, but…I just can’t.

I also think people should be able to easily opt out of being part of this future “existence”, though that’s nearly impossible at this point.  The Right to be Forgotten movement attempts to give people some choice in the matter, but apparently the process of making Google remove you from certain search results (the data stays, it’s just not linked to your name) involves an ungodly amount of hoops to jump through.  Maybe they’re hoping people will get frustrated and give up…

Anyway, I’ve come to find some amusement in the possibility of someone in the year 2116 somehow running across that massive compilation of blonde jokes I put online ages ago and thinking “What the…?”  Or maybe that shitty photo you took with your Motorola Razr phone and uploaded to Friendster in 2004 will someday pop up in an online collection of “primitive social intercommunication technologies.”  Who knows, maybe in the future everyone’s past online life will be like a virtual museum exhibit.

Hmmm, I’m actually not sure how I feel about that one.  Kinda sounds like another Black Mirror episode…

Dear Pokémon Go player: don’t be an asshole

God, I love The Oatmeal.

As if we don’t have enough people walking around with their faces buried in their phones, oblivious to everything around them, now we’ve got people tossing all common sense out the window and being insensitive dicks about it as they try to “catch” imaginary creatures in an app that collects mountains of data on who and where you are at all times.  Yay, technology!  I know that “sheeple” is a tired, eyeroll-worthy term favored by conspiracy theorists and other nutjobs, but sometimes it’s actually appropriate.  Case in point:

Holocaust Museum would like for ‘Pokémon Go’ trainers to back off

The Museum has found itself transformed into a series of three Poké Stops for each part of the facility, like several other inappropriate locales across the world, with visitors flocking to them, phones held high. Poké Stops are like caches of items for players who happen upon them, spawning items like Poké Balls, Potions and more.

…The museum is looking into seeing if it can be removed as a home for Poké Stops going forward, as it seems “disrespectful” for visitors to be engaged in these displays in areas of the museum meant for reflection and solemnity, such as the museum’s Hall of Remembrance.

Oh, and then there’s this.  Lucky guy, but not too smart.

This Is What Can Happen When You Play Pokémon Go While Driving

His mother wrote on Facebook cited by The Smoking Gun that although her son won’t answer a phone call or text behind the wheel, when he saw a “‘special’ Pokémon on his app… He looked down for a minute and woke up in an ambulance.” She adds that he’s thankful no one was in the now crumpled passenger seat.

But wait!  It looks like the developers have already come up with a way to ruin the game.  Soon you’ll be pummeled with ads for special creatures available only at certain shitty mall stores and fast food chains.  Corporate cash grab GO!

‘Pokémon Go’ sponsored locations will let brands in on the fun

While you’re trying to catch ’em all with Pokémon Go, the developers are figuring out how to make (more) money from the white hot augmented reality (AR) game. Along with the existing in-app purchases from “PokéCoins,” developer Niantic says it will use sponsored locations as another way to cash in, according to the Financial Times. “There is a second component to our business model at Niantic, which is this concept of sponsored locations,” Chief Executive John Hanke told the FT.

I honestly haven’t played this game, which is surprising because it’s such a cool use of technology that appeals to my geek streak, and normally I’d jump at the chance.  But I began reading about it on the gadget blogs and elsewhere, and after seeing the ridiculous frenzy it’s caused and what kind of personal info it collects, I really want no part of it.  (Jesus, I really must be getting old!)  I’m content to watch until it peaks and people lose interest, by which time there will be a new and exciting fad to start the frenzy all over again.  It’s a Circle of Life thing.

So much for “protecting the family”…

Here’s a story that’s been making the rounds lately.  This woman bragged on Facebook about all the guns she owns, because Obama was gonna take ’em from her and blah blah blah, same shit we always hear from firearm fetishists.  But then…

Texas gun advocate shoots and kills her two daughters

In March, Christy Sheats, 42, wrote on Facebook: “It would be horribly tragic if my ability to protect myself or my family were to be taken away, but that’s exactly what Democrats are determined to do by banning semiautomatic weapons.” On Friday she got into an argument with her two daughters and shot them both dead. Sheats herself was shot and killed by a police officer.

Holy shit.  I’m totally not surprised this happened in Texas, either.  But wait…just when you didn’t think it could get any worse:

Gun nut mom went back for more bullets before executing daughter

Police say that Christy Sheats, the gun nut mom who shot dead her two daughters during a family confrontation that spilled into a Texas street, returned inside to reload before executing her child in view of horrified neighbors. She was still shooting when cops arrived, which is why they killed her.

Sure, she may have murdered her own children in cold blood, but at least she was fully supported by her God-given Second Amendment rights to bear arms against whoever, right?  That’ll show ’em!

And no, I’m not blaming the guns themselves for this — but clearly, this woman made full use of her ample supply to destroy her family.  She clearly had a few loose wires and should probably have been in therapy if she wasn’t already.

Oh, and then there’s this nitwit, though I have a feeling she’s trollin’ us.  Hard to tell nowadays, isn’t it?

Race mixing is not only an ungodly thing, it causes such confusion and humiliation.  Not only for the children born of this sin, but for the grandparents who would have to carry this burden. Mrs. Sheats was the picture of elegance and I know she would not want to have to explain to her friends why she was carrying around a yellow mixed baby that her promiscuous daughters had created.

Rather than be forced into this life of depravity and sin, she chose to go down grasping her weapon in the name of God.  As far as I am concerned, she is a martyr for Christ.

In a follow-up post she whines, “Why am I the bad person for expressing what a majority of the world believes?”  That’s exactly your problem:  you think the whole world shares your evil and racist opinions.

You’re not a martyr, dear.  You’re just an asshole.

Running list of Donald Trump epithets

Update 11/4/16:  Added a few more to the bottom of each list, plus some just for his hair.  I know I’m missing a lot of good Trump names but I jot ’em down when I can.  You know, for posterity and stuff.

Time to lighten the mood!  Since I can’t seem to ignore the bastard, I’ve started a running list of epithets for Donald Trump taken from various places around the interwebs.  They’re not all zingers but some are truly fantastic.

I’ve only come up with two myself, though.  While posting on Facebook recently I referred to him as “this orange-tinged bag of jingoist raccoon farts.”  Not a bad start, I suppose.  The other day the phrase “Third-rate Hitler cosplay enthusiast” popped into my head, so there you go.  Feel free to comment with your own!

Stephen Colbert:

• A microwaved circus peanut
• A honey-glazed tiger testicle
• A catheter bag full of candy corn
• A shriveled tangerine covered in golden retriever hair

From @midnight (one of the few shows I watch almost religiously — the linked video is great):

• Xenophobic sweet potato
• Wispy human queef
• Dissonant bagpipe powered by farts
• Living Donald Trump caricature of Donald Trump
• Douchebag-infested hairpiece
• Bigoted orangutan and casino mismanager
• Presidential candidate and cranky planetoid
• The Orange One
• The Magnificent Orange One
• Orange condom filled with rancid stew
• Jersey Shore ventriloquist dummy
• Corn-husk doll cursed by a witch
• Luminous marmoset
• Tangelo Fruit Roll-Up stretched over cat litter
• The larval stage of a yam
• Conistipated Cheeto
• Tangerine covered in cobwebs
• Feral shouting meatball
• Fancy deli meat sculpture
• The angriest pumpkin
• Shrieking buffalo wing that fell into a urinal
• Jingoistic bullfrog
• Narcissistic human airhorn
• Orange yelling machine
• Hotel magnate and bloated Jack-o-Lantern in a suit
• Spray-tanned ski movie bad guy
• A racist voodoo doll made of cat hair

From the “Throwing Shade” podcast (I know I’m missing some — these were all from a single episode!):

• Self-contained Human Centipede
• The dumpy garbage-troll from “Weird Science” zipped up in the skin of a gin-soaked 19th-century bodysnatcher
• Living, breathing, walking, talking pile of elephant diarrhea
• God’s ultimate mistake
• The physical embodiment of a cumfart
• Hustler magazine zipped up inside a leather gym bag that’s been treated with the
• finest human urine
• The world’s biggest turd with shoes

From Gawker:

• Exhaustive child
• $4 billion puddle of tinted moisturizer
• Wonka Factory escapee
• Open-Faced Quesadilla
• Idiot billionaire and face of YouTube’s popular “Annoying Orange”
• Noted Asshole
• Asshole-American
• Shrunken apple head
• Permanently open mouth
• Verbal Billionaire
• Deflated basketball
• Cartoon plutocrat
• Sentient overripe pear
• Melted creamsicle
• Rotting pumpkin time-lapse
• Fluffy bouffant
• Gaping mouth with a hairpiece
• Oozy lather of absurd hyperbole
• Dick-nosed baldy
• Perpetual asshole
• Serially bankrupt business mogul
• Television clown
• Bloated spawn of a Penn Station ashtray and Nickelodeon slime
• Legitimate hairstyle choice
• Anthropomorphic caterpillar
• Toupee’d buffoon
• Bloviating billionaire
• Idiotic rich man
• Vibrating Bologna loaf
• Deflated football
• Human embodiment of hotdog filling
• Toupee-wearing Orangina Fuckhole
• Sentient bottle of self tanner
• Short-fingered vulgarian
• Rejected Richie Rich Villain
• Corndog that escaped from the state fair
• GOP Presidential candidate and Bone-in Ham
• Walking sun dried tomato
• Presidential candidate and human Kewpie doll
• Adult male baby with the combover and personality of a 30 pound toddler
• Melting pig carcass
• Human cystic acne pus
• Millionaire and disgraced racist
• What would happen if a caps lock key was granted one wish and that wish was to come to life
• Fabulist cheddar critter
• NOT a Fetal-Mafia Truther (i.e. Ted Cruz)
• Unreptant Bigot
• Ralph Steadman illustration come to life
• Noted Donald Trump enthusiast
• Grimacing Cheeto Fart
• Everyone’s Favorite Screaming Steamed Carrot
• Cursed Halloween Mask
• Presidential candidate and bag of flour
• Enraged animated creamsicle
• Woody Allen impersonator and Incessant Tweeter
• Time-displaced Sopranos extra
• Melted candle impersonator
• Bloviating caricature of a businessman
• Disgraced Pope impersonator
• Cable News Fever Dream
• Shoehorn with teeth
• Lint-crusted dried apricot
• Billionaire Siberian Tiger Hairball
• Miss Cleo cosplay enthusiast
• Petulant slice of stinking, festive shit-pie
• Noted Racist Donald Trump
• KKK Scion
• Cranial bee sting victim

From Jezebel:

• An ambitious corn dog that escaped from the concession stand at a rural Alabama fairground, stole an unattended wig, hopped a freight train to Atlantic City and never looked back
• Orange asshat
• Four-time bankruptcy filer and seething hernia mass
• Bone-in ham
• Sun-dried tomato
• A shithead
• Adult blobfish
• Deflated football
• Fart-infused lump of raw meat
• Melting pig carcass
• Disgraced racist
• Talking comb-over
• Human equivalent of cargo pants that zip away into shorts
• Cheeto-dusted bloviator
• Fuzzy meat wad
• Bag of flour
• Human turd
• Not in any way sexist, you bimbos
• A man who cherishes women
• Future leader of the free world
• Decomposing ear of corn
• His own best parody
• A rich idiot … willing to allow garbage to fall out of his mouth without batting a single golden lash
• Pond scum
• Noted troll
• The class clown that everyone wishes would be quiet and let the class learn
• Melting businessman
• The person still inexplicably leading the Republican presidential primary
• Wax museum figure on a very hot day
• Soggy burlap sack
• Bag of toxic sludge
• Your next president and ruler for life
• A brightly burning trash fire
• Impoverished urchin
• Aggressively stupid
• Great judgment-haver
• Man-sized sebaceous cyst
• Enlarged pee-splattered Sno Cone
• Empty popcorn bag rotting in the sun
• Man-shaped asbestos insulation board
• Hair plug swollen with rancid egg whites
• Inside-out lower intestine
• Dusty barrel of fermented peepee
• Usually reasonable burlap sack full of rancid Peeps
• Degloved zoo penis
• Presidential candidate and bargain bin full of yellowing Jean-Claude Van Damme movies
• Hairpiece come to life
• Normal-looking human man and entirely credible choice as future leader of the free world
• Decomposing pumpkin pie inhabited by vicious albino squirrels
• A dishrag that on closer inspection is alive with maggots
• Lead paint factory explosion
• Candied yam riddled with moldy spider carcasses
• Enraged Gak spill
• The shriveled pinto bean you had to pluck out of your Chipotle burrito basket
• Human-sized infectious microbe
• Poorly-trained circus orangutan
• Chester Cheetah impersonator
• Lumbering human-like tardigrade
• A tiny piece of dried cat poop that you found in your rug
• A carnivorous plant watered with irradiated bat urine
• Prominent golem Donald Trump, a man who once withheld medication from his sick baby nephew

The New York Times called him “an insecure boasting little boy whose desires were somehow arrested at age 12.”

GQ Magazine called him “the Lex Luthor of our time.”

The New York Daily News called him “Dead clown walking.”

John Oliver called him many things, among them “America’s back mole — it may have seemed harmless a year ago, but now that it’s become frighteningly bigger, it’s no longer wise to ignore it.”

But wait!  What about his hair??  Yes, there’s a list for that too.  The Washington Post has put together the 100 greatest descriptions of Trump’s hair ever written, and these are my faves:

• An abandoned nest
• A decomposing ear of corn
• A corn husk doll cursed by a witch
• An ambitious corn dog that escaped from the concession stand at a rural Alabama fairground, stole an unattended wig, hopped a freight train to Atlantic City and never looked back
• The furrowed wake that a speedboat would leave on a lake of orange sherbet
• A Mobius combover
• The male equivalent of a push-up bra
• A mullet that died in some horrific accident
• Golden fleece
• Dyed the nascent yellow of a baby chick
• A hue best described as ‘Cigarette-stained-teeth blond’
• Burnt Cheetos auburn
• More flyaways than LAX
• More soft-serve swirl than Dairy Queen
• An aggressive cowlick gone rogue
• An unruly shrub
• An unfortunate situation
• The roll of sod that never looked quite right in your yard
• Farcical follicle humiliation
• Mexican feather grass
• A South American Flannel caterpillar
• The hair of 33 Barbie dolls
• A pancake hat
• Bread at the end of the loaf
• An airboat skimming the Everglades
• The halo of meticulously crafted bullshit
• A pumpkin having a nervous breakdown
• Decomposing pumpkin pie inhabited by vicious albino squirrels
• A viscous, bird-killing oil slick
• A very well-behaved guinea pig
• A dishrag that on closer inspection is alive with maggots
• A dead, furry lobster
• Diffused, unsavory salmon
• That thing
• Best left to an architectural critic
• A face on the top of his head. A twin, all but absorbed in the womb. The eyes move. The lips quiver.
• The grotesque, exhibitionist, peacocky mutation that adorns his skull
• A bridal-level updo
• An interdimensional, gravity-warping vortex

It’s time for some gun-addiction rehab

Let’s face it:  America’s addiction to guns is literally killing us.  These addicts buy, sell, collect, and fetishize firearms with intense passion.  This passion is fueled by misinterpretations of the Second Amendment, absurd fantasies of valiantly defending their homeland against government tyranny, and racist/xenophobic feelings towards certain groups of people.  Oh, and many of them just have a seriously fucked-up desire to feel powerful and kill stuff.

And here we go again:  dozens of lives (this time in Orlando) snuffed out by a guy with a gun he never should have been able to get his hands on.  The arguments on social media defending his right to own that particular weapon are especially galling.  But how else should we expect addicts to respond?  If you’ve had experience with someone battling an addiction to alcohol, meth, etc. you know exactly what’s happening here.  The addiction will do whatever is necessary to protect itself.  It will make excuses, it will lie, it will say literally anything to ensure that the pleasure from the substance never ceases.

This is why you have rambling gun-apologetics articles like this one, where you can practically hear the excitement in his voice as he breathlessly describes in absurd detail why the AR-15 makes the perfect weapon for mass killing and how awesome that is…though of course murder is bad and stuff.  That’s pure addiction talking there:  well-worded and logically presented, but still absolutely and selfishly clinging to the thing that brings him so much pleasure.  It’s a sickness, folks.

Look, in my 20-ish years online I’ve wasted countless hours wading through diatribes from gun zealots defending their right to own military-grade weapons.  They’ll even split hairs about what “assault weapon” means, or what “militia” means, desperately trying to distance their worship of these dick-replacements from the latest massacre of innocents.  And you know you’ve run into a gun addict when their first reaction to any comment supporting gun control is what I call the WALL OF TEXT:  five or six dense paragraphs of run-on sentences detailing why they should be able to own any weapon they choose and how dare you repress my God-given right to own a AR-15 and the Founding Fathers totally said we should have ’em and by the way fuck Obama he wants my guns and he can’t have ’em praise Jesus vote Trump.  Seriously, this is what they do.  I see it every time we have another massacre…which is now weekly.

And honestly, I’ve had enough of their bullshit so I no longer engage them in debates.  No amount of linguistic gymnastics can justify the ownership of these weapons.  No amount of microscopic examination and reinterpretation of the Second Amendment makes it morally acceptable to allow anyone to purchase one, especially someone on the FBI’s terror watchlist (like the Orlando shooter was).  Not when we’ve got massacres happening weekly in this country, some involving children…something even the rifle-strokers have to admit wasn’t envisioned by our Founding Fathers.  These particular guns are made specifically to kill as many people as possible in a very short time, and nothing more.  It’s all over their marketing materials, even.

Yes, we should still fix the laws that allow dangerous people to get these weapons, but making them harder or impossible to get ahold of will definitely help as well.  Of course, when presented with actual data from around the globe showing that gun control works, they glaze over and claim it’s just the leftist commie agenda trying to take their precious people-killers.  That’s the addiction talking again.  Have you ever tried reasoning with an alcoholic who doesn’t actually want to change?  I have.  It’s pretty much a waste of time.

Can’t we build some rehab facilities for these people?  Maybe lock them up for a few weeks and make them watch newsreels of gun violence aftermath and the families ripped apart by it.  Make them go to group meetings where people talk about their irrational attraction to these steel instruments of killing.  I mean, there’s gotta be something we can do to treat this sickness.

It’s just a fantasy of mine, of course.  The problem is far too widespread and the worship of firearms is too deeply embedded in our culture for any significant changes to the gun laws to happen, but a man can dream.  (That’s me, always looking on the bright side!)

Reap this.

Whoops.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick deletes “reap what you sow” tweet after mass shooting at LGBT club

A “reap what you sow” tweet from Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick that went out hours after approximately 50 people were killed at a Florida LGBT nightclub has been deleted amid backlash.  At precisely 7 a.m. Sunday Dan Patrick tweeted a photo with the words of Galatians 6:7. The verse reads, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”

I’m not surprised in the least that this came out of Texas…but it seems to me that what America is really reaping is mountains of dead bodies bought and paid for by NRA lobbyists and Republicans who refuse to do anything about it except offer “thoughts and prayers.” But I digress…

Patrick’s adviser Allen Blakemore issued a statement explaining that the tweet was an unfortunate coincidence.  …A Bible verse is tweeted from Patrick’s account every Sunday at 7 a.m.

Riiiiight.  Great bit of P.R. there.  All you have to do is read the kind of shit he tweets regularly (anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-poor, pro-white, pro-Christian, pro-discrimination, etc.) and it’s not much of a leap to conclude that he’d post this intentionally.  The only upside to all this is the vast sea of backlash he’s swimming in at the moment.  You wanted attention, Mr. Not-Even-A-Governor, and now you have it.

(Side note:  even if it was just a crazy coincidence that this tweet was unintentional, do you really need to be auto-tweeting Bible verses?  What’s the point, to gather Likes?  Matthew 6:6: “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”  Oh but if you do that, nobody will see what a stellar Christian you are!  Can’t have that, now can we?)

Such an imagination we have…

Now, this is the way to scare the shit out of people and make them do what you say.  Some of these would look right at home in John Carpenter’s “The Thing.”

Donald Trump before the makeover.  Or maybe after, it’s hard to to tell.

THE DEVIL AND HIS SERVANTS: DEMONIC ILLUSTRATIONS FROM 18TH CENTURY OCCULT BOOK

With the warning “NOLI ME TANGERE” (“Do Not Touch”) on its cover, the compendium can be seen as a last attempt by those of faith to instil fear among the superstitious. After all, the Compendium Artis Magicae was produced during the decade of revolutions (American and French) and in the Age of Enlightenment—when reason, science and the power of the individual dominated, and the first stirrings of industry were about to change Europe and the world. The horrendous witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries were long banished and the last execution in England for witchcraft took place in 1716 (1727 in Scotland, 1750 in Austria, 1782 in Switzerland), while the practise of witchcraft ceased to be a criminal offense across Europe during the century (England 1735)—all of which makes this Compendium Artis Magicae all the more bizarre.

I’ll bet many people today can look at such things and feel a stab of fear, because they’ve been programmed to think there’s an evil creature lurking in the shadows trying to lure them into its sinful clutches.  (Side note:  what’s with the gargantuan wangs on some of these demons…?)

Going downhill fast…

Well, so much for my efforts to ignore Trump…  Actually this is more about his supporters.

So this is what we’ve come to now:

Photographs Show Trump Supporters Pepper Spraying Protesters in The Face (UPDATED)

Last week, photographer Jimi Giannatti attended a Trump rally in San Diego, where protestors converged to denounce in particular the candidate’s deeply racist anti-Mexican stance. Trump’s supporters were ready for them, and armed with pepper spray.

The anti-Trump protesters were forced by the police to stand across the street from the rest of the crowd, so they weren’t even near the supporters.  These Trump assholes actually went across the street themselves and attacked the protesters with pepper spray.  Is anyone going to jail for this?  Trump would bail ’em out if they did.

Oh, there’s video in that article, too.  Those fuckers were enjoying themselves inflicting horrific pain.  At least they also hit some of their own with those streams.  Thanks, God!

It’s only a matter of time before some racist fucktard wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat pulls out a semi-automatic and sprays a group of protesters with bullets.  It’s the American way, after all.